British writer blasts UK's unscrupulous arms-deals

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 July 2014, 14:19 GMT]
“The killing fields of Sri Lanka have received all too little attention in the British media, with up to 70,000 Tamil civilians massacred at the end of the 2009 civil war: but this does not serve as a deterrent for British arms sellers,” writes Owen Jones, a British columnist and author in an opinion piece in The Guardian on Wednesday. Further providing examples of states that have had a history of persecuting nations or suppressing basic civil rights, he laments that “our arms trade serves as a reminder that Britain's claim to be a promoter of democracy is a myth.”
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Protesting mother exposes occupying SL military’s false propaganda

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 July 2014, 17:16 GMT]
“The SL military never bought my lands. They said I need to provide details to obtain land. Then I was forced to sign a paper in Sinhala at the police station. The SL military moved into my land and has now sent notice to seize the lands permanently from me,” said a Tamil mother who protested against the land surveyors who came to her land situated along the A9 Road, at Mirusuvil in Thenmaraadchi of the Jaffna district. While the protest was going on a group of SL military intelligence operatives entered the house of a Tamil councillor, who was supporting the protesting family, threatened his wife at gunpoint and caused damage to his property. Rasiah Theivendrampillai, the councillor from the divisional council in the area, said military personnel who entered his house, while he was at the protest, burnt his bankbooks and land deeds and threatened his family.
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Eezham Tamils and duplicity of West’s human rights campaigns

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 June 2014, 23:28 GMT]
The progress in women security achieved through liberation movements in Asia are more substantive than any that was achieved or could be achieved by the campaigns of the West-activists. Yet, why do they ignore the former and focus only on the latter? Is it because it gives the West-activists and by implication those in the West in general the moral high ground to look down upon the “others”, asks Dr. N. Malathy, in an article sent to TamilNet. Discussing the topic through the Eezham Tamil case study, and comparing the West-activists’ campaign on child soldiers then and sexualised violence against women now, she is bringing out the duplicities and deficiencies inherent in the human rights campaigns run by West-activists.
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Nigeria to ape ‘Sri Lanka model’ in handling Boko Haram insurgency

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 June 2014, 06:10 GMT]
“Nigeria is studying the military tactics used by Sri Lanka to crush the rebel Tamil Tigers for its own battle against Islamist group Boko Haram,” Reuters reported on Friday, citing Nigerian Defence Ministry sources. The Nigerians are having discussions pertaining to strategy and tactics with a military delegation from Sri Lanka led by Chief of Defence Staff Jagath Jayasuriya, a genocide-accused who was the overall command overseeing the offensives on the Eezham Tamils in Vanni from 2008-2009. The US led West and several other African countries are also supporting Nigeria in its offensives against the Boko Haram insurgency.
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UK shields Sri Lanka’s genocidal rape committed on Tamils

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 June 2014, 22:49 GMT]
Britain, which was actively in complicity with the genocidal war conducted without witnesses against Eezham Tamils, now in a global summit convened in London this week, shields the systematic genocidal rape committed on Tamil women too. The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, organized by British Foreign Secretary William Hague and the high profile Special Envoy of UNHCR, Angelina Jolie, with delegations from 140 countries and ministers from 100 countries including the US Secretary of State, was highlighting the cases of all but the Tamils. “Regrettably, Foreign Secretary Hague has forgotten about the courageous survivors of sexual violence in Sri Lanka,” said Bianca Jagger.
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‘Proliferation of micronarratives assists the logic of counterinsurgency’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 June 2014, 23:48 GMT]
In the context of the Tamil Eelam liberation struggle, when a “micronarrative” discourse about gender, caste, region or other “special interest groups” claims autonomous status, “when it divorces itself from the primary contradiction between the Tamil nationalist metanarrative and the Sri Lankan state, it only ends up fracturing a resistance movement against genocide” argues Karthick RM. In an article published on Indian journal Sanhati, providing examples of how such differences were used to fracture the Eezham Tamils liberation struggle in the past and the present, he shows that such “dissidence” only assists the logic of counterinsurgency (COIN). Drawing from classical and contemporary COIN experts and from the writings of psychologists, Mr. Karthick also observes how such micronarratives and a defeatist mentality complement each other.
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SL military blocks people from attending protest in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 June 2014, 23:05 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) politicians joined a protest held in front of the Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat on Thursday demanding legal hearings into habeas corpus petitions from the families and relatives of persons, who are reported missing after the families had handed them over to the occupying Sri Lankan military during the final days of the genocidal onslaught on Vanni in May 2009. On Thursday, the Sri Lankan military in Mullaiththeevu was blocking the kith and kin of the missing persons from attending the protest, which was led by Ms Ananthy Sasitharan, an elected councillor of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) who represents the voice of the kith and kin of the missing persons.
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Hold Gotabhaya accountable for war-crimes, writes NYU Professor of Law

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 June 2014, 03:14 GMT]
"Even if Gota[bhaya Rajapakse] never sees the inside walls of a US prison, the White House could send a powerful signal of its commitment to accountability by formally investigating and, if the evidence is there, indicting Gota[bhaya]," writes Ryan Goodman, Professor of Law at New York University School of Law in the on line forum called Justice and Security which provides rigorous analysis of U.S. foreign policy, national security and law. "Because of Gota’s citizenship the US would also be less vulnerable to accusations of meddling. And, indeed, the US administration could also suspend its own criminal inquiry, in a very public way, on the ground that it will give Sri Lanka’s political establishment an opportunity to do the right thing. Congressional members can very publicly support the initiation of a full-blown criminal inquiry by the Justice Department," Goodman said.
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Resorting to genocide does not always ensure COIN success: Israeli military historian

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 May 2014, 21:38 GMT]
“It should be noted […] that resorting to mass murder, even genocide, does not always enable counterinsurgents to win,” renowned Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld said. In an exclusive Email interview to TamilNet on Saturday, Prof. van Creveld also expressed a degree of consent to the proposition that a counterinsurgency (COIN) that secured a brutal victory over an insurgent but could not dent the political aspirations of the target population was a failure. He is also of the opinion that while a large scale ground intervention by US forces in South and South East Asian regions does not have great possibility of success, the superior ability of the US “to dominate the sea, the air, and outer space” in these regions give it a significant leverage. However, van Creveld’s comments on the imposition of peace in Sri Lanka warrant some introspection.
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Machiavellian ‘Prince’ of Sri Lanka?

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 May 2014, 04:09 GMT]
The Prince, a short treatise written by Niccolo Machiavelli in about 1527 as an advice to the Governor of Florence, to win his favour presents doctrines which have a striking similarity to those adopted by Rajapaksa, with unapologetic obeisance from Colombo elites. While historians and political scientists argue on the true objectives of the book, the term "Machiavellian" is near universally used to refer to amoral, unscrupulous, and devious power games in the conduct of States. Rajapaksa’s calculated acts to destroy the Tamil nationalist struggle by first killing thousands of Tamil civilians in the "crime of the century," and then continuing the structural genocide in the NorthEast, with the complicit West unable to arrest the Sinhala state machinery, appear to be policy actions directly pulled out from The Prince.
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Ananthi goes for traditional medium of remembering the dead on Mu'l'livaaykkaal Day

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 May 2014, 08:38 GMT]
Northern Provincial Council (NPC) member Ananthi Sasistharan has been protesting in front of a Sri Lankan military barrier on Mu’l’ivaaykkaal Remembrance Day demanding access to Keerimalai Nakuleasvaram temple at Keerimalai for the families to perform rituals to the dead family members. The SL military has been blocking all the avenues to the ritual site rejecting the Tamil families from conducting the ritual during Mu’l’livaaykaal remembrance. Keerimalai is situated in Valikaamam North which has been subjected to militarisation and Sinhalicisation by the occupying SL military.
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Tamils should project universality in Mu'l'livaaykkaal remembrance

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 May 2014, 07:08 GMT]
The Jaffna University Science Teachers’ Association (JUSTA) on Saturday condemned the Colombo government for oppressing Mu'l'livaaykkaal remembrance. One of the obverse impacts recognised by the JUSTA is that “it might lead to latent nostalgia for the LTTE, despite the anger against its holding the civilians hostage in the last stages of the war.” The JUSTA statement reeks of a deceptive twist deployed by the agencies of the West in covertly passing the blame. New Delhi was overt in oppressing any remembrance when its FM chose to visit Jaffna on the 2009 Heroes Day. Tamils should not slip in recognising and projecting the global struggle dimensions of remembering Mu'l'livaaykkaal, commented a Jaffna University academic.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka celebrates ‘Vesak’ suppressing Mu’l’livaaykkal Remembrance

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 May 2014, 21:01 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala forces of the Sri Lankan State this year celebrated Buddhist Vesak in a massive scale in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils as never before. The commander of the occupying SL military in Jaffna organised a two day military event in Jaffna. New Delhi's Consul General in Jaffna Mr V Mahalingam and his officials were invited to an event held at the Open Air Theatre in front of the Jaffna Public Library together with SL State employees from the Northern Provincial Council and the University of Jaffna. Diaspora operatives collaborating with SL military were also seated as special guests at the event.
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Eezham Tamils in Canada evolve common position on Tamil activism

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 April 2014, 21:31 GMT]
In a move interpreted as a sharp response to Sri Lanka's war on Tamil diaspora, more than 80 Tamil community organizations from across Canada have come together in an initiative to create a consensus outlining their collective position and guiding principles on Tamil struggle-centric engagement. The Tamil Assembly rejected the proscription of 16 Tamil diaspora organizations along with 424 individuals by the Government of Sri Lanka and said: The ongoing genocide of the Tamil nation is aided and abetted by institutions, governments, and bodies outside the purview of the Sri Lankan state structure, making them complicit in the ongoing genocide. These external actors have a responsibility to halt the ongoing genocide of the Tamil nation and guarantee the collective rights of the Tamils, the document said.
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Alarming trend of ‘hostage taking’ by Colombo’s TID investigators: Lawyers

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 April 2014, 09:54 GMT]
The military intelligence of occupying Colombo is keeping the family members of alleged suspects as hostages in detention camps irrespective of their age, gender and irrespective of any connection to those the military claims as suspects involved in the revival of the armed struggle, Colombo-based lawyers representing the victims said in a note sent to human rights defenders. The lawyers described the trend as alarming. Not only the freedom of movement, but also the freedom of having visitors in their residences is seriously affected in Mullaiththeevu and Ki’linochchi districts in particular, the lawyers said.
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SL military threatens former LTTE members, civilians from Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 April 2014, 14:38 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military intelligence operatives have detained 3 Eezham Tamils from Batticaloa district in recent days. A couple and their kids living in Vavuniyaa were detained by the so-called Terrorist Investigation Division, interrogated at Vavuniyaa TID office and later transferred to Boossa detention in Colombo. The arrest was made in Vavuniyaa on 06 April. Both, the husband and wife were former LTTE members in Batticaloa who had left the movement before the defection of Karuna. They were arrested in Vavuniyaa where they were employed. Their three children have been handed over to the grand parents in Aayithiya-malai, news sources in Batticaloa said.
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UN wants cooperation despite Colombo’s rejection of Geneva resolution: ICP

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 April 2014, 19:55 GMT]
Having Sri Lanka’s genocidal military commander Major General Shavendra Silva as an adviser to UN Peacekeeping and giving more significance to Syria and North Korea than to the crimes Sri Lanka, the United Nations Secretary General and officials under him are encouraging Sri Lanka to work with the UN Human Rights Council’s mechanisms in Geneva despite Colombo categorically stating that it will not cooperate with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) after the resolution passed last week in Geneva. Mr Ban was recalling the commitments made to him on accountability by the SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa in their “Joint Statement of 2009” through a “pre-prepared answer” to ICP’s question on Tuesday. In the meantime, Colombo has extended an invitation to Mr Ban Ki-moon in May 2014 to visit the island, the ICP further reported.
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SL military rule stepped up in North, wartime restrictions re-introduced

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 March 2014, 19:44 GMT]
Clamping down on civilian life in the North, the occupying Sri Lankan military has re-introduced pass system for fishermen in the North to access their seas, putting up check posts on the roads, dawn to dusk search operations and military patrols of armed soldiers in the Northern province, especially targeting coastal areas. In the meantime, the occupying Sri Lankan military has ‘arrested’ at least 44 Eelam Tamils between 07 March and 27 March, news sources in Jaffna said. Most of them have been arrested in abduction style. The iron fist control on the civilian life seeks to silence all activism and threatens the witnesses who have been prepared to witness against the genocidal crimes by the Sri Lankan State, rights activists in Jaffna told TamilNet. Civilian movement was at standstill during the nights as if a curfew has been clamped down at several locations of the peninsula.
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Activists from homeland, diaspora address UNHRC

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 March 2014, 15:34 GMT]
The Deputy Chairman of Valikaamam North Piratheasa Chapai (PS) and the president of Vali North Displaced Peoples Rehabilitation Organisation, S. Shageevan spoke at UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday demanding global focus on the ideology-driven genocide against Tamil people in the North and East of the island. In the meantime, Tamil diaspora activist Krisna Saravanamuttu from the National Council of Canadian Tamils (NCCT) addressing the Council on the same session said that Tamil people are enduring a slow, but relentless, genocide. “The Tamil struggle today is about the survival of our people against genocide by the Sri Lankan state to destroy our sovereign national existence in the island’s NorthEast,” Krisna Saravanamuttu said.
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UK long blighted cause of Eezham Tamils, contributed to genocide

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 March 2014, 13:36 GMT]
“The UK’s permanent representative at the United Nations, a man called Sir John Sawers, who was at that time the permanent representative to the UN, stopped any Security Council discussion about the crisis in Sri Lanka in February 2009. This was the exact point, as we know very well from the Petrie Report that the UN officers were raising massive alerts inside the organisation about the impending massacre. It was the UK that stopped the Security Council from discussing those reports openly, so it wasn’t just an internal institutional failure of the UN, it was a deliberate policy of the UK government,” said British criminology academic Dr Andy Higginbottom, addressing a media meet in Geneva on Friday. He elucidated on how the UK was long blighting the cause of Eezham Tamils.
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