Colombo exploits mineral resources of Eezham Tamils in occupied Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 September 2014, 22:50 GMT]
Despite the action by Northern Provincial Council Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Irrigation and Environment in August this year in prohibiting excavation of sand from the coast of Vaaviyadi and Puthu-aattadi in Kokku’laay region in Vanni, the Colombo government and agents of Namal Rajapaksa, the son of SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa, have accelerated the excavation of mineral sands containing ilmenite and rutile, raw materials for manufacturing Titanium Dioxide. The SL government in Colombo has seized several acres of lands along the coast in recent weeks, news sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet on Saturday.
Full story >>

Bringing OISL to NorthEast is IC responsibility: Tamil politicians

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 September 2014, 23:18 GMT]
Tamil politicians who met the British Deputy High Commissioner Lara Levis, who was on a trip to North and East, urged the diplomat to pass a message to her government and the international community to exert maximum pressure on Colombo to allow the Geneva-based OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL) to visit the homeland of Eelam Tamils in the North and East of the island. “The Deputy High Commissioner, who listened to our complaints on the human rights violations of the Tamil people, was silent. We urged her to impress upon her government and the international community to enable the OISL to visit the island,” TNA parliamentarian P Selvarasa from Batticaloa said.
Full story >>

Powers may have double talk but those who struggle should not

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 September 2014, 16:32 GMT]
"I am convinced that if Ukraine solved its domestic problems without the use of armed forces, without the bloodshed there over the past month, without the use of heavy artillery... this tragedy would not have happened," said Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu to visiting Malaysian defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein on Wednesday, while discussing MH 17 investigation. Whether Russia would speak in the same line and would advise its BRICS partners, especially New Delhi, to take the line in the investigation on the crimes of Sri Lanka and in the decades long militarised genocide against Eezham Tamils is what world humanity wishes to know, said Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
Full story >>

SL judiciary blocks massacre victims remembrance in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 September 2014, 22:54 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan Police in Batticaloa on Tuesday blocked the 24th annual remembrance event of the victims of the brutal massacre of Chaththuruk-ko’ndaan massacre carried out by the Sri Lanka Army in 1990. Batticaloa District Magistrate Mr NMM Abdulla issued an injunction order prohibiting the remembrance event at the memorial site accepting the SL police version, legal sources in Batticaloa said.
Full story >>

SL military floats 5,000 cell phones for surveillance on Tamils in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 September 2014, 16:30 GMT]
The military intelligence of occupying Sri Lanka has distributed more than 5,000 cell phones to selected Tamil civilians in former LTTE administered areas in Vaakarai and Paduvaan-karai regions of Batticaloa district in an attempt to convert the recipients of the SL military 'gift' into informants and collaborators. 3,000 of the mobile phones have been provided to women. In the meantime, ex-LTTE members are being harassed to report at the SL military camps and instructed to collaborate with the SL military if they wished to avoid 'future problems', civil sources in Vaakarai say.
Full story >>

Tamil villagers fear Sinhalicisation of South Bar in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 September 2014, 19:25 GMT]
The officials of the occupying Sri Lanka have been harassing 8 uprooted Tamil families to vacate from their huts at the village of Shanthi-puram, situated in South Bar GS division of Mannaar DS division. The officials, under the instruction of Sinhala Government Agent of Mannaar District, have claimed that the land has been allocated for the construction of Buddhist vihara.
Full story >>

SL military starts dismantling remaining houses in occupied Champoor

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 September 2014, 23:11 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military has started to destroy properties situated inside the so-called ‘Economic’ zone in Champoor in Trincomalee district, news sources in Moothoor told TamilNet on Sunday. The houses and wells have been bulldozed to the ground in an occupied residential area near Champoor Sri Paththirakaa’li Amman temple within the last few days, according to the land-owners. The SL military has started to dismantle the remaining buildings in Champoor as they did in Valikaamam North in Jaffna, the sources further said. At the same time, Colombo’s surveying department has been engaged in surveying the lands within the occupied zone.
Full story >>

'LTTE ban contributes to further oppression of Tamils'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 September 2014, 19:29 GMT]
The international proscription of the LTTE only contributes to criminalizing the political struggle of the Tamils and facilitates increased oppression in their homeland, argues Chris Slee in an article published on the Green Left Weekly on Saturday. "These bans were imposed because the governments of these countries were opposed to the Tamil national liberation struggle. Most Tamils living in exile were sympathetic to the LTTE, seeing them as freedom fighters, not terrorists. The banning of the LTTE in various countries was aimed at intimidating Tamils from supporting the struggle for self-determination in their homeland," he writes. A case challenging the ban on the LTTE in EU is pending in European courts.
Full story >>

Aruvi-aa'ru, Kætagal-aara

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 September 2014, 15:08 GMT]
The river coming from the hills or the river at its estuary

The pebble-stone river
Full story >>

SL TID in Jaffna terrorises Tamil Catholic priests who served in Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 September 2014, 10:02 GMT]
Sri Lankan ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’, which receives direct instructions from SL presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, in recent days has been monitoring, intimidating and ‘interrogating’ Eezham Tamil Catholic priests, who have been with their people in Vanni during and before the genocidal onslaught on Vanni. One of the six priests, who were detained in military-controlled barbed-wire camps in Menik Farm in 2009, Fr. A. Anton Stephen, was questioned by the TID officers at the Bishop’s House as the TID of the occupying Colombo was speculating that he is one of the key witnesses submitting an eyewitness account to the three member OHCHR investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL) panel tasked to produce a report on the investigation process in Sri Lanka after collecting direct reports from individuals, organisations and governments.
Full story >>

Thousands of Tamil Nadu fishermen protest India's apathy to their plight

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 September 2014, 04:35 GMT]
Thousands of Tamil Nadu fishermen in Rameshwaram protested against India's continued apathy to their plight and condemned BJP member Subramaniam Swamy for his remarks supporting the Sri Lanka Navy's seizure of the boats of Tamil fishermen. In the demonstration organized outside Fisheries Department, the protesters burnt Swamy's effigy and demanded an apology from him. Protests were held in other parts of Tamil Nadu as well on Thursday.
Full story >>

Jayalalithaa condemns Swamy’s stance on Tamil Nadu fishermen issue

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 September 2014, 04:26 GMT]
In a letter sent to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa said that the views of BJP member Subramanian Swamy on the fishermen issue “has given rise to resentment and angst not only amongst the fishermen community but also amongst the entire population of Tamil Nadu.”Ms. Jayalalithaa was referring to an interview of Swamy where he had said that he had given the idea to the Sri Lankan government to seize the boats of Tamil Nadu fishermen who crossed the IMBL. This letter comes in the wake of the arrest of 9 fishermen, the sinking of one boat and the seizure of another by the SL Navy on Monday. Separately, TESO staged a protest on Wednesday where the DMK chief Karunanidhi said that Tamils in the island lived like slaves, PTI reported.
Full story >>

Time for Norway to speak out against SL stand on OHCHR investigation: Paper

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 September 2014, 11:55 GMT]
Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s arrogance against the international community cannot be passed over in silence, opined VG (Verdens Gang), the popular Norwegian daily with largest circulation, in a editorial column on Tuesday, reminding the Norwegian State and politicians who have involved in resolving the conflict in the past of their duty. “If Norway or Norwegian interests continue to have a say on the regime in Sri Lanka, it is now time to speak out,” the newspaper said putting Sri Lanka in the same league as that of North Korea and Syria.
Full story >>

Corporate big-shot praises ‘Sri Lanka’ as an ‘emerging market’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 September 2014, 23:03 GMT]
Peter Kohli, the CEO of DMS Funds, in an article in NASDAQ on Tuesday praised Sri Lanka as an emerging market, encouraging foreign investment in the island. Mr. Kohli, an Indian by birth who runs a stock exchange company in the USA, further said that “Sri Lanka has put in place the necessary reforms and is on the road to continued rapid economic expansion”. The article, which expresses admiration for the expansion of the Sri Lanka’s economy post-2009, also provides advice to potential investors. Commenting on this, Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island said that as the genocidal grip of the Sinhala state in the occupied Tamil homeland intensifies, a parallel process of a global corporate-military interest in the island that has no concern for humanitarian issues is being exposed.
Full story >>

Colombo steps up Sinhalicistion of public sector in North

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 September 2014, 21:37 GMT]
While hundreds of Tamil nurses who have completed their studies in the Northern Province are without jobs, 84 Sinhalese from South have been provided appointments filling the vacancies in the hospitals in war-affected hospitals in Mannaar, Ki’linochchi, Vavuniyaa and Mullaiththeevu districts in the Northern Province and at the Point Pedro, Chaavakachcheari and Thellippazhai base hospitals that come under the health ministry of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC), news sources in Jaffna said. Colombo is Sinhalicising the public sector in the North and East along with transformation of the SL military cantonments into Sinhala Military Zones in Jaffna and Trincomalee.
Full story >>

SL military, police block protesters in North on International Day of Disappeared

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 August 2014, 06:52 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan Military and Police on Saturday blocked the kith and kin of disappeared persons who were on a protest rally in Vavuniyaa organised by the citizens committees from the five districts in the North. The peaceful march, which started with a public meeting at Vavuniyaa Urban Council building, was blocked by the riot control police from proceeding towards the office of the Government Agent.
Full story >>

Puluddumaan-oadai

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 August 2014, 19:01 GMT]
The pond, the locality of which is found with Puluddai-maan (a species of tiny deer, Tragulus meminna)
Full story >>

Political fundamentals cannot be surrendered to military requisites of imperialism

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 August 2014, 15:33 GMT]
Five years of actual ground experience of Eezham Tamils since the Vanni War ending in genocide, is nothing but the thorough and accelerated militarisation of their land by the Sinhala military, carried out with active patronage coming from New Delhi, Washington and Beijing. Militarisation of this nature, that too by a historically proven genocidal State and by its military, is perhaps the most important reason, why the military-less nation of Eezham Tamils can’t expect any political solution working within a united island and that they should seek independence. Eezham Tamil individuals and forums in the diaspora hijacked by imperialisms of militaristic interest should think twice before telling that Tamils have given up the claim for their country.
Full story >>

STF deployed to muzzle protests against environmental genocide in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 August 2014, 07:01 GMT]
Hundreds of commandos from the occupying Special Task Force (STF), a full-fledged military outfit under the SL Police that has committed genocidal massacres against Eezham Tamils in the East, have been deployed in Vadamaraadchi East in Jaffna to muzzle renewed protests from Tamil villagers against the environment-destroying sand-scooping that is being carried out by Colombo-backed EPDP paramilitary's Maheswary Foundation and Gotabhaya-operated ‘Neythal’ outfit. On Thursday, a 25-year-old pregnant woman was killed on the spot when a speeding vehicle belonging to Maheswary Foundation hit her on Saraswathy Lane at Navakkiri in Valikaamam East.
Full story >>

Modi gave lesson to TNA on ‘collaborative politics’ says Devananda

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 August 2014, 23:11 GMT]
“I hope that the Tamil National Alliance leaders who recently went to meet the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would listen to his advice, which is the same as our longstanding position on the resolution to the conflict, that one should start collaborating with the Sri Lankan Government on Northern Provincial Council,” said EPDP leader Douglas Devananda, who is also a minister in Rajapaksa regime. He was addressing the audience at the re-opening ceremony of Achchuveali Industrial Estate in Jaffna on Wednesday. The industrial estate has been rehabilitated with Indian assistance. SL Presidential sibling and the ‘Economic Development’ Minister Basil Rajapaksa, High Commissioner of India Y.K. Sinha and the Chief Minister of Northern Province C.V. Wigneswaran were among the delegates who attended three ceremonial events connected to projects that have received Indian assistance.
Full story >>