SL military wants Railway station in North named after Sinhala soldier

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 January 2014, 23:40 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military wants to change the name of the Elephant Pass (EPS) Railway Station, being constructed with Indian assistance, to the name of a war-dead 25-year-old Sinhala soldier Lance Corporal Gamini Kularatne, who died after tossing two grenades into the first LTTE-made bulldozer tank in 1991 in the first battle of EPS Base. The destroyed railway track, which was being extended from Vavuniyaa to Ki’linochchi last year, has now reached Ezhuthumadduvaa’l.
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Global vigilance urged on ‘genocidal experiments’ by Sinhala Buddhist monks

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 January 2014, 07:29 GMT]
A recent documentary by a leading Japanese television network depicted the work of a Sinhala Buddhist monk, Kalyana Tissa Thero of the ‘Seth Sevana Lama Nivasa of Attambagaskanda’, an orphanage in the Sinhala-ruled Tamil town of Vavuniyaa, as a ‘reconciliation’ work by a ‘true Buddhist’ who was looking after war-affected Tamil children. But, the monk was sexually abusing the children. The Tamil children, subjected to a genocidal ‘orphanage’ experiment were deprived of their language and religion and were being sent to Sinhala school. Following a specific complaint on sexual abuse committed on a 9-year-old child and amidst prevailing protests by the local child protection activists, the monk was arrested in October. But, two months later, Kalayana Tissa Thero was released on bail with the backing of Colombo's National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), on 31 December 2013.
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Colombo has annulled ‘arrest warrant’ says Sitsabeisan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 January 2014, 10:25 GMT]
“Sri Lankan authorities have confirmed that their previous claims of an arrest warrant in my name does not exist and I now look forward to exploring and learning more about the country of my birth,” says Ms Rathika Sitsabeisan, the elected Eezham Tamil MP from Canada, in a statement released by her party, NDP, in Canada on January 01, 2014.
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Transcend SA model, SL State and West’s mechanisms in seeking justice: Fr Rajan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 January 2014, 07:04 GMT]
The South African model that betrayed its people is now taken up by Colombo just to save war criminals. It is futile for Tamils to expect justice from any future government of SL State. Tamils also have to reconsider approaching their struggle once again through West’s mechanisms of justice. The current TNA failed to combine moderate politics with the politics of struggle. Steering Tamil national polity for crumps can’t be justified as ‘diplomacy.’ Tamil intellectuals have to think beyond the trap of ‘Transitional Justice’ and investigate potentialities of the concept Post-Transitional Justice, which is non-state, multi-sited, multi-actor and multi-referential, said Fr Elil Rajan, advocating Chile model, at a gathering in Batticaloa last week that remembered slain TNA parliamentarian Mr Joseph Pararajasingham.
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Trincomalee students killing - 8th Anniversary

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 January 2014, 00:31 GMT]
Parents and relatives of five Trincomalee students who were extra-judicially executed at a seafront in Trincomalee by Sri Lanka armed forces on the 2nd of January 2006 will be commemorating the eight anniversary of the death of their sons today, Thursday. Despite a determined and relentless pursuit for justice by Dr Kasippillai Manoharan, the father of Ragijar, one of the students killed, including campaigns by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, justice has eluded the families of the students killed. "Until the perpetrators of the crime, and the at Sri Lanka's helm who issued the order to kill my son, are brought to justice, I will keep on fighting," Dr Manoharan told TamilNet, adding, "I remain grateful for the Rights groups and the organizations that campaigned and highlighted the need for international involvement to bring justice to us."
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Australia’s conduct on Tamil deportations comparable to Hitler’s deniability on Jewish question: Haigh

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 January 2014, 15:17 GMT]
Bruce Haigh, a retired diplomat, a rights activist, and an expert witness to the Bremen People’s Tribunal established to adjudicate on whether Sri Lanka committed genocide on Tamil people, in an article appearing in Canberra Times, compared the “deniability adopted and refined by Hitler's Third Reich towards the final solution of the Jewish question” to Rudd and Abbott’s Governments conduct over Tamil asylum seekers. Haigh said that Tamil witnesses from Sri Lanka told him that Australian diplomatic mission has been briefed adequately on the situation, and that he believes the Australian Government(s) have ignored these for reasons of policy and politics. “This would suggest that both major parties knowingly acted illegally with respect to processing Tamil asylum seekers,” Haigh said.
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Human skeletons spotted inside well, bunkers in PTK

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 January 2014, 11:00 GMT]
Human skeletons have been spotted inside a well and the surrounding land of a house located at 2nd division of Puthuk-kudiyiruppu (PTK) in Mullaiththeevu district, news reports from Mullaiththeevu said. On the latest reports of finding human skeletons in PTK, Tamil activists in Mullaiththeevu suspected that these could be the victims who were executed by the advancing Sri Lankan military in 2009 genocidal onslaught on Vanni.
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SL immigration officials ‘investigate’ Canadian Tamil MP in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 January 2014, 10:28 GMT]
Following the interrogation on Tuesday by the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Department, who placed the visiting Eezham Tamil parliamentarian from Canada, Ms Rathika Sitsabaiesan, from 7:00 p.m. to midnight under an unofficial house-arrest, the immigration officials of occupying Colombo have subjected her for a second round of investigations Wednesday noon. As the Canadian MP was on a private visit to the island, the SL immigration officials would be carrying out an investigation to see whether she had violated the kind of visa utilized to her, the officers have told Wednesday.
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Veeraich-choalai, Weera-sole

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2013, 23:56 GMT]
The forest or grove of Drypetes sepiaria trees
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Canadian Eezham Tamil MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan under house arrest in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2013, 20:51 GMT]
Canadian Eezham Tamil parliamentarian Rathika Sitsabaiesan representing Sacarborough-Rouge River constituency, who was on a visit to the island has come under the harassment of the occupying Sri Lankan military and police establishment in Jaffna on Tuesday evening. SL ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ Officer-in-Charge in Jaffna Ranaweera accompanied by two TID female officers, who were waiting at a hotel in Jaffna, where Ms Rathika Sitsabaiesan was staying, have placed the visiting Canadian parliamentarian under an ‘unofficial’ house-arrest after she entered the hotel around 7:00 p.m., concluding a visit to the uprooted people of Valikaamam North and Vadamaraadchi with the chairman of Valikaamam North Piratheasa Chapai (PS) Mr S. Sugirthan.
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SL navy sailor sexually assaults 4-year-old Tamil child in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2013, 15:25 GMT]
A sailor of the occupying Sinhala Navy from a camp in Thiriyaay, a Tamil village in the north of Trincomalee district, was arrested on Sunday by the Kuchchave'li Police as the villagers demanded immediate action from the commanders of the occupying military and police in Thiriyaay. The SLN sailor, identified as one Priyantha Dissanayake, was produced in Trincomalee magistrate court on Monday before the acting magistrate who ordered the suspect to be remanded till January 6, 2014.
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Sri Lankan TID declares ‘shadow war’ on Tamil journalists in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2013, 09:10 GMT]
“We will not abduct you or take you for 4th floor for interrogations. But, we will make sure you die in the road hit by our encounter teams in natural accidents and dispute-like killings. You will not become heroes among your own people and die like street dogs,” is the message re-iterated by the so-called ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ interrogators, who operate various interrogation-cells in the North chasing the journalists in Jaffna. A Colombo-based media rights activist observing the pattern of the psychological warfare by the TID on journalists in Jaffna described the unfolding scenario as Colombo's latest ‘shadow war’ on Tamils, similar to the one that preceded the 2009 genocidal onslaught.
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Resettled survivors of Vanni onslaught languish in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 December 2013, 17:14 GMT]
95% of the 1080 families of Batticaloa Tamils who survived the 2009 genocidal onslaught in Vanni and resettled back in Batticaloa district have been completely neglected from any help and still languish without basic facilities. When the families displaced from Batticaloa to Vanni in 2004 from different places of the district, Karuna group paramilitary destroyed their houses and their possessions were robbed. When they returned to their district, surviving the genocidal onslaught, Europe-based NGOs and UN agencies provided temporary huts to these families. All support stopped there, and these huts became the ‘markers’ for these families to get isolated from further aid, the families complain. They have also been sidelined from the Indian housing assistance.
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Colombo's motive of using China for forensic examinations on Mannaar mass grave questioned

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 December 2013, 08:42 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's police officials in Mannaar have said that the skeletons recovered at the mass grave at Thirukkeatheesvaram were being dispatched to China for forensic examinations. Responding, legal sources in Mannaar asked the motive of Colombo using China for DNA testing of the skeletons discovered at the mass grave and questioned the fate of similar cases earlier sent to China for ‘forensic examinations’. In 2009, China had allegedly provided Colombo with ‘movable crematory vehicles’ to get rid of the dead bodies of the genocidal victims in Vanni. Tamil activists urged the alternative world to assist the nation of Eezham Tamils to undertake forensic examinations in future in a credible and independent manner.
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Local contacts of visiting Indian journalist exposed to TID interrogators in Colombo

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 December 2013, 21:34 GMT]
In one of the strongest investigations and monitoring conducted so far on a foreign journalist visiting the island, the experienced interrogators of the notorious ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ of Colombo had not only confiscated the electronic and non-electronic possessions from the young journalist from Tamil Nadu, but also monitored and traced all his contacts from the moment he landed at Colombo airport for the second time, informed media sources in Colombo told TamilNet Sunday. In the meantime 22-year-old Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran, when contacted by TamilNet after his deportation to Chennai, said he was subjected to ‘psychological torture’ like condition at the hands of the TID interrogators in Colombo and that the TID had his Tamil book of his first visit translated when they questioned him on his affiliations.
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No Indian houses for uprooted Batticaloa Tamils from Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 December 2013, 22:30 GMT]
Hundreds of Tamil residents, who were uprooted from Vanni in the 2009 genocidal onslaught and resettled in Batticaloa district now, have not been provided permanent houses under the Indian housing project, according to complaints made to the Batticaloa District Citizen Committee.
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Colombo’s wildlife department appropriates lands in Paddippazhai for Sinhalicisation

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 December 2013, 12:40 GMT]
Colombo government’s Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), deploying Sinhala settlers from Ampaa’rai district and paramilitary known as Home Guards, has put up a fence covering 800 acres of Tamil villages of Batticaloa district. The land appropriation is taking place under the guise of constructing a fence to prevent wild elephants from entering Batticaloa district from the jungles of Ampaa’rai district, according to Tamil National Alliance (TNA) councillor of the Eastern Provincial Council.
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CPJ calls for immediate release of Indian journalist

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 December 2013, 20:18 GMT]
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York based media rights group, on Friday called for the immediate release of an Indian journalist and film-maker, Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran who was arrested by the occupying Sri Lankan military and Police in Vanni on Wednesday.
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Pa'raa'lai

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 December 2013, 13:35 GMT]
The ruins.

The place or structure ruined to the foundation level.
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Sri Lanka’s TID interrogates Indian journalist in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 December 2013, 13:19 GMT]
The journalist from Tamil Nadu, Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran, who was arrested by the occupying SL military and police in Vanni, while he was visiting Ki’linochchi was still under the custody of the ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ as late as Thursday night, informed sources in Colombo said. Earlier, the SL police spokesman in Colombo had stated that the Mr Thamizh Prabhagaran was being handed over to the immigration authorities for deportation. But, Colombo's TID officers were interrogating the Indian journalist on his contact network in the island by going through his article series that has appeared in Junior Vikatan, the sources further said.
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