SL voting concludes peacefully with 67% participation in North-East

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 August 2015, 15:50 GMT]
At least 67% of the voters in the North-East have taken part in the electoral race for 29 parliamentary seats in the parliament of the genocidal State of Sri Lanka where the Eezham Tamils are deprived of expressing their political aspiration through ballot after 1977 General Elections following the introduction of the so-called 6th Amendment in 1983. According to the initial details, the rate of participation was high at 75% in Trincomalee, which has been subjected to systematic Sinhala colonisation and demographic genocide over a long period of time.
Full story >>

STF deployed in large numbers in North-East on election day

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 August 2015, 07:03 GMT]
Commandos of Special Task Force (STF), which is a full-fledged military outfit, administratively organised under the SL Police, have been deployed in large numbers in Tamil-speaking Muslim dominated Kaththaan-kudi and Vaazhaich-cheanai towns and the suburbs in Batticaloa as well as at Chaayntha-maruthu in Ampaa'rai district. In North, the STF has been deployed in Vavuniyaa and Mannaar, news sources said. Voting is taking place smoothly in the North-East, news sources said. Initial results are expected around 11:00 p.m. local time.
Full story >>

US, Jewish outfits in Colombo behind deceptive ‘hybrid court’, TRC advocacy

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 August 2015, 11:56 GMT]
Human Rights activists in North and East told TamilNet this week that it was USA, more than any other countries, that has been promoting the South Africa inspired Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the so-called “hybrid mechanism” for transforming the international process into a domestic process lately in the island. The Colombo-based USAID and American Jewish World Service (AJWS) have been working behind the scene to campaign among Eelam Tamils to support these mechanisms, the sources told TamilNet. In the meantime, Northern Provincial Councillor M.K. Shivajilngam, in a letter sent to UN Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Saturday urged the UN Rights Chief to “take measures for proper international judicial process under the auspices of the UN.”
Full story >>

Occupying Buddhist monk, SL military erect ‘memorial stones’ at seized lands

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2015, 23:49 GMT]
The extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk and the occupying Sri Lankan military, who have seized the lands from Eezham Tamils at a strategic point linking North and East at Kokku'laay in Mullaiththeevu district, have hurriedly put up 7 ‘memorial stones’ for fallen Sinhala soldiers inside the premises where they intend to establish a Buddhist temple-centric economic establishment. The advice to erect memorial stones has come from the SL Defence Ministry in Colombo, informed sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet on Thursday. One of the Eezham Tamil land owners, Manikkathas Thirugnanasampanthar, when interviewed by TamilNet, complained that the Buddhist monk and the SL military were seeking all avenues to complicate the situation to their advantage in permanently seizing the property. The Tamil land-owners lack resources to legally confront the genocidal land grab, he said urging assistance.
Full story >>

Buddhist monk, SL military obstruct territorial contiguity of Tamil homeland at Kokku'laay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 June 2015, 23:48 GMT]
An extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk, Sri Thissapura Gunarathna Thero, who has occupied the lands of Eezham Tamils at Kokku'laay, located along the coastal Mullaiththeevu - Batticaloa Road, has deployed the occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers to proceed with the construction of the Vihara, completely ignoring an interim order issued last week by Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat to not to proceed with the construction of the ‘Sri Sambodhi Vihara’ until the dispute of lands occupied by the Incumbent monk is solved. The monk and the soldiers of the occupying army continue to the work despite the pressure and objection coming from the Eezham Tamils. The area surrounding Kokku'laay is the focus of Sinhala colonisation presently, as it is the key location for wedging the demographic contiguity of the North and East as well as direct communication between Mullaiththeevu and Trincomalee.
Full story >>

Batticaloa ignored in financial allocations for resettlement: EPC Councillor

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 June 2015, 22:45 GMT]
The SL Government in Colombo and the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) have failed to allocate financial resources to resettle the uprooted people in Batticaloa district, EPC Councillor R. Thurairatnam told media on Wednesday. The uprooted people from seven of fourteen divisions in the district have been struggling without proper assistance while Colombo and the EPC keep ignoring their needs despite repeated appeals, he said.
Full story >>

Snail's pace delivery of Indian Housing Scheme criticised

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 May 2015, 23:57 GMT]
Five years have elapsed since New Delhi announced what it called as the “flagship project of India´s developmental assistance,” in June 2010. Apart from the fact that the project is being delivered in snail's pace, many of the beneficiaries who had lost everything have been forced to undertake 700,000 rupees in loans to complete their houses as the money allocated for each house, 550,000 rupees, was not adequate, the families complain. Out of 41,512 houses allocated in the Northern Province, only 44% of the houses, numbering around 18,220 units have been completed so far.
Full story >>

Diaspora urged to document flow of narcotics into Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 May 2015, 15:37 GMT]
The Sri Lankan police will not be investigating to the fullest degree possible to assert what kind of narcotics were used by the gang rapists, who committed the brutal crime earlier this month, informed Tamil paramilitary operatives in Jaffna claim. The occupying Sri Lankan military has systematically deployed a number of Sinhala and Muslim narcotic sellers from South into Jaffna and Vanni over a long period of time. The Sri Lanka Navy sustains the flow of narcotics from India. Even the narcotic traffickers who earlier operated from Mannaar have shifted their activities to the islets off Jaffna in recent years. So-called rape drugs have been introduced in recent times, the Tamil paramilitary sources further say. The Chief Minister of Northern Province, Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, was also expressing the same message last week.
Full story >>

Mu’l’livaaykkaal Genocide Day marked in occupied Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 May 2015, 06:39 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan State has deployed more than 600 Sinhala riot control policemen Sunday evening at Mu’l’livaaykkaal in Mullaiththeevu, where Eezham Tamils were intentionally corralled in 2009 in a calculated and deliberate attempt to destroy as many Tamils as possible. The Northern Provincial Council, which passed a key resolution in February this year demanding the OISL UN mechanism in Geneva to investigate the claim of genocide, has invited all the Tamil parliamentarians and councillors from the province to attend the remembrance event at Mu’l’livaaykkaal East on Monday. However, students of Jaffna University, the Tamil National Peoples Front, civil society and religious dignitaries are proceeding with collective memorial meetings at several locations in the NorthEast on May 18.
Full story >>

SL Governor continues ‘LLRC agenda’ of Sinhalicisation in Northern Province

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 May 2015, 22:12 GMT]
The incumbent Sri Lankan Governor of Northern Province, HMGS Palihakkara, who was one of the eight panellists appointed by former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa to the so-called Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), has instructed the SL Government Agents in the Northern Province to channel more resources to the Sinhala settlements initiated during the Rajapaksa regime in the North, civil sources in Jaffna said. In the meantime, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) provincial councillor K.T. Linganathan, who is from Nedungkea'ni, Vavuniyaa, on Sunday said elected Tamil representatives were being refused access to an accelerated Sinhala colonisation scheme at Kokkachchaan-ku'lam, which has been Sinhalicised into Kalabogaswewa with 5,000 Sinhala settlers. The occupation, initiated during the previous regime, is now being expanded with new housing schemes.
Full story >>

SL CID wants to investigate journalists in Mannaar, Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 April 2015, 23:25 GMT]
Sri Lankan Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has instructed four Tamil journalists in Vavuniyaa and Mannaar on Sunday to appear in Demattagoda CID office on Wednesday for investigations, journalists in Mannaar said. The journalists were not informed on the subject matter of the investigations. The SL police in Mannaar and Vavuniyaa have issued the summons in Sinhala language to the Tamil journalists.
Full story >>

Investigate SL Minister Bathiyutheen along with Basil Rajapaksa, Muslims demand UNP

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2015, 16:34 GMT]
The people of Mannaar, Puththa'lam and Vavuniyaa have started to raise their voices questioning the credibility of the ‘new’ SL regime in Colombo, which has failed to arrest and investigate SL Minister of Industry and Commerce Mr Rishad Bathiyutheen over allegations of misappropriation of funds. Basil Rajapaksa, who was the former SL Minister of ‘Economic Development’ and Mr Bathiyutheen, who was the SL Minister for Resettlement, have appropriated large sums of the funds obtained for resettling the war-affected people, sections of Muslims in Puththa'lam and Mannaar accuse. At a meeting held in Temple Trees on Friday for UNP members from Northern and North-Western Provinces, Muslim members raised their voices against entertaining Bathiyutheen with a minister portfolio instead of investigating him together with Mr Basil Rajapaksa, who is now detained for investigations.
Full story >>

TNA, TNPF politicians address press conference in Geneva

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 March 2015, 22:02 GMT]
Northern provincial councillors Ananthy Sasitharan, M.K. Shivajilingam and TNPF Leader Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam addressed the press at the Geneva Press Club on Tuesday, briefing the audience on the various aspects of the structural genocide targeting the Eezham Tamil nation, which continued unabated despite the internationally orchestrated ‘regime change’ hatching Maithriplala Sirisena as the SL president. The Tamil politicians from the homeland also said that the procrastination in delivering justice to Tamils on the part of the international community in the deferral of the OISL report only emboldened the Sri Lankan State in its crimes against Tamils. Human rights activist and one of the judges in the People’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka, Maung Zarini also addressed the audience together with Tamil diaspora activists Sivakami Rajamanoharan from the UK and R Sri Ranjan from Canada.
Full story >>

ICP asks UN to confirm receiving NPC Genocide Resolution

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 March 2015, 08:57 GMT]
The Inner City Press on Tuesday questioned the UN Spokesperson in New York whether the UN would confirm receiving the Genocide Resolution passed by the Northern Provincial Council given to the UN Under-Secretary General Jeffrey Feltman who visited Jaffna on Monday. The spokesperson said: “I will”. On Wednesday, the ICP asked again that what would Mr Feltman do with the genocide resolution and the question went unanswered, according to ICP on Thursday. In ‘seeking truth’, when the Colombo government came out with the LLRC report that paves way for a structural genocide of Eezham Tamils, the report was ‘accepted’ by the UN as model for its Geneva deliberations. But, when the NPC came out with the resolution on investigating protracted genocide, the visiting UN official questioned the NPC Chief Minister, why this resolution now.
Full story >>

Protesters condemning OISL delay burn effigy of Sumanthiran

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 February 2015, 15:06 GMT]
Condemning the recently announced deferral of the OISL investigative report by the OHCHR in Geneva, voicing against the talk of UN converting the international investigation into a domestic one, and demanding immediate response on the fate of the thousands of missing persons, Women’s Organisation of Missing Persons' Families in Jaffna staged a protest on Saturday in front of the Bus Stand in the city. The protestors, numbering more than 250, blamed New Delhi and Washington for buying time and space for the Sri Lankan State, with the intention of shielding the crime of genocide. At the end of the protest, an effigy of nominated TNA parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran was burnt by a section of youth from the ITAK, who blamed the Colombo-centric elements within the TNA for collaborating with the global actors discarding the fundamental principles of the Tamil cause.
Full story >>

Tamil civil society seeks clarification from Zeid on reasons cited for OISL deferral

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 February 2015, 13:07 GMT]
The High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein needs to clarify as to how he envisages OISL receiving new information, given the fact that the Sri Lankan Government does not promise cooperation with the OISL inquiry. The possibility of the OISL inquiry receiving important new information will only be credible if the OISL team is given access to Sri Lanka and given full freedom and access to engage in evidence gathering. But, SL Foreign Minister’s letter to the High Commissioner dated 13 February 2015 does not promise engagement with OISL specifically, Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) said in a statement issued on Friday. “Why should the SL Government's willingness to act on present day human rights issues be a bar to releasing a report on accountability for the past,” the TSCF has further asked in the statement.
Full story >>

Don't delay OISL report, TCSF urges UN Rights Chief

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2015, 15:18 GMT]
The Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) on Thursday urged the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein to proceed with the release of the findings of the OISL inquiry and in the event of finding of serious crimes being committed recommend to the relevant UN agencies and member states of the UN to take all steps necessary for international criminal prosecutions to be initiated. The network of more than 100 civil activists from the North-East, also referred to the resolution passed by the Northern Provincial Council on the 10th of February 2015 also expressing disbelief in the credibility of domestic mechanisms delivering on accountability, truth and justice.
Full story >>

Paalai-meen-madu, Min-neariya

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 February 2015, 23:03 GMT]
The White Mullet fishpond

The fish reservoir
Full story >>

Poo-malarnthaan, Poop-pooththaan-ku'lam

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 January 2015, 03:01 GMT]
The flower-blossomed (pond or tank)

The flower-blossomed tank
Full story >>

SL military in Batticaloa continues to exploit families returned from Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 January 2015, 22:15 GMT]
The Sri Lankan State and its military intelligence in Batticaloa district continue to harass 1,080 families that survived the genocidal onslaught in Vanni in 2009. The families from Batticaloa returned to their native villages situated in 10 of the 14 Divisional Secretariat divisions in the district. The DS Secretaries in these divisions have also been instructed to refuse assistance to these families by the genocidal military. There is no change in the harassments on the ground despite the ‘changes’ taking place in Colombo, the families said. Even those affected by the recent floods have been neglected in the humanitarian assistance. Women-headed families continue to complain about targeted sexual harassments by the occupying Sinhala military in Batticaloa. Two of the 10 divisions where the families have resettled, Koa'ralaippattu South and Koa'ra'laip-pattu North are worst affected.
Full story >>