Tamil university students attacked in their homeland by Sinhala students

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 March 2014, 14:29 GMT]
All Tamil students from the first year have vacated the hostel of the Eastern University at Vanthaa’ru-mooalai in Batticaloa on Saturday following a brutal attack by Sinhala hostel inmates on 1st year Tamil students who were having a birth day party on Thursday midnight. More than 45 Sinhala students, armed with batons, penknives and iron-boxes, assaulted the Tamil students at the party causing serious injuries to 7 Tamil students. 2 Sinhala students were also injured in the clashes that followed. The Sinhala policemen at the police post had refused to intervene to stop the clash.
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Lawyers release testimony of Vipooshika, details confirm SL military trap

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 March 2014, 10:01 GMT]
Lawyers in Colombo working on a Fundamental Rights case, have released a translated text of the letter written by 13-year-old Vipooshika on what happened to them on 13 March 2014 and in the continued detention. The details given by her confirms the earlier reports of alleged trap set by the SL military Establishment and the reports of assault and intimidation. The letter further establishes how the Judicial Medical Officer (JMO) in Vavuniyaa cooperated with the Sri Lankan military establishment to intimidate the women.
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Key sabotage in US draft lies in withdrawal of demilitarisation

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 March 2014, 16:00 GMT]
The US draft resolution that will be tabled at the UNHCR, initially talking of demilitarisation and then deleting it, amounts to encouragement of Sinhala militarisation in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, and the results are already showing in the SL military activities, said Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The removal of demilitarisation is done with the particular intention of nullifying even the weak investigative mechanism of the OHCHR brought out in the draft, as witnesses will have no freedom to facilitate a genuine investigation in a genocidal-militarised environment, the activists said.
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Fear psychosis grips Vanni as SL military clamps down on Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 March 2014, 08:08 GMT]
The occupying SL military system, emboldened by the extension of one more year to continue its iron fist manoeuvrings to continue to engineer demographic, cultural and structural genocide on the nation of Eelam Tamils, has used 2014 March sessions in Geneva to project an enemy in its imagination, bringing again untold miseries for the thousands of families that have been affected by the genocidal onslaught in 2009. On Wednesday and Thursday, the districts of Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu witnessed military round up operations as never before in recent years after the war. Several villagers were brought to open grounds, filtered one-by-one, arrests made and threats issued by Sinhala soldiers who are made to believe by Colombo that former LTTE members were regrouping to wage another armed struggle. A fear psychosis has gripped the people of Vanni.
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Moongkilaa'ru victims slain by heavy weapons: forensic report

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 March 2014, 07:26 GMT]
A forensic team that inspected the skeletons of the victims from a bunker at Moongkilaa'ru have submitted their report to Mullaiththeevu District Court stating that they have found 11 pieces of shrapnel used in artillery and mortar shells. The 9 victims were slain in Sri Lanka Army fired shells during the mass exodus by the civilians from the so-called ‘No Fire Zone’ which was targeted by the SL military fire during the genocidal onslaught. Hundreds of civilians perished in the shelling along the road and the families and relatives were not able to conduct proper burial. Volunteers who helped to bury the victims say most of the victims buried at the said bunker belonged to a single family from Thiruvaiyaa’ru in Ki’inochchi district.
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Geneva press conference to discuss nature of US resolution

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 March 2014, 20:24 GMT]
Civil society activists and Tamil politicians from the homeland join together with Diaspora activists and exiled journalists to look into the question whether the US draft resolution being framed at the Human Rights Council would be a part of the solution or part of the problem in bringing a solution to the 60-year-old genocide of Eezham Tamils in their homeland on Friday at a side event in Geneva addressing a press conference at Geneva Press Club on Friday, Professor R. Sri Ranjan from the University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Canada, told TamilNet on Thursday. The event would explore the multiple aspects of the resolution and whether UNHRC as a body failed in its mandate to protect a persecuted people who face a most brutal form of genocidal oppression in their homeland. The press conference will also be webcast at 11:00 a.m. CET.
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Canadian students highlight genocide in letter to Harper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 March 2014, 12:36 GMT]
Canada's largest student union, representing more than 50,000 students, in a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Harper, expressed solidarity with "the Tamil people calling for justice and accountability for the victims of ongoing structural genocide," and said they join other several Rights organizations in "demanding a sustainable and just political solution for an indiscriminate right to Tamil autonomyh in Sri Lanka and and end to systemic and physical acts of genocide to the Tamil people by the Sri Lankan Government."
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Colombo malicious in twisting Ananthi's Geneva speech

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 16:01 GMT]
Responding to Sri Lankan delegation's accusation on her address at Geneva, Northern Provincial Council (NPC) member Ananthi Sasitharan on Wednesday defended her statements in Geneva saying that she didn't violate any protocol of the Provincial Council system or that of the Sri Lankan State. “In fact, I went to Geneva following the democratic decision by the NPC,” she said. Also, the Sri Lankan delegation was malicious in projecting that she was using the term “Tamil Eelam”. Ms Ananthi said she was only using the term “Eelam Tamils,” which is the cultural identity of the Tamils in the island. I don't want to go into the discussion of the term that they have twisted is lawful or not. But, I was only using the term “Eelam Tamils” and the full text of my speeches will be made available by the UN Human Rights Council if anyone want to verify it, she further said.
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UN uses Tamils to 'learn lessons' but denies justice to their genocide: Ananthi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 12:42 GMT]
The Right to Protect (R2P) concept, accepted by the World Summit in 2005, has totally failed to save Eelam Tamils from the genocidal war in 2009, said NPC councillor, Ms Ananthi Sasitharan at the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday in Geneva. She addressed the council twice, one of them being in Tamil language. Although the United Nation, which has admitted its systemic failure on the conflict, chose to learn lessons from the failures in the island and came up with the Rights Up Front initiative, it has failed to deliver justice to the victims on whose fate these lessons were learned, Ms Ananthi told the Council. “As the victims of a continued genocide, we are disappointed with the resolutions being tabled at this respected assembly, year after year, failing to address the root-problem, which is genocide,” she told the Council.
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Sri Lankan TID releases Fr. Praveen, Ruki Fernando

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 07:51 GMT]
While the Sri Lankan Government delegation in Geneva responded Tuesday evening defending the claims of the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) to the concerns raised by several NGOs against the TID detention of the Human Rights defenders Rev Fr Praveen and Mr Ruki Fernando, both the human rights activists were released a few hours later by the TID due to mounting pressure abroad and in the island. The SL delegation in Geneva came with a ‘point of order’ statement saying that both the activists were linked to someone named K.P Selvanayagam alias Gobi, who had been overseas and was ‘reviving the LTTE’ through ‘regrouping unemployed local youth’. Tamil activist Jeyakumari was in detention for harbouring Gobi, the SL delegation said.
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Journalists in North receive death threats over phone

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 March 2014, 23:49 GMT]
A section of Tamil journalists in North, who have been subjected to investigations and harassment by the Sri Lankan military intelligence in the recent past on Tuesday said they were receiving phone calls with death threats this week. The Sri Lankan military was using a projected image of ‘LTTE regrouping’ to silence the journalists and civil activists, especially during the 25th session of the human rights council in Geneva. In the meantime a top commander of the Sri Lanka Army has told a rights activist in Colombo that the whole Geneva discourse would end as the talk of USA sending ship to evacuate LTTE political leaders while brokering a surrender-deal at the end of Vanni war in 2009.
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Time for International Investigations, says Camp

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 March 2014, 01:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka "looks to be drifting toward authoritarianism. Journalists are terrified and intimidated by arrests and mysterious assaults on those critical of the government....The once-independent judiciary has learned not to challenge the government's edicts. The war-heavy defense establishment carries out many internal security functions, and "white vans" have become synonymous with the disappearance of dissidents who speak out against the government," writes Donald Camp, a retired foreign service officer at the US Department of State, adding, "after five years of stalling by the government [Colombo], it is time for an international investigation to do what Colombo has been unwilling to do."
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SL military deploys terror in Vanni, Priest, NGO activist under TID arrest

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 March 2014, 05:47 GMT]
Human Rights defender Rev. Fr. Praveen, the former director of the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation (CPR), who had been subjected to harassment by the occupying SL military several times before, has been arrested by the occupying Sri Lankan military and Police on Sunday night together with a human rights activist from Colombo, Ruki Fernando, when the two human rights activists were trying to locate information on what had happened to 13-year-old Vipooshika and her mother Jeyakumari at Tharumapuram in Ki’lnochchi. Ruki Fernando is a human rights adivisor with INFORM. In the meantime, a reliable source inside the Sri Lankan police revealed some exclusive details to a media source in Colombo on what happened to the arrested Jeyakumari and her daughter.
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Anglican priest receives death threat following reports of mass grave in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 March 2014, 03:09 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military has issued death threats to Rev Fr. N. Prabahar, an Anglican Priest who resides close to Trincomalee harbour, after an alleged mass grave site has been concealed by the SL military at Makeasvara playgrounds in the stadium premises. The mass grave was discovered on 13 February. In the meantime, an NGO activist in Trincomalee, who didn’t wish to be named, said there were at least 15 skeletal remains in the alleged mass grave.
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SL military steps up harassment on IDPs as US draft drops ‘de-militarisation’ in Geneva

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 March 2014, 23:20 GMT]
As the US draft that already failed Tamils by dropping international investigation on Sri Lankan State gets further watered down in its demands at the corridor discourse at Human Rights Council in Geneva, the occupying SL military in North and East of the island has strengthened its grip on Tamil people who have been determined with seeking justice on the ground. While those demanding the SL State to reveal the whereabouts of their missing family members in the North are subjected to harassments by the intelligence wing of the SL military, the uprooted Champoor Tamils still languishing in temporary huts in four camps in Moothoor East in Trincomalee are left to rotten with deteriorating health conditions in their camps, the women in the camps complain.
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Poruwa-danda, Gal-poru-yaya

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 March 2014, 20:16 GMT]
The forest to cut trees

The expanse of rocky raised ground
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Protesters demand immediate release of Jeyakumari

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 March 2014, 19:47 GMT]
Condemning the arrest of Jeyakumari Balendran and her daughter at Musilampaddi in Tharumapuram, Ki’linochchi and demanding immediate release of Jeyakumari who has been remanded at Boosa jail, Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) and All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) organised a protest in Vavuniyaa, which was well attended by political activists, councillors and Catholic priests and nuns, who demanded international attention and immediate release of the victim turned activist Jeyakumari.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka sends message to children and families voicing for their missing

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 March 2014, 15:15 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army arrested a 13-year-old girl and her 48-year-old mother, the only remaining female members of a family that has lost three men in the war, two of them died in the war and the last one missing after he surrendered to the Sri Lanka Army at the end of war in 2009. The two traumatized victims were voicing for the release of the only male, whose whereabouts are not revealed by the SL military. The mother, Jeyakumari Balendren, went to LLRC and to all the protests and became a leading activist in mobilizing the families of the missing in Ki’linochchi district. The daughter Vipooshika became the symbol of young children searching for their loved ones. Now, Colombo has sent the mother to Boosa prison in South and the daughter to so-called ‘Juvenile Correction and Rehabilitation Centre’ in North through its judiciary.
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Ananthi delivers another UNHRC address on genocide investigation

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 15:38 GMT]
“We request this assembly to call for international investigation on genocide, and as an immediate step, to come out with a mechanism to stop the on-going genocide of Eelam Tamils,” Ms Ananthi Sasitharan told the UN Human Rights Council at Geneva, delivering a second address under the General Debate on Friday. The resolutions passed in the recent years and the draft resolution to be submitted this year have disappointed the Tamils as these resolutions have failed to address the main problems of the victims, she told the Council. As an immediate step, she urged the international community to come out with a mechanism to stop the on-going genocide of Eelam Tamils.
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Ananthi addresses UNHRC in Geneva on continued genocide against Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 14:13 GMT]
Ms Ananthi Sasitharan, the popular TNA councillor of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) on Friday addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council's 25th session taking place in Geneva. She requested the UN system to take “bold steps in understanding the 60-year-long genocide and investigate it through an independent international investigation.” Addressing the UNHRCs General Debate, the 47-year-old mother of three told the Council that the children affected in any war spend a lifetime to recover from the impact. “But, the Eelam Tamil children face a continued war with genocidal intent,” she said urging “concrete actions to safeguard our children from becoming permanent victims to the genocide.”
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