SL ambassador cites China for ‘autonomy within unitary structure’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 November 2012, 06:25 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka’s ambassador in France, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke, on Sunday reiterated his stand of finding ‘autonomy’ solutions for Tamils within a ‘unitary’ state. The model he cited was China. He was replying to criticism on his stand by Emeritus Professor Peter Schalk that appeared in TamilNet last Thursday. “The reply of the ambassador only confirms what we all have a foreboding of, namely that the ambassador of Sri Lanka has a totalitarian system like the Chinese as a model for the unitary state of Lanka. What about the "autonomy" of Tibet in practice? There is no autonomy,” commented Peter Schalk in a note sent to TamilNet on Monday.
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Eyewitnesses to Kumaarapuram massacre summoned to Anuradhapura

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 November 2012, 20:16 GMT]
Witnesses to February 1996 brutal massacre of 24 Tamils by the occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) at Kumarapuram vilage in Trincomalee, have been sent summons to appear on Monday in Anuradhapura High Court situated in predominantly Sinhala district, more than 16 years after the genocidal massacre. “This gang rape and massacre of innocent civilians, including children and women, forms part of a system evidence of Genocide against Eezham Tamils,” a lawyer from Trincomalee told TamilNet commenting “justice delayed is justice denied.” Many of the witnesses are poor labourers who do not know Sinhala. The witnesses have also been threatened by the SL military not to appear in the Courts, the sources further said.
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Politics of Genocide

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 November 2012, 09:51 GMT]
While the Mu'l'livaaykkaal killings and the on-going cultural destruction in the NorthEast can be argued to constitute "Genocide" within the definition of the Genocide Convention of 1948, a virtual codification of the “Never Again” ethos, Western Nations including the United Nations have shown not only any inclination to accept that the crime occurred, but also are likely complicit in allowing the allegedly criminal state to continue to commit genocidal crimes, and to avoid accountability for crimes committed during the war. The criminality that may befall the West arising from Article 3(e), and the violation of Article I of the Genocide Convention for failing to prevent genocide, are likely reasons for the officials of the UN and UN member states to avoid calling the killings a "Genocide."
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Tamil activists take different view of Canada’s support to UN’s internal report

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 November 2012, 00:16 GMT]
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird issued a statement on Thursday regarding the UN Secretary General’s Internal Review Panel Report on Sri Lanka. Offering support to the report, the statement laid stress on the failure of the Sri Lankan government to make progress on ‘reconciliation, accountability and respect for human rights in Sri Lanka’. Responding to this, Tamil activists in Canada told TamilNet “ if the Canadian government is genuinely concerned about ensuring that mistakes made in Sri Lanka are not repeated, then they must acknowledge that addressing the fundamental national question of Eezham Tamils and providing justice for the genocide they suffered should be a prerequisite to any ‘work’ of the international community.”
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Colombo accelerates demographic genocide in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 November 2012, 18:33 GMT]
The Colombo government led by President Mahinda Rajapakse has been implementing a land appropriation policy to reduce the parliamentary strength of Tamils in Trincomalee district with the support of occupying Sri Lanka Army, say Tamil politicians in the district. While landless residents of the district have to fight for the allocation of half an acre per family, the outsiders brought down from south are allowed to clear forest lands 2 to 3 per acres per family. More than three hundred Sinhala families have been brought down from southern districts of the island and are allowed to clear forest area in Suriyawewa situated in Seruwila DS division at the rate of two to three acres per family.
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Israel airstrikes kill Hamas military commander

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 November 2012, 09:33 GMT]
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) began on Wednesday a heavy bombardment of the Gaza strip with a targeted airstrike, killing Hamas military commander Ahmad al-Jabari and a passenger in his vehicle. The IDF cited his involvement in the hostage-taking of Gilad Shalit, an episode in the 2006 war on Lebanon, as its justification. Israel's "Operation Pillar of Cloud" signals the largest escalation in the conflict since 2008-9 Gaza invasions. “This name invokes the Hebrew nation's biblical pre-history - much as Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism conjures the Mahavamsa as an ideological tool in it’s very modern state military strategy,” comments Lorenzo Fiorito, an activist working with solidarity groups in Canada. “The present Gaza offensive has little to do with the individuals it has killed or with millenia-old founding myths - it has to do with the Palestinian claim to statehood,” he adds.
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Autonomy within unitary structure paradoxical: Peter Schalk

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 November 2012, 14:17 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s ambassador in France, Dayan Jayatilleke, calling for “autonomy within a unitary structure,” at a seminar in Paris earlier this month was a political-populist statement, responded Professor Emeritus Peter Schalk, who participated the seminar arranged by Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). A unitary structure excludes autonomy. A social scientist would not have uttered such a sentence, Prof Schalk said, in a note sent to TamilNet on Thursday. Calling CNRS partial in providing propaganda platform to Colombo, he said that the violence by the governments of Lanka is structural and genocidal that is practiced over the decades and not just an occasional aberration or some nuts.
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BTF to push for genocide investigation: HR activist

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 November 2012, 00:18 GMT]
Palaka'ni interviews Human Rights Coordinator of British Tamils Forum (BTF), Kana Nirmalan, on the significance of the recent conference held by All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPG-T) and the BTF, with the participation of Tamil politicians and representatives from the Tamil homeland, Tamil Nadu and the diaspora. The resolution of the conference has demanded international independent investigations on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
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UN consistent in ‘leaking’ on Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 November 2012, 04:21 GMT]
An internal review panel report on the UN ‘s conduct in the final months of the Vanni War has found the UN guilty of “systematic failure” in Sri Lanka, according to the report leaked to the BBC on Tuesday. The practice of ‘leaking’ information and reports on Sri Lanka is consistent with the UN ever since the times of the Vanni War, and this only shows how the UN is still not straight forward in remedying the genocide of Eezham Tamils it abetted in the island, commented a new generation Tamil politician. He cited the leaked documents of the UN on the casualties in Vanni War in March 2009 and the UNSG panel report that was leaked to media before being made public in April 2011. BBC cited sources that the executive summary of stark conclusions in the current draft report will be removed in the final report.
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'World failed Eezham Tamils'

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 November 2012, 21:39 GMT]
With the much delayed report authored by U.K.'s Charles Petrie on the review of UN inaction during the 2009 Mu'l'livaaykkaal massacre due to be released to the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon tomorrow, UN Dispatch, a website that covers the U.N., chronicles the "massive and system wide failure to prevent the slaughter of an estimated 40,000 ethnic Tamils in five short months in the winter and spring of 2009," and says, like what the UN has done, "[a]nti-genocide constituencies around the world ought to also undertake the same hard-hitting self examination" on the failure to first prevent, and later the failure to expose the mass atrocity against Eezham Tamils.
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Resettlement remains frozen for 51,000 Tamils in Valikaamam, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 November 2012, 01:45 GMT]
Since 2010, the SL government officials in Jaffna, including the GA, have been claiming that there were no ‘High Security Zones’ in the Jaffna district. In the meantime, more than 51,000 Tamils, belonging to 22 GS divisions, are denied access to their fertile lands and houses in Valikaamam, Jaffna. While the Colombo government was claiming that there were only ‘no go zones’ where land mines were yet to be cleared, the SL Supreme Court gave permission to proceed with the FR petition filed by Mr Mavai Senathiraja, 1 year later.
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Politics breaches international law in denying Eezham Tamil Nation: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 November 2012, 23:20 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the president of the Tamil National People's Front (TNPF), interviewed by TamilNet's Palaka'ni on Saturday said that Eezham Tamils are legally qualified for nationhood under the existing international law. Nationhood is denied to Eezham Tamils not by the law, but by the international politics, he said.
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Uprooted Tamils in Champoor live in camps under flood water

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 November 2012, 16:19 GMT]
Uprooted Champoor Tamil families numbering about 1,250 are undergoing untold sufferings in temporary shelters due to ongoing heavy rain and strong winds. Temporary shelters situated in Kaddai-pa'richchaan, Ki'liveddi, Manatcheanai and Paddiththidal are under flood waters and the latrines are submerged in the water, according to C. Thandayuthapani, the opposition leader in the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC).
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Colombo plans to settle 25,000 Sinhala families in Batticaloa district

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 November 2012, 23:42 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government with the assistance of occupying Sri Lanka Army and the paramilitary politicians, has been implementing a scheme to settle down about twenty five thousand Sinhala families in the Batticaloa district in the eastern province, informed sources in Batticaola said. More than 5,000 Sinhala families brought from south have been settled down along 16 km coastal area from Paasik-kudaa in Koa'ralaippattu DS division to Chavukkadi in Ea'raavoorpattu (Chengkaladi) DS division.
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ILPS conference in Canada discusses liberation struggles and state oppression

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 November 2012, 21:36 GMT]
The three-day Canadian conference of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) culminated on March 10. The public discussion series at Toronto’s Ontario Institute for the Study of Education comprising several topics, was organized to coincide with the Second General Assembly of the ILPS-Canada. Krisna Saravanamuttu, a second generation Eezham Tamil, was one of several activists who delivered strategic analyses of state tools against liberation movements, under the topic “The War on Resistance,” to an audience of approximately 25 activists. Presentations advanced perspectives on Tamil, Palestinian, Indian, and Quebecois social movements. Among participants originally of Latin American, Kashmiri, Philippine, Quebecois, and Anglo-Canadian origin, second-generation youth members of the Tamil community made up a prominent proportion of attendees to this event.
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Tamil delegates interact with London Tamils, affirm support for genocide investigation

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 November 2012, 23:37 GMT]
Concluding the three day global conference organized by the BTF and APPGT, politicians and civil society activists from the island and Tamil Nadu participated in an interactive session with an Eezham Tamil diaspora audience in London, on Friday. This event follows a meeting among the Tamil delegates in the British parliament on Thursday, where they had arrived at a consensus on the resolutions proposed on the day before calling for an independent international investigation into the genocidal war crimes of the Sri Lankan state.
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Colombo appropriates lands, constructs Buddhist Stupas in Kuchchave'li

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 November 2012, 20:37 GMT]
The Sri Lankan Department of Archaeology is engaged in constructing Buddhist Stupas in lands appropriated from Tamil and Muslim villagers at Kuchchave'li division of Trincomalee district. The appropriation of lands and the construction of the Buddhist temples are taking place with the backing of the occupying Sri Lanka Army. Foundation stone was laid on Friday for the construction of a Buddhist Stupa on the top of a rocky hillock called Karadimalai, along the seacoast, adjacent to the SL police station as well as the old Rest House complex in Kuchchave’li. The prime tourist location will get an exclusive Sinhala-Buddhist cultural image soon. The SL military is also appropriating lands in Kuchchave'li village, for its own purposes.
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Sri Lanka must be investigated for crime of genocide: London conference

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 November 2012, 18:09 GMT]
The global conference organized by British Tamils’ Forum (BTF) and All Party Parliamentary Groups for Tamils (APPGT), involving participation of civil society activists and politicians from the island and Tamil Nadu, diaspora groups, and British parliamentarians, on Wednesday called for an independent international investigation on the complete conduct of the Sri Lankan state against the Tamil nation, specifically calling for an investigation on the allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by the GoSL on the Tamil people. The proposed resolution also urged the global civil society and leaders of the IC to stop decimation of the Tamil nation by the Sri Lankan state.
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Tamils vote with Muslims in EPC against SLA land grab of Muslim village

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 November 2012, 15:30 GMT]
The Eastern Provincial Council (EPC), which is now under the control of ruling United People Freedom Alliance (UPFA) passed a resolution unanimously Tuesday against the appropriation by the Sri Lanka Army of the entire traditional Muslim village, Karimayilaiyoottu with a century old mosque. C.Thandayuthapani, the opposition leader in the EPC who represents the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) extended full support to the motion saying that no one would tolerate the appropriation of a traditional Muslim village and the mosque by the Sri Lankan military. The resolution was brought by Ameer Ali, a ruling party member, at the monthly meeting of the EPC.
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UNHRC resolution has failed to exert pressure on Colombo: FirstPost

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 November 2012, 17:33 GMT]
“If anybody thought Sri Lanka would mend its ways after the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution, they are mistaken,” writes G Pramod Kumar, a senior editor of Indian news portal FirstPost.com on Monday. In a story titled ‘Impeachment of Sri Lankan chief justice is India’s foreign policy failure’, Mr Pramod Kumar notes that “while the international community continues to put pressure on the country to improve its human rights standards and fix accountability for its alleged war crimes, it has become more defiant.”
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