123,000 fall below poverty line in Batticaloa district

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 October 2011, 18:58 GMT]
20.5 percent of the population in the Batticaloa district in the Eastern Province is beyond the poverty line, according to Sri Lankan Central Bank Advisor of the Poverty Abolishment Programme, R.Sri Pathmanathan. At an event held in Batticaloa last week, Mr. Sri Pathmanathan said Batticaloa district was one of the 14 poverty stricken districts in the island. The districts of Ki'linochchi, Vavuniyaa and Mullaiththeevu have not been included in the study, he said.
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Siddha Medical Faculty in Trincomalee to come under Colombo University

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 October 2011, 06:52 GMT]
The Colombo government is taking steps to bring the Siddha Medical Faculty now under the Trincomalee campus of the Eastern University with the University of Colombo. Academics in the East blame the move as a design of cultural genocide by Colombo that seeks to undermine the traditional medical science of the Tamil country. The transfer of the Faculty to Colombo will be affecting the education in the eastern province, complains R.Thurairatnam, a member of the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) in a memorandum sent to SL Minister of Higher Education.
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Colonising Sinhalese swindle resources while sanctions apply to resettled Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 October 2011, 08:28 GMT]
Fishing is completely banned for ‘resettled’ Tamils of the villages, Kokku’laay, Karainaadduk-kea’ni and Pu’liya-munai of the Ma’nal-aa’ru region of Mullaiththeevu district, where Colombo is creating a new Sinhala division in the name ‘Weli-oya.’ Sinhalese and Muslims brought in to the area now totally monopolise fishing traditionally carried out by Tamils in their land. The ‘resettled’ Tamils find fishing camps of the colonisers within their very villages when they returned after displacement by war. The Sinhala fishermen who earlier had only seasonal camps have now permanently settled in the strategic Mukaththuvaaram (mouth) part of the Kokku’laay Lagoon. They have now come with their families and genocidal Colombo is now helping then to build permanent houses.
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Sinhala division starts functioning in Mullaiththeevu district

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 October 2011, 05:32 GMT]
A Sinhala administrative division, under a Sinhala Asst. Government Agent, has started functioning recently in the Mullaitheevu district. The new division with a toponym ‘Welioya,’ renaming the Tamil Ma’nal-aa’ru, will permanently wedge the demographic contiguity of the northern and eastern provinces of the country of Eezham Tamils occupied by Sri Lanka’s military. The division has been planned in such a way to demographically link the Anuradhapura district of the Sinhala North Central Province with the eastern coast at Kokku’laay, through recently established Sinhala colonies. With accelerated colonisation, soon the division may even pave way for a Sinhala electorate in the Mullaiththeevu district. Meanwhile, talking to Tamil diaspora members recently, the US Asst Secretary of State Robert Blake said that he was unaware of any Sinhala colonisation of Tamil lands in the island.
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Sinhalese given lands in Tamil villages in East under Mahaweli Scheme: TNA MP

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 October 2011, 18:49 GMT]
Thirty Sinhalese families have been allocated lands under the Mahaweli Development Land Distribution Scheme in a traditional Tamil village Oamadiyaamadu located in Koa'ralaippattu North DS division in Batticaloa district. This planned land grab in Batticaloa district is being carried out on the direction of Colombo government led by SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
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Colombo responsible for attack on JUSU Leader: Jaffna university students

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 October 2011, 17:37 GMT]
The successive SL governments in Colombo have been subjecting the student leaders of the University of Jaffna to state terror and harassment and the student community is not going to give up voicing for the rights of Eezham Tamils, said student leaders who addressed the gathering of more than 1,000 students at the University grounds Monday. The students carrying placards against the SL military boycotted their classes and came together in a meeting of condemnation against the attack on Student Union leader S. Thavapalasingam by alleged SL military intelligence operatives on Sunday.
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India urged to help tracing transfer of sovereignty document

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 October 2011, 10:32 GMT]
Like the Kandyan Convention signed between the British and the chieftains of Kandy in 1815, which is a legal document for the transfer of sovereignty, the Portuguese signed a treaty with the Muthaliyaars of Jaffna after their conquest of the Kingdom of Jaffna in 1621. Earlier historians have cited the availability of a copy of the document in Goa, the former colonial headquarters of the Portuguese in the East. Whether India that proposes to help developing a museum in Jaffna would help tracing the document and similar Portuguese documents on Jaffna for the display of copies in the proposed museum, ask academics in Jaffna.
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Rift in TNA citing dissatisfaction in struggle spirit

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 October 2011, 06:36 GMT]
TULF politician Mr. Anandasangaree, who was earlier supporting Rajapaksa’s war, has born again now, being furious at the TNA’s lack of spirit in fighting against Rajapaksa over the land re-registration issue. He publicly accuses the TNA leaders, particularly Mr. Sampanthan and Mr Premachandran for not leading a people’s struggle against the issue. Mr. Anandasangaree and the PLOTE of Mr Siddharthan, both who earlier backed the genocidal Colombo, have joined the TNA in contesting the last civic elections and they were successful in capturing three local bodies. This week, Mr. Anandasangaree has convened a ‘general body’ meeting for the TULF in which he and Mr. Kanagaraja have respectively been named as General Secretary and President of the TULF. Sampanthan has responded by protesting to the election commission that the meeting was illegal and was breaching earlier court rulings.
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Sinhala Army builds Buddhist temple in front of church in Valveddiththu’rai

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 October 2011, 05:37 GMT]
The virtually Sinhala Army of Sri Lanka that occupies the country of Eezham Tamils, is building a new Buddhist temple at Valveddiththu’rai Junction, in front of the historic St. Sebastian Church. Valveddiththu’rai, the birthplace of the LTTE leader Pirapaharan, never had any Buddhists, except the occupying Sinhala Army. The act is a naked show of Sri Lanka’s jubilation over the genocide of Eezham Tamils, mocking at those who talk about ‘post-war reconciliation,’ civil activists in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, former TNA parliamentarian MK Sivajilingam on Friday has appealed to the Vatican to take immediate ecclesiastical and diplomatic action to stop the military’s Buddhist construction as it seriously hurts the feelings of the Tamil Catholics of the town. Similar acts of the SL Army are also reported from Mannaar, a major Tamil Catholic city.
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UK’s Defence Secretary Liam Fox quits as pressure mounts

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 October 2011, 16:05 GMT]
UK’s Defence Secretary Liam Fox has resigned from his post Friday afternoon amid mounting pressure over his working relationship with his flatmate and self-styled adviser Adam Werritty. Dr. Fox was widely accused of running a ‘shadow foreign policy’ on Sri Lanka and undermining Britain’s official foreign policy, a mysterious trust he set up to solicit private sector contributions to ‘development’ in Sri Lanka – with Mr. Werritty as its key contact - seems to have done nothing other than fund his visits to the island, and now it appears that Mr. Werritty’s globe-trotting to numerous places Dr. Fox was also visiting on official business, has been partly funded by a corporate intelligence company with “a close interest” in Sri Lanka.
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Colombo brings Sinhalese to culture prawn in Jaffna marshlands

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 October 2011, 05:04 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s government occupying Jaffna has taken over 350 acres of coastal marshland along the Jaffna Lagoon in Kaarainakar, Ma’ndaitheevu and Araali for prawn culture laboured by Sinhalese brought from the South. Even though said as developed for freshwater prawn culture, the project will ruin the groundwater table in the above places where local people already face difficulties in getting drinking water. Such environmental disasters were already experienced in Puththa’lam. The ultimate aim of such projects is to demographically confiscate the coasts from Eezham Tamils, make their traditional villages environmentally uninhabitable and swindle the resources of their sea and land, academics in Jaffna said. The Sinhalese fishermen brought from the South target items of export value such as conches, sea cucumber and prawns.
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Sri Lanka links to the fore in Liam Fox political storm

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 October 2011, 04:48 GMT]
Amid the relentless political and media storm over British Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s relationship with Mr Adam Werritty, a close friend who has been operating as an unofficial ‘advisor’ to him on security and foreign policy matters, the duo’s links to Sri Lanka’s regime have been regularly popping up. By Friday, three separate types of links had been established in a series of reports filed over the past week by The Times, The Guardian, the Financial Times, and The Daily Telegraph newspapers, as well as Channel 4 and BBC television. The main opposition Labour party has in recent days tabled several questions in Parliament over Dr. Fox’s links to Sri Lanka, while the seemingly ceaseless revelations by the media are unsettling both Dr. Fox’s hitherto staunch allies in the right wing of the ruling Conservative Party, as well as senior Ministry of Defence staff and top military officers.
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Maldives defence minister visits Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 October 2011, 05:04 GMT]
Maldivian Defence Minister, Thalhath Ibrahim Kaleyfaanu, visited Sri Lanka’s occupying Army in the country of Eezham Tamils in Jaffna on Wednesday. His visit follows Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s unhindered support to genocidal Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa in shielding the latter from international war crimes investigation. The ‘hundred per cent Islamic country’ Maldives in recent times has entered into a number of agreements with Israel, the secret protocols of which are yet to be known to the public. However, the new friendship and the lease of one of the islands to Israel for ‘agricultural development’ are much talked about in Maldives. The support of US Asst Secretary of State Robert Blake to Nasheed’s Maldives in the international organisations is not without reason, political observers say.
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Sri Lanka entices India in Commonwealth Games bid

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 October 2011, 02:41 GMT]
If Sri Lanka becomes successful in the bid to host 2018 Commonwealth Games in Hambantota, India will get 5 billion dollar investment opportunity in building facilities, The Hindu Business Online reported SL envoy Prasad Kariyawasam saying in New Delhi on Tuesday. The construction corruption of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi and the diplomatic corruption of Rajapaksa being the ‘Guest of Honour’ are well known. While Sri Lanka’s very membership in Commonwealth and it hosting the 2013 Heads of Govt Meet have become controversies likely to be raised in Perth this month, Colombo entices India by offering partnership in swindling ‘Common Wealth’ to further development imbalance of the nation of Eezham Tamils and to diplomatically establish Genocide as an acceptable State paradigm for the region, Tamil politicians commented.
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The Times slams Liam Fox’s ties to Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 October 2011, 07:17 GMT]
Amid the continuing – and seemingly expanding – controversy in Britain over Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s working relationship with close friend, Mr. Adam Werritty, the former’s relationship with Sri Lanka’s regime has been thrust into the media spotlight. In its editorial Wednesday, The Times newspaper slammed Dr. Fox’s involvement with the Colombo government with which, press reports reveal, Mr. Werritty is also intimately associated. “The Defence Secretary’s ties to Sri Lanka are wrong and have exceeded his ministerial remit,” The Times said, referring to how his actions have undermined UK policy in dealing with the “grotesque and criminal” actions of the Sri Lankan armed forces against Tamil civilians in 2009.
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India refuses landing to GTF leader, TNA plans visit to USA

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 October 2011, 05:55 GMT]
The Indian government on Tuesday refused landing permission to the President of the UK-based Global Tamil Forum (GTF), Fr. S.J. Emmanuel, when he went to Chennai via Dubai. He flew back to Dubai. The GTF is a confederation of large Eezham Tamil diaspora organisations in leading western countries and Australia as well as democratically elected country councils in the West. Meanwhile, the Tamil National Alliance parliamentarians led by Mr. R. Sampanthan are planning a visit to the USA on the 23rd of this month to discuss current political situation, media reports from Colombo said on Tuesday.
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"Racial supremacist ideology thriving in Sri Lanka"

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 October 2011, 04:51 GMT]
"The status of Sri Lanka in the 21st century is of a political elite triumphantly thriving on racial supremacy ideology....CHOGM is the perfect opportunity to challenge Rajapaksa over his government's wilful murder of Tamils under the guise of defeating terrorism. It is arguable whether he should even be allowed into the country but if he arrives in Perth he should be made to realise that he has the blood of innocents on his hands," said Antony Loewenstein, an Australian independent journalist who sits on the advisory council of the UK-based Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, in the ABC's online column Wednesday.
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Improper Swiss disclosure to Sri Lanka endangered Tamil lives: Swiss TV

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 October 2011, 01:09 GMT]
Switzerland government improperly passing over information of 235 phone numbers to Colombo by the end of 2010 is feared to have contributed to arrests, disappearances or extrajudicial killings of Tamils traced by those numbers in the island, Switzerland National TV, Schweizer Fernsehen said Tuesday. Swiss gave the phone numbers in the island that were contacted by alleged LTTE sympathisers in Switzerland. Commenting, Social Democratic Party’s Luzern Canton parliamentarian Lathan Sudaralingam told TamilNet that accused war-criminal and former SL Ambassador Maj. Gen. Jagath Dias was instrumental in facilitating such transactions. “We have long been raising alarm on such human rights violations, but Swiss Government appeared to have allowed an alleged criminal to engage in more crimes while in Switzerland, and had allowed him to escape from facing prosecution,” Mr. Lathan said.
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Sri Lanka organises sea-paramilitary to attack Tamil Nadu fishermen

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 October 2011, 21:40 GMT]
Calling themselves ‘Somalian pirates’ a sea-paramilitary created and deployed by Sri Lanka’s Navy is intensifying its mid-sea attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen in the waters of the Palk Bay, Gulf of Mannaar and off the southern tip of India, news sources in Jaffna said. Largely Sinhalese from the south, along with a Tamil gang inducted by the SL Navy from Koddadi, a coastal locality near military occupied fort of Jaffna city, man the paramilitary. SL Navy has given military training to this outfit. A Sri Lankan minister is also suspected to be involved in the operation. Several lakhs worthy of fish catch of the fishing fleets of Tamil Nadu is routinely seized after attack by this paramilitary getting inside Indian waters, while the SL Navy holds off the fishing fleets along the maritime boundary. One such attack took place while the Indian foreign secretary was visiting Jaffna on Sunday.
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