SL military removes Kuddimani remembrance posters, harasses former MP in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 July 2012, 09:38 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) together with the SL Police on Thursday arrested former Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian and the political coordinator of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation, a registered political party in the TNA alliance, for having put up posters remembering 54 Tamil political prisoners, including pioneer TELO leaders Kuddimani and Thangathurai, who were massacred inside the Welikade prison in Colombo in the SL state-sponsored pogrom against Eezham Tamils in July 1983. Mr. Sivajilingam was later released by the SL police at Nelliyadi, with the warning that he should not ‘antagonize’ the military officers of the SL military.
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Paramilitary terrorizes Vaakarai, instructs people to vote for UPFA

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 July 2012, 20:22 GMT]
Paramilitary operatives led by former chief minister of the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) are threatening the voters in Vaakarai area of Batticaloa district that they would be driven out from the region if they vote for the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) at the forthcoming election to the EPC. The paramilitary men have instructed the people to vote for Rajapaksa's ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) in which Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan would be participating as the lead candidate.
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TESO, AIADMK could create history with tacit action on fundamentals

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 July 2012, 23:54 GMT]
The island transformed from colonial Ceylon into genocidal Sri Lanka has in the process witnessed two wars of brutal conquest in the last two hundred years, both of which were ultimately imperialist. The conquest of Kandy in 1815 by British imperialism bringing in the unitary state and the conquest of Vanni in 2009 by a strategic partnership of the US and Indian imperialism are not two different phenomena, if the aftermaths of the wars are compared and comprehended. The larger question arises for the peoples of the region, elsewhere, and especially for the people of Tamil Nadu in this context is whether they are going to succumb one after the other as in the past, or are going to create history for humanity by learning from history. The TESO meet will only turn into a crafty device if its convenors and participants don’t direct it to answer the fundamentals.
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SL Supreme Court to inquire into FR application against Champoor lands acquisition

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 July 2012, 23:37 GMT]
A three-member bench of the Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court on Monday decided to take up the Fundamental Rights Application filed by four Tamil-speaking farmers, a Muslim and three Tamils, against the appropriation of their traditional paddy lands in Champoor in Moothoor East in Trincomalee district, for inquiry on October 11.
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Tamil politicians urge global action in releasing POWs, political prisoners

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 July 2012, 13:52 GMT]
Addressing a press conference in Vavuniyaa on Tuesday, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) called for immediate release of all political prisoners who are held without any charges in the Sri Lankan prisons. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, representing the Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) said that the International Community, especially the countries that backed the internal LLRC mechanism of Colombo in the resolution passed at the UN Human Rights Council's Sessions in Geneva earlier this year, are primarily responsible for the fate of the Tamil Prisoners of War and political prisoners. Those who attended the funeral of Nimalarooban, braving the threats posed by the Sri Lankan military and intelligence operatives, told TamilNet that the victim had sustained fatal injuries on his head.
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London demonstrators urge UK, India to act through Commonwealth

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 July 2012, 23:49 GMT]
Gathering at 10 Downing Street in front of the residence of the British Prime Minister on Monday, Eezham Tamils in the UK remembered the 29th anniversary of the Black July massacre, urging for the expulsion of Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth and for Britain to boycott the CHOGM meeting scheduled to take place in the island next year. “During the 1983 pogrom, the Eezham Tamils could flee to the North as a sanctuary. Now, the extensive land grabs and militarization of the Tamil homeland has made it unsafe for them even in their home. The International Community and especially India should take responsibility for their calculated silence that has allowed this to happen,” Ravi Kumar from the British Tamils Forum (BTF) told TamilNet.
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Emerging logistics blueprint of Sri Lanka's White Van operations

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 July 2012, 01:58 GMT]
Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a non-profit litigation and advocacy group based in the U.S., has pieced together an operational blueprint of Sri Lanka's White Van abductions, and the complicity of State Institutions. The blueprint is based on affidavits from surviving abductees, a video deposition from an ex-member of Liberation Tigers who was spared execution at the last moment, information revealed from recent capture of white van abductors in the South, and other circumstantial evidence including open death threats issued by Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse. TAG concludes that the white van phenomenon is not a random occurrence of isolated events, but a systemic well-organized criminal enterprise carried out by independently operating cells consisting of criminal gangs and military personnel and activated by directives from high level State officials.
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Fasting in London against genocidal Sri Lanka timed for Black July, Olympics

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 July 2012, 22:52 GMT]
The Black July remembrance event held at London on Sunday addressed the systematic injustice that Sri Lanka had been meting out to the Tamils, with activists placing emphasis on the protracted nature of genocide Eezham Tamils face in unitary Sri Lanka. Gobi Sivanthan, a Tamil youth activist, began his hunger-strike vigil which will end on the Olympics closing ceremony on August 12 demanding, among others, the immediate halting of land grabs in the Tamil homeland. Conveying solidarity with the demands of the demonstrators, Kurdish and British activists who spoke at the event urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to immediately suspend Sri Lanka from the 2012 London Olympics. “States committing genocide should not be part of Olympic games,” Akif Wan, a representative from the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) said, speaking at the event.
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SL minister Badurdeen competes with SLA on appropriating lands in Vanni amid protests

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 July 2012, 21:59 GMT]
While more than 2,000 war-affected families are struggling without lands in Karaithu'raip-pattu division of Mullaiththeevu district, Sri Lankan minister of Trade, Rishard Badurdeen, has planned to appropriate 1,500 acres of forest land along Mu'l'liyava'lai - Nedungkea'ni Road promising the lands to his supporters from elsewhere in the island, sources at Karaithu'raippattu divisional secretariat told TamilNet. Even the occupying SLA had opposed the move, but the SL minister has exerted pressure from the top to implement his plan, the sources further said. In the meantime, protests against the SL minister, who is blamed for violent attack on the court complex in Mannaar is being stepped up by the lawyers, who have also protested against the attack on the residence of Point Pedro District Judge on Wednesday.
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Genocidal land grab extended to new division in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 July 2012, 22:18 GMT]
The SL state-sponsored genocidal land grab has now reached to Ea'raavoorpattu (Chengkaladi) DS division, civil sources in Batticaloa said. In recent days, Sinhala settlers have cleared several acres of forest along Magncha'l Aaru, located 5 km east of Maha Oya junction on A5 (Chengkaladi-Badulla) highway, renaming the area in Sinhala as ‘Mangalagama’. The Colombo based authorities of the SL state, which have taken over the administration of rivers, reservoirs, and ponds from the district-based irrigation authorities since 2009, are depriving the livelihood of Tamils by appropriating cultivation lands and the water sources used for inland fishing.
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Acute malnutrition prevails among uprooted Champoor families

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 July 2012, 23:22 GMT]
Acute malnutrition and hunger prevail among uprooted Champoor families now staying in ‘welfare centres’ that are located at Kaddai-pa'richchaan, Ma'nat-cheanai, Ki'liveddi and Paddiththidal in the Moothoor East. About 4,036 uprooted members of 263 families from Champoor six years ago due to SL military operation launched by the Sri Lanka Army in 2006 are staying in these camps as the government had refused to allow them to resettle in their own villages in Champoor area. According to reports by civil groups that the stoppage of distribution of dry ration relief under the World Food Programme for the last six months has led to the tragic situation in welfare camps.
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Australian socialist calls for support to Tamils’ right to self-determination

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 July 2012, 07:47 GMT]
“Tamils should have the right to choose whether they wish to be part of a united Sri Lanka, to break away and form an independent Tamil state in their traditional homelands in the north and east of the island, or to have some intermediate form such as federalism or autonomy,” writes Chris Slee, a member of the Melbourne branch of the Socialist Alliance, in an article published on Green Left Weekly, Sunday. Noting that the support given to Sri Lanka by world powers, especially the US, in allowing the May 2009 massacre to happen and criticizing the misunderstanding of the “progressive” Latin American countries of the Tamils’ struggle, the author calls on Australians to “demand that the Australian government support the proposal for a UN-supervised referendum. We should also demand that it end all ties with the Sri Lankan army and the other repressive forces of the Sri Lankan state.”
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Nelliyadi protest urges coherence in Tamil politics

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 July 2012, 16:51 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the leader of Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF), addressing the peaceful protest on Wednesday at Nelliyadi, which was organised against the slaying of Nimalarooban in Sri Lanka’s prison, urged the people to see things in the context of Sri Lankan government’s systematic annihilation of the existence of Tamils as a Nation in the island. “Until we fail to establish the recognition of the Tamil nationhood and its distinct sovereignty, we will be failing in our political work,” he said. In the meantime, TNA MP S. Sritharan, addressing the protesters at Nelliyadi said Tamils are not a defeated Nation. “What has happened to our youth in 2012 in Vavuniyaa is nothing different than what had happened to our youth at Welikade prison in 1983,” he said adding that until the injustice continues, the struggle for liberation would continue.
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Nelliyadi protesters overcome sabotage by SL Military Intelligence

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 July 2012, 12:30 GMT]
Around 300 protesters gathered at Nelliyadi in Vadamaraadchi, Jaffna, on Wednesday, braving threats from the occupying Sri Lanka Army that warned participants about ‘firing orders’ issued to SL soldiers and Policemen. However, the demonstrators, that included solidarity groups from Upcountry and South, protesting the killing of Tamil prisoner Nimalarooban, successfully beat the sabotage attempt by the SL Military Intelligence. The SL military had dispatched four masked operatives in two motorbikes with Tamil Eelam national flags in their attempt to incite trouble at the site of the protest organised by the Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF). The intelligence operatives had to escape from being caught by the protesters.
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Eezham Tamil youth in Germany resolve to uphold Tamil sovereignty

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 July 2012, 11:21 GMT]
Condemning the attempts by establishments to compel Eezham Tamils to accept the genocidal development model of Colombo in the Tamil homeland, second generation Eezham Tamil youth in Germany resolved “to raise awareness and educate Tamils and non-Tamils about the ongoing-internationally abetted-genocide of the Tamil nation” and to educate the IC about the legitimacy of the Tamil struggle for sovereignty at the ‘Tamil Eelam Sovereignty conference’ organized by TYO-Germany at Landau, on Sunday. Speaking to TamilNet, Vibisanan Rajasingam of the TYO said that it was important for the second generation youth in the diaspora to understand the need for a sovereign state of Tamil Eelam as the only solution to check the genocide of the Eelam Tamils, referring to the three types of sovereignty of the Eelam Tamils as mentioned in the Tamil sovereignty cognition declaration.
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TNA should reject PC model, field independents in East elections: TNPF

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 July 2012, 22:15 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) should demonstrate to the world the Tamil rejection of the Provincial Council model of the 13th Amendment by not participating in the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) elections, but the TNA could field a front of independent candidates to meet the political challenge of the times. The candidate list already prepared could go as an independent list with a specific political message on the cause to the people, said Gajendrakumar Ponnampalam of the Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF), presiding over a press conference in Jaffna on Saturday. The TNPF promised support to the TNA in any such move. In the meantime, former TNA parliamentarian and TELO leader M.K Sivajilingam urged the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the TNA to field candidates jointly. It is time for the East to have a Muslim chief minister, who is also elected by Tamils, he told TamilNet.
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Sri Lanka's descent to dictatorship

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 July 2012, 21:03 GMT]
"...three years after the war ended, human rights groups and opposition leaders warn that the country is descending toward dictatorship, with dissent brutally crushed, the media cowed and the minority Tamils, whose insurrection caused the war in the first place, still treated like second-class citizens," Washington Post said in the Friday edition, adding, "[a]s the scorched earth campaign entered its final stages in 2009, it cost tens of thousands of lives – a U.N. report called for an investigation into war crimes by both sides, accusing the Tigers of using civilians as human shields and the Sri Lankan military of indiscriminate shelling and denying civilians access to humanitarian aid."
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SL military grabs more lands in Maathakal

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 July 2012, 17:48 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Jaffna has occupied new lands in Maathakal, leaving 279 more families without homes. The latest reports say that the Sri Lankan military is silently evicting people from their homes in areas that are situated outside the former ‘High Security Zone’, civil sources in Valikaamam North said.
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Indian media seeing SL military misses pronouncing genocide

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 July 2012, 07:22 GMT]
A correspondent of the Mumbai-based Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), visiting the country of Eezham Tamils occupied by Sinhala military, sees there the Palu tree identified in Sinhala, but not the Paalai tree of Tamil literary fame. The example may be trifle but illustrative in showing how the lenses through which the Indian media sees or try to project the question of Eezham Tamils misses genocide in reducing the issue into mere militarisation, commented Eezham Tamil activists in the island responding to a feature in July 14 issue of EPW. Criticising the SL militarisation but at the same time artfully avoiding the heart of the matter, the genocide, the article said, “The message for the moment at least is clear: reconcile, by keeping your head down, give way to the army, be patient and hope for the best. In other words - do pretty much what you did to survive the reign of the LTTE."
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SL intelligence steps up harassment on Tamils in Colombo

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 July 2012, 23:50 GMT]
Officers claiming to be from the Sri Lankan Defence department, but carrying ID cards issued by SL Police Department, have been visiting selected houses in Kirulappane and Dehiwale suburbs of Colombo this week demanding new registration of household members, sources in Colombo said.
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