Sinhala encroachers storm into 100 acres of lands at Kanneeraavi in Pulmoaddai

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 August 2019, 22:49 GMT]
A group of Sinhala encroachers, led by Sinhala Buddhist monks, are clearing one hundred acres of lands for the third consecutive day on Saturday at Kanneeraavi in Pulmoaddai. The area is located northwest of Pulmoaddai town and southeast of Kokku'laay lagoon near the cremation of grounds of Tamils. It consists of both the crown and private lands, grassroots activists in Pulmoaddai said. Kuchcha-ve'li Divisional Secretary P. Thaneswaran is reluctant to act against the latest encroachment, Tamil-speaking Muslim activists said. Panamure Thilakawanse Thero, the well known extremist monk is leading the intruders. The monk seems to have the backing of Sajith Premadasa, who is the SL Minister of Housing, Construction and ‘Cultural’ Affairs, the sources further said. When TamilNet contacted the civil officials in Pulmoaddai, they urged immediate media attention to the problem.
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SL Forest Department retains 8,034 hectares of pasturelands in Paduvaan-karai, Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 August 2019, 14:28 GMT]
Eight thousand and thirty-four hectares of grass plain in Paduvaan-karai region of Batticaloa district was tentatively traced in a map to demarcate the area as pastureland in 1976 by the SL Survey Department. However, the process didn't complete into accurate demarcation, said Rajbabu Suntharamoorthy, the divisional secretary of Koa'ra'laip-pattu South (Kiraan). The SL Forest Department retains the area as belonging to Thopik-kal (Thoppigala) thick forest. The incumbent Government Agent has taken necessary steps to get the pastureland secured as demanded by the farmers, the Divisional Secretary maintained. TamilNet contacted the DS on Friday following the report on Thursday that more than one thousand cows had died since January as the SL authorities were dragging their feet concerning the allocation of the pasturelands and access to the drinking water reservoir to the cattle.
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Colombo converts 2000 acres of ex-HSZ lands citing India-assisted airport expansion in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 August 2019, 20:05 GMT]
The SL State schemes to permanently seize 2000 acres of properties belonging to private Eezham Tamil landowners in Valikaamam North, citing the Indian-funded transformation of the so-called civilian airport in Palaali in Jaffna. Valikaamam North Divisional Councillor Shanmugalingam Shageevan, who is also the chairman of Vali-North Resettlement Committee, said the occupying SL military was converting the former ‘High-Security Zone’ lands into the so-called civilian airport lands. The ultimate aim of the SL State is retaining the areas as before during the times of war, he accused.
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Book on Santhiya becomes narration of Tamil struggle incorporating Marxist ideas in early 80s

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 August 2019, 23:28 GMT]
Ben Hillier, the editor of Australia’s leading socialist publication, Red Flag, wanted to recount the life of Santhiya, a former LTTE cadre who had perished in an Indonesian detention centre in late 2017. Her tragic death occurred as a result of the anti-refugee and anti-Tamil struggle policies practised by Australia. In his efforts to trace her life the editor of the Red Flag travelled to Jakarta, Indonesia and then to the occupied country of Eezham Tamils with the support of the Tamil Refugee Council (TRC) a grassroots diaspora group in Australia. Ben Hillier, who travelled to the occupied country and learned more about the sacrifices made by the Eezham Tamils, particularly the Tamil women, authored his book “Losing Santhiya: On Life and Loss in the Struggle for Tamil Eelam” in July.
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State discrimination causes death of 1000 cows, milk production drops by 5,500 litres in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 August 2019, 23:27 GMT]
The drought has taken a big toll on dairy farmers as the SL State has been systematically neglecting their repeated requests for drinking water reservoirs for the cattle. The occupying Colombo has also been desisting from safeguarding the pasture lands in the interior Ko'ra'laip-pattu South (Kiraan) division of Batticaloa district targeting Sinhala colonisation through the Mahaweli scheme. Nimalan Kanthasamy, the Secretary of Dairy Farmers Association in Kiraan and Chengka'ladi, told TamilNet on Tuesday that the milk production supplied to the SL State-owned dairy Milco (Pvt) Ltd from the region has dropped from 6,000 litres to just 400 litres on average between January and July 2019. It is a human-made disaster intended to obliterate the particular livelihood, say the grassroots activists in the district.
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Pirapaharan’s statements between 1984 and 1993 reproduced in book form in Europe

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 August 2019, 23:55 GMT]
A Switzerland-based Eezham Tamil youth group, ‘Phoenix - the Next Generation’, has photostatically reproduced the rare 314-page compilation officially published by the Headquarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in September 1993 in Jaffna. The book contains selected letters, interviews and statements of LTTE Leader Velupillai Pirapaharan starting from his first media interview in March 1984. The compilation consists, amongst others, of a letter that declines LTTE representation at a meeting held in New York in May 1985, appeals to the leaders of India and Tamil Nadu during the LTTE-IPKF war in 1987, and a letter of solidarity addressed to South African (ANC) leader, the late Oliver Tambo, in July 1988. The reproduction has been made from a book obtained at the public library of Jaffna in the past. The book, with ID 9907, is no longer accessible at the library.
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Threatened female activist suffers injuries in suspicious ‘accident’ in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 August 2019, 23:47 GMT]
A leading activist of missing persons in Batticaloa district, Mrs Amalanayaki Amalraj, was struck by a suspicious motorbike rider around 4:30 PM on Sunday. Mrs Amalraj, seated back on a motorcycle which her daughter was riding, spotted a speeding motorbike with three persons passing them, then slowing down. As her daughter reduced the speed, the other speeding bike hit them from behind and rapidly vanished away. A group of villagers who witnessed the accident chased the speeding motorcycle and managed to catch the driver. The two others seated in the motorbike have managed to escape. The rider was identified as a close relative of one of the most dreaded Tamil paramilitary operative of the SL military in the past. Mrs Amalraj was also harassed by the SL Police when she was on her way to meet the UN Special Rapporteur on Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association last month.
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SL Army puts up military post, Buddhist chanting dominates Kanniyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 August 2019, 23:55 GMT]
The Sinhala Buddhist monks are playing the sound of Pirith through loudspeakers at the disputed heritage site of Kanniyaa Hot Wells round the clock. At the same time, occupying Sinhala Army soldiers of 221 Brigade have started to put up new military posts between the road arch and the Hot Wells. The Tamil visitors feel that the loud Pirith chanting was highly disturbing their visit to the place of geological heritage with Saivaist religious significance. SL Army and Sinhala officials attempted to block the Tamil journalists from taking photos and video. The SL Army and the officials who claimed to be the representatives of the Archaeology department tried to prevent the visiting Tamil journalists from taking pictures or videos of the locality. However, the ‘Archaeology’ officials withdrew from the site after the journalists demanded them to document their identity papers on Saturday.
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Tamils must fight back against illegal seizure of lands by SL Forest Department: Kurunathan

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 August 2019, 21:18 GMT]
The SL Forest Department has been systematically thrusting upon the divisional secretariats in the North-East various mischievous interpretations of forest conservation laws of the unitary state system to seize the lands of the uprooted Tamils. The SL department was violating the constitution by declaring 220 acres of lands that belonged to 200 landowners at Kanakar-kiraamam in Ampaa'rai as coming under its domain in December 2015. It took four years for the SL Forest Department officials to admit the seizure as a 'failure', said Former Eastern Provincial Land Commissioner Kathrigamathamby Kurunathan. He was confronting the SL department officials at a meeting organised by the SL Human Rights Commission in Ampaa'rai on 20th July. However, the people are yet to see any positive sign on the ground.
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38 parents of missing Tamils have perished during prolonged protest, mothers blame IC

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 August 2019, 22:55 GMT]
Thirty-eight parents, most of them mothers, have died since the families of persons subjected to enforced disappearances launched their protest, which is nearing 900 days. Many of them suffered heart-attacks, says Leelathevi Ananthanadarajah, the mother of a Tamil went missing at the hands of the occupying SL military. By failing to specify a time-bound action plan to the SL State, the IC has failed the victims, she said. The mother was talking to media during the monthly marking at Ki'linochchi on Tuesday. In the meantime, the ‘Office on Missing Persons’, which is the SL State-agency tasked to determine the status of the missing, has stepped up its psychological war against the women taking part in the continuous protests across the districts of North-East. The latest OMP manoeuvre is to offer 250,000 rupees of loans to the active protesters selectively, Mrs Ananthanadarajah said.
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Deception of so-called reconciliation at display in Kanniyaa: Tamil councillor

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 July 2019, 23:39 GMT]
Around twenty monks and one hundred Sinhala Buddhists gathered at the dismantled base construction of the Saivaist Pi'l'laiyaar temple in Kanniyaa and chanted Pirith while Tamil devotees were conducting annual Hindu ritual of Aadi Amaavaasai for their ancestors on Wednesday. The Pirith prayer is a new exercise, which was intended to demonstrate their so-called stake of the imaginative ‘chaitya’, which they claim as existed at the locality, commented Divisional Council (PS) representative Chandirarajah Vipooshan. After witnessing the latest development, Mr Vipooshan said a few Tamil individuals and the controversial outfit known as Rava'na-senai were getting deceived by the Sinhala Buddhists and that they were only abetting Sinhala Buddhicisation of the heritage site of Eezham Tamils.
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SL Police evades filing case against extremist monk in Neeraaviyadi

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 July 2019, 16:18 GMT]
Ven Kolamba Medhalankara Thero, the Sinhala Buddhist extremist monk, who had encroached into the premises of Pi'l'laiyaar temple at Neeraaviyadi in Mullaith-theevu, was directly involved, along with a group of people, in removing the Saivaist Nandhi flags on 16th July. The Nandhi flags were flown in parity with the Buddhist flags at the locality since 6th July. The controversial monk and his supporters had selectively removed the Nandhi flags leaving behind the Buddhist flags. They have also stolen the robes. The trustee board of the temple went to file a complaint with the SL Police on 17th July, the following day. However, the police was refusing to entertain their complaint. Now, the police has informed the trustees through politicians that the monk was ‘mentally disturbed’ and admitted to a hospital in Colombo to avoid cases against him.
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SL Governor dodges Ki'linochchi DCC meeting, Colombo's military and departments confronted

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 July 2019, 23:13 GMT]
The so-called Civil Security Division (CSD) and the occupying SL Army, which come under the SL Defence Ministry in Colombo continue to occupy more than 400 acres of farmlands in Ki'linochchi district. The Tamil people suspect the SL Police of backing the Sinhala miners who operate almost all the tipper trucks, which scoop the sands in the region excessively. At the same time, various departments working under the unitary system of the SL State continue to exercise their power in seizing the properties ignoring the divisional authorities and the civic councils. Knowing that these crucial matters were scheduled to be taken up for discussion at a plenary session, Suren Raghavan, the deceitful Tamil SL Governor to North, was absconding from attending the District Coordination Committee meeting on Monday.
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SL Police goes door-to-door collecting details of residents in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 July 2019, 18:06 GMT]
Occupying Colombo’s police has started to collect details of persons residing in each house in the police division of Kaaththaan-kudi in Batticaloa district. Tamil residents in Chelvaa-nakar, which comes under the administrative division of Ma’n-munaip-pattu, complained that the police personnel were visiting each household since 27 July. The SL Police demands there must be a household leader for every house, and that person should put a signature in a document where details of every resident are registered.
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Politicians whipping up ‘sovereignty’ fears in South, déjà vu 1956 for Tamils: Guruparan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 July 2019, 23:35 GMT]
Whenever the SLFP or the UNP resorts to a high-handed Sinhala Buddhist nationalist projection as part of the electoral politics, the other party simply follows suit opting to strengthen the same paradigm because they don’t want to be left out. The trend has always been the same throughout the entire electoral political history of the island as far as the Tamils are concerned, said Jaffna-based academic, attorney and civil activist Kumaravadivel Guruparan. For Tamils, this is just another déjà vu of experiencing 1956 when SWRD Bandaranaike bringing the ‘Sinhala Only’ Act and JR Jayawardene making Kandy march the same year, he commented. The SL polity as a whole has demonstrated to the United Nations and the West that the Sinhala-Buddhist ethnonational politics would always be the over-riding factor as far as the politics in the island is concerned, Guruparan observed further.
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SL Wildlife Department converts farmlands of Tamils in Kokkuth-thoduvaay into sanctuary

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 July 2019, 16:25 GMT]
The Tamil farmers who had been uprooted for 35-years from Kokkuth-thoduvaay in Mullaith-theevu district and managed to return to their village in 2012, lost their low-lying irrigable lands along with reservoirs to Sinhala colonists. Now, the SL Wildlife Conservation Department has seized their upper-lying “Maanaavaari” agricultural lands and converted these into a bird sanctuary. The aim is to wedge the contiguity of the occupied Tamil country’s northern and eastern territories up to the very coastline. Kokkuth-thoduvaay is an agricultural and fisheries village, sandwiched between the lagoon of Kokku'laay and the sea in Karai-thu'raip-pattu division of the Mullaiththeevu district.
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Questions raised over ‘double-edged conduct’ of ITAK on Kanniyaa affairs

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 July 2019, 19:08 GMT]
Just a day after TNA (ITAK) Parliamentarian and President’s Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran made a sudden legal move of securing interim orders from the courts in favour of Tamil concerns regarding the heritage site of Kanniyaa, Mr Kugathasan, a coordinator of the party in the district, has caused controversy by meeting the extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk at Velgam Vihara on Tuesday. The coordinator of the so-called mega-development of Trincomalee, which has been conceived by an extremist Sinhala nationalist politician, Patali Champika Ranawake, was meeting the monk with a pro-Sinhala group of Tamils aligned with the JVP along with the controversial outfit calling itself “Raava'na Senai”. The latest move has raised several questions, says Vipooshan Chandirarajah, who is an elected Councillor of Trincomalee Town and Gravets Divisional Council (PS).
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Mother dies after searching for missing son for 11 years

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 July 2019, 22:54 GMT]
A 74-year-old mother of a Tamil male subjected to enforced disappearance eleven years ago in Mannaar has passed away after suffering a heart attack in Mullaiththeevu on Wednesday. The representatives of the district organisation of the families of persons subjected to enforced disappearances said that the mother, Thresamma Sebamalai, was an active member in their continuous protest during the past 869 days. She was trying to trace the whereabouts of her son for the past 11 years. Mrs Sebamalai was living at Ira'naip-paalai in Puthuk-kudiyiruppu.
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Students, TNPF mark 36th Black July Remembrance in Jaffna, Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 July 2019, 23:38 GMT]
The student community of the University of Jaffna and Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) offices in the North and the East marked the 36th anniversary of the collective trauma of the ‘Black July’, the SL state-sponsored genocidal pogrom that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Tamil residents in the south of the island in 1983. Tamil-speaking Muslim students also took part in the remembrance event organised by the students in Jaffna.
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SL Archaeology must be reconfigured to respect Tamil parity on heritage: Ganesan

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 July 2019, 23:30 GMT]
The SL Archaeology Department is the evil of all heritage related tensions in the North and East, and thirty-two Sinhala only experts currently advise it. This ‘Sinhala’ Archaeology must be reconfigured, said SL Minister of ‘National Integration’ and Hindu Religious Affairs Mr. Mano Ganesan, in an exclusive interview to TamilNet on Monday. The conservation of the protected sites in the North-East, including the ancient traces of the Tamil Buddhist heritage, must be carried out with the advice of Tamil historians. Mr. Ganesan said he would be moving a cabinet paper to this effect. At least five Tamil experts must be assigned the specific task, he said. Ganesan also warned Tamils against falling prey to the heinous designs of the anti-Muslim extremist monks who want to set the Tamils against the Tamil-speaking Muslims.
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