US State Department plays ‘ultimate saviour of genocidal Colombo’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 February 2011, 08:34 GMT]
Those who are guilty of war crimes naturally would try to blame others and would do everything to save their skins. If at all the LTTE was responsible of any war crimes, it is not there now. But the others responsible are roaming free. The US Asst Secretary of State Robert Blake often calls for ‘some’ accountability. Some accountability comes only when some of those internationally responsible for the crimes bow down first taking responsibility, and desist from further contribution to genocide and denial of independence to Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo, responding to Mr. Blake passing “large part of the responsibility” for the civilian casualty in the Vanni war on the LTTE. In a way Blake in his recent interview concedes that he and his government were a party to the war and thus a party to the war crimes, the writer points out.
Full story >>

TVPA: US's legal gift to victims of war-crimes, torture

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 February 2011, 03:47 GMT]
For new immigrants, America is the face of liberty, palladium of justice and the embodiment of the ideal of government under law, not under men. In this deliberative democracy, where the nation is perpetually arguing with its own conscience, debates spawn statutes that afford redress to victims who have suffered under despotic states around the world. The Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) is one such statute enacted in 1992 that enables U.S. citizens and non-citizens, whose relatives have suffered torture or extra-judicial killings, to assert a civil claim for damages. The recent legal action in the US by three Tamil plaintiffs in the US Federal Court against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse is based on the provisions in the TVPA.
Full story >>

Minni-ni'raignchaan

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 February 2011, 05:32 GMT]
The place abounding with Minni plant or creeper
Full story >>

Hasty Sinhala colonisation wedges north and east at Kokku’laay

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 January 2011, 12:40 GMT]
Within the last three weeks, 240 Sinhala families were hastily settled at Kokku’laay, a narrow strip of land, which is the only link of contiguity between the northern and eastern flanks of the country of Eezham Tamils in the island. This pivotal conspiracy of Colombo to demographically de-link the contiguity of the two Tamil provinces is being implemented by SL colonial governor in the north, Maj. Gen. Chandrasri and by SL ‘Rehabilitation’ minister Rishard Baddiudeen. Colombo lies that it is only ‘resettlement’ of Sinhalese, but except one or two families others are outsiders and the 43 original Tamil families resettled among Sinhalese now live in fear. The demographic wedging takes place at a time when New Delhi, advocating ‘home grown’ solution, is allegedly engaged in pressurizing Tamil politicians to commit to the de-link through their own mouth.
Full story >>

Thean-thookki

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 January 2011, 00:14 GMT]
The place of Thean-thookki trees
Full story >>

US legal effort to seek justice for son's killing - Dr Manoharan

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 January 2011, 00:17 GMT]
In an interview with the BBC Tamil service, Dr Kasippillai Manoharan, father of Ragihar, one of the five students extra-judicially executed by Sri Lanka's military at the Trincomalee beach on January 2nd, 2006, said that Sri Lanka's judicial system is not capable and unwilling to provide justice and bring closure to his son's death, hence his initiating a civil suit in the U.S. He further told the BBC, five years have passed since his son's brutal killing, and he will use all judicial instruments now available to him outside Sri Lanka to bring his son's killers to justice. Dr Manoharan said he is convinced that Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa has information on the killers but the President is unwilling to allow prosecution of military officers. Both Mr and Mrs Manoharan are prominent physicians who earlier practiced in Trincomalee.
Full story >>

EPDP area organizer recovered dead in Vadamaraadchi East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 January 2011, 22:20 GMT]
36-year-old Rasarathninam Sathees, Maruthangkea'ni area organiser of EPDP paramilitary-cum-political party was found dead Saturday morning near Aanaivizhunthaan cemetery near Vallipuram temple. The last news about Mr. Sathees was that he was on his way in a motorbike to organise an event to which EPDP leader and SL Minister Douglas Devananda was scheduled to attend at Ampan-kudaththanai. Sathees has been critical of EPDP leadership on its Maheswari Foundation business of excavating sand from Vadamaraadchi East. The EPDP has said Sathees was killed in a motorbike accident. Police said it was awaiting a medical report.
Full story >>

Kokkaddichchoalai massacre of 65 Tamil civilians remembered

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 January 2011, 12:13 GMT]
The twenty fourth annual remembrance of Kokkaddichchoalai massacre was held Friday in Batticaloa. The Sri Lanka Army, which is almost all Sinhalese, killed 65 Tamil civilians in a prawn farm located about 10 km off west of Batticaloa city on 28 January 1987. The SLA burnt down the farm and huts where Tamil laborers were staying.
Full story >>

Rajapaksa sued in US Courts over war-crimes, plaintiffs seek $30m in damages

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 January 2011, 20:05 GMT]
Three Tamil plaintiffs whose relatives were killed in three different incidents, all considered to be war-crimes, filed a civil case in the District Court of District of Columbia against Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa Friday at around 4:00 p.m, the attorney for the plaintiffs and former Assistant Deputy Attorney General of the US, Mr Bruce Fein, said in a release sent to the media in the U.S. The legal action was sponsored by Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group. The plaintiffs seek $30m as damages through six counts of violations of the Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA).
Full story >>

Military in Jaffna district to stay, says SLA Commander

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 January 2011, 01:31 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Commander, Maj. Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya, while addressing a news conference at the army headquarters in Colombo, said that the Sri Lanka's defence ministry will not move out the security forces stationed in the Jaffna peninsula, the state-run Dinamina newspaper said in a front page article Friday.
Full story >>

Solheim without ‘appetite’ envisages further involvement

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 January 2011, 12:19 GMT]
How could the Norwegian ‘peace’ broker Erik Solheim claim that he was not biased towards one party in the national conflict in the island of Sri Lanka, when he had approached the issue with a preconception that there had been no appetite in the world for separations, asked Stephen Pushparajah, a well-recognized Eezham Tamil in Norway, responding to Mr. Solheim’s reiteration Wednesday that there is “no international support for a separate Tamil state” and his envisagement on behalf of Norway to play a further “role as a dialogue partner both with the government and peoples of Sri Lanka, including exile communities.” It was this closed mind of the peace facilitators and the powers behind them that encouraged Rajapaksa to end the war with genocide and to continue the genocide even after the war, he further said.
Full story >>

South African author joins boycotting Sri Lanka literary festival

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 January 2011, 12:15 GMT]
Award winning South African novelist and playwright Damon Galgut, citing concerns over rights record of Sri Lanka, boycotted the literary festival in Galle, despite his arrival in the island this week, AFP reported Thursday. "It's an unfortunate situation for us that Damon heeded this ridiculous campaign," the festival curator Shyam Selvadurai told reporters. Nobel laureate Turkish-born Orhan Pamuk and his partner, fellow writer Kiran Desai, last week pulled out of the festival. Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, Reporters without Borders and a group of intellectuals led by Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy led a campaign to boycott the festival, saying that this was not the time to give legitimacy to Sri Lankan government. However, the US embassy in a press release Tuesday said that it welcomes the festival.
Full story >>

Father, son abducted in Vadamaraadchi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 January 2011, 12:05 GMT]
A recently released man from SLA internment camp in Vavuniyaa in his early 30s and resettled with his father at Polika'ndi in Vadmaraadchi, Jaffna, has been abducted, according to human rights activists in the region. A few days after the abduction of the son, his father too was abducted by armed men who came in a white van. The family of the abducted remains silent as they had been threatened not to complain or talk to media, the sources further said.
Full story >>

New Delhi’s insensitive defence approach triggers off trouble in Palk Strait

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 January 2011, 22:13 GMT]
New Delhi’s approach of safeguarding its defence interests by protecting a flawed state and regime in Sri Lanka is the root cause for recent escalation of trouble in either side of the Palk Strait, following defence agreements and secret protocols between Indian Defence Secretary and Colombo’s Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. New Delhi and Colombo, having strategic partnership in safeguarding establishments and in economic interests of corporations, were totally insensitive to the defence of the people living on either side of the Palk Strait, the historic shareholders of the waters. Instead of working for international recognition and justice to the national question of Eezham Tamils, New Delhi sitting on it and defending genocidal Colombo will invite further trouble in the coming days, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
Full story >>

IFRC President to visit Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 January 2011, 15:37 GMT]
The President of the International Federation of the Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Tadateru Konoé is scheduled to arrive Wednesday in Colombo to support the much needed flood operations and to celebrate volunteerism in the island. Mr. Konoé is scheduled to travel to the north, the east and the south of the island to assess the aftermath of floods and also to witness the work of the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society and the IFRC, according to a statement by the IFRC.
Full story >>

Angry public burns cut-outs, banners of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 January 2011, 07:52 GMT]
Angered by the politics and by an extravagant ritual, ‘Yaakam,’ by a Tamil Nadu chaamiyaar (Hindu religious person) Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, at a time when genocide and floods cause desperation, the Eezham Tamil public in Ka’luvaagnchikkudi in Batticaloa on Saturday burnt his cut-out images and banners. He went back to India the following day. Last Thursday, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar honoured the ‘social service’ of the SL president’s son Namal Rajapaksa at a function in Colombo, jointly organized by his outfit to observe the 2600-year of the birth of Buddha. On Saturday, at the ‘Mahaa Rudra Yaakam’ ritual, he honoured the paramilitary politicians S. Chandrakanthan, chief minister for the East and SL deputy minister V. Muralitharan by placing shawls on them.
Full story >>

USA opens American Corner in Jaffna, welcomes writers festival in Galle

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 January 2011, 01:22 GMT]
The US ambassador in Colombo Patricia A Butenis on Monday opened American Corner, a US outfit in Jaffna city, to function at the premises of a local NGO, Jaffna Social Action Centre. The Deputy High Commissioner of the Indian High Commission in Jaffna, SL colonial commander in Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Hathurusinghe, the Sri Lanka Government Agent in Jaffna and the mayor participated the diplomatic event that follows the opening of the Deputy High Commission of India in last November. Meanwhile, on the same day the US embassy in Colombo has also welcomed the controversial ‘Literary Festival’ in Galle and has donated money to bring students and teachers to the meet.
Full story >>

TAG to file civil case against Rajapakse in Texas Federal Court

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 January 2011, 02:37 GMT]
Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group advocating criminal legal action worldwide against Sri Lanka's alleged war-criminals, said in a press release issued today, that TAG's attorney is filing civil action against visiting Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse for damages under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA/TVPA) on behalf of three plaintiffs for the killings of 40,000 civilians in Mullaiththeevu in 2009, killing of 5 Trincomalee students in January 2006, and for the killing of 17 Action contre la faim (ACF) workers in August 2006. As calls to apprehend, investigate and prosecute Mahinda Rajapakse by rights organizations, US Congresspersons and diaspora Tamils have escalated, European Tamil diaspora youth are mobilizing protests in front of US embassies against Rajapakse's visit to the U.S.
Full story >>

Sri Lanka's commission to conclude "sittings"

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 14:25 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), the mandate of which was deliberately designed to whitewash Sri Lanka's war-crimes, and invitation to three leading premier human rights watchdogs Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and International Crisis Group (ICG) to attend LLRC's sittings was rejected due to LLRC "lacking the ability to advance accountability for war crimes," announced that the LLRC will "conclude its public sittings after the completion of sittings in the Ampara District in mid February" and would then would prepare its "final report that would be submitted to [Sri Lanka's] President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May," local media reported.
Full story >>

Militarization of policing announced in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 13:33 GMT]
Mounted on bicycles, the SL military in Jaffna will be ‘patrolling’ the streets. They may not enter houses but will be engaged in street checks. They will act in the same way they were functioning during war times. The military cannot be confined to barracks, announced the colonial commander of the occupying SL military, Maj. Gen. Mahinda Hathurusinghe in a meeting held in the district secretariat Saturday. The military has to be in alert as crimes may escalate in the wake of elections expected soon, he envisaged. Political observers in Jaffna said that the premeditated step aims to bring civil administration and civilians in Jaffna completely under the control of the occupying military. Colombo’s plan was mouthed through the Sri Lanka Government Agent (SLGA) Mrs Imelda Sugumar a few weeks ago, when she urged the Army to police Jaffna.
Full story >>