‘13th Amendment, PC system cannot provide political solution to Tamils’: TNPF

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 July 2013, 13:14 GMT]
Reiterating their position that “the recognition of the distinct sovereignty of the Eelam Tamil Nation and our right to self-determination is non-negotiable,” the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) in a statement released on Saturday asserted that the 13th Amendment and the Provincial Councils system, rejected by the Eezham Tamil nation way back in 1987, “can never play any part of a process to reach a political solution today.” The statement released on the 30th anniversary of Black July, further said “if there is a firm resolve of the Eelam Tamil Diaspora to be true to this righteous cause at all occasions and venues, we in the homeland believe that it can ultimately serve to reinvigorate the Tamils in the homeland to mobilize and democratically counter the machinations of the Genocidal intent of the Sinhala Buddhist state.”
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Sinhala archaeology focuses operation in North-East corridor

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 July 2013, 09:07 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Postgratuate Institute of Archaeology (PGIAR), based in Colombo and exclusively staffed by Sinhalese, has recently undertaken a special project called “Yan Oya Middle Basin” research for the years 2011-2015, which will be focussing on a region that links the Northern and Eastern provinces of the country of Eezham Tamils in the island. Yan Oya is a river that originates in the North Central Province, follows the boundary of the Eastern Province and enters into the sea at Pul-moaddai that links the North and East. The selection of this location for intense archaeological research by an exclusive Sinhala team, go hand in hand with the accelerated Sinhala-Buddhicisation of the region, observers said, citing a State-sponsored Buddhist enclave coming up at Pulmoaddai in 500 acres of land.
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Ku'lakkaadu, Vaarivanam

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 July 2013, 00:09 GMT]
The jungle of the pond
The tract of ponds and jungles
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Another link to North and East sieged by Sinhala Buddhists

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 July 2013, 23:40 GMT]
A place called Kanthasaami-malai in Thennai-maravadi village, along the narrow border of the Trincomalee and Mullaiththeevu districts of the North and East provinces of the country of Eezham Tamils, is under siege by the Sinhala-Buddhist monks, who have arrived from the South. They claim that Kanthasaami-malai area belongs to a historic Buddhist Vihara and want about one hundred acres of land to be handed over to them. They have made ‘representations’ to the occupying Sri Lanka Army to get these lands for a new construction of the so-called Purana (ancient) Buddhist Vihara. While such claims are made for the interior landward link at Thennaimaravadi, a Buddhist monk from the South has already appropriated 500 acres of land at the coastal link at Pul-moaddai for a Buddhist enclave. The land was surveyed for him by the genocidal State’s Survey Department.
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‘US-British imperialism helps Sinhala colonization of Tamil homeland’

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 July 2013, 21:32 GMT]
The help of US and British imperialism assists the Sinhala state’s colonization of Tamil areas, observes a solidarity statement by Europe based Kurdish and Turkish diaspora youth organizations. Released on the occasion of Black July, the statement in German language, signed by 4 Left-leaning youth organizations and published on the official website of the German based Kurdish youth organization the Union of Students from Kurdistan (YXK), besides condemning the massacre in July 1983 also traced the continuity of genocide to May 2009 and after, stating that the rulers “had no interest in the scheduled peace process and negotiations”.
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Colombo steps up Sinhalicisation of Pulmoaddai to wedge North and East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 July 2013, 22:45 GMT]
Tamil-speaking Muslims living in their village of Pulmoaddai, situated near the administrative border to the districts of Trincomalee in the East and Mullaiththeevu in the North, now face appropriation of their lands by Sinhala Buddhist monks who have come from Hambantota in the South, news sources in the East said. Local Muslim leaders fear that the Sri Lankan State and the occupying Sri Lanka Navy are planning to colonize their traditional Muslim village with Sinhalese, outnumbering them. Pulmoaddai is situated on the edge of strategic Ma'nal-Aa'ru, which has been recently carved out as a Sinhala division to wedge the North from the East. Pulmoddai also has one of the richest deposits of Titanium ore in the world. The sands in the area contain ilmenite and rutile, raw materials for manufacturing Titanium Dioxide.
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Manmohan Singh gives half-baked reply to Jayalalithaa on Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 July 2013, 19:31 GMT]
Responding to a letter sent by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, J. Jayalalithaa, Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh said that India has “long advocated the creation of an environment in Sri Lanka in which all communities, particularly the Sri Lankan Tamils, are masters of their own destiny within the framework of a united Sri Lanka.” The half-baked reply does not address any of the issues raised by Ms. Jayalalithaa’s July 14 letter. Instead, it only shows the adamant attitude of the Indian centre in forcing the genocide-affected Eezham Tamil nation to “reconcile” with a fundamentally oppressive Sri Lankan state. The text of Dr. Singh’s letter was released to the public as part of a press statement by the Tamil Nadu government on Thursday.
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Diaspora Tamils remember Black July

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 July 2013, 23:27 GMT]
Tamils in the diaspora took part in events in countries in the West on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Black July massacres of 1983 on Tuesday. Black July commemorations are held by Tamils across the world every year to remember over 4000 Tamils who perished in a pogrom organized by the UNP regime in 1983 in Sri Lanka. As a generation passes with three decades since the horrific event, a general opinion among new generation activists across the diaspora is that had the International Community positively intervened in favour of the Eezham Tamil nation recognizing the genocidal intent of the Sinhala rulers of unitary Sri Lanka, the genocide in Mu’l’livaaykkaal could have been averted.
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Albright-Williamson report paves way for further injustice to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 July 2013, 15:44 GMT]
The “United States and R2P” report authored by Madeleine K. Albright, former US Secretary of State, and Richard S. Williamson, former US presidential special envoy to Sudan, paves way for further injustice to the genocide-affected nation of Eezham Tamils, by harping on “national reconciliation” of the genocidal State of Sri Lanka and by harping on helping the genocidal government to respond to the needs of “all communities” in the so-called country, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The deliberate flaw in the report stems from the stand of not recognising the genocide in the war and the genocidal intent of the Sinhala State decades before the war and the years following the war, the activists said.
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‘IC neglected responsibility to take timely action in Sri Lanka’: Report

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 July 2013, 19:02 GMT]
In face of the mounting civilian casualties between January and May 2009 in the island of Sri Lanka, the international community “did little beyond issuing statements of concern” and “neglected its responsibility to take timely action when it was apparent that violations of humanitarian law were taking place”, states a report authored by Madeleine K. Albright, former US Secretary of State and Richard S. Williamson, former US presidential special envoy to Sudan. For Sri Lanka, the report lays emphasis on the IC supporting a “national reconciliation” process. The report titled “The United States and R2P: From Words to Action” released on Tuesday, analysing cases of Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, Syria, Sudan and South Sudan, Congo, and Sri Lanka, provides general recommendations for US policy vis-a-vis R2P. Tamil activists have taken a different perspective on R2P’s role in Sri Lanka.
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UN Sri Lanka tribunal will avoid ICC jurisdictional issues, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 July 2013, 00:43 GMT]
The United Nations General Assembly (GA) must immediately establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Sri Lanka (ICTSL) as a "subsidiary organ" under U.N. Charter Article 22, and organized along the lines of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was established by the Security Council, said Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in International Law, while commenting on the appointment of Samantha Power as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and advocating that Ms Power should follow the leadership of Madeline Albright who spearheaded the setting up of the ICTY. This will avoid the jurisdictional hurdles in the ICC taking up criminal matters related to a non-signatory state, Boyle added.
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Colombo engages in widespread Sinhalicisation of Mannaar: TNA-MP

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 July 2013, 23:38 GMT]
The Colombo government is actively engaged in colonising around 6000 Sinhala families in the Mannaar district of the Northern Province, including its coastal areas, while it is not taking care of the resettlement of the Tamils and Muslims displaced by the war, accused Mr Selvam Adaikkalanathan, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian for Mannaar. The TNA may have to seek judicial remedy if the government is bent on bringing in Sinhalese without resettling people affected by the war, he further said. The TNA parliamentarian should first have the guts to mobilise the people to ask the USA, Co-Chairs, India and the UN that have asked the people to come into the barbed-wire camps, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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Precedence setting determination by British court on SL Country guidance: legal activist

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 July 2013, 23:19 GMT]
In an interview to TamilNet, Mr. Geetharthanan Kulasegaram, a Tamil legal activist based in the UK who assisted one of the solicitor firms in preparing material for UK’s Sri Lanka country guidance case, elaborated on the significance of the determination by the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the Upper Tribunal in UK. Initially, the Home Office in the UK had tried to paint a picture of normalcy in Sri Lanka, basing on the findings of the report by Norway based Landinfo report. This was challenged and the recent ruling takes note of the ongoing oppression of Tamils in the island, especially ex-LTTE cadres.
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Wigneswaran should not weaken diaspora and Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 July 2013, 17:15 GMT]
Hindustan Times carrying out an interview of CV Wigneswaran on Friday highlighted his statement against Tamil Nadu polity in the title. The highlight shows the priority in New Delhi’s polity and media in diffusing and detracting the uprising in Tamil Nadu for the independence of Eezham Tamils that is denied primarily by New Delhi and Washington. Hindustan Times just follows The Hindu, The Times of India and The New Indian Express in this regard. The gang up of Indian’s mainstream media behind the agenda of the genocidal partners has to be vigilantly perused by the peoples’ polity in Tamil Nadu as it is a re-enactment of the times that led to the Mu’l’livaaykkal genocide, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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Activists discuss strategies of resistance at London event

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 July 2013, 23:33 GMT]
Activists involved with different contemporary political and social movements came together on Thursday at an event in London to discuss strategies of resistance in the 21st Century. Titled ‘Modern Day Protest’, the event was chaired Hugh Muir, columnist with the Guardian, and saw the panellists, with experience in different spheres and types of activism, engage in lively debate and sharing their views on the models of effective activism to be considered especially in the West. Eezham Tamil activist Gobi Sivanthan’s argument that non-violent direct action was a very effective strategy to be pursued in the West given the level of criminalization of activists and protests was taken up well by the participants.
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Can Power, silent on Sri Lanka genocide, redeem herself in UN, asks Boyle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 July 2013, 00:50 GMT]
The Director of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights of the U.S. National Security Council, Samantha Power, who has been nominated for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been attending a Senate hearing on the nomination this week where she has been forcefully advocating action to stop “the grotesque atrocities being carried out by the Assad regime,” Washington media reported. Professor Boyle, pointing out Power's conspicuous silence during the killing of Tamil civilians reaching genocidal proportions by the Sri Lanka military, said that Power now has a chance to "redeem" herself by establishing an International Criminal Tribunal for Sri Lanka, as did her predecessor Madeline Albright to the former Yugoslavia.
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EU parliamentarians request GoSL to ensure accountability

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 July 2013, 15:16 GMT]
A delegation of European Union parliamentarians visiting Sri Lanka requested Colombo to “ensure accountability in the face of what the UN calls "credible allegations" of up to 40,000 civilians killed in the final battles in 2009” the AFP reported on Friday. "On the physical side in terms of roads and reconstruction, the progress is very, very visible, but a lot more needs to be done on political issues," the AFQ quoted the delegation head, UK’s Jean Lambert. Ms Lambert had also said that the EU wanted Sri Lanka “to implement recommendations of its own domestic war probe which called for independent investigations into alleged rights abuses.” The “domestic war probe” by the genocide-accused Sri Lankan government has been condemned as a farce by many Tamil political activists.
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Habitual detraction of due justice to Eezham Tamils continues in Indian media

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 July 2013, 04:51 GMT]
“In order to allay Sinhalese apprehensions, iron-clad guarantees should be provided that devolution to provinces should not lead to demand for separation,” writes V. Suryanarayan, in an opinion feature “Ethnic riddle in Sri Lanka,” appeared in The New Indian Express on Wednesday. “The Achenese model should be of relevance because like the Sinhalese, the Javanese are also opposed to federalism. The special autonomy status to Acheh, it must be underlined, is within the constitutional framework of a unitary Indonesia,” he further writes. Whatever that has happened or continue to happen, Eezham Tamils should never get independence and the Sinhalese should be appeased at any cost, even in their opposition to federalism, is the thrust of the opinion, on which the impunity of genocidal Sri Lanka is firmly anchored, responds TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Affiliating Trinco university campus with Anuradhapura: civil society calls for protest

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 July 2013, 12:33 GMT]
In one of the worst moves of educational genocide of Eezham Tamils, efforts are now being undertaken to affiliate the Trincomalee Campus of the Eastern University with the Rajarata University of Anuradhapura, informed sources in Trincomalee told TamilNet on Thursday. The university-level educational institutions of Tamils in Jaffna and Batticaloa, started by the missionaries in the 19th century, became secondary schools when the British rule transferring power to the Sinhalese towards its closing days, encouraged only a Colombo-centric education. Later, when the Tamils demanded a university after the so-called independence, they wanted it to be based in Trincomalee. Affiliating the Trincomalee Campus with the Sinhala University at Anuradhapura is the height of educational genocide, said, Tamil academic and civil circles in the East.
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Political solution comes only when military-geostrategy approach overpowered

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 July 2013, 02:51 GMT]
The recent joint US-Sri Lankan military exercise in Trincomalee, coming after Colombo announcing the ‘arrest’ of a few police personnel for the massacre of five Tamil students in Trincomalee, signals that the USA is again sending a message to China that it still considers the island in the Indian Ocean Region as a US-Indian territory, says a geopolitical analyst in Trincomalee. The development also signals to Tamils that powers locked in the geopolitical game are only seeking eyewash and token responses from the Sri Lankan State. Political solution will never come unless masses overpower the rotten military-geostrategy approach of the powers, forcing them to seek alternatives, the analyst said.
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