Tamil returnees from UK face possible torture in Sri Lanka: Report

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 September 2012, 03:35 GMT]
Freedom from Torture (FfT),a medical foundation for the care of victims of torture, in a report released this week, pointed to the evidence of more than 20 Eezham Tamils who experienced torture after returning voluntarily to Sri Lanka in the post-conflict period, and said that the Organization "considers that the UK's removal policy for Sri Lanka is based on a flawed assessment of risk." Asserting that the examined cases "reveal that Sri Lankan Tamils who in the past had an actual or perceived association at any level with the LTTE but were able to leave Sri Lanka safely now face risk of torture on return," the FfT added that there "should be a pause in forcible removals of Tamils to Sri Lanka" while the UK Border Agency's policy on removals to Sri Lanka is changed to properly reflect the evidence presented in FfT's report.
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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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‘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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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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Eezham Tamil elected to leading committee of SP party in Switzerland

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 September 2012, 14:22 GMT]
Lathan Suntharalingam, an Eezham Tamil and a legislative member of Lucerne canton in Switzerland, has been elected to the national level 9-member Leading Committee of the Social Democratic Party (SP) on Sunday. Dissler Sebastian, the general secretary of the SP party in the Canton of Lucerne, told TamilNet that the election of Lathan Suntharalingam to a crucial role in their party not only demonstrated the achievement of an active politician, but also how their party has recognized the role of the immigrant population.
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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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Tamil civil society cautions UNHRC to safeguard reputation

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 September 2012, 14:58 GMT]
Civil society activists of Eezham Tamils are worried about possibilities of Sri Lanka manipulating the visit of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) team to the island next week. In a letter addressed to HE Navanetham Pillai, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the civil society has cautioned the team against Sri Lanka buying more time to continue and complete its agenda of Sinhalicisation of the North and East. The civil society expressed its fear based on past instances where the GOSL had been able to manipulate visits by members of the International and UN community so as to benefit its agenda. The letter requested the team to have its own agenda for assessment of the situation, to get guarantees from GOSL for that freedom and to let the public know on the terms of reference as well as restrictions.
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Arnestad’s ‘Silenced Voices’ documentary gains momentum

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 September 2012, 14:27 GMT]
Even as the GoSL tightens its vice through different means to gag democratic voices in the island from expressing the truth about the genocide of the Eezham Tamils, award-winning Norwegian documentary filmmaker Beate Arnestad’s ‘Silenced Voices - Tales of Sri Lankan Journalists in Exile’ has been steadily gaining momentum at acclaimed film festivals and screenings across the world, exposing the truth about media repression by the Sri Lankan state. After a grand pre-première in Oslo in February 2012, a world premiere in Hague at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in March, screenings at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York in June, Arnestad’s documentary received a salubrious welcome at public screenings in Australia this week.
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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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Apply BDS campaign against Sri Lanka: Tamil Nadu writer

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 September 2012, 09:02 GMT]
Arguing that “massive international pressure alone can halt the ongoing cultural and structural genocide against the Tamils”, Tamil Nadu based poet and writer Meena Kandasamy contends in an article on Tehelka.com that an effective Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which was used against the apartheid South African state must be also applied to Sri Lanka.
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BJP denies inviting Rajapaksa as Tamil leaders announce protest in India

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 September 2012, 19:14 GMT]
Tamils across Tamil Nadu on Wednesday launched protests against Rajapaksa’s scheduled visit to India on 21 September to inaugurate a centre for Buddhist study at Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh. VCK activists in Coimbatore burnt photographs of Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sushma Swaraj, the leader of the BJP who had reportedly invited the genocide-accused SL president. Meanwhile, MDMK leader Vaiko urged the BJP to cancel the invitation to Rajapaksa, stating that otherwise he would lead a black flag demonstration to Madhya Pradesh when the SL president arrives. In the meantime, Sushma Swaraj and other BJP leaders have denied inviting Rajapaksa, alleging that the Indian Prime Minister and the Ministry of External Affairs were responsible for inviting the SL president.
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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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Pilgrimage, tourism become show of genocidal jubilation

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 September 2012, 18:00 GMT]
12.5 million Sinhala Buddhist visitors from the South have toured Jaffna peninsula during the last three years, from July 2009 to August 2012, according to the statistics released by the statistics division of the occupying Sri Lankan military in Jaffna. Highest number of visits was recorded in August 2012, when more than 100,000 southerners visited the peninsula. At least 80,000 of these visitors have been to Nagadipa vihara at Nayinaatheevu, an islet off Jaffna during the last month. In the meantime, the Eezham Tamil people of the peninsula, numbering less than 600,000 and the resettling people of Vanni live in a parallel universe without communication with the visiting Sinhalese, who are looked after by the occupying SL military and ‘civil’ administration.
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‘BJP legitimizes Sri Lanka’s culture of genocide through Buddhist links’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 September 2012, 13:54 GMT]
At a function organised by the Sri Lankan high commission in New Delhi on Saturday, BJP leader Sushma Swaraj has unveiled a painting depicting Emperor Asoka to mark the 2,600th year of the advent of Buddhism in the island. Sushma Swaraj recalled the important cultural and Buddhist links between India and Sri Lanka and affirmed India's commitment to the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, reported IANS on Sunday, adding that “she was impressed by the resettlement, rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts of the Sri Lankan government and the approaches by all parties towards reconciliation.” A Tamil Nadu activist studying in New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University working with the Delhi Tamil Students’ Union condemned this move as a legitimization of “Sri Lanka’s culture of genocide”.
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