Colombo deploys former LTTE members to twist opposition to US resolution

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 March 2013, 07:32 GMT]
While the Tamil Nadu students in an unprecedented international approach have risen up targeting the hollow resolution tabled by the USA at Geneva, and have come out with 9 demands addressed to New Delhi and Tamil Nadu governments, Colombo engineering an ironical twist to the Tamil uprising, organised a simulated anti-resolution demonstration in Vanni on Tuesday directed by the Sinhala military with the forced participation of former LTTE members, who are now kept as farm labourers by the military. The demonstration was scheduled to take place in Ki’linochchi and Mullaiththeevu by placing the detained former LTTE members in the forefront, followed by public passers-by who were detained for this purpose by the SL military on Tuesday morning. But, the plan flopped and the SL military had to bring in Sinhalese from Mannaar in 3 buses to stage the demonstration in Ki'linochchi.
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Student protests across Tamil Nadu intensify against US resolution

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 March 2013, 20:41 GMT]
While the students of Loyola have been coerced to end their hunger-strike after their arrest in early hours of Monday, their three day fast has sparked off protests across Tamil Nadu. Students from colleges and universities in Chennai, Chidambaram, Chengalpet, Coimbatore, Kumbakonam, Trichy, Tanjore and Tirunelveli have begun mass protests condemning the pro-LLRC US resolution and urging for a referendum among the Eezham Tamils for a sovereign Tamil Eelam as the only just political solution. Grassroots mobilization that is not affiliated to any political party but based on correct concepts is credited to the success of these protests, sources from Tamil Nadu told TamilNet.
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Fasting Loyola students arrested by police, protests to continue

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 March 2013, 06:18 GMT]
In a sudden operation conducted around midnight, the Tamil Nadu police swooped on the eight Loyola College students who were on an indefinite hunger-strike against the pro-LLRC US resolution and have forcibly removed them from the venue of their protest at Koyambedu, Chennai, on Monday. The students, who had begun their fast on Friday, have been taken to the Royapettah General Hospital. Also, around 200 supporters of the students were detained in a community hall near the protest venue. While this move is seen as a draconian curbing of rising sentiments among Tamil Nadu students against those who extend legitimacy to the genocidal Sri Lankan state, sources in Chennai also told TamilNet that the eight students were firm that even if they were arrested they would not give up their protest.
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Academics criticize R2P, emphasize inapplicability to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 March 2013, 20:12 GMT]
Even as certain groups of the establishments are suggesting the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine to the Eezham Tamils, the concept has come under severe criticism by academics who attended the “Conference on Tamil People’s Rights” at Geneva on 02 March. While British academic Dr. Andy Higginbottom argued that R2P was “a humanitarian face to further US interests”, Ireland based Sinhala academic Dr. Jude Lal Fernando stated that “At a time when the powers are giving economic diplomatic and military support to the Sri Lankan state, talking about R2P is nonsensical”, in their opinions conveyed to TamilNet. Dr. Fernando also stressed the need for “the application of remedial sovereignty by means of an UN referendum conducted by powers who were not involved in the genocide.”
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Colombo attempts to resurrect bogey of suicide terror

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 March 2013, 02:35 GMT]
Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN, and the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State University co-sponsored "a dialogue" Friday on suicide bombers in New York, and how the Government of Sri Lanka eliminated the menace and successfully prosecuted the war on terror, sources attending the event told TamilNet. The belated attempt to rekindle the "suicide terror" factor, four years after the Mu'l'livaaykaal massacre and the death of LTTE leadership, was a desperate diversionary measure to shift the increasing focus from Sri Lanka's human rights violations and alleged complicity in mass atrocities, Tamil circles commented.
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Giving bicycles and taking land: New Delhi’s ‘rehabilitation’ policy on Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 March 2013, 00:31 GMT]
India donates 10,000 bicycles to assist the rehabilitation of the war displaced in the North, said The Hindu on Thursday, citing the Indian High Commission in Colombo. The highlight was timed for protests in Tamil Nadu and across the world over the Indo-US failure in tabling a just resolution on Sri Lanka at Geneva. New Delhi’s adamant backing to the ‘friendly’ Sinhala State and military in occupying and colonising the lands of the nation of Eezham Tamils is well known. While there are speculations that the Indian policy aims at indirectly grabbing land in the island through strategic partnership with the Sinhala State and by accepting the structural genocide it commits on Tamils, an alternative Indian media Kafila on Wednesday revealed how Indian land grab enslaving peoples takes place in Africa with the complicity of governments there.
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Chennai college students on indefinite hunger-strike condemn US resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 March 2013, 18:24 GMT]
Eight students of Loyola College, Chennai, who have begun an indefinite hunger-strike on Friday calling for a UN referendum among the Eezham Tamils, have also condemned the pro-LLRC US resolution to be tabled at Geneva, accusing it of bailing out genocidal Sri Lanka. Speaking to TamilNet, Mr. Britto, one of the protesting students, outlining the demands of the hunger-strike, said that the current US resolution was a farce that would completely cover-up the genocide of the Eezham Tamils and strengthen the hands of the perpetrators. The protestors also told TamilNet if their hunger-strike was not paid heed to by the Central Government, they would undertake a Civil Disobedience campaign throughout Tamil Nadu to boycott paying taxes to the Indian state that is endorsing the genocide of their brethren.
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Indian Muslim party demands justice for genocide of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 March 2013, 01:03 GMT]
The Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), a pan-Indian Muslim political party, protested on Thursday outside the UN office at Delhi demanding justice for the genocide-affected nation of the Eezham Tamils. Stating that there was a “gradual genocide” of the Eezham Tamil nation going on in the occupied homeland of the Eezham Tamils, the protestors placed four principal demands to the UN and India, namely to pass a resolution against the Sri Lankan state recognizing its crime of genocide, to punish the perpetrators of gross human rights violations, to ensure the trial of Sri Lankan war criminals in the International Criminal Court and to punish the perpetrators of sexual violence against Tamil women.
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US UNHRC inaction not inconsistent with saving Rajapakse in US Courts, says TAG

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 March 2013, 01:03 GMT]
The resolution tabled in the Geneva UNHCR sessions by the USA in concert with India, which sidesteps forcing an independent international investigation into the Mu'l'livaaykaal killings, and misleads the Eezham Tamils into a mirage that international community will seek accountability, appears entirely consistent with the intervention of the U.S. State Department in the legal actions pursued by Tamil plaintiffs against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse, legal sources in Washington said. U.S. is acting as a proxy to Rajapakses in filing legal briefs and replacing Patton Boggs as "the attorneys" for Rajapakse.
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Learn Lesson and Respond Concretely: ‘LLRC’ for Tamils on US resolution

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 20:08 GMT]
The draft resolution based on Sri Lanka's LLRC tabled at the 22nd Session of the UNHRC, by the USA that architected the genocidal war against Eezham Tamils, should be an eye-opening lesson to all Tamils in the world in learning with confirmation the dismissive attitude of the USA towards the annihilation-facing nation of Eezham Tamils. The attitude of New Delhi, seeing Sri Lanka an enemy of humanity as a friend of India, and its interest in seeing Washington and Colombo directly engaging with each other are already known. Tamil activists teamed between the two powers for ages, believing that one or both would come to the rescue, and were showing a mirage to the common folk now and then, should learn the lesson at least now and respond concretely in addressing the ultimate adversaries.
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‘US resolution will not give Tamils justice’: Vaiko

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 07:22 GMT]
Stating that only an internationally monitored referendum among Eezham Tamils for an independent state of Tamil Eelam and an independent international investigation into genocidal war crimes of Sri Lanka would provide justice, MDMK leader Vaiko, in a statement on Wednesday asserted that the upcoming US resolution at Geneva falls drastically short of providing any justice to the genocide-affected nation of the Eezham Tamils. In the statement Mr. Vaiko also criticized political parties in India for holding up the US resolution as an appropriate step forward. Separately, protests against Sri Lanka have been intensifying across Tamil Nadu.
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Colombo reaches ‘understanding’ with USA, claims Sinhala daily

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 07:09 GMT]
Sinhala daily Divaina, which is a sister news paper of The Island, published by Upali Newspapers in Colombo, has stated in a recent news report citing ‘reliable’ sources that Colombo had reached a mutual understanding with Washington on the implementation of LLRC and monitoring its implementation through a Rajapaksa-appointed Commission of Colombo. According to the paper, the USA had promised to Colombo that it would refrain from imposing sanctions on Sri Lanka through UN Security Council until 2016. Last week, the External Affairs Minister of the New Delhi Establishment in the Indian parliament ‘encouraged’ the USA and Sri Lanka “to directly engage on the draft resolution and aim for a mutually acceptable outcome.”
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Worsening human rights woes drive political skulduggery

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 00:56 GMT]
While Tamils unitedly view the Mu'l'livaaykaal killings as an international crime of genocidal proportions committed by the State, Colombo, sensing the tightening of the rights noose around its neck at the UNHCR and beyond, is resorting to political skulduggery, even while Tamils look suspiciously at the international actors, particularly India and the U.S. Both India and the U.S., even while armed with credible evidence of Rajapaksas' complicity in the genocidal crimes, continue to allow Colombo space and time to act on "improving" the rights climate, while Colombo continues its cultural genocide, and aggressively erases any remaining evidence of mass atrocities.
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Colombo instructs SL intelligence to curb protests against SL State

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 March 2013, 23:52 GMT]
As the world’s attention is focused on Colombo’s crimes against Tamils, the intelligence offices of the occupying Sri Lankan military in North and East have received fresh instructions from the SL Defence Ministry in Colombo to stop people from mobilizing protests demanding the release of Tamil prisoners in the Sri Lankan prisons and to curb protests against the creation of Sinhala Military Zones in the Tamil homeland. On Tuesday, SL intelligence officers were directly involved in harassing and blocking around 700 protestors from the five districts in North, who were boarding the buses heading to Colombo for the protest which took place in front of the UN office in Colombo on Wednesday.
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BJP cell of Tamil Nadu ex-servicemen apologises to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 March 2013, 02:42 GMT]
“The deepest psychological wound rankling the minds of every veteran in Tamilnadu is the killing of Tamilians during the Indo-Srilankan war of 1987-90 by the Indian Armed Forces,” says the President of the Tamil Nadu BJP Ex-Servicemen’s Cell, Lt Col CR Sundar, in a statement circulated to media this week. Had the war crimes been taken up for investigations at that time itself, the later tragedy befallen on Tamils in the island could have been averted, he told Tamil Nadu correspondent of TamilNet on Tuesday. The need that has arisen for Tamil ex-servicemen to take up party line of politics on the Eezham Tamil issue is a significant development in India, political observers said.
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Thousands rallying in Geneva question TNA MPs on compromise

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 March 2013, 23:34 GMT]
Thousands of Eezham Tamils from across Europe, who took part in a rally at Geneva on Monday demanded a UN sponsored referendum for a sovereign Tamil Eelam. In the meantime, sections of protestors, who confluenced in Geneva, approached the hotel where TNA politicians, who had come to attend a conference, were residing. Parliamentarians Maavai Seanthirajah and Ariyanethran were encircled by the people who questioned them on the compromising polity forgetting fundamentals adopted by the TNA leadership. According to informed circles, TNA leader Mr Sampanthan in London last week has claimed that the US government use to extend invitations for talks only to him and to Mr Sumanthiran.
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Tamil Nadu activist self-immolates demanding justice for Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 March 2013, 23:10 GMT]
Demanding justice for the Eezham Tamils and international action against the genocide-accused Sri Lankan state, a social activist from Kadaloor (Cuddalore), Tamil Nadu immolated himself on Monday. Citing police sources, the PTI reported that Mani, a 41-year-old social worker of coastal Nallavaadu village in Kadaloor district, “doused himself with petrol and set himself ablaze” at the Collectorate complex, raising slogans against Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and demanding that he be tried in the International Court for alleged war crimes. Later reports said Mr. Mani succumbed to his serious injuries at the Kadaloor government hospital. Separately, there have been protests in Chennai against Sri Lanka in the context of the upcoming session in Geneva.
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Freedom Group accuses UKBA of withholding Sri Lanka torture information

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 March 2013, 19:23 GMT]
Freedom from Torture (FFT), a UK-based rights group, accused the UK Border Agency of withholding statistics for the last quarter of 2012 while the Agency planned for a mass removal of Tamils, including those whose protection claims have been refused, on the 28 February to Sri Lanka. Presenting data obtained from the Border Agency using the 'Freedom of Information (FOI) Act' the rights group said, "UK has granted refugee status to at least 15 people who were previously removed from the UK to Sri Lanka where they claim to have been tortured or otherwise harmed."
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Condemn genocide in a single-line resolution at Geneva: AIADMK tells New Delhi

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 March 2013, 00:28 GMT]
“India should move a single-line resolution in the Council condemning the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka and demand an independent international investigation,” said AIADMK’s MP, Dr. Maitreyan, during the parliamentary debate in New Delhi on Wednesday. Citing Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalithaa linking the war crimes to the days of the Nazi Germany of Hitler, Dr. V. Maitreyan condemned Indian Foreign Minister calling Sri Lanka a friendly country. “Sri Lanka, as a friendly country, is a thing of the past. How can a country, which carried out a systematic genocide of my umbilical-cord brethren, Tamils, be termed as a friendly country,” he asked, blaming India for diluting the impact of the UNHRC resolution last year, by softening its tone, tenor and contents.
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Daily Mirror fabricates news: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 March 2013, 00:01 GMT]
“It is sometimes possible for journalists to misunderstand what is being said, and as a result misquote. But in this case, the major part of the said news item is entirely fabricated,” says Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam responding to Colombo-based English media Daily Mirror reporting his speech at the Press Club in Jaffna on Monday. While he had cited the report of Ms. Navi Pillai in appreciation for evidencing the grave violations committed against Tamils in the last one year, the Daily Mirror titled its news report on Wednesday as “Pillai responsible, says Ponnambalam,” Gajendrakumar said. Following protests by Gajendrakumar, Daily Mirror carried another report on Thursday, titled “Ponnambalam clarifies.” This was even more disappointing and completely inadequate, Gajendrakumar told TamilNet.
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