‘Grease devil’ episode develops into standoff at Tholpuram in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 September 2011, 13:06 GMT]
An standoff that erupted between the residents of Paa'naaveddi village and the occupying Sri Lanka Army soldiers of 51-3 brigade Saturday night was contained in the last minute from deteriorating into a blood bath by the intervention of community leaders and politicians, after the residents caught two armed SLA soldiers. While the residents of the village situated in Tholpuram in Valikaamam West were chasing two alleged ‘grease devils’, two armed SLA soldiers emerged from the place where the ‘grease devils’ vanished. The two SLA soldiers were captured by the villagers and kept inside a house bound to ropes.
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SL embassy in US canvasses Congress staff

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 September 2011, 11:12 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Ambassador and embassy staff held a ‘reception’ for top US Congressional staff members in Washington on Friday to brief them on ‘post-conflict development’ in the island and to discuss US policy towards Sri Lanka, a press release of the embassy said. Showing a brief film on Sri Lanka’s reconciliation, redevelopment and economic development efforts, amidst Sri Lankan dance and food, ambassador and SL president Rajapaks’s close pal, Jaliya Wikramasuriya told the chiefs of staffs of the key departments including the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “we want you to have the information to tell others the correct story of Sri Lanka, and not necessarily the one you read in the media.”
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Haiti lawyers question impunity of SL Army rapists

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 September 2011, 11:03 GMT]
The rape mania of Sri Lanka’s almost exclusive Sinhala military is allowed to go with impunity in the island and totally denied by a genocidal government. But the exposure comes from Haiti where the genocidal SL military went for UN ‘peace keeping’. According to officials in Haiti, the SL soldiers accused of sex crimes had systematically raped women and children, some as young as 7-years-old, Sunday Leader reported citing Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. Recently, while reporting on the rape of a 10-year-old girl in the south of the island by a former SL Air Force officer, Colombo media said that the mania in the SL military is a result of the free licence given to them over the years to commit sex crimes against Tamils.
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21st anniversary of Chaththurukko'ndaan massacre remembered

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 September 2011, 16:29 GMT]
Local residents of Chaththurukko'ndaan village in the Batticaloa district held the 21st anniversary remembrance of the 184 Tamil civilians massacred by soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army at the village on 9th September 1990, civil sources said. 184 Tamil civilians including infants, children, women and men were pulled out of their homes and were bludgeoned to death or extra-judicially executed by SLA soldiers from the Chaththurukko'ndaan 'Boys Town' army camp. Five of the dead were infants under year one, 42 children under years 10, 09 pregnant mothers and 28 adults over 68 years of age. 38 were from Chaththurukko'ndaan village, 37 from Panichchaiyadi, 62 from Pi'l'laiyaaradi and 47 from Kokkuvil.
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Batticaloa civil authority pressures relatives to declare missing persons dead

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 September 2011, 12:16 GMT]
Civil authority in Batticaloa district has been forcing kith and kin of persons missing after arrest or abduction to obtain death certificates stating that the missing victims are dead, according to the relatives. With the end of the war intelligence wing of the Sri Lanka Army, paramilitary groups of Karuna and Pilliayan had abducted and disappeared several Tamil civilians in Batticaloa district. Batticaloa District Secretariat has been now begun issuing death certificates to the abducted persons with the declaration by the aggrieved parties that the missing were dead.
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Tamil student abducted near SLA camp in Batticaloa, escapes

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 September 2011, 12:07 GMT]
Ajanthan, a 11-year old Tamil student was abducted by an unidentified group of six persons came in bicycles while he was riding a bicycle to attend evening class in Kallady Vivekananda Girls Maha Vidiyalayam in Batticaloa town Thursday around 5.30 p.m., sources in Batticaloa said. The abduction took place near the camps of Sri Lanka Navy and Sri Lanka Army are located and where civilian movement has been prohibited. But the student escaped from the abductors the following day while being held in a casuarinas jungle along sea coast.
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Multilingualism, multiculturalism and Sinhala academia

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 September 2011, 00:31 GMT]
‘Celebrating multilingualism’ in Sri Lanka, and delivering a keynote address in a language award ceremony in Colombo in July, Professor of Sinhala K.N.O. Dharmadasa said that Tamil came to be introduced into the island at a later time, especially after the Polonnaruva period (c. 13th century AD). According to the Mahavamsa myth he was relying upon, culture of multilingualism in the island began when “a group of settlers led by Prince Vijaya, who would have been speaking a dialect which linguists call Prakrit, came and settled down in the northern plains.” Meanwhile, delivering a lecture on Buddhism at the UN General Assembly in May and using it for campaigning Sri Lanka’s ‘reconciliation,’ another Sri Lankan Prof. Sudharshan Seneviratne said, arrival of Buddhism and other north Indian social ideologies heralded the beginnings of civilization in the island.
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UN inaction responsible for ‘grease devil’ phenomenon, NZ Tamils tell Ban

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 September 2011, 00:16 GMT]
In a letter routed through the Mayor of Auckland to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon visiting New Zealand, the Tamil Action Front in New Zealand on Monday urged the UNSG to stop the post-war disaster the Eezham Tamils have been going through. “[The UN panel] report was released in April 2011. It is September now. There is no indication that you have done justice to the report – not even sent a copy to the UN Human Rights Council for discussion and action. Your inaction has emboldened Sri Lanka to order the Security Forces to menacingly intrude into homes of the peace loving Tamil and Muslim peoples of the traditional Tamil speaking areas – the North and East of Sri Lanka, the Front said in its letter.
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India needs foundational policy change if past is catalogue of failures

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 September 2011, 05:46 GMT]
“The need of the hour is for India to undertake a thorough reappraisal of its Sri Lanka policy and make the necessary changes so that it is in consonance with the traditions of Nehru-Indira Gandhi years. The international community will be watching how India will react to the situation in the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly when the matter [Sri Lanka’s war crimes] comes up for discussion, writes V. Suryanarayan and Ashik Bonofer in Tuesday’s paper of SAAG. The paper catalogues Nehru-Indira Gandhi era interventions in protecting Tamils from pogroms, criticises India’s failure in protecting Tamil civilians in 2009 and argues for a policy change. Tamil politicians commented that the change should be foundational if piecemeal interventions proved a catalogue of failures and the writers treating a nation, as “Tamil minority groups in Sri Lanka” won’t help such a change.
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Batticaloa residents urge international action on already admitted crimes against humanity

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 September 2011, 18:22 GMT]
The kith and kin of 174 Tamil youths, who were arrested and dragged away by the occupying Sri Lanka Army 21 years ago in two separate incidents at Vanthaa'rumoolai and later massacred en masse, observed Monday memorial prayers at the Saiva temple at the Eastern University premises and at the Vishnu temple of Vanthaa'rumoolai. According to the findings of the SL Presidential Commission appointed by the then government to conduct inquiry into several massacres of Tamils that had taken place in East, Sri Lanka Army was responsible for the abduction of 174 Tamil youths.
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No foreign affairs without consulting states: India’s new foreign secretary

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 September 2011, 17:44 GMT]
“In our federal system, nothing is done and nothing will be done without the consultation of the State government,” India’s new Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai was cited saying on the issue of India and Bangladesh sharing the waters of Teesta River. No agreement on sharing the waters could be reached without West Bengal's consent, the Foreign Secretary told media in New Delhi on Monday. People of Tamil Nadu should take a special note of the consistent disparity in New Delhi’s treatment between the issues of Bengalis and Tamils. Demanded by West Bengal, India liberated Bangladesh, but acting completely opposite to the wishes of the people of Tamil Nadu, India contributed to genocide of Eezham Tamils. New Delhi has not acted on any of the resolutions of the State of Tamil Nadu, political circles in Tamil Nadu point out.
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Batticaloa residents perturbed over new interrogations - TNA MP

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 September 2011, 16:56 GMT]
Batticaloa district parliamentarian of Tamil National Alliance, P. Ariyanenthiran told media Tuesday that he had received complaints from many families across the district that the occupying Sri Lanka Army had begun harassing the families of ex-LTTE members. The civilians are highly perturbed due to the ongoing interrogation of former LTTE members, the MP told media.
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SL military prepares for next phase of militarisation

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 September 2011, 03:01 GMT]
While the Sri Lankan military operated ‘grease devil’ phenomenon has disturbed normalcy in the North and East sustaining a state of emergency, around 4,000 Sri Lanka Army, Navy and Air Force personnel have been engaged in a joint military exercise named ‘Cormorant Strike 2011’ for the last three weeks in Trincomalee. The SL Army commander Lt. Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya, who participated in the concluding event of the joint exercise on ‘counter terrorist actions’ and ‘amphibious landings’ on Monday claimed that the SL military personnel were being trained on how to act under normal laws since the state of emergency has been withdrawn.
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Genocide in Sri Lanka targets Tamil women, affects fertility: TNA MP

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 September 2011, 06:17 GMT]
While talking on the past and on-going genocide of Eezham Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian for Vanni, S. Sritharan on Sunday said in a meeting in London that Tamil women are particularly targeted now and the fertility of Tamils is systematically jeopardized. He cited the examples of ‘grease devil’ attacks on women and the plight of young widows in child-producing age group. Eezham Tamils are increasingly convinced today that a united Sri Lanka would not work, he said. Later, when a question was asked why the TNA had not raised the issues of genocide and right to self-determination in the recent meet convened by a Congress MP at New Delhi, the deputy leader of TNA Maavai Senadhiraja answered that their unawareness of the agenda of the organizers and the desire not to exhibit disunity among the invited groups had been the reasons.
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CPI(M) ‘keen’ in solutions within ‘united Sri Lanka’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 September 2011, 22:22 GMT]
While Eezham Tamils experiencing genocide have long resolved on their right to self-determination and independence, the Tamil Nadu State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Saturday has announced that it will stage an agitation in New Delhi on Wednesday ‘demanding’ the Indian government to find a political solution based on equal rights and regional autonomy within ‘united Sri Lanka.’ The party has also called for immediate measures of rehabilitation and a ‘high level’ (not international) investigation on war crimes. While grassroot public opinion in Tamil Nadu is mounting on leaving the political future of Eezham Tamils to be decided by the right to self-determination of Eezham Tamils, the imperialist outlook behind the CPI(M) agenda tries to deviate it, Tamil Nadu political circles said.
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SL military uses ‘media persons’ to film protesters in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 September 2011, 21:34 GMT]
Two Tamil-speaking Muslim media persons in Batticaloa, one in the position of district media coordinator and the other a ‘freelance journalist’, have been busy during the past weeks in Batticaloa taking video and photos of civilians protesting against SL military operated ‘grease-devils’. Based on their video recordings, the SL intelligence personnel operating from the SLA camps in Batticaloa, identify the protesters from different villages and hand them over to the so-called Terrorist Investigation Department officers who had come from Colombo to Batticaloa.
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Sri Lanka conspires for a Sinhala division in Mullaiththeevu district

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 September 2011, 02:22 GMT]
Occupying Sri Lanka’s Colonial Governor in the North Maj. Gen. Chandrasri and presidential sibling Basil Rajapaksa are all set to create a new Sinhala division in the Ma’nal Aa’ru part of the Mullaiththeevu district that will be delinking the contiguity of Northern and Eastern Provinces. India that has committed to the integration of the northern and eastern provinces but now collaborates with Colombo in the genocide and structural genocide of Eezham Tamils is particularly answerable to the situation, demand Tamil politicians in the island. Last week, while talking to diaspora Tamil groups, the US Asst Secretary of State feigned ignorance on the intense Sinhala colonisation that is taking place in the country of Eezham Tamils.
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World Bank aid diverted to Sinhala colonisation in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 September 2011, 00:06 GMT]
The assistance given by the World Bank to North East Services Improvement Project (NELSIP) to improve road development in recently resettled areas in the Puthukudiyiruppu and Karaithu’raippattu divisions of the Mullaiththeevu district is diverted to a recently initiated Sinhala colony called Sampath Nuwara in the district at the instructions of presidential sibling Basil Rajapaksa and SL colonial governor of the north Maj. Gen. Chandrasri. SL minister Rishad Baddiudeen is also involved in the racket. The World Bank has allotted the funds to help the war-torn people and while the local administration has almost finalised the programme of road development, all of a sudden the fund amounting to 15 million has been diverted to an intrusive Sinhala colony Sampath Nuwara initiated in the Ma’nal Aa’ru area now Sinhalicised as Weli-oya in the district.
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Indian railway aid helps Colombo to wedge North and East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 September 2011, 00:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka occupying the country of Eezham Tamils proposes to lay a railway link between Mannaar and Trincomelee through Medawaachchiya in the Sinhala territory of North Central Province, while the shortest link between the two cities is through Vavuniyaa in the north. As the railway line between Thalai Mannaar and Medawaachchiya has been restored with Indian assistance, Colombo now plans to extend it to Trincomalee through the North Central Province. The link of Thalai Mannaar in the Palk Bay and Trincomalee in the Indian Ocean is strategically important to Indian interests as Trincomalee could be directly linked through land and a short ferry with the Indian railway network coming up to Raameaswaram. But the link planned through Sinhala territory aims to structurally wedge the Tamil country and Sinhalicise the Tamil port cities.
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