SL Police, intelligence officers threaten relatives of missing persons in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 August 2014, 07:23 GMT]
Sri Lankan Police Constables and Intelligence operatives of the occupying SL military in Mannaar have threatened and harassed the relatives and families of missing persons, who wanted to appear in front of the SL Presidential Commission on Missing Persons (SLPC) which held its hearings between 08 and 11 August in Mannaar. The chairman of Mannaar Citizens Committee, Rev Fr Immanuel Sebamalai, told TamilNet that SL military intelligence officers had even gone to the extent of telling the people that there will be no use in appearing in front of the SLPC.
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SL police opens fire on Tamil villagers in Batticaloa, two women wounded

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 August 2014, 20:25 GMT]
Two Tamil women were admitted to Batticaloa Teaching Hospital Tuesday night with gunshot injuries after SL policemen, who went in civil to ransack illicit brewers had opened fire on the villagers at Panai-a'ruppaan, located 15 km west of Kokkaddich-choalai. Two Sinhalese policemen and two Tamil men were also rushed to hospital with assault injuries. Only 25 families live in the remote village of Panai-a’ruppaan. Some of these female-headed families have been running illicit ‘kasippu’ breweries after they had lost their husbands and their livelihood. They were not involved in such activity under the LTTE-run civil administration, civil sources in Kokkaddich-choalai told TamilNet on Wednesday. The episode on Tuesday was only a tip of the iceberg, they said.
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Indian housing scheme in Trincomalee ignores uprooted Champoor Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 August 2014, 14:08 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Trincomalee has blocked the representatives of uprooted Eezham Tamils from Champoor from presenting their appeal in person to the Indian High Commissioner Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha, who visited Moothoor East last Friday to lay the foundation stone for the housing scheme for the war affected people from the three villages of Koonith-theevu, Navaratnapuram and Choodaik-kudaa. The uprooted Tamils, still living in four so-called welfare camps at Paddith-thidal, Ma’nat-cheanai, Ki’liveddi and Kaddai-pa’richchaan, who were blocked from the handing over their appeal have sent a letter to the Indian High Commissioner detailing their suffering for the past 9 years.
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Colombo schemes Sinhala colony at Saiva Shrine of Kanniyaa Hot Wells

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 August 2014, 13:36 GMT]
After illegally occupying the Hot Wells, a Saiva sacred site in the traditional Tamil village of Kanniyaa in the Uppu-ve’li division of the Trincomalee district, and after constructing a Buddhist Shrine at the locality, the genocidal State of Sri Lanka is now ‘developing’ a new road to connect the traditional Hindu shrine with a remote Sinhala settlement, abandoning the already existing road that links the village wtih Jaffna – Anuradhapura Road. The Colombo government is also scheming a large Sinhala colonization project along the new road in thousands of acres of public lands in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, informed Tamil civil sources in Trincomalee told TamilNet.
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Kurds display self-reliance and unity in the midst of world apathy

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 August 2014, 08:53 GMT]
During the course of the siege and following the takeover of the City of Sinjar in Southern Kurdistan by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), coordinated policies of eradicating the Yazidi and the Kurdish population were unleashed, forcing a mass exodus of people from the city of 300000 towards the inhospitable mountains adjoining the city. However, Kurdish forces from other parts of Kurdistan have displayed a historic and phenomenal cooperation in coordinating the Kurdish national resistance. On 4th August, the PKK issued a statement on its website “All Kurds in the north, east, south and west must rise up against the attack on Kurds in Sinjar.” On Friday, Kurdish diaspora from all these regions demonstrated in Oslo, condemning ISIS brutalities and the silence of the International Community.
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Mannaar Bishop rejects GoSL’s Presidential commission on missing persons

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 August 2014, 18:21 GMT]
Rejecting an offer to make presentations before the GoSL’s Presidential commission on missing persons, Mannaar Bishop Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph said “Over the years many commissions such as yours have been set up and there is absolutely no shred of evidence that they have tackled impunity. Most, if not all of these commissions have provided only to be eye washers for the then Governments in power.” In a letter sent on Sunday addressed to the Chairman and Commissioners of this setup, he further expressed his concern that “the recent expansion of your mandate and the appointment of international experts to oversee the work of the commission without any clear terms of reference has been deliberately done to undermine the work of the UN OHCHR's inquiry into Sri Lanka which commenced recently.”
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SL TID detains another Tamil student of Sabaragamuwa university

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 August 2014, 10:23 GMT]
The Tamil student, who was arrested last Tuesday by the SL Terrorist Investigation Division (TID), has been released as protests by Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim students of the Sabaragamuwa University gained momentum on Friday. However, another Tamil student of the same university has been arrested and subjected to interrogation at the notorious 4th Floor in Colombo. The students of the Sabaragamuwa University have termed the harassment of Tamil students as State Terrorism in their protest. Sutharsan from Mukamalaai, Ki’linochchi, was arrested while he was recovering from an injury.
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British officials held secretive Belfast meeting with Sri Lanka after Mu'l'livaaykkaal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 August 2014, 00:02 GMT]
UK government lawyers are claiming there are no minutes available from a controversial meeting held between British officials and a Sri Lankan military adviser at Belfast's Policing Board HQ one month after the genocidal onsluaght on Vanni in 2009. The revelation comes after a year-long legal battle to get full disclosure from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to a Freedom of Information request. The British government withdrew its national security exemptions just days before the matter was to due to be decided by a judge at the Information Tribunal. The Belfast meeting related to the deployment of two senior Northern Ireland police officers to Sri Lanka as “critical friends” of the regime during the final stages of the genocidal onslaught in 2009.
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SL military steps up threats, harassment of Tamil councillors in North

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 August 2014, 10:58 GMT]
The so-called white vans and motorbikes without number plates operated by the SL military intelligence have been deployed to monitor the movement of Tamil councillors in the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) in recent days, complain several members of the NPC. A prominent councillor, Ms Ananthy Sasitharan, recently lodged a complaint with Vadduk-koaddai Police complaining that white van and motorbike squads were chasing her round the clock, monitoring all her movements. In the name of investigating the complaint, the police went ahead with engineering false evidence that there were no reports of white van or motorbike squads in the area where she resides, TNA sources told TamilNet. The SL Defence Ministry was behind the recent withdrawal of police protection that was provided to some of NPC members, according to NPC Chairman CVK Sivagnanam.
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Tamils show solidarity with Kurdistan, Palestine

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 August 2014, 00:17 GMT]
In a series of protests that happened across the globe, Tamils demonstrated their solidarity with the nations of Kurdistan and Palestine. Condemning the Islamist ISIS’ brutality and ethnic cleansing against the Kurds in the Kurdish territories of Syria and Iraq and Israel’s unrelenting assault on Palestine, Tamil activists conveyed their support for independent Kurdistan and Palestine. Over the past few weeks, protests for these causes in Chennai, London, Washington, Los Angeles, Sydney, Toronto and other places saw active Tamil participation. Over 2000 activists of different organizations staged a protest in Chennai on Friday for Kurdistan and Palestine. Likewise, Tamil activists who attended a Kurdish demonstration in London on Friday highlighted the need for greater solidarity among Nations-Without-States.
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Tamil man dies at hospital, SL police shields traffic crime by SL Navy

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 August 2014, 10:54 GMT]
A speeding tractor belonging to the Naayaa’ru camp of the occupying SL Navy in Mullaiththeevu on 02 August hit a motorbike causing serious injuries to two 24-year-old Eezham Tamil men from Mullaiththeevu. One of the victims, Arumukam Sivakumar from Chilaavaththai South of Mullaiththeevu district, succumbed to his injuries at Jaffna Teaching Hospital on Thursday after struggling for his life for four days. The victim is a father of two children. The SL Navy trooper who was riding the tractor and his fellow troopers in the trailer had run away into a nearby military camp after the accident, and they have not been ‘identified’ by the SL police.
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Eezham Tamil student subjected to abduction-styled arrest at university in South

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 August 2014, 09:53 GMT]
The intelligence operatives of Colombo’s military Establishment on Tuesday abducted an Eezham Tamil student attending the Faculty of Social Sciences and Languages in the Sabaragamuwa University, which is situated at Balangoda of Ratnapura District in the South. The Tamil student from Vavuniyaa in the North was allegedly ‘arrested’ with the assistance of the University administration, according to informed student circles at the University. The 25-year-old student, Niroj Yogarajah, was last seen when a lecturer had summoned him after the examination. The parents of Niroj have complained to the ‘Sri Lankan’ Human Rights Commission at Vavuniyaa on Thursday stating that they suspected the SL Terrorist Investigation Division to be behind the ‘arrest’.
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Occupation of grazing lands in Batticaloa is big scale Sinhalicisation: EPC Councillor

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 August 2014, 08:40 GMT]
Colombo is engaged in a sinister move to Sinhalicise and colonise a large territory of the Batticaloa district with Sinhalese, Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) Tamil National Alliance (TNA) councillor K. Thurairajasingham told TamilNet. The area consists of more than 30 Tamil villages that come under the Koara’laip-pattu South (Kiraan) and Ea’raavoor-pattu (Chengkaladi) divisions. The Sinhala colonisation project is taken forward through militarisation. Buddhist monks and Sinhala politicians from Ampaa’rai and Polonnaruwa districts are deployed by Colombo to give political leadership to the Sinhalicisation phase of the project.
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Monks-led mob disrupts Tamil victims’ meet in Colombo church

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 August 2014, 12:35 GMT]
Encouraged by BJP New Delhi’s stand against UN crimes investigation in the island, a Sinhala-Buddhist mob, led by monks, flexed muscles against Tamil rights activists and family members of missing persons, who went to Colombo from the Vanni districts to present their case in a meeting held at a Catholic church at Maradana in Colombo on Monday. The meeting was organised by the Center for Society and Religion and by Inform Human Rights Center and the incident took place in the presence of the US Deputy Ambassador in Colombo. The Tamil victims who went to present their plight to southerners and diplomats were largely led by Catholic church personalities of the Mannaar Diocese.
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Sinhala division hijacks civil affairs of Tamil division in East

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 August 2014, 23:49 GMT]
After Sinhalicising the strategic land-link between the Northern and Eastern provinces and demographically changing the Ma’nal-aa’ru region of Eezham Tamils into a fully Sinhalicised DS division in the south of Northern province, the Colombo government and its military Establishment have now instructed the Sinhala Divisional Secretariat of Padavi Sripura in Trincomalee to take charge of the civil affairs in the northernmost part of Kuchave’li division of Trincomalee district in the Eastern province. The move intends to carve out a Sinhala district, occupying the strategic land and the sea link between the Northern and Eastern provinces and annex that part with the North Central Province, fear informed Tamil civil officials in Trincomalee.
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BJP’s bypass ‘geopolitics’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 August 2014, 19:03 GMT]
New Delhi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) comes out with a comical ‘geopolitics’ bypassing India’s own Tamil Nadu State and the nation of Eezham Tamils at the closest proximity, to build a ‘Ram Sethu’ to genocidal Sri Lanka, and in that process concedes to the total annihilation of the nation and territoriality of Eezham Tamils. Even though the inroads of China and Pakistan are cited as usual, and now added with citation of US interference as well, the DNA of the thinking of New Delhi and some of its South Indian articulators on the question of Tamils has to be carefully understood by all Tamils. There is no alternative to Tamils proving their geopolitical strength in all justifiable ways possible.
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Fr. Thaninayagam centenary statue unveiled in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 August 2014, 23:27 GMT]
A memorial statue was unveiled in Jaffna marking the centenary of the grand Tamil scholar Rev. Fr. Xavier Thani Nayagam on Saturday and the location known as Madaththadi situated on the Jaffna Main Road in the city, has been declared Thani Nayagam Square. The peaceful opening ceremony comes after the organisers had been firm in braving the harassment by the occupying Sri Lankan military that wanted to erect a Buddha statue at the locality, residents told TamilNet.
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Israel, Sri Lanka, need collective world action

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 August 2014, 00:02 GMT]
What Israel is doing in Gaza now is collective punishment. Israel will accept nothing short of the acquiescence of Palestinians to their own subordination. The twenty-three-year charade of the “peace process” has shown that this is all Israel is offering, with the full approval of Washington. The U.S. must either reverse its policies or abandon its claim of being an “honest broker.” It should certainly not insult Palestinians by saying that it cares about them or their children, who are dying in Gaza today, writes Arab Studies Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University. What is said on Palestine is no different from what could be said on Washington and New Delhi put together in the case of the nation of Eezham Tamils, comment Tamil activists for alternative politics.
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Media groups protest against SL military’s shadow war on Eezham Tamil journalists

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 July 2014, 14:14 GMT]
Following the SL military sabotage against Tamil journalists, who were on their way to attend a workshop held in Colombo on Friday, 25 July, and against the continued threat and harassment of the involved Eezham Tamil journalists, Tamil journalists in the five districts of Northern Province came together at a protest organised by the Jaffna Press Club in Jaffna city on Thursday. Media organisations based in South also took part in the protest in Jaffna expressing their solidarity with the Eezham Tamil journalists, who are being threatened and harassed by the occupying military of the genocidal Sri Lankan State.
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British-trained STF brings night terror back to Jaffna streets

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 July 2014, 20:42 GMT]
The STF, trained by the British, which is a full-fledged military outfit under the SL Police and was directly engaged in acts of genocide in the East as well as in Vanni during the war, has started arbitrary arrests in Jaffna peninsula during the night time. Tamil youths are being detained for being spotted on the streets without identity papers in their own villages and towns. The civilian freedom of movement has been severely restricted and the people are again afraid to move around after 8:00 p.m. A so-called ‘Zonal Commander’ of the STF has been appointed for Jaffna peninsula, receiving direct instructions from the SL Military Establishment, informed sources said.
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