TNA’s PSC participation will be pursued when Rajapaksa returns from India

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 September 2012, 13:12 GMT]
TNA leader Sampanthan was invited at a short notice on Monday night to meet Mahinda Rajapaksa at his house on Tuesday morning. According to a press release by Mr. R. Sampanthan on Tuesday, at the end of many topics that were discussed, Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa “responded by inviting Mr.Sampanthan to the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) and stated these matters could be addressed when the process commenced. Mr.Sampanthan responded by stating that the TNA has never taken up the position that it will not attend the PSC, but has only insisted that commitments made must be implemented before attending the PSC sessions. It was agreed that this matter would be further pursued on the return of the President from his visit to India.”
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China strengthens its grip on Colombo

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 September 2012, 11:17 GMT]
China has signed 16 agreements with Colombo on Monday. The agreemets range from visa exemption and marine development to economic and technology cooperation. The agreements also promised to expand investment and increase imports from the island, reported China Daily on Tuesday. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa signed the agreements with China's top legislator, Wu Bangguo, who is the highest ranking official of the Chinese legislature to visit Colombo since the end of genocidal Vanni war in May 2009.
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Blake clings to LLRC while Rajapaksa scoffs at regime-change paradigm

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 September 2012, 00:36 GMT]
Concluding his visit to Colombo with a press conference on Friday, the US Asst. Secretary of State, Robert Blake, came out with the expected rhetoric on LLRC implementation, provincial council election in the North, ‘reducing’ the role and profile of the SL military in the ‘North’ and resumption of talks with the TNA on ‘provincial devolution’. While the zest was missing in the statement of Blake, Rajapaksa with an obvious hint at the current predicament of the USA mocked at the boomerang effect of the regime change paradigm. Rajapaksa’s tirade against the USA is unnecessary, since how could the Obama Administration that doesn’t think of even changing the South Asia desk would think of a regime change in Sri Lanka, commented political observers.
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International civil society urged to act on CHOGM meet in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 September 2012, 21:38 GMT]
After seeing the behaviour of today’s establishments in the Commonwealth that was once known for its effective action against South Africa’s apartheid, and after seeing the Indian diplomat turned Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma stretching his position to uphold the genocidal state and regime in Sri Lanka, the gagged Eezham Tamil civil society activists in the island urged the International Human Rights Organizations to come out with an international civil society boycott of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet scheduled to take place in Sri Lanka in November 2013. They also urged understanding governments in Canada, Tamil Nadu state and elsewhere to lead the international civil society paradigm, and the international media to help such a paradigm. The diaspora should be awakened to new struggle strategies, they further urged.
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OHCHR team arrives in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 September 2012, 08:31 GMT]
Hanny Megally, Chief of Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa branch of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Friday arrived in Colombo on a week-long tour to the island.
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‘UN approach counts trees, conceals sight of forest’

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 September 2012, 05:31 GMT]
A summary on Sri Lanka prepared by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), based on the submissions of 46 stakeholders, shows how the UNHRC approach guides even the stakeholders to confine themselves only to individual cases or just manifestations, but not to the fundamental issue – the national question or collective human rights of an affected nation in the island. By the exercise of counting the trees, the UNHRC model of approach deliberately conceals the sight of the forest, commented alternative human rights activists in the island. The OHCHR summary was submitted on July 30 to the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review of the UNHRC for its 14th session, scheduled to take place from 22 October and 5 November in Geneva. An OHCHR team visits the island on Friday.
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UPFA operatives threaten TNA councilors to join UPFA in East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 September 2012, 23:24 GMT]
Some of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) councilors, elected in the Eastern Provincial Elections, have gone into hiding evading abduction and intimidation as operatives sent from Colombo were engaged in threatening that they would be abducted if they fail to extend support for the formation of a new administration by the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA). The Colombo operatives began to threaten the TNA councilors as they were not able to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Tamil people even after promising 50 million rupees in cash to each councilor, a house in Colombo and a vehicle, the sources further said.
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Blake greets Sampanthan in Colombo

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 September 2012, 20:00 GMT]
The visiting US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake Thursday morning met R. Sampanthan, the parliamentary group leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) at Colombo Hilton Hotel. Mr Blake showed interest in knowing about the tug-o-war between the parties in the forming the next administration of the EPC, the sources close to TNA told TamilNet. Referring to the Action Plan submitted to the UNHCR by the Sri Lankan Government about the implementation of some of the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), Sampanthan pointed out to Blake that the SL government had diluted those recommendations in its Action Plan
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Socialist Alliance in Perth formes equality campaign for Tamil Eelam, Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 September 2012, 23:16 GMT]
“Just like the apartheid in South Africa was isolated through the tightening grip of trade, cultural and sporting sanctions; just as the freedom struggle was aided by international support-moral, financial and political; so too a new international campaign for equal rights and justice in Tamil Eelam and Sri Lanka must be brought into being,” says Samuel Wainwright, one of the leaders of the Socialist Alliance in Perth, Australia, who recently organised a solidarity seminar in Perth. A new network, named ‘WA Network for Human Rights in Tamil Eelam and Sri Lanka’ has come into being following the seminar held on 01 September in Fremantle, he said.
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India awakens to sexist component of genocidal culture in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 September 2012, 05:23 GMT]
A cartoon that appeared in Lakbima newspaper of Sri Lanka, on Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, has awakened the masses in India on the sexist side of the genocidal culture encountered by Eezham Tamils over several decades, said South Asia watchers in New Delhi noting responses from different parts of India. The impact of the cartoon in India in realising the nature of the genocidal culture that is not checked, not boycotted like the apartheid, but is always pampered, is many times more than the impact evoked by seeing images of the sexual abuse of even corpses of Eezham Tamils, the South Asia watchers said. The cartoon found condemnation in Colombo too, by Women and Media Collective (WMC).
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Blake to visit Colombo to steer LLRC course of politics

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 September 2012, 00:06 GMT]
One of the main articulators of the system that architected the genocidal war in the country of Eezham Tamils and the US Asst. Secretary of State, Robert O. Blake Jr., will be visiting Colombo between September 12 and 14. According to a US State Department press release, he will be meeting Colombo’s External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris and senior officials to discuss a wide range of issues, including progress in implementing the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) Action Plan. For 25 years New Delhi was harping on the 13th Amendment. Now the USA comes out with the LLRC implementation, which in the thrust of it, is worse than the 13th Amendment in the annihilation of the nation and territoriality of Eezham Tamils, commented Tamil political activists in the island, adding condemnation at the gullibility of the hijacked political dealers in the diaspora.
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SLMC gets chance of showing political statesmanship

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 September 2012, 01:14 GMT]
With all irregularities exercised by the Rajapaksa regime of Colombo in the Eastern PC Elections, the emerging reality is that the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress gets its chance of showing political statesmanship in responding to ground realities in the Eastern Province, comment political observers watching the developments in the island. “It is a providence-given chance to the Tamil-speaking Muslims in the island to decide their political cause, whether they want to remain just a ‘minority’ or they want to be stakeholders in making a nation. At the same time, the question of conceding the status to the Muslims has also been extended to the TNA,” commented an observer in the East. However, by being carried away by the ‘simulated course of events’ the TNA is burdened with the responsibility of proving that in what way the PC system justifies the aspirations of Eezham Tamils and Muslims.
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Australia deals legal setback to US on extradition cases

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 September 2012, 10:23 GMT]
In a legal blow to U.S. anti-terrorism laws used in extraditing Tamils caught in various sting operations of the U.S. law enforcement authorities, the 109-page opinion issued by the Federal Court of Australia's Judge J. North agreed with the Eezham Tamil defendant, Thulasitharan Santhirarajah, that in approving the extradition request, the Australian Attorney General (AG) fell into jurisdictional error on six different legal issues, the most precedent setting among them being that the offences charged by the U.S. were "political offenses," and therefore, that under section 22(3)(a) of the Extradition Act 1988, the Court was empowered to grant relief by prohibiting the "AG acting on her determination to surrender the defendant to the US."
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Outlook attacks The Hindu’s Sri Lanka deception

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 September 2012, 00:31 GMT]
The Hindu’s Sri Lanka policy came under severe attack in an article written by S. Anand that appeared both in print and online editions of a mainstream Indian media, Outlook, on Saturday. Viewing what unfolded in Tamil Nadu in the past week as a “vulgar charade of competitive righteousness on the part of all players, including the media,” the role played by The Hindu’s orientation was brought out in the article in the following words: The Hindu’s former editor N. Ram had said within two weeks of the end of the war: “Justice has not been done to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government for its astonishing feat of rescuing by military means close to 275,000 civilians.” And later, a Sri Lankan minister picked up on the perverse cue and described the war as “one of the greatest humanitarian operations in modern times.”
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Sri Lanka's lesson to Cicero

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 September 2012, 15:40 GMT]
James Carville, a well-known U.S. political pundit, commenting on the contemporary relevance of a letter written in first century B.C. on "how to run a good campaign," says in a Foreign Policy article, "[l]ittle did I realize that pretty much everything I've said was old news 2,000 years ago, covered expertly in Quintus Tullius Cicero's strategy memo for the campaign of his brother, Marcus, for consul in Rome in 64 bc." While the note applies more to, and highlights the hypocrisy inherent to, the political campaigns running up to the elections in the much celebrated western liberal democracies, campaigns in west-propped up, family-run, majoritarian, illiberal democracies such as the one in Sri Lanka, can add a chapter on the use of threat and violence to win elections to Cicero's handbook. Tamil National Alliance's campaign, in contrast, can be said to steal leaves out of Cicero.
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Rajapaksa’s ministers threaten Tamil voters in East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 September 2012, 11:37 GMT]
A group of more than ten ministers of the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) currently staying in Trincomalee district on the eve of election to the Eastern Provincial Council were reportedly engaged in intimidating voters to vote for their candidates and the Tamil village level officers are intimidated for not co-operating with them in this regard, civil sources in Trincomalee said Saturday. In the meantime, participation in the provincial elections on Saturday was as low as 35% in the city and 40% in remote areas in the early hours of the day. However, reports from remote areas indicated active participation later in the day. In Ampaa'rai district, the attendance was at 60%. In Batticaloa district, 62% of the votes were polled, the officials said. Muslim voters in Ee'raavoor, Kaaththaankudi and Vaazhaich-cheanai divisions actively participated, news sources in East said.
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SLN arrests asylum seekers, Greens Senator notes systematic abuse of Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 September 2012, 19:36 GMT]
As the Sri Lanka Navy arrested 54 Australia bound asylum seekers fleeing from the island on a boat on Thursday and hauled them off to the CID for interrogations, Australia’s Greens Party Senator Lee Rhiannon condemned the Australian Coalition’s political position to deport refugees from the island before they set foot on Australian soil as being “immoral, discriminatory, cruel”, referring to the routine violations of the Tamils’ basic rights in the island. "It is not surprising that people are looking to escape from Sri Lanka,” she told TamilNet. "Reports of the systematic abuse of Tamil women political prisoners and prisoners-of-war by the Sri Lankan armed forces are extremely disturbing,” she further said, alluding to TamilNet’s feature on genocide-intended sexual violence perpetrated by the Sri Lankan military and police on ex-LTTE female cadres.
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Congress, BJP, religiously sanctify genocide

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 September 2012, 05:16 GMT]
By inviting Mahinda Rajapaksa to inaugurate a Buddhist institution at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh in India, both New Delhi’s Congress regime and the BJP-run Madhya Pradesh state government endorse religious sanction to the kind of genocide committed and being committed by the Rajapaksa regime of Colombo. In the process they undermine the prospects of Buddhism re-emerging as an expression of the downtrodden masses, accused Dalit Buddhist circles in Tamil Nadu. Sinhala Buddhism is an Orientalist rediscovery in the libraries of the colonial West. India’s Hinduism is no exception. Both have agreed upon the deployment of genocide in the annihilation of nations in the region and it is tested on Eezham Tamils. It is a warning to peoples all over South Asia and elsewhere, commented an academic in Jaffna.
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Sampanthan writes to Rajapaksa on election violations in East by UPFA

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 September 2012, 13:42 GMT]
Certain events have occurred in the past several days which have raised grave misgivings in regard to whether the elections to Eastern Provincial Council to be hold on Saturday would be free and fair, tells R. Sampanthan, the parliamentary group leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) on Thursday in a formal letter sent to SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa who is also the leader of the ruling UPFA alliance. Vehicles belonging to candidates and supporters of political parties opposed to the UPFA have been attacked, Sri Lankan military intelligence personnel have warned those opposed to the UPFA of ‘unpleasant consequences’ after the elections and a so-called Blue Brigade that has arrived in the East has been asking for the polling cards of voters, the letter by Mr Sampanthan said.
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Genocide partners talk about people to people relationship

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 September 2012, 00:02 GMT]
The action taken by Tamil Nadu chief minister to send back Colombo footballers and an incident of mob harassment against Sri Lankan tourists in Tamil Nadu have made New Delhi and Colombo, the partners in the genocide of Eezham Tamils, to remember the importance of people to people relationship all of a sudden. Following close on their heels were The Hindu and the Marxist Communist Party of India (CPI-M). The BJP parliamentary leader Sushma Swaraj chose the time to invite Mahinda Rajapaksa to open a Buddhist institution in her constituency. Even though sections of media in India try to reduce the stand of Jayalalithaa as mere impulsive response to the open insistence of the Centre on training Sri Lankan military personnel in India, and project it as a dangerous game, powerful but short-sighted etc., the matter is much deeper than that, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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