Tamil Genocide Remembrance marked in Melbourne opposing Australia's deportations

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 May 2019, 17:25 GMT]
Australian Tamil diaspora marking the tenth Tamil Genocide Remembrance was supported by the Australian, Filipino and aboriginal progressive and internationalist solidarity activists, who took part in the vigil and delivered messages of support to the remembrance event. The protesters gathered in the city on 15 May, and the Tamils marked the commemoration event on 18 May. “What happened to Eelam Tamils was not just war crimes - it was genocide,” said one placard carried by the solidarity activists while a banner stated: “Keep away from bloodstained Sri Lankan military”. “Don’t deport to danger. Let them stay” was their message. The son of a war-dead LTTE commander addressed the participants of the commemoration event on 18 May, sharing his experiences of the genocidal onslaught as a 12-year-old boy at Mu’l’ li-vaaykkaal in 2009.
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Profound experience of attending Tamil Genocide Remembrance in Vanni: Bremen Tribunal Judge

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 May 2019, 18:06 GMT]
Colombian theologist Rev Fr Javier Giraldo Moreno was visiting the island this month taking part in the tenth Tamil Genocide Remembrance event, which was held at Mu'l'livaaykkaal in Vanni on 18 May. Fr Javier Giraldo was one of the eleven judges of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT) which found the unitary state of Sri Lanka guilty of the crime of genocide in the hearings held in Bremen, Germany in January 2014. Before leaving the island, Fr Giraldo addressed journalists at a press conference held at Jaffna Press Club on 20 May, and he was responding to four specific questions. Re-examining Norway-facilitated 2002 peace process was necessary to advance the struggle for the rights of the Tamils, he said. Furthermore, the leaders of all religions should get together to counter the divide-and-rule tactics of the SL government, especially after the Easter attacks, the Catholic priest said.
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Tamil Genocide Remembrance marked in geostrategic Pacific islands of Okinawa, Jeju

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 May 2019, 17:26 GMT]
The people of the Island of Okinawa, located between Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea of the Pacific, marked the tenth Tamil Genocide Remembrance in two separate events reflecting their resistance to the protracted geopolitical militarisation of the islands in the Indo-Pacific. In 1945, almost one hundred thousand civilians along with an equal number of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers and 12,000 US military personnel perished as the USA went on capturing Japan’s southernmost island in one of the bloodiest amphibious invasions in the modern history. Around 30,000 US troops are now stationed there with a changed focus towards China. The grassroots movement among the Okinawan population is strongly opposed to their island being continuously militarised. Mu’l’ li-vaaykkaal Remembrance events were also held in Kyoto, Japan, and on the strategic Jeju island off the Korean peninsula.
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Wigneswaran writes to Guterres: Urgent need for UN Monitoring Mission to North-East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 May 2019, 22:33 GMT]
Former Chief Minister of Northern Provincial Council Justice CV Wigneswaran has written to UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres urging the latter to appoint a United Nations Monitoring Mission to record ongoing human rights violations in the North-East. The SL military has put up ten checkpoints between the Tamil-dominated areas of Vavuniyaa and Jaffna, and these checkpoints have become sites of countless human rights violations, mainly targeted harassment of Tamil women and arbitrary detentions, Justice Wigneswaran said in his letter sent to UN offices on Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day.
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‘Eelam War V’ is knowledge-war against ‘political COIN’: Swiss youth group

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 May 2019, 13:46 GMT]
Switzerland-based Eezham Tamil youth group, ‘Phoenix the Next Generation’ and its media front ‘Puradsi Media’ (meaning revolutionary media) has announced a three-point programme to confront the ongoing political counter-insurgency (political COIN) that has been deployed against the Tamil diaspora by the powers and the SL State who want the diaspora to either abandon or compromise the doctrine of Tamil Eelam. The Phoenix group came up with the initiative at the book launch of “Structures of Tamil Eelam: A Handbook”. The book launch took place at the Archives Centre, known as “Thmaizh-ka'la'ri”, which is attached to Chaiva-ne'rik-koodam Archives Centre in Bern, Switzerland.
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Sikhs, expatriate Indian Tamils mark May 18 questioning role of Norway, USA

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 May 2019, 23:03 GMT]
The expatriate Indian Tamils from Tamil Nadu living in Scandinavia took part in the 10th Mu'l'livaaykkaal Genocide Remembrance event organised by Eezham Tamils in Oslo, the capital of Norway. They also staged a separate marking on their own at Gustaf Adolf's square in the city of Gothenburg in Sweden on 20th May. In the meantime, expatriate Tamil Nadu Tamils living in the USA staged remembrance events at 20 different places on 18th May, criticising the US abetment of genocidal Sri Lanka, both before and after the 2009 onslaught. The role of the expatriate Tamil Nadu Tamils in marking the tenth remembrance gains more significance than the hundreds of emotional events marked by the Eezham Tamil diaspora in the North-America, Europe and elsewhere with massive participation, said Tamil diaspora activists, who also appreciated the way a Sikh editor marked his remembrance to the same effect.
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Metanarrative of Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal, geopolitics and secularism: Jude Lal Fernando

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 May 2019, 00:28 GMT]
The outside powers, be it USA, UK, China or India, are always pre-occupied with the geo-strategic location of the island. During the British colonial period, the Sinhalese were made to believe that they were closer to the British than to the Tamils (Tamils were the ‘invaders’). This resulted in a religiously defined Sinhala Buddhist unitary, which sought to consolidate itself after the ‘independence’. The genocidal process was the outcome. The Tamil liberation struggle, which was a secular nationalist struggle, culminated into the Tamil Eelam state and stopped the genocide. The 2009 onslaught not only destroyed the human lives, but also the secular nationalist liberational ethos. After the Easter Sunday attack in 2019, religious conflicts have been imposed with global implications. Professor Jude Lal Fernando explains the metanarrative and proposes an action to overcome the challenges.
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Photos from Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal Remembrance in Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 May 2019, 16:05 GMT]
“The Tamils all over the world commemorate not only the death of our brothers and sisters who were killed but the history of resistance and its sacrifice for the collective cause of the Tamil people,” said Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal Remembrance Public Forum (North-East) in a statement read out at the commemoration event, which was marked by around one thousand people who braved the harassment of the occupying SL military in marking the 10th year of Tamil Genocide on 18 May 2019 at Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal in Vanni. The photos narrate the emotional nature of the event.
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May 18 declared as Awakening Day of Tamil Nation against Genocide

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 May 2019, 10:27 GMT]
The grassroots groups which came together from the North and East to organise the 10th Remembrance Day commemorating the deaths of tens of thousands of lives in the Tamil genocide declared the day as the Awakening Day of Tamil Nation against Genocide at Mu'l'livaaykkaal. The occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka had put up several, and a particular military unit that had from Colombo was visiting door-to-door in Mullaiththeevu warning the people against taking part in the event. However, the remembrance event proceeded with people who had come from other towns. The event was peaceful and emotional. The statement issued by the organisers called for the international investigations and to recognise the distinct sovereignty and inalienable right of self-determination of Tamils in the merged North-East.
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Kalaikkoan's premonition proved right, Tamils cannot shy away from international struggle

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 May 2019, 23:41 GMT]
The chauvinist elements in the South which were behind the State-sponsored anti-Tamil pogrom in 1958 also chose to warn the Muslims and the Burghers that they would be the next targets in the aftermath. Many Tamils were chased out from South to Jaffna and Batticaloa, But they would be eradicated from there as well, in the future, through Sinhala militarisation, the warning claimed. Fifty years later, Colombo and the powers abetting its war, would be achieving that if the war was allowed to proceed the course it was taking, warned Kalaikkoan master, the head of LTTE's Navam Academy, in 2009. The 36-year-old student of history, who had almost lost sight in both of his eyes was an articulate teacher. He was subjected to enforced disappearance at the hands of the SL military on 17 May 2009. TamilNet releases the unedited audio of the Satellite phone communication with him from 13 April 2009.
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New Delhi continues to interpret aspiration of Eezham Tamils as threatening its sovereignty

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 May 2019, 23:13 GMT]
Eezham Tamils should get the clue from New Delhi's latest proscription of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that the idea of Tamil Eelam remains strong even though the LTTE was institutionally destroyed a decade ago through a genocidal onslaught, commented Tamil activists in Jaffna. The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs proscribed the LTTE for five more years issuing a notification through the Gazette of India on Tuesday. The announcement observed that “[t]he LTTE’s objective for a separate homeland (Tamil Eelam) for all Tamils threatens the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India, and amounts to cession and secession of a part of the territory of India from the Union and thus falls within the ambit of unlawful activities”.
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Mullai GA gives in to pressure from top, allocates lands to Sinhala colonists

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 May 2019, 21:35 GMT]
Mullaiththeevu District Secretary (Government Agent) Ms Rupavathy Ketheeswaran appears to have bowed to pressure from the Colombo establishment to allocate a housing scheme for the Sinhala colonists in Mukaththuvaaram in Kokku'laay, says civil activist and a former UN Field Officer V. Navaneethan. While defending the rights of the private Tamil land-owners, the GA seems to have promised to allocate three acres of public lands to the encroaching colonists. The GA who visited the area after the Sinhala protesters laid siege to her office on 13 May, was under pressure to promise the public land plot of three acres to be transferred to the colonists to set up a housing scheme. She was accompanied by SL military officers and the police as well as Survey Department officials, news sources in Mullaiththeevu said.
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SL State-run sea cucumber farming becomes major threat to Tamil fishers of North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 May 2019, 20:58 GMT]
The occupying unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka is scheming to shrink the coastal fishing access to Eezham Tamil fishers in the islets and along the west coast of Vanni, where the resettled Tamils are already struggling with limited access to their coastal belt due to militarization and other activities from the South. Several new locations have been identified by the SL state-run National Aquaculture Development Authority (NAQDA) and the SL National Aquatic Resources Research And Development Agency (NARA), informed sources at Jaffna District Secretariat told TamilNet on Tuesday.
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Sinhala colonists protest against Tamil officials in Vanni

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 May 2019, 18:57 GMT]
More than one hundred Sinhala colonist families staged a protest laying siege to the Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat on Monday opposing the Tamil officials, including the District Secretary (GA) Ms Rupavathy Ketheeswaran, for objecting their illegal occupation of the lands. Even after the district secretary had met them, the protesters were blockading the entrance. The SL Police was not acting against the protesters. The SL military and police, who blocking Tamils from gathering to commemorate the 10th year of 2009 genocide that took place in the district citing Emergency Regulations, were not acting against the Sinhala protesters, the officials at the District Secretariat told TamilNet.
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Ex NPC councillor vows to mark genocide remembrance at 21 places before 18 May

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 May 2019, 22:26 GMT]
Former Northern Provincial Council (NPC) member and ex-TNA parliamentarian M.K. Shivajilingam has vowed to mark Tamil Genocide Week from 12th to 17 May at 21 places across the eight districts in the North and East before taking part in the tenth year marking of 2009 Tamil Genocide Day on 18 May at Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal. “We have chosen 21 places where the SL military was committing genocidal acts. It is like the 21-gun salute, the highest respect paid to those who sacrificed their lives,” Mr Shivajlingam, a political leader of TELO said. After inaugurating the first event at Kappaladi along the coast near Mu'l'livaaykkal on Sunday, he blamed the SL State for detaining the student leaders in Jaffna and for harassing himself describing the moves as aiming to suppress the 10th Tamil genocide remembrance on 18 May.
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Colombo attempts to Sinhalicise Tamil village using sympathy following Easter attack

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 May 2019, 20:15 GMT]
Occupying Colombo’s ‘National Housing Development Authority’ (NHDA) was silently scheming to launch a housing scheme for Sinhala colonists in Mukaththuvaaram in Kokku’laay West village (GS/GN) area of Karai-thu’raip-pattu administrative division of Mullaiththeevu district on Saturday. However, the move was temporarily postponed following strong objections from the Tamil land-owners. The violent colonists, backed by the occupying SL Navy are Sinhala Catholics. They have been occupying the place during the times of war and after. Mukaththuvaaram is a strategically located village at the northern tip of the lagoon-mouth of Kokku’laay. The provincial border between the North and East runs through the lagoon.
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Academics across continents mark Tamil genocide remembrance in Dublin, discuss global injustice

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 May 2019, 23:34 GMT]
Irish, Cypriot, Rwandan, Palestinian, Rohingya, Korean and Colombian academics were taking part in an academic conference and a commemorative event on the tenth year of 2009 Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal Tamil genocide in Dublin, Ireland on the 02nd of May and on the 08th of May. The reflections made at these events provided both insights from lived experiences of genocide as well analysis of the situation before and in the aftermath of May 2009. The geopolitical context of Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal, attempts to de-politicize Tamil resistance and consolidate the ongoing structural genocide institutionalized through the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka were discussed in detail in the events making comparisons with the oppressions elsewhere in the world.
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Western diplomats must act to free Jaffna University student leaders: Political Analyst

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 May 2019, 18:04 GMT]
The West needs to be reminded that the Tamil Christians were at the receiving end of the Easter Sunday most probably because the hierarchy of the Tamil National Alliance and the Tamil leaders, in general, had been explicitly leaning towards it after the end of the genocidal war in 2009. The unitary state in Colombo has now clamped down on the Tamil student leaders of the Jaffna University by deploying the Emergency Regulations totally out of proportions in a heavily politicised and chauvinistic manner using the situation after the Easter Sunday attacks, said Jaffna-based Senior Lawyer and Political Analyst S.A. Jothilingam on Thursday. His comments to TamilNet come a day after the Magistrates’ Court in Jaffna was unable to act on the release of the students as their release required explicit action by the SL Attorney General under the Emergency provisions.
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Blake's Colombo lecture reminds Tamils of bureaucracy abetting 2009 genocide

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 May 2019, 16:57 GMT]
Former US Ambassador Robert O. Blake was visiting Colombo on Tuesday to deliver a lecture titled ‘US Foreign Policy towards China and South Asia and what it means for Sri Lanka’. He was advising Colombo to tackle the response to the Easter Sunday attacks by drawing lessons from the 2001 Bush Administration and form an intelligence coordinating body of technocrats not to miss any single lead of information on potential attacks. Former SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was precisely doing that during the war, he said. He also warned against over-reacting as the US did after 9/11 by expanding government surveillance without appropriate constitutional checks. On geopolitics, Mr Blake was enticing Colombo to engage with China, the USA and other countries in parallel, a paradigm which enabled Colombo to annihilate the military power of Tamils through a genocidal onslaught in 2009.
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Arts Faculty student leader urges principled action from Jaffna lawyers

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 May 2019, 13:45 GMT]
The president of the Student Union of the Art Faculty at the University of Jaffna, Mr Rajaratnam Krishanth, has urged the lawyers, particularly the head of the bar association in Jaffna Ms Shantha Abimannasingham P.C., who is also the notary public Council Member of the Council of the University, to take up the wrong PTA detention of Jaffna University Student Union. The matter should also be taken up with the U.S. Embassy and other diplomatic missions in Colombo, he said. The action for releasing the JUSU leaders must be a broader one, he said. The students were awaiting the legal outcome on May 08 before initiating a struggle, he said. In the meantime, all other avenues must be pursued in parallel, he said. TNA's Sumanthiran and Civil Society activist Guruparan are already done their part, the fellow students told TamilNet.
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