Pressure mounts on UNSG to make Sri Lanka war-crimes report public

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 April 2011, 00:05 GMT]
After the report on laws-of-war violations in Sri Lanka was submitted to the United Nation's Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, by a UN appointed 3-member panel of experts, prominent Rights organizations called on the UNSG to make the report public. While Ban's office said the UNSG will do so after Colombo has a chance to look at the report, the office did not set a time frame. Amnesty International said, "report on accountability for war crimes committed in the Sri Lankan armed conflict must be made public," and Human Rights Watch (HRW) added that "UNSG should use the findings to press for justice."
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‘Colombo’s ‘genocide’ of Tamil even in the nomenclature of New Year’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 April 2011, 11:54 GMT]
The traditionally known nomenclature, Tamil-Sinhala New Year or Sinhala-Tamil New Year, for the festival that falls on 14 April, has been in recent years twisted in a scheming way as Sinhala-Hindu New Year by genocidal Colombo and by chauvinistic sections of Sinhalese, to get rid of the word Tamil even in the secular festival of New Year, says a Tamil academic in Colombo. A festival has to be recognized in the way the people celebrate call it. Otherwise it is an insult. No one can deny that Eezham Tamils traditionally call the New Year that falls on April 14 as Thamizh Varudam, the months of it as Thamizh Maatham and the dates of it as Thamizh Thikathi. No one has ever used the word ‘Hindu’ and the word Hindu itself is only of roughly 125 years old in Eezham Tamil usage, the academic further said.
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Thinakkural vehicle hijacked in Colombo

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 April 2011, 09:09 GMT]
Three persons clad in police uniform hijacked a white van belonging to Thinakkural newspaper at Wall’s Lane in Modera, Monday 6:30 p.m., claiming that they were suspicious over documents that were in the van.
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Sinhala colonization threatens coastal areas of Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 April 2011, 03:56 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse led United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government has been implementing a planned scheme to settle Sinhalese persons in the southern coastal areas of Mu'l'lik-ku'lam, Thampapa'l'li in Ko'ndaichchi and areas along Madu road in the Mannaar district. Lands belonging to Tamil villagers in these areas are being grabbed to settle Sinhalese from the south, said Mr.Selvam Adaikalanathan, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Vanni district parliamentarian in a statement to media.
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UN served a ploy to surrender killings

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 April 2011, 12:47 GMT]
Around 18 hours before the surrender of the LTTE Political Head B Nadesan and other civil officials of the LTTE that ended in their killing by the Sri Lanka Army, the UN officials served in the island met in Vavuniyaa and made plans to receive them on behalf of the UN. The UN officials were very well aware of who were coming to surrender, said a high-ranking UN worker who was involved in the arrangements to TamilNet on Monday. All the UN officers who served in the island at the time of the war are either no more in UN service or have left the island. The UN was used as a ploy in arranging and enacting the ‘surrender’ and then to kill the LTTE officials, Tamil political observers said. Vijay Nambiar, chief of staff to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, was in Colombo at the time.
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Seine-net beaches in Mullaiththeevu distributed to Sinhala fishermen

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 April 2011, 15:27 GMT]
Traditional seine-net beaches (Karaivalai-paadu) of Eezham Tamils in the coastal tracts of Mullaiththeevu district are grabbed and distributed among Sinhala fishermen from the south by a team of SL fisheries officials from the south. The excuse is that the local Tamil fishermen in the LTTE controlled areas did not register their seine-net stretches with the SL fisheries ministry. 12 stretches in A’lampil, 8 stretches in Thoo’ndaavil and 5 stretches in Chemmalai are thus grabbed and given to the Sinhalese. The Mullaiththeevu Government Agent as well as the district fisheries director had no knowledge of what the Sinhala officials from the south were doing. Meanwhile, Sinhala fishermen in Kalpiddi in the south, after seeing Tamil Nadu trawlers in their waters, are meeting on Monday to mobilise ‘Jaffna-Sinhala’ corporation against ‘Indian poaching.’
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Blake sets wrong precedence in committing against democratic wishes of Tamil nation

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 April 2011, 19:19 GMT]
The US Asst Secretary of State Robert O Blake has set a wrong precedence by choosing to respond to a chauvinistic Sinhala perspective appeared in The Island editorial that “the United States does not support separatism but rather a united, peaceful and democratic Sri Lanka.” In doing so, Blake insults the democratic mandate of the nation of Eezham Tamils and encourages a terrorist state that openly commits genocide on one hand and blatantly denies even an iota of its human rights abuses on the other. The rhetoric of Blake, ‘peace, democracy and united Sri Lanka’, is a historically proven bundle of contradictions that always went against the nation of Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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HRW demands accountability for wartime disappearances

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 April 2011, 05:19 GMT]
Human Rights Watch, a New York based rights organization, said in a press release issued Friday that "[t]hrough interviews with relatives of the missing and witnesses, published testimony, and media reports, Human Rights Watch found that more than 20 people who were taken into army custody between May 16 and 18, 2009, appear to have been forcibly disappeared. Most of them are known to have been detained in the Vadduvaakal area, just south of the strip of land in northeastern Sri Lanka where the final battle between the LTTE and government forces occurred. At the time, the area was controlled by the Sri Lankan army’s 59 Division," and demanded that Colombo "should account for everyone who was taken into custody."
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Eastern Tamil, Muslim nurses barred from voting in Nursing Council elections

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 April 2011, 00:44 GMT]
Majority of Tamil and Muslim nurses in the eastern province have their voting rights violated in the election of office bearers of the Sri Lanka Nurses Council scheduled to take place on Saturday in Colombo, according to provincial nurses’ union sources. 11 members of the 19 member Nurses Council are to be elected at Saturday election.
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Heavy competition in capturing Tamil media in the island

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 April 2011, 00:42 GMT]
Shares of a leading all-island Tamil daily, Thinakkural, published simultaneously in Colombo and Jaffna, were for ‘sale’ recently for hundreds of millions, and the competitors ranged from a former LTTE bigwig in the Rajapaksa camp and a Sinhala media house to circles close India. Ultimately, another leading Tamil daily in the island, The Virakesari, succeeded in purchasing 41 percent of the shares for 240 million rupees, informed media circles in Colombo said. Meanwhile, Sri Lankan state-owned media establishment Lake House has started publishing a Jaffna edition of its Tamil daily Thinakaran. Colombo soon plans to bring out this edition of Thinakaran using the facilities of Eezhanaatham, the only daily that was earlier coming from Vanni and the building of which is now occupied by the SL colonial military.
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Blake sees ‘people to people’ ties through militaries

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 April 2011, 13:36 GMT]
The US Asst Secretary of State Robert O Blake, giving testimony before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday said that the value of the skyrocketing US arms sales to India over the last decade “is not just the dollar figure – they both represent and strengthen deeper levels of cooperation between our two militaries and facilitate building people-to-people ties.” On Sri Lanka Blake said: “Positioned directly on the shipping routes that carry petroleum products and other trade from the Gulf to East Asia, Sri Lanka remains of strategic interest to the U.S. An important contributor to global peacekeeping operations, Sri Lanka stands poised to be a capable and willing partner to effectively combat violent extremism, trafficking and piracy, and thereby help to ensure the maritime security of the region.”
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‘SL forces want Emergency extended for colonizing East’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 April 2011, 12:11 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance MP for Batticaloa, Pakiaselvam Ariyanethiran, Tuesday night told media that Sri Lankan forces were staging search operations in the three districts of Eastern Province to justify Colombo's “need” to extend the Emergency in the island. The Sri Lanka Army with the SL Police on Tuesday launched major cordon and search operation simultaneously in all the three districts of the Eastern province for the first time since the end of Vanni war. Meanwhile, Tamil residents of border villages in the East said the SLA had put up new road blocks and had issued warnings asking for details of those who were protesting against Sinhalese being settled along the border villages.
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Tamil national activist attacked in London

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 April 2011, 19:09 GMT]
Two unidentified men attacked Eezham Tamil nationalist R. Soosaipillai, known as Thanam, in front of his house in London Monday night. Mr. Thanam, a veteran activist, was one of the key persons who supported the successful re-mandate of Vaddukkoaddai Resolution in UK that democratically reaffirmed the Eezham Tamil aspiration for an independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam in January 2010. He served as a mobilisation coordinator in the British Tamil Forum (BTF) during the crucial time 2008 – 2010. Thanam, who once served the infrastructure of the Tamil national cause for 21 years, is also one who grasped the transition of the times with perception. The 47-year-old activist has been a force behind major Tamil public events in UK including the Heroes Day remembrances. In his capacity, he has always been in touch with the law and order agencies of UK.
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Tamil civilian reported missing in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 April 2011, 19:11 GMT]
Sivakuru Ganeshalingam, 47, resident of Periyakallaaru has been reported disappeared since March 23, according to complaints made by his relatives with the Batticaloa Police, sources in Batticaloa said. Ganeshalingam left Batticaloa to Colombo on that day and his relatives have lost contact with him, the complaint states.
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Vi'laan, Divula-pitiya, Jool-pallama

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 April 2011, 21:22 GMT]
The place of wood apple trees
The high ground of wood apple trees
The low ground of wood apple trees
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JDS calls for immediate release of arrested Sri Lanka journalist

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 April 2011, 12:22 GMT]
Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), an group of Tamil and Sinhalese exiled journalists from Sri Lanka condemned the "outrageious arrest" of journalist and news editor of Lankaenews website, Benett Rupasinghe, and called for his immediate release. Rupasinghe was arrested on March 31 by Sri Lanka Police which the JDS called "another act of intimidation agaisnt media freedom."
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US initiated ‘contact groups’ to militarily weaken Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 April 2011, 12:04 GMT]
Two international ‘contact groups', one each to check LTTE fund-raising and arms purchases were initiated by the U.S, in the first half of 2006, says The Hindu article Friday, based on the US cables accessed by The Hindu through Wikileaks. A cable sent in August 2006 from the US Embassy in New Delhi discloses the composition of the contact groups for the first time: representatives of Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States, The Hindu feature further said.
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ITAK local councilors of North, East to take oath in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 April 2011, 06:55 GMT]
76 councilors of the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Katchchi (ITAK) elected to fifteen local authorities and Chairmen and Vice Chairmen of twelve local authorities are scheduled to take oaths on April 10 Sunday morning at Trincomalee Town Hall in the presence of Mr.R.Sampanthan, parliamentary group leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the president of Ilankai Thamil Arasu Katchchi (ITAK). ITAK is the major constituent of the TNA. Earlier TNA decided to have the event on March 31 but it was later postponed to April 10 enabling Sampanthan to attend the event, party sources said.
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Thousands of SL troops round up resettled villages in Jaffna, Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 March 2011, 06:50 GMT]
Thousands of occupying troops of Sri Lanka Army rounded up the village Uduththu’rai in Vadamaraadchi East and are engaged in search operation since Thursday early morning. A similar operation is simultaneously being undertaken in Mullaiththeevu also. Vanni IDPs were recently resettled in both the places. The operation is said to be following an alleged incident in which some SL troops who went on a boat are missing in the sea and only their boat came ashore.
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Eastern University closed down indefinitely

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 March 2011, 03:17 GMT]
While the Tamil Youth Organisation in UK was engaged in an awareness campaign for boycotting genocidal Sri Lanka in international sports, a cricket-related euphoria of the Sinhala students in the Eastern University of Sri Lanka in Batticaloa resulted in attack on Tamil students and indefinite closure of the university. Inebriated by euphoria of Sri Lanka’s victory in the cricket semi finals that took place in Colombo, the Sinhala students of the Batticaloa University entered into the hostel of the Tamil students and attacked them on Tuesday midnight. Following the incident, the SL police at the university check post that entered into the campus without permission from the Vice Chancellor also started attacking the Tamil students. As Tamil students started boycotting classes on Wednesday the university is closed down indefinitely.
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