US-led World Bank loans to Rajapaksa, fortifies Colombo-dominated structure

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 06:49 GMT]
While the Eezham Tamils are hoodwinked by the ploy and decoy of a US-resolution at Geneva, and while the plight of Eezham Tamils is considerably due to a Colombo-centric structure in the island, the US-dominated World Bank headquartered in Washington has approved a loan of US$ 213 million on Thursday for the development of Colombo city. The loan has been granted under the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) institution of the World Bank for the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project. This is the first IBRD loan to Sri Lanka. Colombo metro ‘development’ project is completely in the hands of war-crimes-accused presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who is also a US citizen. Immediately after the war the IMF bailed out the genocidal state by granting US$ 2600 million.
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China card misleads Indian public

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 06:38 GMT]
“The question that needs to be answered now is should the UPA government [in New Delhi] be more worried about alliance politics or China’s growing dominance in South Asia,” asks a news feature appeared in The Times of India on Tuesday. By taking a stand to vote against Sri Lanka at Geneva, the UPA government for the moment seems to have calmed the political furore. But bypassing one crisis India seems to find itself in a potentially bigger threat of leaving Sri Lanka in the hands of China, the feature said. If the thrust of the Times of India feature is to discourage India from acting on Sri Lanka by showing the China card, the media is misleading the Indian public, said an Eezham Tamil politician in the island.
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Sri Lanka orientates education to conform structural genocide

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 March 2012, 18:59 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s ‘terrorism’ professor Rohan Gunaratna was the foremost of the six “prominent professionals in the education field” cited by Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute in Colombo, as lecturing in a ‘National Conference on the Role of Education in Reconciliation’ hosted by the institute last Tuesday. The professor, lecturing on the “immense success” of Sri Lanka ‘rehabilitating’ ex-LTTE combatants despite their ‘past engagement in the killings in the North and East and outside,’ stressed on the need of schools becoming “multi-ethnic” in the island, shedding ethnic and religious segregations. This means, there can be no more schools for Tamils, like that they can’t have a territory for them, and Tamil and Muslim children will eventually be ‘minorities’ subjugated in the Sinhala-Buddhist schools of the island, commented an educationalist in Jaffna.
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Jayalalithaa blasts New Delhi supporting US-bailout of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2012, 19:45 GMT]
Coming hard on Indian Prime Minister’s announcement in the parliament on Monday forenoon that India is inclined to vote in favour of the US-resolution at Geneva UNHRC, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa on Monday evening described the stand as evasive and useless as it is not answering an earlier TN Assembly resolution calling for international investigation on the war crimes and genocide. According to Jayalalithaa, both New Delhi and the DMK chief Karunanidhi once again enact a drama similar to the one in the last days of the Vanni war in hoodwinking Tamils. Leaving aside seeking a commitment from Sri Lanka to report to the UNHRC on progress, the US-tabled resolution at Geneva leaves everything in the hands of Sri Lanka and harps on only implementing Sri Lanka’s own LLRC recommendations.
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Begin next stage of struggle by burning Sri Lankan constitution: May 17 Movement

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2012, 06:04 GMT]
When the International Community and India, approaching from their point of view, think of only bringing in a regime change in Colombo, buttressing failed democracy of the State and imposing farcical solutions to the Eezham Tamil question, Tamils all over the world, despite their differences, should use the situation to internationally place their demands loud and clear in unison, in ways acceptable to the world. This only will give us the morale to bring forward our struggle in future, if the powers once again fail us. Our demands could be nothing but calling for independent international investigation and asking for UN-conducted referendum on Tamil Eelam. Symbolically answering the powers upholding the State of failed democracy, the Sri Lankan constitution should be burnt all over the world, said Mr Thirumurugan Gandhi of May 17 Movement of Tamil Nadu.
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Shavendra Silva declared "persona non grata" to British event

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2012, 15:25 GMT]
The U.K.'s United Nation Mission in New York, decided not to invite Sri Lanka's Acting Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and ex-Major General in Sri Lankan Army (SLA), Shavendra Silva, to the Commonwealth Day reception, triggering a boycott from Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN, Dr Palitha Kohona, the current co-chair of the Commonwealth Caucus in New York, media in Colombo reported.
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Tamil civil society warned US officials on LLRC danger prior to Geneva

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2012, 05:45 GMT]
“The [Sri Lankan] Government’s current activities in the North and East are challenging the very existence of the Tamil people and more time to the GOSL to implement the LLRC’s recommendations will only mean further time for the Government to play havoc in the North and East and subjugate the interests and aspirations of the Tamil people,” said leading Eezham Tamil civil society members in the island, in a letter addressed to the visiting US Under Secretary of State Maria Oetro and the Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake last month on 10 February 2012. TamilNet has received a copy of this confidential letter and releases it to the public after blacking out the names and other identity of the members for security reasons. The letter clearly outlines the grave danger of initiating the accountability process with the so-called ‘positive recommendations’ of the LLRC report.
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‘LLRC hollow, India must use pressure to secure justice for Tamils’: Tehelka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2012, 03:03 GMT]
While a section of pro-establishment Indian media and journalists have attempted to the shield the Sri Lankan government from an external war crimes enquiry, an article published in Tehelka, an Indian magazine reputed for its investigative journalism, slams the hollowness of the LLRC citing UN panel report and referring to recently emerged images of civilians executed in cold blood when those who bear command responsibility for the atrocities have been given promotions. The article ‘Why are we not looking at these war crimes?’ dated 24 March by Tehelka’s correspondent Sai Manish further adds that future for justice for the Tamils does not lie with the pro-LLRC US resolution but “It depends more on how India can use its power to ensure that the innocent women and children who died don’t just get counted as collateral damage — as Colombo wants to make the world believe.”
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Chinese-helped new SL Naval base comes up in Vanni, targeting Palk Bay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2012, 09:45 GMT]
Sri Lanka occupying the country of Eezham Tamils opened a new naval base in the western coast of Vanni at Naachchik-kudaa facing the Palk Bay in a commanding position to target movements from the Tamil Nadu coast of India. Construction of the new naval base received Chinese help. SL navy commander Somathilake Tissanayake inaugurated the base on Monday. Meanwhile, journalists who have gone for the annual church fete at the uninhabited islet Kachcha-theevu in the Palk Bay has noticed a permanently built SL naval base there. The construction material of this base and a newly coming up jetty there were found with Chinese markings. Two SL naval ships are always stationed near Kachcha-theevu. The attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen deploying Sinhala gangs from the south are operated by SLN in Kachcha-theevu.
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Sinhala school students attack visiting Tamil counterparts from Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2012, 08:51 GMT]
Nations divided at the grassroot in the island despite machinations of global powers, reflected in an episode this week in which visiting students from leading schools of Jaffna were attacked by fellow Sinhala students in a cadet camp at Randamba in the Southern Province. The Sinhala military officials in the camp, rather than attending to complaints, chose to send the Jaffna school students back, with a warning not to tell anyone what had happened to them in the camp. During the decades of war, Colombo had stopped cadet programmes in the schools of Jaffna. Now as a part of its militarisation and structural genocide programme Colombo has conceived the idea of obligatory military training to all university entrants and reintroduction of cadet programme in the leading schools of Jaffna.
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Eezham independence is demand of Tamil fanatics, says Kuldip Nayar

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 March 2012, 18:07 GMT]
“There is hardly any Indian who supports the division of Sri Lanka as a fringe of Tamil fanatics demand,” said Punjab-born, Indian journalist turned diplomat and politician, Kuldip Nayar, writing to Colombo’s The Island on Wednesday. Assuring Colombo that despite its China-Pakistan intimacy, India will not change its helping friendship, Nayar wants Rajapaksa to present his case to the India society, by means like press conferences in New Delhi, as presently he is not seen in good light. Some days ago, a Tamil media in Chennai lamented that the case of Eezham Tamils is not known in India beyond Tamil Nadu. Unless Tamil Nadu has the guts to tell in ways heard in the rest of India that genocide-affected Eezham Tamils can’t survive without independence, Nayars would continue with their deception, said a Tamil politician in the island.
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HR organisations urged to attend plight of ex-militants needing asylum

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 March 2012, 05:55 GMT]
While Amnesty International and other international organisations have started to look at widespread and systematic mistreatment of detained former LTTE combatants in the hands of genocidal Sri Lanka, the organisations should also attend to the way some countries have enacted laws to create conditions of detention to asylum-seeking former Tamil militants, deport them or detain them in constant fear of deportation, and at the same time encourage and assist the handling of the Tamil militants by the genocidal state, urged Tamil civil activists in the island. In the context of the island, the human rights question and rehabilitation of all ex-militants could ultimately be handled with satisfaction and dignity, only when the Eezham Tamils are restored with their sovereignty, the activists further said.
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New Delhi’s ‘historical’ Lanka relations outweigh Tamil Nadu aspirations

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 16:43 GMT]
Reading out a statement in the Rajya Sabha of Indian parliament on Wednesday, answering the demand of Tamil Nadu political parties that India should vote against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC, Foreign Minister SM Krishna said, “Any assertions on our part may have implications on our historically friendly relations with a neighbouring country.” Krishna was rather harping on New Delhi’s continued ‘engagement’ with Colombo. Tamil Nadu ruling party AIADMK’s members angered by the statement walked out of the house, after tearing the statement of Krishna. Meanwhile, participating in a panel discussion in Puthiya Thalaimurai TV on Tuesday, Communist Party of India (CPI) leader, D. Pandian said that he would start reviewing his own Indian citizenship, if New Delhi votes in favour of Sri Lanka at Geneva.
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Detention without trial, Amnesty blasts Sri Lanka's rights record

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 02:48 GMT]
"Hundreds of people languish in arbitrary, illegal and often incommunicado detention in Sri Lanka, vulnerable to torture and extrajudicial execution, despite the end of the country’s long conflict... arbitrary and illegal detention and enforced disappearances remain routine in Sri Lanka, where human rights abuses of all types go uninvestigated and unpunished," Amnesty International said in a new report "Locked away: Sri Lanka's security detainees," released Tuesday.
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Onus focuses on India

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 01:38 GMT]
Even though diffusing, deviating and hijacking the need to address the crux of the crisis in Sri Lanka, the US-tabled resolution at the UNHRC and the associated diplomatic deliberations and muscle-flexing seem to be artfully fixing the onus on India, in lines with the long legacy of Indo-US competition ruining the aspirations of genocide-affected Eezham Tamils. India could seize the opportunity and could come out with alternative righteous options to counter the trap, but the guilty-filled Congress regime is incapable of them. As New Delhi’s stand has been repeatedly proved an impediment to justice in the island and at the same time New Delhi is also not doing anything on its own other than shopping there, the question comes whether removal of the Congress regime is a prerequisite to India’s progress in the region and in world affairs, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Grassroot Diaspora unites, upholds Tamil sovereignty, denounces LLRC-based resolution

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 March 2012, 18:58 GMT]
A coalition of 12 grassroot Eezham Tamil Diaspora organisations all over the world, on Tuesday, jointly urged the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to compel Colombo to free all Tamils in detention, withdraw all of its armed forces from the Tamil homeland and report back on completion by the 20th session. The organisations, consisting of democratically elected country councils, all the country branches of the Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) and Tamil Coordinating Committees (TCC) “deeply regretted” the decision of the United States to show regard for the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and called upon the UN to initiate an “immediate independent international investigation into the genocide of Eelam Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka” and urged the apex body to conduct a referendum with a free and sovereign state of Tamil Eelam as “an explicit option”.
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LLRC will only legitimise Sinhala occupation of Tamil homeland: British Academic

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2012, 13:29 GMT]
Even as some diaspora groups who went to Geneva have unwittingly welcomed the US resolution and ‘constructive recommendations’ of the fundamentally flawed LLRC set-up to cover the protracted genocide of the Eezham Tamils, Dr. Andrew Higginbottom strongly affirmed that the LLRC will only entrench Sinhala state rule over Tamil territories and provide it a fraudulent legitimacy to do so. Speaking at Geneva last Monday, Dr. Higginbottom, lecturer in Politics and Human Rights at Kingston University, London, criticized the injustice of the powers that are pro-LLRC. “The debate should not be whether the cup is half full or half empty, which is the debate taking place between the two blocs at the UN. The problem is that what is in the cup is poison, it really does not matter so much if it is a bit fuller or not,” he said, noting that what drives the US is not humanitarianism but power politics.
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Without international investigation accused will become judge: CPI

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 22:25 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu Assistant Secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI), Mr C. Mahendran in an interview to Junior Vikatan this week, rejected a statement by the Marxist Communist Party (CPM) central committee member and parliamentarian, TK Rangarajan saying that there is no need for an international investigation on Sri Lanka. Mr Rangarajan’s statement has found opposition even inside his party. Commenting, Mahendran said, he was surprised and he didn’t understand that in what sense Rangarajan had made the statement. Rangarajan should realise that expecting Sri Lanka to conduct the investigations is like appointing the murderer as the judge to deliver justice, Mahendran said.
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We always requested international investigation: TNA’s Suresh Premachandran

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 18:40 GMT]
“We have been to various countries like United State of America, Great Britain, Canada and South Africa, and we requested those countries that there must be an international investigation on the accountability, because the LLRC report does not have anything about the accountability as such,” said TNA parliamentarian Mr Suresh Premachandran in conducting a press meet at the TNA office, which is also the EPRLF office, in Jaffna on Sunday. On TNA’s talks with the SL government, Premachandran said Colombo has not yet fulfilled an understanding between Sampanthan and Rajapaksa that a bilateral agreement on solutions should precede before the TNA naming participants to the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC). Without third party mediation the talks are futile, as SL doesn’t want to settle the problem through power sharing, Premachandran said.
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LLRC-based resolution extremely disappointing: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 11:37 GMT]
The US-tabled resolution at UNHRC, based on the fundamentally flawed LLRC recommendations, is extremely disappointing and counter-productive, said Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, leader of Tamil National People's Front (TNPF), in a press meet held at the party office in Jaffna on Saturday. The resolution envisages an accused in the violation of international humanitarian law to become the investigator of the crime. If the LLRC findings are going to be the ‘starting point’ for any future prospects, chances of progress are difficult. Rather than keeping the expectations of the grieved party at the bare minimum, the resolution should begin with the UNSG panel report. What need investigation are the genocide of 60 years culminating into the war and the on-going structural genocide. Justice could come only from independent international investigation, he said.
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