Hi-tech Chinese ship spied on India using Colombo harbour: NDTV

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 September 2011, 10:26 GMT]
A hi-tech Chinese ship with 22 in-built laboratories, but disguised as a fishing trawler, has spied on India using Colombo harbour facilities and Sri Lankan territorial waters a few months ago, an Indian media has reported on Wednesday. The Delhi-based NDTV in its exclusive report said that by the time ship figured in the Indian radars, “it had operated already for about 22 days and was positioned off-the cost of Little Anadaman - an area which is considered sensitive and crucial in the ongoing battle for supremacy over the Indian Ocean region between India and China”. According to the report, although an Indian naval ship was deployed immediately to deal with the target, no punitive action could be taken against the Chinese ship as it was in international waters.
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Grease devils – a new military phenomenon unleashing State terror in NE: JDS

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 September 2011, 06:42 GMT]
The Journalist for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), a media organisation of exiled group of Journalists from the island, Thursday said that the introduction of so-called grease devils was nothing but “a new military phenomenon to instil a chilling fear psychosis among the Tamil and Muslim communities living in and around their traditional homelands of North and East” and to unleash “a full-scale State-terror to curtail their collective rights”.
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Grease devils, occupying forces, intensify terror in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 September 2011, 23:00 GMT]
The ‘grease devil’ terror, staged by Sri Lanka’s occupying forces in the country of Eezham Tamils in a systematic way, clearly shows signs of a master-minded genocide emboldened by international inaction, said political and civil activists in Jaffna, commenting on terror unleashed on Wednesday and Thursday in the Jaffna University locality and in the Kurunakar suburb of Jaffna city. The events followed the model of the attack on residents of the Naavaan-thu’rai suburb of Jaffna a few days ago. “You cannot protect your women form us, is the psychological challenge posed by the ‘grease devil’ terror to provoke Tamils and then to attack them like they attack dogs to establish the point that militarisation and genocide have to be submissively accepted, because the occupying forces are sure that the powers that ignore genocide are on their side,” commented a politician in Jaffna.
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Colombo brings in new legislation to replace Emergency Regulations

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 September 2011, 14:22 GMT]
Having hoodwinked the international community by announcing an imminent withdrawal of the three decade-long Emergency Regulations, Colombo has decided to introduce new set of laws with immediate effect to replace the draconian law that gives sweeping powers to SL Police and military forces to arrest and detain people without any charges indefinitely. Sri Lanka’s Justice Minister Rauf Hakeem has said that the new set of laws will be in place with the expiry of similar provisions under the island’s controversial emergency laws, which Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa proposed to lift by the end of August. Badly hoodwinked by the mere propaganda exercise by the genocidal Rajapaksa regime many members of the powerful international community, including the United States quickly hailed as “significant step” the move to do away with the emergency regulations.
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Welimuva-pothana

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 September 2011, 05:00 GMT]
The grassland/ scrub of white-faced monkeys
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Tamil Nadu Assembly, Madras High Court, make precedent in Indian democracy

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 19:34 GMT]
In an extraordinary development in Indian constitutional history, the Tamil Nadu State Assembly on Tuesday unanimously and strongly resolved that the President of India, respecting the sentiments of the people and political parties of Tamil Nadu, should reconsider the clemency appeals of the three Tamils fixed for execution and convert their death sentences into life imprisonment. In the meantime, acting on a legal move by Vaiko and N. Chandrasekaran, The Madras High Court on Tuesday stayed the executions for 8 weeks giving time for the government to file counter affidavit. The President of India earlier rejected the clemency appeals of Perarivalan of Tamil Nadu and two Eezham Tamils, Murugan and Shanthan condemned to death in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, and their hangings were fixed to September 09.
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Tamil Nadu tensed over execution of death sentences

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 06:41 GMT]
The people of Tamil Nadu and Tamils all over the world are agitated over the Indian government decision to execute death sentences to three Tamils after keeping them in prison for more than 20 years. Perarivalan of Tamil Nadu, and Eezham Tamils Murugan and Shanthan arrested in 1991 on charges of involvement in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi were sentenced to death in 1998. Their clemency petition was rejected last month and the hangings are fixed to September 9. The politics behind the case is 30 years of India-involved war in the island of Sri Lanka that turned into genocide of Eezham Tamils. While the Indian foreign minister in the parliament last week sought to respond to the war crimes investigations without endangering India’s relations with Sri Lanka, the hangings are sure to endanger New Delhi’s relations with Tamils, political observers said.
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Blake will draw blank if truth not recognized

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 August 2011, 01:57 GMT]
The US Asst Secretary of State Robert Blake visits Sri Lanka this week, following Indian Foreign Minister Krishna telling the Parliament that what bothered the island for the last three decades was nothing but ‘terrorism’ and the solution confines to material ‘rehabilitation’ of Tamils and political ‘build up’ of the defunct 13th Amendment. Blake spoke to diaspora groups in the US before his visit. The engagement of India and the USA with the island is meaningless if it is not based on the recognition of the truth that the issue in the island is a national question, the war waged there had chronic genocidal intentions on the part of the Sri Lankan State and the military that now occupies the country of Eezham Tamils is in actuality not a State military of international norms but a genocidal Sinhala military, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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BTF reps visited India over Sri Lanka war crimes probe

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 August 2011, 13:36 GMT]
Representatives of the British Tamil Forum (BTF) travelled recently to India to raise awareness of the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, and to build support for an independent international investigation into the mass killings of Tamil civilians in the closing months of the island’s war, the organisation said in a statement this weekend. Taking up an invitation extended to the BTF by India’s main opposition Bhathiya Janatha Party (BJP) during a meeting in London, a delegation travelled to Delhi and several Indian states, including Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, to meet several key political leaders and senior political advisors, as well as representatives of human rights organisations, religious and media organisations, the statement said.
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Decades-old skeletons unearthed in former SL Navy camp in Delft

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 August 2011, 10:10 GMT]
More than seven human skeleton remains were unearthed by a team of medical officials in Nedunth-theevu (Delft) island on Friday in a land belonging to Assistant Government Agent's office. The skeletons are believed to be 20 - 30 years old. Earlier, the Sri Lanka Navy had stationed in the premises for several years.
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Delhi protest proclaims Eezham Tamil Right to Self-Determination

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 18:00 GMT]
Rajya Sabha MP Baishnab Charan Parida of Biju Janta Dal, the ruling political party of the State of Orissa, on Friday expressed his party's strong support to Tamil Right to Self-Determination at a rally organized by leftist youths of the Communist Party of India in front of the Indian Parliament. Meanwhile, R. Thirumalai, from Tamil Nadu, state secretary of the All India Students’ Federation (AISF), declared that no one has the moral right to dictate the form of political solution, and that the victims of genocide, the Tamils in the island, should alone decide their political destiny by exercising the absolute right to Self-Determination without any pre-conditions.
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Tamil Nadu Congress MP agrees with Gotabhaya

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 04:22 GMT]
There is no need for any more solution as the 13th Amendment is already there, said Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in giving an interview to Headlines Today this month. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Thursday, Tamil Nadu Congress parliamentarian Dr EM Sudharshana Natchiappan agreed with Gotabhaya. “In the latest booklet released by their [Sri Lanka] Defence Ministry a humanitarian analysis is given. In that also they have accepted the Thirteenth Amendment. Why I am stressing on the Thirteenth Amendment again and again is because there is a new thinking in the policy makers that they have to go beyond the Thirteenth Amendment. This is the policy followed by all the parties including BJP after Rajiv Gandhi. What he had laid as a foreign policy for Sri Lanka is to have the Thirteenth Amendment implemented in toto, so that there is peaceful settlement,” Natchiappan said.
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SL military assault vigilant committee members in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 03:56 GMT]
Youths who provide security to their villages as members of vigilant committees against the movement of suspected ‘grease devils” are summoned to Sri Lanka Amy camps in Batticaloa district and severely assaulted by intelligence men of the Sri Lanka Police, according to affected youths. The fate of two such youths summoned to army camp at Mu'rakkoddaagn-cheanai in Batticaloa district two days ago is not known, according to village residents.
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Sri Lanka must remove PTA, international pressure working - Amnesty

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 03:50 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government must follow up its repeal of the state of emergency by removing repressive legislation such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), Amnesty International said Friday. Whilst welcoming Sri Lanka’s pledge to lift draconian emergency regulations, Amnesty said “the Sri Lankan government still uses repressive measures such as the PTA, which allows authorities to hold detainees arbitrarily and for long periods without trial, including in places that are not officially acknowledged as detention facilities.” The human rights group pointed out that “Police and security forces in Sri Lanka routinely ignore international regulations and procedures intended to protect the rights of individuals who have been arrested.”
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India betrayed Tamils at a crucial moment: CPI in parliament

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 August 2011, 18:30 GMT]
Sri Lanka has two nationalities —Sinhala nationality and the Tamil nationality. What happened to the Tamil nationality is one of the worst tragedies in the history of the world. It is not just killing of one person. It was a full-scale war on one particular nationality - Tamil nationality. In two days, 40,000 people were killed. Where else did such a thing happen? “I waged India’s war, this is what Sri Lankan president claims. What does the SL government tell the world? India was the collaborator in the war against SL Tamils. Did you ever deny the SL claim? India ‘betrayed’ the SL Tamils at a crucial moment. Now, India is trying to become a Permanent Member in the UN Security Council. The SL Tamil issue is a test case for India as to whether India can play a role as a Permanent Member in the UN Security Council or not, said Mr D. Raja of the CPI in the Rajya Sabha Thursday.
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SLA-assaulted Tamil civilian dies in Puththa'lam hospital

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 August 2011, 15:07 GMT]
A 33-year-old Tamil civilian, suffering from heart ailment died last Sunday at hospital after being assaulted by Sri Lanka Army soldiers in Narakkalli village in Puththa'lam, medical sources told TamilNet. The victim, Mr. P. Sivakumar, was the first one to alert the villagers of suspected ‘grease devils’ believed to be Sinhala soldiers.
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Colombo proposes to lift emergency but continue PTA

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 August 2011, 18:36 GMT]
Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday proposed to lift emergency rule in the island, but said that the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) would continue. Even though Colombo’s supporters and media campaign were showcasing it as a significant development to rehabilitation of ‘democracy’ in the island, this doesn’t make much difference to Tamils, considering the extent of militarisation and Sinhalicisation of state in the island, political observers said. Colombo’s media brief denied that the decision was due to pressure from India or other outside forces. But, analysts said that the move was calculated to save Rajapaksa regime from a number of international situations. On Thursday, Indian Foreign Minister said that India would wait to take a stand on war crimes until the UN report comes to a UN forum. Meanwhile the US Asst Secretary of State plans visiting Colombo next week.
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Sinhala villagers assault Indian nationals in Hatton

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 August 2011, 16:33 GMT]
Two Indian nationals working as an Engineer and Consultant in an Indian funded hospital project in Hatton were assaulted by Sinhala villagers at Ambagamuwa in Ginigathena in the Central Province on Wednesday 7.00 pm. The attack took place when the driver of the car they were travelling, a Muslim, went away to a nearby tea kiosk to break fast. Both injured persons were admitted to Glegan Base hospital in Dickoya. The excuse for the attack is said to be that the villagers suspected the victims as ‘grease devils’. But it was revealed in a number of instances in recent days that Sri Lanka’s military and intelligence personnel were involved in the ‘grease devil’ attacks that target Tamils and Muslims in the island.
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AIADMK, opposition walkout after Krishna’s statement in Rajya Sabha

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 August 2011, 12:33 GMT]
Both the main political parties of Tamil Nadu, AIADMK and DMK, as well as most of the opposition parties in the Rajya Sabha of the Indian parliament walked out on Thursday, disappointed by the statement made by the Indian Foreign Minister SM Krishna on Sri Lanka. On the issue of war crimes, Krishna said that India would wait for the tabling of the UN panel report in a UN forum to take a stand on the issue. This is because, “questions still remain” on the report, he said. On the killings of Tamil Nadu fishermen by Sri Lanka’s Navy, the Foreign Minister of the power aspiring for permanent representation in the UN Security Council said: “We have limitations in acting on the fishermen issue. If you have more details give it to me and I will investigate.”
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All Ceylon Tamil Congress calls upon India, IC to ensure fundamentals

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 August 2011, 19:55 GMT]
“We are of the firm opinion that the recognition of the Tamil People in the island of Sri Lanka as a distinct Nation entitled to the Right to Self-Determination is necessary to ensure the continued existence and protection of the Tamils as a People. Only then would any negotiations with the Sri Lankan State be meaningful,” said All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) in a separate statement as no consensus was reached in the meeting of Eezham Tamil political parties in New Delhi Tuesday and Wednesday. “We therefore call upon India and the International Community to recognize these rightful claims made by the Tamil Nation and emphasis such as the basis for any solution within one country,” the statement further said.
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