Naalanda

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 December 2011, 04:51 GMT]
The high ground cum low jungle having Naa trees
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Translate political strength into solution: TNPF’s Kajendren

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 December 2011, 15:46 GMT]
The LTTE left endowing us with enhanced political strength in the international arena. It will be a folly if we don’t know to effectively translate that into political solution addressing to our aspirations, said the Secretary General of the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), Selvaraja Kajendren, while remembering the slain Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, N. Raviraj on Wednesday in Jaffna. The present TNA tries to project an image that the Tamils are now weak and they should not demand anything as in the past. This is a wrong projection. It is the political strength and righteousness the LTTE left with us that now makes the IC to poke its nose with seeming sympathy. Their real interests are different, but the space has to be used with firmness and not with naivety on our part, Kajendren said.
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Abductions on rise in Vanni, Red Cross joins SL Police in refusing to register complaints

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 December 2011, 07:47 GMT]
A 23-year-old Tamil youth was abducted Tuesday night by armed men who came in a white van while the youth, Ganeshamoorthy Rathan, was talking to his friends along roadside in Kaadduvinayaakar temple area of his native village, Mu'l'liyava'lai of Mullaiththeevu district. Mr. Rathan was brought to his house and instructed to park his bicycle at his house. When the mother of the victim suspected that her son was under pressure by unknown men who accompanied him, the men pulled out a gun and said they were from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the SL Police and instructed Mr. Rathan to get into the van. When the family members went to the SL Red Cross office situated in Mullaiththeevu, the officials at the office refused to accept the complaint and said they do not register such complaints.
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Colombo’s colonial rule, TNA and diaspora frustrate people in the Tamil country

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 December 2011, 00:07 GMT]
From allowing blatant burglary and fleecing businesses to harassing people and making money from fabricated petty offences, the Sinhala military, police and officials of occupying Sri Lanka aim to frustrate Tamils to make them leave their country, said a feature by S.M. Thiyagarajah appeared in Tamil media on Saturday. There are deeper political reasons in depriving Tamils of their self-respect and imbibing a feeling of insecurity in them, the article further said. Meanwhile, citing Prof. SK Sitrampalam speaking on Thursday, The Virakesari’s weekly editor V. Thevaraj wrote that Colombo-centric elements in the TNA and collaborative sections in the diaspora disappoint Tamils in the island. Tamils should be united against once again falling into traps by succumbing to collaboration and dearth of leadership, he further said.
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UK lobbyists wrote Rajapakse's UN Civil war speech - paper

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 December 2011, 01:05 GMT]
During a special undercover investigation by UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, executives from Public Relations firm, Bell Pottinger, were caught on camera boasting of employing 'dark arts' to burnish reputations of countries accused of human rights violations, and were accused of "reputation laundering" using contacts in high levels of the British Government. The Independent newspaper reporting on the investigation also revealed that Bell Pottinger wrote the UN's speech for Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse, and quoted a senior executive saying that "[the speech] went a long way taking the country [accused of rights violations] where it needed to go."
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Maathakal protests Sri Lanka’s Naval base

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 December 2011, 23:22 GMT]
A major coastal village Maathakal in Jaffna staged a protest on Monday against occupying Sri Lanka building an extensive naval base there by confiscating private lands of Eezham Tamils. Maathakal is the closest point of Jaffna to Point Calimere (Koadikkarai) in the Tamil Nadu coast across the Palk Strait. The base is a security threat not only to Eezham Tamils but also to Tamil Nadu as well as to India, but New Delhi and Colombo seem to think Tamils on either side of the Palk Strait as ‘common enemies’, commented a geopolitical analyst in Jaffna. In recent times, occupying SL is silently expanding its naval bases in other points of the Palk Bay too, at Kaarainakar, Kayts, Ma’ndaitheevu, Delft and Oora’ni by confiscating private lands. Meanwhile Sri Lanka that has no claim over Bay of Bengal without the country of Eezham Tamils it occupies, is entertained in Indian dominated BIMSTEC.
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Strategic Batticaloa borderland appropriated for colonisation

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 22:44 GMT]
2,500 acres of lands in Mangka'la Aaru, located along Chengkaladi-Badulla A-5 road, a border village of Batticaloa district, are to be sold to Sinhala businessmen and to foreign investors, informed sources in Paduvaankarai told TamilNet. SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa's Colombo government has recently taken steps to survey the lands through its deputy minister and paramilitary operative Vinyagamoorthy Muralitharan. A team of SL government officials from Colombo are on the ground conducting surveying and demarcating the lands in question for the last one week, the villagers said.
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War crime litigations reach crucial phase in US courts

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 20:19 GMT]
Civil cases against Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse and Shavendra Silva, an ex-army commander and currently Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) are waiting next round of decisions from the District Court of District of Columbia and District Court of Southern District of New York respectively, legal sources monitoring the progress of the cases said. The Rajapakse case awaits decision if the court can "force" Rajapakse to answer and engage with the Court. Shavendra case awaits decision from the SDNY judge on Silva's Motion to dismiss.
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Norway funds Sri Lanka ministry

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 10:52 GMT]
The Norwegian embassy in Colombo has contributed 18.5 million Rupees to Sri Lanka’s Child Development and Women’s Affairs ministry to improve mobility of Women Development Officers and to display billboards in prominent places, a press release from the Norwegian embassy in Colombo said on Friday. Norway at times had to “buy peace” through aid, observed Norway’s assessment report of the failed peace process released last month, cautioning “Aid may play a supportive role in peace process, but cannot short-circuit complex political processes.” Aid cannot be a substitute for politics, the report further said. But the Norwegian government is now interested in buying inroads into ‘Victor’s Sri Lanka’, forgetting its responsibilities to the victims of its peace process, diaspora political observers said.
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Wider public participation marks Heroes Day in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 December 2011, 11:34 GMT]
It became clear on the eve of Heroes Day, Sunday, that ruling circles in India join hands with genocidal Colombo in denying Tamils the right to remember their fallen freedom fighters. Yet the day was observed with a marked positive difference in Tamil Nadu this time. Public and grassroot initiatives replaced political party organized mass gatherings, and there was wider and spontaneous participation of a social cross-section: from workers and farmers to communities in business, education and professions. “If Tamils have contributed anything memorable to human civilization in their contemporary history that was the paradigm-setting stand taken by the Eezham Tamil heroes, defying injustice of all the world Establishments,” commented an 85-year-old Marxist who spent a life time for the communist movement in the diaspora and in the home country, ever since he was 16.
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Unemployed Tamil graduates stage protest in SL militarized Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 December 2011, 18:13 GMT]
Hundreds of unemployed Tamil graduates Friday held a protest in front of the office of the SL Colonial Governor of Northern Province Maj. Gen (retd) G.A.Chandrasiri demanding immediate employment and condemning the lethargic attitude of the Colombo government in providing employment opportunities to the graduates in the North. The demonstration commenced from Va'n'nai Perumaa'l Kovil the city of Jaffna went through Stanley Road and Kandy Road to the final destination in Chu'ndukuzhi where the SL Governor’s Secretariat is located. Around 500 unemployed graduates participated in the protest. No government appointments are made in the North between 2005 till 2010, the protesters complained.
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‘Rehabilitation’ means mental torture in open prison

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 December 2011, 19:18 GMT]
For former liberation fighters and their active supporters who were ‘released’ after the war, the so-called rehabilitation means servitude under SL military and mental torture in open prison, news reports from the SL-occupied country of Eezham Tamils said. The latest sanction against them is that they were warned by the SL military not to try going abroad for any reason. If caught at the airport their lives are not guaranteed, they were told. Instructed to report often to SL military intelligence units, they have been repeatedly told not to talk to media, not to discuss anything with the public and not to attend to any public gatherings. Most of the former liberation fighters are already under mental stress from the ‘brain washing’ sessions before the so-called release. Now they are forced to live a completely isolated life.
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US Pacific Command to build hospitals in the North through Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 December 2011, 12:08 GMT]
Directly treating ‘development’ as a military strategy to match with the Sri Lankan model, the US Pacific Command has decided to re-build four hospitals in the north at Oddusuddaan in the Mulaiththeevu district and at Muzhankaavil, Poonakari and Pazhai in the Ki’linochchi district. While the US Pacific Command will be providing the grant assistance, the SL government will make available Rs. 23 million to meet the levies, Colombo media reports said. Except Pazhai, the other three places have major military bases and cantonments of occupying Sri Lanka.
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West endorses ethno-military rule, military solution: Tamil civil groups

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 December 2011, 11:39 GMT]
Civil society organisations in the country of Eezham Tamils are enraged at foreign diplomats visiting their country confining the purposes of the visits primarily to meeting the commanders of the occupying Sinhala military but not the civil society. While genocidal Sri Lanka conjures ’normalcy’ has come to Tamils, the gesture of these diplomats is a tacit endorsement to the ethnic-shaded military rule and military solution. Those who delay international justice, sit on international responsibilities, and talk about ‘domestic’ solutions are not honest. They only mean ‘remote controlled’ military solution, and that is what in the minds of the core sections of the Establishments that deploy cosmetic talk of human rights as a cover, the civil groups accused. They are particularly enraged at the conduct of the US, UK and EU diplomats.
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Abducted university student released

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 November 2011, 15:29 GMT]
Jaffna University Siddha Medicine student, Vetharaniyam Latheesh, who was feared abducted by the occupying Sri Lanka’s military on the Heroes Day evening, Sunday, at Thirunelveali in Jaffna, was released on Monday evening after being taken to a notorious military intelligence outfit directly operated by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in Vavuniyaa. The release of Latheesh became possible as some Western embassies in Colombo showed interest in his case, news sources in the island said. Jaffna University students, who were harassed by the SL military after a torch was lit atop the university hostel on the Heroes Day, felt relieved and optimistic at the gesture of the international community, university circles said.
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Whether history is different to Tamils and Sinhalese, asks Jaffna academic

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 November 2011, 06:38 GMT]
A single event that took place in the University of Jaffna on the Heroes Day, Sunday, has captivated the minds of Tamils all over the world, more than the diaspora functions marked by ever increasing participation of people but in some instances showing hijack aimed at dividing, capturing and ‘softening’ the struggle by the very forces against whom the spirit of the Day was meant for. Amidst all the oppression against the Day, by genocidal Sri Lanka backed by imperialism especially the Indian one, unidentified people lit the Heroes Day flame atop a tall building in the Jaffna University to shine like a star of hope. The Sinhala brethren should understand the event in the same vein of they take pride in Sri Sumangala hoisting the lion flag in Dalada Maligawa even after the British conquest of Kandy, an academic in Jaffna said.
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Colombo plans to annex Tamil border villages in Batticaloa with Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 November 2011, 20:21 GMT]
Colombo government has been planning to Sinhalicise about fifteen to twenty thousand acres of lands located along the border Tamil villages in the Batticaloa district from the administration of Batticaloa district to Ampaa'rai district secretariat, according to local district officials in Batticaloa. As a first step in the plan, six villages with vast natural resources in the Kachchai-kodith-theevu GN division in Paddippazhai DS division of Batticaloa district are to be annexed with the Ampaa'rai district. During the last two years, 108 Sinhalese families have encroached lands that belong to 114 Tamil families in Kevu'liyamadu, one of the villages to be transferred to Ampaa'rai, in the latest move of demographic genocide on the country of Eezham Tamils.
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Record turnout as Canada Heroes Day event asserts sovereignty

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 November 2011, 12:07 GMT]
More than 70,000 Canadian Tamils paid homage to heroes at the Toronto Heroes Day event organized by the Canadian Tamil Remembrance Organization (CTRO) Sunday. Conducted in four sessions in a make-shift venue, emotions were high and messages were clear. Despite threats of manufactured divisions towards the event, organizers came under the banner of CTRO for the importance of a strong display of unity. The event was marked with heart-touching cultural programmes reflecting on national unity amongst Eezham Tamils, highlighting successes and rejecting strategies of division in moving forward.
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Questions for Sri Lankan Ambassador of Australia: Dr. Senewiratne

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 November 2011, 11:21 GMT]
If the war is over and the Tamil people have been ‘liberated’ from the ‘terrorists’ and ‘rehabilitated’, then why does the Sri Lankan government still not allow access to international groups in Tamil areas, asks Brian Senewiratne in a hard-hitting series of questions to Sri Lankan High Comissioner to Australia. Dr. Senewiratne, a renowned physician and an Australia based Sinhala expatriate, produced posers to ex-Admiral Thissara Samarasinghe using evidence from the UN report, Channel 4 video and other sources. The ex-Admiral, incidentally, is also alleged of war crimes and there have been calls in Australia to investigate his role in the genocide of the Eelam Tamils.
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Anuradhapura Tamil prisoners receive attack as ‘Heroes Day present’

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 November 2011, 06:19 GMT]
A group of Sinhala prison officials who entered the Anuradhapura prison on Sunday asked Tamil political prisoners in remand, numbering around 65, to come out as they wanted to give ‘presents’ for them on the Heroes Day. Realising the sarcasm, when the prisoners refused to come out, they were forcibly brought out to an open ground where they were made naked and were severely beaten up by the prison guards. Five of them who were seriously injured are admitted in the Anuradhapura hospital. Even though there were many others too who got injured, they were not taken to hospital. The Tamil political prisoners were recently arrested from the Vanni districts and they are kept at Anuradhapura without any cases being filed.
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