SLA, paramilitary, extort money from traders in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 July 2011, 10:43 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers and cadres of para military groups under the guise of civil administration are allegedly extorting money from traders who come to Batticaloa town from Paduvaankarai area, sources in Batticaloa said. Sri Lanka army soldiers and para military groups are also being accused of forcibly taking produce brought by traders at several check points.
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Jayalalithaa should play the role like Indira Gandhi on Bangladesh

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 July 2011, 16:12 GMT]
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalithaa should make it a mission to campaign for the independence of Eezham Tamils in the other states of India and elsewhere. For two years before the independence of Bangladesh Mrs Indira Gandhi quietly undertook a diplomatic campaign for it all over the world. Now there is no one except Ms. Jayalalithaa who is bestowed with the mantle to play such a role for the independence of Eezham Tamils.
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‘Flying Fox’ draws flak at home after Sri Lanka visit

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 July 2011, 08:10 GMT]
British Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s visit to Sri Lanka over the weekend has drawn the critical attention of the press back home. The Sun and the Daily Mail, two of Britain’s leading tabloid papers carried similar articles Tuesday questioning Dr. Fox’s penchant for foreign visits, and cited military brass as dubbing him the ‘the Flying Fox’, while The Times newspaper reported on criticisms by human rights and Tamil groups that his visit to Colombo undermined international efforts to censure the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa over war crimes in the final months of the island’s war in 2009.
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Colombo government interferes with district development: TNA MP

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 July 2011, 07:41 GMT]
The Colombo government has introduced a subtle method to delay the development at district level by instructing all parliamentarians to submit their allocation under the district decentralized budget (DCB) to the SL Ministry of Economic Development for approval instead of forwarding it to district secretariats. Normally all district parliamentarians submit their allocations under the DCB to district secretariats and approved by District Development Committee (DDC). Batticaloa district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Mr.P.Ariyanethran has said that the deviation from several decades’ old practice has been adopted by the central authorities as a step to delay the district level development at a time all clamour for more devolution of powers at district level.
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Father of slain woman on Kathirkaamam pilgrimage rules out rape

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 July 2011, 10:57 GMT]
31-year-old mother of two children, Santhakumari Krishnapillai, from Thampiluvil, Batticaloa, who was on a pilgrimage to Kathirkaamam was found slain in the early hours of Sunday was killed by an animal, the father of the victim told media Tuesday. The incident took place near the riverside of Va’l’liyamman Temple at Kathirkaamam. On Tuesday, the father of the woman, who was also on the pilgrimage, ruled out rape and said his daughter went aside from the group looking for a toilet pit and that he found her body after he heard her screaming for help.
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World embraces independent South Sudan

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 July 2011, 05:13 GMT]
South Sudan’s declaration of independence on Saturday, marking the end of a half century of struggle for self-determination, has been followed by formal recognition by governments around the world. The five members of the UN Security Council - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China- along with India and South Africa, were the first amongst many countries. The very first state to recognise South Sudan was Sudan itself. In a statement President Obama said "A proud flag flies over Juba and the map of the world has been redrawn. These symbols speak to the blood that has been spilled, the tears that have been shed, the ballots that have been cast, and the hopes that have been realised by so many millions of people." Saturday’s ceremony was attended by leaders or senior representatives of dozens of countries as well as United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.
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Threats escalate on TNA candidates ahead of civic elections in North

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 July 2011, 04:54 GMT]
Following the Sri Lanka Army attack on Tamil National Alliance (TNA) meeting last month and the systematic harassment on building owners not to provide their halls to TNA for campaign meetings, the residences of various candidates of the TNA, including the former parliamentarian M.K. Sivajilingam, have been targeted by SLA-operated squads that are engaged in threatening the candidates. In the early hours of Saturday, a gang that came in two white-coloured Hiace vehicles threw dirt baskets at the residence of Mr. Sivajilingam. On the same day, the residence of Mr. Subramaniyam, another candidate of the TNA in Maanippaay constituency in Jaffna, came under attack by an alleged SLA operated squad. Earlier, similar acts of intimidation were reported in Cha'ndilippaay in Jaffna. In the meantime, the residences of various TNA candidates have been stoned in Thenmaraardchi.
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UK Defence Minister accuses Labour regime for Sri Lanka’s war

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 July 2011, 13:14 GMT]
The visiting British Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox, while delivering the Lakshman Kadirgamar Memorial Lecture in Colombo on Saturday, accused the previous Labour government of UK for neglecting a political process he had worked out in 1997 and thus contributing to war in the island. “The incoming Labour government showed little interest in Sri Lanka or in taking forward the political process we had begun. The agreement subsequently withered on the vine, to my very great sadness, and the cycle of violence brought more misery, more violence and more death,” he said. Dr. Fox, viewed as one of the ‘friends’ the Rajapaksa regime is harping on, pinned his hopes now on the LLRC report expected in November and made only a passing remark on the need of an inclusive political solution.
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North England Tamils protest at Sri Lanka cricket match

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 July 2011, 07:25 GMT]
Diaspora Eezham Tamils from Manchester and Liverpool demonstrated and handed out leaflets Saturday outside the Old Trafford grounds where Sri Lanka played England in the fifth one-day-international this summer to raise awareness of Sri Lanka’s mass killings of civilians in the final months of the island’s war in 2009. The protest, organised by the leftist Tamil Solidarity (TS), was supported by British trade unions UNISON and UNITE, and local Tamil community organisations.
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Sri Lanka holds Briton over Channel 4 documentary, as Fox meets Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 July 2011, 13:48 GMT]
Sri Lanka has arrested a Briton for allegedly helping Channel 4 television produce a documentary accusing Sri Lanka’s military of mass killings of civilians in the final months of the island’s war. Kandanam Jegadishwaram was arrested on Monday and a Colombo magistrate agreed Friday police can hold Kandanam Jegadishwaram for a month, press reports said Saturday. The British High Commission in Colombo told AFP it had no immediate information on the case. The arrest comes as British Defence Secretary visited Sri Lanka and met with President Mahinda Rajapakasa.
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Southern universities hold anti-SL government demonstration in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 July 2011, 02:57 GMT]
Teachers associations of universities in the south of the island of Sri Lanka held an anti-SL government demonstration and meeting in Jaffna on Friday that was also participated by teachers of the University of Jaffna. It was an impressive demonstration and meeting held in Jaffna in recent times, news sources in Jaffna said. Their demonstration march starting from the old railway station of Jaffna went through the Hospital Road and KKS Road of the heart of the city to reach the Veerasigham Hall, where more than 500 delegates mostly from the south held a meeting. Now only we come and see for ourselves the conditions in Jaffna that despite the complete end of the war even elected parliamentarians from this place are unable to anything, the university teachers from the south said in a press meet held in Jaffna, Friday.
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Sampanthan proposes SL minister dismisses

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 July 2011, 02:55 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R. Sampanthan, moving an adjournment motion in Sri Lanka’s parliament Thursday and speaking on it said that his objective was “to develop a just settlement within an undivided Sri Lanka,” adding that this approach has been widely endorsed by the international community, notably India. The co-chairs have clearly stated and have clearly ruled out any form of division of this country, he further said. On the same day in the SL parliament, SL minister Nimal Sripala de Silva said that his government would not offer a federal solution to Tamils. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka occupying the Tamil country is intensifying its war against the TNA as more and more of the TNA candidates and supporters are attacked and intimidated in civic elections in the north, news sources in Jaffna said.
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British MPs support international investigations of Sri Lanka mass killings

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 July 2011, 18:33 GMT]
The need for an international investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity during Sri Lanka’s war was reiterated Tuesday at a Parliamentary reception in Britain, attended by 40 MPs as well as representatives from leading NGOs, embassies and High Commissions in London, British, Tamil, Sinhala and Indian media organisations, and senior Tamil activists. The event was hosted by parliamentarians Lee Scott (Conservative) and Siobhain McDonagh (Labour), Chair and Vice-Chair the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamil (APPG-T) and was facilitated by the Global Tamil Forum (GTF). In a statement Friday, Mr. Scott said: “There will be no hiding place for the senior people in the Government of Sri Lanka. We will not stop until justice for the victims of war crimes is served.”
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External sanctions needed for change in Sri Lanka - TYO

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 July 2011, 11:55 GMT]
Welcoming Sri Lankan star cricketer Kumar Sangakkara’s assertion Monday that “cricketers [have] bigger responsibilities than merely playing on the field,” and that “the spirit of cricket can and should remain a guiding force for good within society,” the Tamil Youth Organisation said Thursday these were the very beliefs that inspired the call for an international boycott of Sri Lanka cricket until Colombo agrees to an independent investigation into mass atrocities in the final months of the war in 2009.
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Teachers forced to conduct SL military’s census hiding war deaths

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 July 2011, 17:08 GMT]
While the Nazi-style registration of people in the north by the occupying SL military is challenged in the SL courts by Tamil politicians, the SL Army is now engaged in another way of registering people by a census it is conducting on its own, forcing Tamil school teachers and through them exploiting school students. Earlier the military tried the registration through village officers and in some instances military personnel directly conducted it. The forms now distributed by the military to teachers have no column on the cause of the death of family members and the teachers are embarrassed in facing people in taking the ‘census’. The SL Army is trying to bury facts through statistics, while it is estimated that more than 200, 000 Tamils have directly been killed in the war of 3 decades in the north alone, politicians in Jaffna allege.
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Norway’s deafening silence on Sri Lanka is wrong: Aftenposten

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 July 2011, 00:24 GMT]
Sri Lanka is in the middle of a power-game played by India, China and the USA. Norway’s interests in Sri Lanka are insignificantly few. There is no reason why Norway should maintain a deafening silence over the need for an international tribunal on the war crimes that took place in the island. The silence is due to a line of thinking in the Norwegian foreign ministry and especially in Mr Erik Solheim, that it would ‘normalise’ Norway’s relationship with Colombo. Rather than being in the driver’s seat in demonstrating how concerned Norway is about human rights, it is wrong on the part of Norway’s government to stand along the roadside with a mouth full of dust, says Kristoffer Rønneberg, a foreign affairs journalist of the prominent newspaper Aftenposten, in a commentary column published on Tuesday.
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Professor Sivathamby passes away

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 July 2011, 19:43 GMT]
Professor Karthigesu Sivathamy, an Eezham Tamil legend of Tamil Studies passed away on Wednesday 8:20 p.m. local time at his home in Dehiwala, Colombo. He succumbed to heart attack at the age of 79. The funeral rituals are scheduled to be held on Sunday at his residence in Colombo and the cremation will take place at Kanatta crematorium by 4:00 p.m. TamilNet joins the millions all over the world in paying tribute to the scholar who has been providing academic leadership to Tamils. He is survived by his wife Rupavathy Sivathamby and three daughters, Mangai, Kothai and Varthani.
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Civil administration becomes Sinhalese in the country of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 July 2011, 06:45 GMT]
140 Sinhala Sri Lanka Administrative Service (SLAS) officers who have come initially for a ‘training’ programme to Jaffna on Monday are eventually expected to be appointed to Sinhalicise the civil service of the country of Eezham Tamils. By not recruiting Tamils and Muslims to the civil service for many years now, Colombo has schemed a situation so that only the Sinhalese could be appointed to key administrative positions even in the north and east. The process that has started in the east has now come to Vanni and Jaffna. While artfully delaying urgently needed action for the national question by reducing it into an endless debate on war crimes that has no reference to genocide, the powers that abet state in Sri Lanka commit more crimes of a permanent nature in allowing Colombo on its structural genocide and extermination of Tamil nation, political circles in Jaffna said.
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War and aftermath raise questions over Tamil strategy of engagement with powers

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 July 2011, 05:41 GMT]
LTTE and Tamil nationalism were perceived by some powers as getting into the way of their geo-strategic interests. Therefore ‘peace and stability’ means stabilising the Sinhalese regime by crushing LTTE’s military challenge – that was done – and bringing Tamil nationalism to heel, which process is ongoing both in Sri Lanka and among the Tamil diaspora, writes Dr. S. Sathananthan in an article he sent to TamilNet. The power-abetted genocidal war and the aftermath facilitations given to Colombo to complete the genocide into a structural one, raise serious questions among Tamils over the nature of their strategic engagement with some powers.
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SLFP gang comes for campaign after militarily attacking TNA

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 July 2011, 08:37 GMT]
A gang of SLFP ministers and parliamentarians, including presidential sibling Basil Rajapaksa were camping in Jaffna last weekend to plan and campaign for the forthcoming civic elections to the town and village councils scheduled to take place in the north on 23 July. Their meetings were also participated by occupying Sri Lanka’s colonial governor Maj. Gen. Chandrasri. The SLFP campaign in Jaffna takes place after occupying SL Army brutally attacking the participants of a Tamil National Alliance election campaign meeting at A’laveddi a few days ago. After leaving democracy in the hands of a decidedly genocidal state, is there any point in some powers talking of the 13th Amendment and political solutions within one country, ask Eezham Tamil civil circles in the island.
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