Occupying SL Army operates behind narcotics trade in Tamil country

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 March 2012, 22:57 GMT]
Sri Lankan military intelligence is allegedly behind a systematic programme of narcotics trade in the North and East of Eezham Tamils homeland, aiming the Tamil students as the target group, reliable sources in Jaffna told TamilNet Friday. On Thursday, three narcotics traders, including the distributors from South, were arrested on Somasundaram Road near the District Secretariat of Jaffna, while they were distributing narcotics. Narcotics dealers sent from South engage in the trade involving former members of Tamil paramilitary groups, news sources further said. However, the Sri Lankan police remained tight-lipped on the arrest of southern narcotics drug dealers on Thursday in the area having leading Tamil schools.
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Post-UNHRC needs show of Fourth World solidarity

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 March 2012, 06:03 GMT]
Pointing out that the UNHRC resolution is not the First Step to liberation but a Closing Step conceived by Globalized Establishments to conclude the process of Tamil subjugation started by the 2002 CFA, mere exposure of the collusion games of the Establishments is not enough, but action is needed rather than the euphoric diaspora chasing mirages, writes TamilNet Economic and Geopolitical Analyst in the Asia Pacific. Being in the Fourth World of nations without state, Tamils paid the price for not building solidarity with fellow peoples of the world. We paid the highest price and should take the initiative otherwise even our future struggle will be organized only by our enemy in a reactionary way. Our alliance with Tamil Nadu is of great importance. As Globalized Establishments cannot survive without consumption and consumers, they will certainly respect the strength of numbers.
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Sinhala land-grabbers trigger abduction of Tamil youth in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 March 2012, 07:22 GMT]
Armed men of allegedly Sri Lanka Army operated white-van squad Wednesday night have abducted a 22-year-old Tamil youth, Ananda Kishore Thanikaasalam, while the youth was at sleep at his house at mid-night. The abduction comes following threats to the Tamil family at Paalcheanai in Kathirave'li of Vaakarai region in Batticaloa district by Sinhalese to hand over their 8 acres of palm grove with more than 1,500 trees, owned by the family for more than 40 years. On 19 March, a police team claiming as investigative officers from 4th floor CID branch in Colombo came to their house and took away a copy of the land deed. Following the involvement of the CID on the land grab issue, the family lodged a complaint with Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission in Batticaloa. After the abduction, the family has lodged a complaint with the SL Police.
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Norway plays with words on investigation, sees failed 13 Amendment as solution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 March 2012, 12:48 GMT]
During a parliamentary interpolation seeking to know Norway’s stand on independent international investigations of Sri Lanka’s war crimes and crimes against humanity, when Conservative MP Peter Skovholt Gitmark asked the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr-Støre on Monday, whether Norway would back such an investigation, the minister answering a clear “yes,” later stopped at only “independent investigations,” dropping the international part. On political solutions, the foreign minister was harping on the 13 Amendment failed for 25 years, backtracking even from the constitutional experiments envisaged by the so-called Oslo Declaration. After playing with the lives of thousands, Norway now plays with words escaping from spelling out international investigations and leaves Eezham Tamils subjugated by unitary and genocidal Sri Lanka, commented diaspora activists.
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India to wage documentary war countering West’s exposure of Sri Lanka crimes

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 March 2012, 18:48 GMT]
The Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi has embarked on deploying India’s expertise in cinematography to campaign against recent exposures of Sri Lanka’s war crimes by Western documentaries and to defend the partnership efforts of the two Establishments in the island. Leading film makers in India have been hired by the ministry to produce a documentary that will be showing an interview with Rajapaksa, de-mining work by Indian teams and footages of Tamils ‘praising’ India, news sources in Colombo told TamilNet on Tuesday. Meanwhile, India’s Bollywood is set to produce a ‘politically charged’ commercial film, “Jaffna,” directed by Shoojit Sircar carrying the theme of ‘extremism’ to another level compared to his earlier film on Kashmir, and the actor John Abraham is going to visit the island often to get a hang of the milieu, IANS reported early this month.
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Eezham Tamil youth in Canada challenge connivance with LLRC-based resolution

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 March 2012, 08:38 GMT]
Second generation Eezham Tamil youth in Canada strongly criticized the support lent to the pro-LLRC US resolution by some diaspora organizations at a panel discussion organized by the National Council of Canadian Tamils on Saturday about the recent United Nations Human Rights Council meeting. While the older generation on the panel were welcoming the US resolution as a “step in the right direction”, the youth activists criticized it for being a “step backward”. Urging the diaspora leadership to have a “slightly longer memory than the last four weeks,” Krisna Saravanamuttu of the NCCT said that the US resolution was “fundamentally flawed” because it used the LLRC as a basis for achieving accountability and a political solution from the Sri Lankan government guilty of genocide.
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LLRC centered resolution, an albatross around Tamils neck

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 March 2012, 09:26 GMT]
While the passage of the US-tabled LLRC-based resolution on Sri Lanka at the UNHRC sessions has renewed expectation in some quarters of the Tamil diaspora that the resolution will be the first step towards exposing the culpability of Colombo in committing war-crimes, Tamil circles expressed the need to exercise caution, pointing out that the history of failed Commissions in Sri Lanka during the last 30 years, and the futility of UN-approved domestic transitional justice mechanisms where alleged perpetrators will be allowed to direct and control internal criminal investigations, will result in the resolution turning into an albatross around Tamils' neck, providing political space to Rajapakses to whitewash war crimes and the on-going structural genocide.
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Eezham Tamils in Sydney protest against SL ‘reconciliation’ propaganda

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 March 2012, 01:42 GMT]
The High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to Australia, Admiral (retd) Tissara Samarasinghe, who was the former SL Navy commander during the times of the genocidal war, was confronted at Epping, a suburb of Sydney in Australia, by Eezham Tamil protestors on Sunday, when the commander alleged of war-crimes came to Epping Leisure Centre to attend a question-and-answer session organized by the so-called Sri Lankan Reconciliation Forum (SLRF).
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Indian ‘cooperation’ stalls OHCHR acting on UNHRC resolution

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 March 2012, 23:41 GMT]
The Indian cooperation in passing the resolution on Sri Lanka at the UNHRC has in fact facilitated possibilities of stalemate in acting on the resolution. It is well known that India was behind the change in the tabled resolution that the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has to function “in consultation with and with the concurrence” of the SL government in implementing the LLRC recommendations and also in addressing alleged violations on international law. Writing on the resolution on Saturday, Prof V. Suryanarayan says, “What will be the consequence, if the Government of Sri Lanka refuses to accept the recommendations of the UN High Commissioner? A political stalemate will follow. How will this stalemate be resolved? The resolution is silent on the subject.”
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Colombo censors BBC Tamil, Sinhala services

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 March 2012, 22:33 GMT]
Sri Lankan state-run Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC), which relays BBC's Tamil and Sinhala services in the island, avoided airing Sandeshya, the BBC Sinhala service on Sunday. In the meantime, BBC's Tamil language service 'Thamizhoasai' was jammed on Friday and Saturday.
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India placates Sri Lanka, claims it had ‘balanced’ US resolution

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 March 2012, 08:51 GMT]
Soon after the successful adoption of the pro-LLRC US resolution, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sent a letter to the Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa claiming that the Indians “spared no effort and were successful in introducing an element of balance in the language of the resolution”. Openly admitting how India had gone out of the way to water down the resolution to make it “non-intrusive” so as to defend Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, he emphasised on a political solution based on the 13th amendment model.
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ICG acknowledges crisis but turns out cock-eyed on solutions

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 March 2012, 10:40 GMT]
The International Crisis Group in its latest reports acknowledges militarisation and Sinhalicisation of Tamil land as currently the burning crisis in the island of Sri Lanka. It is implicit admission of structural genocide faced by the nation of Eezham Tamils. Both the Sinhala militarisation and colonisation increase the risk of a return to violence, the reports caution. But the ICG doesn’t want to see the historical impossibility of any righteous solution becoming successful in the island without secession. Reducing the nation of Eezham Tamils as ‘minorities’ and focussing the crisis of only the North, intriguingly leaving out the East, the ICG is cock-eyed in perceiving that elections to the northern provincial council under the rotten unitary constitution and control through foreign ‘development’ funds could bring in solutions, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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TNPF cautions ‘first step’ myth of UN resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 March 2012, 22:58 GMT]
Projecting the watered down resolution passed at the UNHRC that doesn’t recognize the genocide committed on Eezham Tamils and that doesn’t call for international investigation, but stops only at implementing the flawed LLRC recommendations as a ‘first step to victory’ is sawing false hopes in the minds of Eezham Tamils, said Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) in the island in a press release on Friday. Confining the phenomenon to mere war crimes, the application of limited pressure serves only the interests of certain competing powers that consider the whole island as a single unit to make their economic inroads. Certain forces use Tamil aspirations for only a regime change in the island, TNPF said.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhala colonisation of coastal Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 March 2012, 15:08 GMT]
SL President's son and Hambantota district parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa has stepped up Sinhala occupation of coastal villages of Mullaiththeevu and Ma'nal Aa'ru (Weli Oya) districts of Vanni mainland this week, civil sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet. Hundreds of Sinhala fishermen were brought from South on Wednesday morning in 20 lorries with their boats and fishing equipments to Chemmalai, a coastal village of Mullaiththeevu district. Local Tamil fishermen who objected the move were assaulted by the occupying Sri Lanka Army and chased away. The SL military officials told Tamils that the fishermen from South had obtained 8-month pass to settle in Chemmalai for fishing. In the meantime Tamil families that resettled in Kokku'laay after 23 years have come under assault by SL military and Sinhalese settlers.
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Watered-down resolution passes in UNHRC, stops short of international investigations

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 March 2012, 13:57 GMT]
The UN Rights Council on Thursday approved the LLRC-based US-tabled resolution urging Colombo to probe Human Rights violations domestically with assistance and advice from the UN rights body. The resolution stopped short of calling for an international investigation. In the 47-member UNHRC, 24 countries including India, voted for the resolution while 15 voted against. 8 countries abstained. Meanwhile, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported SL minister Laksman Yapa Abeywardene as saying that Colombo's relationship with close neighbor India and powerful USA would not be changed despite the resolution passed in UN Human Rights Council. "Whatever decisions taken by India and the U.S. with regard to the resolution, that will be limited to that issue only," the Sri Lankan minister said.
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Solheim told to leave Norway government

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 March 2012, 02:21 GMT]
The Norwegian Minister for International Development and Environment, Mr Erik Solheim, who also handles the country’s peace facilitations in different parts of the world, has been asked to leave the government by the leadership of his Socialist Left (SV) Party in the coalition, according to media reports on Wednesday. He has been told to give way for younger talents from his party. The immediate reaction of the minister was strong disagreement with the decision of his party, but he refrained from commenting on his exit before an official announcement by his party. Mr Solheim is widely seen as Norway’s main player in the failed peace process in the island of Sri Lanka.
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Cannot expect solutions from NGOs tied to western bureaucracies: Kurdish Activist

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 20:54 GMT]
Stating that oppressed nations must enforce their own agendas and not rely on NGOs like ICG for solutions, Kurdish activist in UK, Mehmet Aksoy, argued that such NGOs were entrenched in bureaucracies, at a seminar on ‘State Repression and the Struggle for Self-determination: Strategies for Resistance’ organized by Campaign against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) on Sunday. The meeting at the University of London Union, London was held in association with diaspora organizations of Kurds, Balochs, Eezham Tamils, Basques, and Sindhis. The Eezham Tamil activists spoke about how the double standards in dealing with the Tamils deployed by the western governments gave a green signal for the GoSL to carry out its genocidal offensive in May 2009.
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De-miners locate remains of cluster bomb in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 20:32 GMT]
A container allegedly deployed by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) to carry cluster bomblets has been recovered recently by the de-miners of the humanitarian de-mining agency Halo Trust near a house at Thiruvaiuyaa'ru, 3 km east of Ki'linochchi town, media sources told TamilNet on Wednesday providing a photo displaying the container placed at the office of the Halo Trust. The markings on the case have been masked by painting, allegedly by the SLAF before the bombardment, a practice observed following the exposure of SLAF deploying banned weapons in 2009. Despite the systematic destruction of crucial evidences of war-crimes and genocide in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils following May 2009 by the Sri Lankan military, humanitarian de-miners have obtained parts of cluster bombs that were heavily used by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) during the war, the sources further said.
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US-led World Bank loans to Rajapaksa, fortifies Colombo-dominated structure

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 06:49 GMT]
While the Eezham Tamils are hoodwinked by the ploy and decoy of a US-resolution at Geneva, and while the plight of Eezham Tamils is considerably due to a Colombo-centric structure in the island, the US-dominated World Bank headquartered in Washington has approved a loan of US$ 213 million on Thursday for the development of Colombo city. The loan has been granted under the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) institution of the World Bank for the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project. This is the first IBRD loan to Sri Lanka. Colombo metro ‘development’ project is completely in the hands of war-crimes-accused presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who is also a US citizen. Immediately after the war the IMF bailed out the genocidal state by granting US$ 2600 million.
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China card misleads Indian public

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 06:38 GMT]
“The question that needs to be answered now is should the UPA government [in New Delhi] be more worried about alliance politics or China’s growing dominance in South Asia,” asks a news feature appeared in The Times of India on Tuesday. By taking a stand to vote against Sri Lanka at Geneva, the UPA government for the moment seems to have calmed the political furore. But bypassing one crisis India seems to find itself in a potentially bigger threat of leaving Sri Lanka in the hands of China, the feature said. If the thrust of the Times of India feature is to discourage India from acting on Sri Lanka by showing the China card, the media is misleading the Indian public, said an Eezham Tamil politician in the island.
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