Sinhala contractor scoops 500 acres of prehistoric gravel in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 September 2013, 04:36 GMT]
While a section of 400 Tamil families, who had sought refuge in Tamil Nadu 23 years ago in 1990 from Parappuk-kadanthaan village in Maanthai West in Mannaar, are trying to come back to their village, 1,500 acres of their lands have been appropriated with the backing of an SL minister and 500 acres of these lands have been illegally sold to a Sinhala trader from South, who has been scooping gravel deposits in the village. The gravel deposits are part of a geological feature called Ira'nai-madu formation that bears crucial evidence for prehistoric human habitation in the island. As such gravel deposits are mostly found on floodplains, scooping the gravel could cause environmental disasters related to drainage, cautioned the local people living with the environment and knowledgeable about the consequences of gravel scooping.
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Colombo occupies 5,000 acres of Tamil land in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 September 2013, 23:14 GMT]
Following a recent Gazette notification by Colombo's Minister of ‘Land and Land Development’, a large area of 4,857 acres of lands are being acquired ‘for use of the government’. The area consists of private and public lands located in 8 villages. Most of the lands being seized by the occupying SL State are private lands belonging to Tamils. Several centuries old historic Aathi Koanesvaram koayil is situated at Koayiladi in Thampalakaamam village.
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Buddhist vihara being constructed at Tamil village in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 September 2013, 23:54 GMT]
A group of Buddhist monks and Buddhist extremist elements from the South are constructing a Buddhist Vihara in the Tamil village of Thangka-vealaayutha-puram in Ampaa'rai district. The occupying Sri Lankan military is assisting the monks, news sources in Thirukkoayil told TamilNet.
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UN faces political pressure from powers that withhold casualty figures: Jude Lal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 September 2013, 23:21 GMT]
While the UN Security Council is the most decisive political organ, why did the US chose to move the UN Human Rights Commission and that too avoiding any reference to UN's own Expert Panel report, questions Dr. Jude Lal Fernando, one of the organizers of the Peoples' Tribunal on Sri Lanka held in Dublin in 2010, explaining the ‘tension’ found within the UN human rights and humanitarian system. Observing two reactions by the UN system, he also details how the casualty figures were intentionally withheld by major powers during war to let the SL State to complete its genocidal onslaught. Even now, the powers sitting on the issue at the UN are exerting political pressure on the system to control and to ‘interpret’ the vast pool of evidence that is against the SL State as well as themselves, Dr Fernando said in a video interview to TamilNet on Saturday.
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Borella

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 September 2013, 18:06 GMT]
(The place of) pebbles, gravel or gritty soil
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‘Military presence in North-East worrying’: Navi Pillay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 August 2013, 21:09 GMT]
“I was concerned to hear about the degree to which the military appears to be putting down roots and becoming involved in what should be civilian activities, for instance education, agriculture and even tourism,” Ms Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at a press conference in Colombo on Saturday. Speaking at the conclusion of her visit to the island, Ms Pillay said that that the military presence in the North-East seemed “much greater than is needed for strictly military or reconstruction purposes,” also referring to the vulnerability of women to sexual abuse. While sympathizing with the spirit of the address of Ms Pillay, who has been at the receiving end of vulgar verbal abuse from Sinhala nationalists, Tamil activists in the island expressed regret that she was still conferring legitimacy to the GoSL’s genocidal blueprint called LLRC.
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Australia’s refugee policy draws flak from UNHRC, activists

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 August 2013, 20:26 GMT]
“Australia’s indefinite detention of 46 recognized refugees on security grounds amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, inflicting serious psychological harm on them,” the UNHRC said in a statement last week. The statement further said that Australia should release the refugees, of whom 42 are Tamils from Sri Lanka, who have been held for at least two and a half years, and offer them compensation and rehabilitation. Speaking to TamilNet on the UNHRC observations, Trevor Grant, veteran journalist and spokesperson for the Tamil Refugee Council, said the judgement vindicated the strong belief of many advocates and lawyers that indefinite detention was not only illegal but intolerable in a just society. However, the Australia’s Coalition still maintains a hardline approach against refugees.
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Norwegian ambassador in Colombo bares agenda in Oslo

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 August 2013, 00:58 GMT]
Norway, once hoodwinked the nation of Eezham Tamils with an ‘internal self-determination’ formula in the Oslo Declaration, now bares its deceptive face by talking about ‘development’ of Tamils with diaspora ‘partnership’ within a ‘Sri Lankan minority’ formula and the PC model. While the Norwegian ambassador in Colombo Ms Grete Løchen was baring the agenda in Oslo on Monday, the Tamil participants looped in were not only confirmed revisionists, habitual upholders of the Sri Lankan State and tangent-polity activists, but were also the representatives of the NCET, Tamil Women Organisation, a TCC outfit and the TECH-Norway. If the agenda can’t be perceived with its nuances and rejected outright at the face of Norway, the diaspora will prove only its impotence, commented Tamils for alternative politics in the island.
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Tamils stopped at gunpoint, Sinhalese demonstrate during Pillay visit to Trinco

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 August 2013, 04:09 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army in Trincomalee visited all the camps where uprooted Tamil civilians were staying and threatened them that they would be facing dire consequences if they were to take part in awareness gatherings anywhere in the district during the visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Navanetham Pillay. The SL police didn’t allow local media reporters to any of the venues where Ms Pillay was interacting with the people and the civil society. Meanwhile, the SL military deployed its paramilitary and intelligence operatives to organize a protest giving placards portraying that LTTE was the main culprit in ‘abducting’ people. The Sinhala extremist JVP and JHU elements were also behind bringing false victims to the stage-managed protest held in front of the District Secretariat.
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‘You may whisper in my ear’, Pillay told Mullai people

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 August 2013, 02:55 GMT]
UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navi Pillay, who met a section of the uprooted people of Champoor in Trincomalee on Wednesday, told them that she was aware of their plight. On Tuesday, Ms Pillay, who visited Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal in Mullaith-theevu sympathized with the victims struggling to resettle amidst the prevailing SL military occupation and the ongoing structural genocide. Noticing fear in the people in speaking out in the presence of the surrounding SL military personnel clad in civil, she told them that they may whisper in her ear. Her direct contact with the victims in Vanni and Trincomalee comes after criticism on the conduct of the UN officials, who in Jaffna on Tuesday had opted to take her away through the backdoor following ‘advice’ by the SL authorities, preventing her meeting with around one thousand parents and victims of the missing people at the Jaffna Public Library.
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Chempi-kaladdi, Chempan-ku’ndu

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 August 2013, 01:07 GMT]
The stone outcrop terrain of Chempai plants
The natural pond found with Chempai plants
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Navi Pillay meeting Tamils in Jaffna ended in eyewash, say Tamil activists

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 August 2013, 01:04 GMT]
The UN Human Rights Commissioner Navanetham Pillay met a group of 15 Tamil rights activists and civil representatives at the UN office in Jaffna. While she spent more time with the Sri Lankan State officials, the independent Tamil activists were given just 90 seconds each to present their cases under 8 different themes that included the cases of missing persons, detention of prisoners, land grab, colonization and attacks on religious institutions.
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SL forces chase out Tamils waiting to see Navi Pillay in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 August 2013, 00:47 GMT]
Sri Lankan military intelligence and SL policemen brutally attacked and chased out a group of 30 families and relatives of missing persons, who had gathered near Paranthan junction in Ki’linochchi district on Tuesday to express their message to the visiting UN Human Rights Commissioner Ms Navanetham Pillay. The families had come as they were told that Navi Pillay would be traveling through A9 on a visit to Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal from Jaffna. Commenting on the nature of the public response to Ms Pillai’s visit to the North, observers said that had Ban Ki Moon come, people wouldn’t have cared or even if they had gathered they wouldn’t have shed tears but would have responded differently.
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Pothuwa-gonna, Divul-gane

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 August 2013, 23:38 GMT]
The grassland forest/ The grass corner.
The wood-apple jungle/ The corner of wood-apple trees.
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Navi Pillay taken through backdoor to avoid public in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 August 2013, 07:01 GMT]
Many among more than a thousand people gathered in front of the Jaffna Public Library on Tuesday morning to personally convey their feelings to the visiting UN Human Rights Commissioner Ms Navi Pillay, started shedding tears when they found out that Ms Pillay was taken away, through the backdoor, by the Sri Lankan officials. The gathering that was mostly the kith and kin of the people missing in the war and the aftermath, was told by the organisers of the visit to peacefully assemble in front of the Jaffna Public Library so that Ms Pillay would be seeing them. Some of the people had even travelled from the South to convey their bereavement. But, after meeting the SL Colonial Governor, SL Government Agents of the districts in the North and SL-run provincial council heads of departments at the Public Library hall, Ms Pillay was led through the backdoor. 
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Even constitutional restructure is no solution: Kasi Ananthan

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 August 2013, 00:30 GMT]
A constitution, even after any reform or restructure, is meaningless in the context of the island Ilangkai (Sri Lanka), as the single State for the whole island is not disposed towards honouring any constitution. In a two-nation island, where one nation is dominant, there are no safeguards as in the case of the multi-nation India under one federal constitution. There is no point in India and the USA harping on the 13 Amendment under a unitary constitution or any other constitutional changes. The 13th Amendment is not a part of Sri Lankan constitution but a part of Sri Lankan conspiracy. The TNA leadership announcing abandonment of Tamil Eelam is the greatest treachery in our liberation struggle, said poet and veteran Tamil political activist Mr Kasi Ananthan in an interview to TamilNet this week.
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Removing gender bias in social institutions

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 August 2013, 00:02 GMT]
After a hundred years of its establishment, the Young Men Hindu Association (YMHA) of Thirunelveali in Jaffna proposes to do away with gender bias in its membership and name. In a letter to all lovers of Thirunelveali and the YMHA on Sunday, the current president of the YMHA, Mr S. Muthulingam was seeking their views on enrolling women as members and changing the name of the institution into Hindu Youth’s Association. It is high time that we do away with the idea of gender segregation not only in social institutions like the YMHA but also in our educational institutions like the Jaffna Hindu College. The Victorian outlook of religion, society and education that came with British colonialism has long outlived the times, commented social activists in Jaffna.
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Fundamentals diluted behind the scene in Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 August 2013, 19:09 GMT]
An elitist group of Tamil lawyers and law academics who have become entrenched in the Colombo-centric system, are collaborating with a section of the foreign Establishments in making Tamil demands ‘non-descript’. Removing the notion of Nation, they talk about self-determination that is not self-determination. In their terminology, ‘Nation’ becomes ‘people’ or ‘nationality’; ‘traditional homeland’ becomes ‘historical habitation’; and ‘Tamil homeland’ becomes ‘contiguous and preponderantly Tamil Speaking Northern and Eastern Provinces’. In an anti-thesis to Tamil Sovereignty Cognition approach based on historical sovereignty, earned sovereignty and remedial sovereignty, they talk about ‘shared sovereignty’, writes an informed Tamil activist in Colombo.
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Trust only the peoples of the Palk Bay: Jaffna fishermen leader

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 August 2013, 08:01 GMT]
The perspective of the coastal people of North is that the States of Sri Lanka and India collaborate in the destruction of Eezham Tamils, said Mr N.V. Subramaniam, a fisheries society leader from Maathakal in Jaffna, who is taking part in the Northern Provincial Council elections representing the Tamil National Alliance. Based on his experience in the grassroots activism and participation in the negotiations and meetings held in India and in Colombo, Mr Subramaniam said the coastal people of North had lost all hope in negotiating with the Establishments of both the States. Instead, the only hope for the fishermen now is strengthening the understanding between the fishermen societies across the Palk Strait and also with the fishermen from South in a people-to-people discourse.
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Tamil Nadu students burn 13th Amendment, call for referendum

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 August 2013, 21:17 GMT]
Tamil students burnt symbolic copies of the 13th Amendment at a protest at Va'l'luvar Koaddam, Chennai on Sunday, urging that only an internationally monitored referendum could provide a solution to the national question of the Eezham Tamil nation. The protestors also called for the expulsion of genocidal Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth.
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