Colombo stages 'LTTE regrouping' scene in Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 11:31 GMT]
Deploying hundreds of soldiers after detaining a 48-year-old mother and her 13-year-old daughter on Thursday, the Sri Lankan military has rounded up the village of Tharmapuram in Ki'linochchi, cutting off the contact between the village and the outside world, news sources in Ki'linochchi said. The SL military is attempting to create a scene of ‘LTTE regrouping’ through its intelligence operations to support its propaganda in Geneva, sources close to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in Ki'linochchi said.
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SLA sets arrest of teen girl and mother figured in British PM's visit to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 06:20 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Ki'linochchi has arrested a 13-year-old girl and her 48-year-old mother, sending shock waves across the entire Tamil nation on Thursday. The girl, Vipooshika Balendren has become a symbol of young children seeking the whereabouts of their family members, as she used to attend the peaceful protests crying in search for her brother, touching the hearts of the people. In a move, believed to be a trap to target the girl and her mother, more than 350 Sri Lankan soldiers rounded up their village Thursday evening in an encounter like operation claiming that they were looking for a ‘terrorist’. The SL military is detaining the girl and her mother, Jeyakkumari Balendran, news sources in Ki'linochchi told TamilNet Thursday night.
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New Delhi FM wants Tamils to talk to Colombo for India to have leverage

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 March 2014, 07:20 GMT]
The New Delhi Establishment’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Salman Khurshid, in answering a question after his address at the SOAS in London on Wednesday, said, “Tamils should have a dialogue with the government. Then only we can have a leverage on Sri Lankan government.” With a record on complicity in Colombo’s genocidal war and on-going structural genocide of Eezham Tamils; record on tilting the balance in favour of Colombo, and with a long record on setting diktats to the Tamil leadership on what to talk, New Delhi now expecting Tamils to start ‘dialogue’ is for the confirmation of the genocide and for bailing out Colombo from international investigations, Tamil activists in London commented.
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US satellite data becomes public in monitoring Ukraine, searching MH370

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 March 2014, 08:21 GMT]
Inviting world public in the search for the missing MH370, a US firm, DigitalGlobe, has thrown open its data from five orbiting satellites. The resolution of the images would be to the extent of half a meter of ocean surface per computer screen. While this is a free service, termed as “crowdsourcing,” the firm’s data on a fee-basis was also open to the public on Ukraine violence and some natural disasters in the past month. The service is termed “First Look Event Service.” While some countries have such a capacity, their Establishments also have the capacity of coursing a genocidal war without witnesses and shielding it for five years, as in the case of Mu’l’livaaykkaal, Tamil political observers said.
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US draft ‘positive’ on many counts in making Tamils ‘learn lesson’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 March 2014, 01:26 GMT]
The US draft tabled at the UNHRC has to be recognized for its positive aspects in disguise that make Tamils learn historic lessons, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The draft opens eyes on the ultimate culprits who actually led Eezham Tamils into Mu’l’livaaykkaal and continue to lead them into accepting structural genocide; on the extent of USA’s confidence in the inherent orientation for subservience and gullibility among Eezham Tamil ‘articulators’; and on the extent of the infiltration the USA has made into various facets of Tamil Nadu – from Brahministic media to ‘original’ Dravidian movements, and from ‘communism’ to various caste politics, the activists in the island said.
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Dormant diaspora rises up against US draft, demands genocide investigation, plebiscite

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 March 2014, 23:33 GMT]
In an unprecedented gathering after May 2009, around 10,000 diaspora Eezham Tamils gathered in Geneva on Monday demanding international investigations on genocide and a UN plebiscite on independent an sovereign Tamil Eelam. Disappointed with the discourse in Geneva and losing their trust in the pro-Establishment lobbyists, the Eezham Tamils have begun to rally behind the network of the grassroots organisations in Europe, that were hitherto silently watching the process. Dr Denis Halliday, the former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, who was one of the judges at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) on Sri Lanka (Bremen Session) addressed the gathering.
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Muslims in Musali division protest against SL military land grab

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 March 2014, 07:28 GMT]
Muslims from Ma’richchuk-kaddi village in Musali DS division in Mannaar sat on the Puththa’lam – Mannaar Road at Maraikkaar-theevu on Sunday and demonstrated against Colombo’s seizure of their lands including their cemetery. The families, uprooted from Musali in 1990, came to Musali division to resettle from Puththa’lam after Muslim ministers aligned with Colombo government promised them resettlement. Ma’richchuk-kaddi is the border between the Northern and Northwestern Provinces.
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Emboldened Colombo ‘mobilizes’ Ampaa’rai Tamils in favour of Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 March 2014, 16:18 GMT]
While Tamil Naitonal Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians are asked by the Washington and London to lobby Australia and India to gain support to the watered-down resolution to be tabled in Geneva later this month, the occupying Colombo has managed to mobilize 750 Tamils, through various manipulations, to march in a rally carrying placards in support of SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa, news sources in Ampaa’rai said. Sri Lankan military operatives, extremist Sinhala Buddhist Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force) activists, Samurdhi and Devineguma ‘development’ workers were deployed to bring Tamil people from various villages of Ampaa’rai district to the pro-Rajapaksa rally staged in Kalmunai. In an orchestrated move, media personnel were brought from Colombo to witness the manipulated rally at Kalmunai.
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NPC minister condemns Colombo for twisting facts on Moongkilaa'ru victims

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 March 2014, 09:58 GMT]
On 28 February, a bunker with dead bodies was located at Moongkilaa'ru in Mullaiththeevu district. Those who perished were people slain in the genocidal onslaught in 2009. But, the Sri Lankan government is only interested in twisting facts and the relatives of the victims are denied of establishing the identity of their kith and kin, said T. Krukularajah, the education minister of the Northern Provincial Council at a meeting organised in Ki'linochchi on the International Women's Day on Saturday. In the meantime, a social worker from Vanni told TamilNet on Sunday that the 9 people exhumed at Moongkilaa'ru were victims of Sri Lankan military attack on civilians and that he was among those who burried them to give the family a decent burial.
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Colombo twists facts, stops excavation of Mannaar mass grave

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 March 2014, 23:32 GMT]
A person of social leadership living at Maanthai in Mannaar for more than 50 years categorically told TamilNet on Saturday that there was never a burial site at the locality near the historic Thirukkeatheesvaram temple as being claimed by the Sri Lankan Archaeological Department. The Colombo government abruptly ended the exhumation of human skeletons from a mass grave where more than 80 human skeletons have been recovered since December 20, 2013. The latest move by Colombo to dismiss the claim of mass grave comes as the issue gained the attention of UN Hight Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Navi Pillay in her recommendations urged the SL government to undertake an independent and credible criminal and forensic investigations with international assistance into all alleged violations of human rights and humanitarian law, including recently discovered mass graves.
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Weak resolutions embolden Colombo: civil society activist

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 March 2014, 19:08 GMT]
The draft resolution to be tabled at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions this month in Geneva has not only disappointed the Tamils by failing to demand an international investigation, it has also failed to recognise the domestic failures despite two rounds of similar resolutions at the UNHRC in 2012 and 2013, said Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) representative and Jaffna University law academic Kumaravadivel Guruparan this week at a press briefing to journalists in Jaffna. Pointing out four major flaws in the latest resolution and comparing the draft with the recent report by the High Commissioner of Human Rights, Mr Guruparan explained the positive and negative aspects of Navi Pillay's approach. The SL State has in fact been emboldened with the weak resolutions year by year, he said.
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IC has deceived Tamils on international investigations: Ananthi Sasistharan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 March 2014, 13:01 GMT]
“The International Community has deceived the genocide affected Tamils on delivering international investigations,” said Ananthi Sasitharan, a councillor of the Northern Provincial Council, at a press conference held in Jaffna on Thursday. “The draft resolution being circulated in Geneva has failed to satisfy even the minimum expectations. It has totally disregarded the repeated requests from Tamils to the IC to deliver international investigations. Furthermore, it is in complete contrast to the impressions given to the Tamils by the international community in recent times,” she told the press. Ms Ananthi Sasistharan also blamed TNA national list parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran for having instructed her to be silent at a crucial meeting with the representatives of 18 countries during her recent visit to Geneva.
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Wahala-kananke, Poramba-kananke

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 16:35 GMT]
The entrance part of the forest

The end or exit part of the forest
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USA ignores requests of Mannaar Bishop on UNHRC Resolution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 14:57 GMT]
Bishop of Mannaar Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph had sent a model resolution to the foreign diplomatic missions, including the Embassy of USA in Colombo, well in advance of the draft resolution by the USA was leaked in Geneva this Monday. The proposal presented by Mannaar Bishop was demanding international investigations on genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prepared by the Tamil Civil Society Forum, the proposal also called upon the “UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council to activate procedures that will lead to a UN sponsored international mechanism to assess the democratic aspirations of the Tamil People, both in the homeland and in the diaspora for a permanent political solution.”
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BIMSTEC having Eelam territory gets secretariat in Dhaka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 09:50 GMT]
The Third Summit Meeting of BIMSTEC States held in Myanmar concluded on Tuesday, with its heads of governments deciding on operating a permanent secretariat based in Dhaka in Bangladesh. A career diplomat of Colombo will be its first Secretary General. Originally formed in 1997, as Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation (hence BIMST-EC), and was joined by Nepal and Bhutan in 2004 to become known as Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, the BIMSTEC is viewed as India’s alternative for SAARC, to have a regional alliance without Pakistan. It is also viewed as an expression of India’s ‘look to East’ policy to balance China's ‘push to South’.
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Tamil academic compares Pakistani-Sri Lankan ‘counterinsurgency’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 06:23 GMT]
“The genocidal oppression faced by the Baloch people and the Eelam Tamil people gains little if any attention in international media. Whatever is represented seems to be permeated by a tendency to absolve genocide and represent a state-centric, depoliticized and minority grounded narration of the plight of the oppressed nations. Such narrations effectively deny the Baloch and Eelam Tamils their inalienable right to self-determination or national liberation,” writes Norway-based Eezham Tamil anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan, in a feature that appeared in a Balochistan website, Balochwarna News last month, urging solidarity between Baloch and Eezham Tamils.
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US draft stops at Navi Pillai inquiry into HR crimes of ‘both parties’

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 March 2014, 23:39 GMT]
A draft resolution on Sri Lanka that is to be tabled at the UNHRC later this month by the USA, UK, Montenegro, FYR of Macedonia and Mauritius was put to circulation on Monday. Contrary to the trumpeting by sections among Tamils expecting US-UK justice through international investigation on war crimes, the draft just harps on OHCHR investigation into “alleged violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes by both parties in Sri Lanka.” On the other hand, the draft that fails in recognising Tamils even by name not only provides more space and time for the completion of their structural genocide but also binds the UNHRC with supporting the “unified land” of the genocidal State.
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Tamil politicians demand international investigation at Jaffna protest

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 March 2014, 23:36 GMT]
When Sinhala prisoners protested in Kandy, Namal Rajapaksa, the son of SL President went to the prison and ordered a report on the condition of prisoners. But, when Tamil political prisoners and prisoners of war, subjected to torture on a daily basis, stage protests, no one from the SL government cares about visiting them, said Sundaram Mahendran, the head of the Colombo based Committee on Missing Persons on Sunday when addressing the people protesting against the mysterious death of a Tamil prisoner Gopithas Visuvalingam, a British citizen who was imprisoned in Colombo since 2007. The protest was staged in the morning of the funeral day of the victim Gopithas, who is a father of two from the UK.
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Britain neglected British Tamil suspiciously died in Sri Lanka's prison

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 March 2014, 23:43 GMT]
The relatives of a 43-year-old British Eelam Tamil, Gopithas Visuvalingam, who died in the Sri Lankan jail under suspicious circumstances on 24 February, blame Colombo for torture of Tamil political prisoners. Mr Gopithas, a British national and father of two, was arrested in Colombo in March 2007 and jailed without any charges till 2012, when he was finally charged and ‘convicted’ for assisting the LTTE. Gopithas had told his aged father, who was visiting him in prison recently that he feared for his life at the hands of operatives, who were under the direct command of the SL presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa before the jail term was over. The family and the relatives of the victim are disappointed with the lack of legal assistance from the British High Commission in Colombo, news sources in Jaffna said.
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SL military seeks to appropriate market complex at Tamil suburb of Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 February 2014, 23:02 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Trincomalee has sought to permanently appropriate the land and the buildings of Malaiyaruvi, a building complex constructed in 1994 by the Trincomalee Town Council to establish a public market at the Power House Road, where Eezham Tamils reside in large numbers. Recently, the SL military has approached Mr Sirimewan Dharmasena, the land commissioner at the Eastern Provincial Department asking the latter to undertake surveying of the lands.
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