Stop treating Tamils as minority: Premachandran MP

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 July 2011, 20:37 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran on Sunday touched on an important conceptual issue related to the national question in the island that affects equality between Tamils and Sinhalese, when he criticized those who treat Tamils as a ‘minority’. “We will not allow the government or anyone else to treat the Tamils as a minority anymore. If the Sri Lankan government thinks the Sinhalese are the majority and the Tamils are the minority, then they are mistaken,” Mr. Premachandran told The Sunday Leader.
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Court prepares for judicial review as EU continues LTTE proscription

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 July 2011, 17:12 GMT]
European Union (EU) Council, comprising the heads of state of the [twenty seven] EU member states, along with the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council, has decided to further extend the proscription of the Liberation Tigers from September. Meanwhile, the same EU Council is mandated by EU law to respond in writing to the case (T-208/11-9) filed by Amsterdam-based Bohler Advocaten attorney, Victor Koppe, on behalf of the Liberation Tigers at the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice before the third week of September, legal sources closer to the EU case said.
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Colombo targeting Tamil civil service is more than revenge

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 July 2011, 18:02 GMT]
Orders have been issued by Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa and by his sibling Basil Rajapaksa to colonial governor Maj. Gen. Chandrasri for immediate and full-swing replacement of Tamil civil service in the north. The act may superficially look as a revenge for the defeat in the civic elections, but it is actually aimed to make any political solution that will be ‘accounted’ to the outside world completely meaningless to Eezham Tamils, and is a part of a long-contemplated agenda of structural genocide, political observers said. Meanwhile, knowing what is happening and what will happen in demography, political representation, civil administration, militarisation and in all other respects, why should the TNA commit to seek solutions under a ‘united Sri Lanka’ just because the powers that abetted the genocide want it, ask non TNA Tamil nationalists.
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Army witnesses recount final orgy of massacre, rape, torture, mutilation

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 July 2011, 02:19 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Army (SLA) officer has given Channel 4 an account of how, following orders from Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the commander of the 58 Division, Brigadier (now Major General) Shavendra Silva gathered his officers in the closing days of the war and ordered them to take no prisoners when capturing the remainder of the enclave in which thousands of Tamils civilians and fighters were surrounded. Brig. Silva received the same orders that Mr. Gotabaya issued to all regiments, the officer who was then serving under Brig. Silva told Channel 4. Meanwhile, another Sri Lankan soldier with the 58 Division has given an eyewitness account of an orgy of mass murder, rape, torture and mutilation in the final days in which tens of thousands of Tamil civilians perished.
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Norwegian Tamils remember Oslo-Utøya, Black July victims

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 July 2011, 08:32 GMT]
City of Oslo, the capital of Norway, was full of roses Monday and Tuesday. More than 200,000 people gathered Monday evening to express their sorrow and solidarity with the victims of the attacks by far-right Islamophobic killer, Anders Behring Breivik, who has claimed the lives of at least 76 people, most of them young, in a combined bomb attack on the government square in the heart of the city and a shooting rampage at the summer camp of the youth wing of the ruling Labour Party at Utøya Island, located northwest of Norway's capital. Two of five Norwegian Eezham Tamil youths, who survived the attack at the Utøya Island, took part in a memorial event Monday, jointly organised by three Tamil organisations. The memorial event also remembered the victims of Black July, the Sri Lankan state-sponsored pogrom against Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka in 1983.
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Canadian Tamils unveil memorial, remember victims of Black July

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 July 2011, 01:30 GMT]
Glen Murray, Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for Toronto Centre, working with Canadian-Tamil youth, unveiled a plaque at a Tamil Memorial Tree Planting event at Evergreen Brick Works – a community environmental centre, Saturday honoring the tens of thousands Tamil lives lost in the struggle for human rights in Sri Lanka. Erected hours before the Black July remembrance event, the memorial commemorates the events of Black July 1983 to Mu'l'livaikkaal of May 2009, the organizers said. Later in the day, in a memorial event organized by National Council of Canadian Tamils (NCCT), Canadian-Tamils gathered at Queens Park –Toronto, to remember the victims of Black July- bracing the heavy rains.
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‘Dropping call for justice and independence is worst crime’

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 July 2011, 21:03 GMT]
Voicing on behalf of the present establishment in New Delhi, sections in the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) unnecessarily declaring against independence of Eezham Tamils and discouraging war crimes investigations are worst of the crimes committed not merely against Eezham Tamils but against human civilization, said Tamil national as well as Left political circles in the island and in the diaspora to TamilNet on Monday. The comments have come responding to TNA views expressed after its victory and during its campaign in the civic elections. TNA leader Sampanthan interpreted the victory as Tamil wish for solutions within ‘united Sri Lanka’ and a confidential document circulated among ‘friends of the TNA’ during the civic elections said that the war crimes investigations were actually directed against India than against Colombo, and hence Tamils should not pin hopes on them.
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Remembering Sri Lanka’s longer history of mass killing of Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 July 2011, 02:40 GMT]
British Tamils held a candle light vigil Saturday evening opposite the Prime Minister’s official residence, 10 Downing Street, to remember victims of Sri Lanka’s 1983 ‘Black July’ anti-Tamil pogrom. Six days of mob violence, organized by ruling politicians and abetted by Sri Lanka’s security forces, which began on July 23 that year killed over three thousand people, and emptied the capital, Colombo, of Tamils. On Saturday, a thousand British Tamils dressed in black and carrying black flags and Eelam national flags, held a vigil between 6 and 9 pm, with lit candles and banners commemorating the pogrom. For several hours before the vigil began, activists and supporters handed out leaflets in the surrounding Whitehall area. The events were organized by the British Tamil Forum.
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Colombo is not conducive to reconciliation or co-existence: New Zealand MP

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 July 2011, 17:51 GMT]
“We see every action pursued by the Government of Sri Lanka after the war being malignant towards the Tamils and are not conducive to reconciliation or co-existence. It is time for TNA to explain to the Governments of the world the ground situation in Sri Lanka,” said New Zealand parliamentarian Keith Locke while addressing a gathering in Auckland, on Saturday that remembered Black July, the pogram against Eezham Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka in 1983. In a calculated move genocidal Sri Lanka chose 23 July, the remenmbrance day to conduct civic elections in the country of Eezham Tamils. But it didn’t prevent Eezham Tamils in many parts of the world from observing the day, which marks the times that impelled the actual beginnings of their militant struggle.
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Tamils reject collaboration-reconciliation, favour identity-based peace

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 July 2011, 08:03 GMT]
The results of civic elections in the country of Eezham Tamils decisively show that despite maximum intimidation and ‘development’ lures, people reject the paradigm of ‘collaboration-reconciliation’ but determinedly favour a polity of peace, based on the identity of their nation, political observers in the island said on Sunday. The message should be useful in seeking innovative and creative ways to resolve the national question in the island in order to achieve peace and stability in the region, they further said.
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Protests make India withdraw SLA training in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 July 2011, 14:21 GMT]
A programme of the Indian military to train soldiers of the genocidal Army of Sri Lanka at the Madras Regimental Centre at Wellington in the Nilgiris District of Tamil Nadu was withdrawn after a protest of the people of Tamil Nadu staged by Periyar Dravida Kazhakam (PDK), Naam Thamizhar Party (NTP), Viduthali Chiruththaigal Katchi (VCK) and other activists groups on Friday. 25 soldiers of Sri Lanka’s Army who arrived at Wellington Thursday night for a three months training were sent back in a bus via Chennai, Indian officials said Saturday. About 200 activists participated in the protest demonstration at Wellington on Friday. A wordy quarrel took place between the Tamil Nadu police and a section of the agitators when the latter attempted to squat on road, PTI reported.
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US official foresees elections in the north as way for ‘indigenous leadership’

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 July 2011, 12:17 GMT]
While the US Secretary of State Ms. Hillary Clinton visiting Chennai was looking at “some innovative and creative ideas” to break the impasse over the ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’ issue, a senior US State Department official told reporters in Chennai on Wednesday that the US government was looking towards Sri Lanka conducting provincial council elections in the north to facilitate the emergence of indigenous leadership for the first time in 30 years. Meanwhile, campaigning for Rajapaksa in the intimidated civic elections in the north that is now taking place ‘guided’ by the Rajapaksa regime and its occupying Army, SL minister Vasudeva Nanayakara on Tuesday said in Jaffna that Tamils should vote for Rajapaksa to “ensure that there is no foreign interferences.”
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Rajapaksa gives Tamil Nadu trio stage fright

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 July 2011, 02:47 GMT]
Three film singers from Tamil Nadu who had accepted a Sri Lankan government invitation to perform for Tamils in the former warzone town of Kilinochchi pulled out Thursday after finding out the event was to be part of the ruling party’s election campaign and that Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa would be attending, Indian press reports said. Mano, Krish and Suchitra (eds: single names only) were “shocked” to discover this whilst at Colombo airport waiting for their special military flight to Kilinochchi, and were hurriedly returning to Tamil Nadu, where their visit had triggered controversy, the reports said.
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India signs MoU with Colombo to ‘rehabilitate’ KKS harbour

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 July 2011, 00:27 GMT]
The government of India entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Rajapaksa regime of Sri Lanka on Thursday to carry out a “complex and wide-ranging project” to “rehabilitate” the Kaangkeasanthu'rai (KKS) harbour in the SL Army occupied High Security Zone in Valikaamam, Jaffna.
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SL Minister Nanayakara accepts mass killings of civilians in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 July 2011, 22:57 GMT]
A top minister in Mahinda Rajapaksa regime has publicly accepted the mass-scale killing of Tamil civilians during the final months of the war in 2009. SL Minister and the leader of Democratic Left Front (DLF), Vasudeva Nanayakara on Tuesday said that his party accepted the important fact that innocent civilians have been killed during the Vanni war. Amid growing international pressure for an international probe into the credible allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka, Mr. Nanayakara, who was on a propaganda drive seeking the public in Jaffna to support the Rajapaksa alliance in the upcoming civic elections in North, said that Tamils could only exert meaningful pressure on the SL government by supporting his alliance.
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Clinton’s analogue contradicts political reality

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 July 2011, 11:26 GMT]
Visiting Chennai and appreciating the Tamil Nadu state in India, the US Secretary of State Ms. Hilary Clinton on Wednesday said, "Every Sri Lankan deserves the same hope and opportunity." If Ms. Clinton implies an Indian-modeled federal solution to the chronic national crisis in the island then she is making a historic mistake in her analogy, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo. Federalism in India had an altogether different origin beginning from the days of the English East India Company compared to the vicious experiment of the British ‘Crown Colony’ in the island. Ms. Clinton should now delete the word ‘Sri Lanka’ if she means talking about Eezham Tamils or about ‘reconciliation’ in the island, he further writes.
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Nepalese in West Bengal achieve autonomy

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 July 2011, 22:17 GMT]
The Gorkhas of the West Bengal state of India achieved a special autonomy for them in the Darjeeling Hill tracts, after nearly 20 years of struggle. A tripartite agreement signed by the Central Government of India, State Government of West Bengal and Gorkha Janmukti Morcha at a village called Pintail in West Bengal on Monday paves way for the setting up of Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. Gorkhas are a major ethnicity of Nepal that also inhabits the Darjeeling Hills in India, bordering Nepal. While it became possible for the Gorkhas to cast geostrategic weight of their location in a bottleneck territory to achieve autonomy, the Tamils on either side of the Palk Bay are yet to cast their international geostrategic weight in decisive ways to achieve the long-deserving liberation of Eezham Tamils, commented Dravidian political circles in Chennai.
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Clinton meets Jayalalithaa in Chennai

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 July 2011, 17:00 GMT]
The United States is “looking at some innovative and creative ideas to break the impasse over the Sri Lankan Tamils issue,” PTI quoted visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telling Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa in Chennai Wednesday. The report did not elaborate. Meanwhile, in a public address Ms. Clinton said that India's example of multicultural democracy should serve as a model for Sri Lanka. Commenting on Clinton's remarks, Eezham Tamil political circles said Indian-modelled political solution will not work in the island when the military is Sinhalese. Centuries of political experience in the island shows that equal status of Tamils and Sinhalese is possible only when they have equal States, the political circles further commented.
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BJP vows to take up Eezham Tamils plight in Indian Parliament

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 July 2011, 07:10 GMT]
Bharatiya Janata Party President Nitin Gadkari who met a top delegation of the British Tamils Forum (BTF) last weekend in London, has said that the BJP was very serious on taking up the ‘Sri Lanka issue’ in the Indian Lok-Sabha. BTF leaders V Ravi Kumar and S. Pathmanathan, who led the BTF delegation to the meeting with the visiting Indian politicians, expressed hope that the BJP would be consulting Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa on the plight of Eezham Tamils and that the Indian leaders would also be meeting the Tamil representatives from the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The BJP is yet to adopt a stand on the accountability issue on the question of Eezham Tamils and the genocide committed on them.
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Australia’s cricketers should shun repressive Sri Lanka - TYO

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 July 2011, 01:30 GMT]
Australia’s cricketers should take a principled stand in defence of human rights and justice, and boycott Sri Lankan cricket until the Colombo government heeds international calls for an independent investigation into the mass killings of Tamil civilians in 2009, the Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) urged Monday. “Sport is inseparable from politics. Nothing gives a repressive regime greater legitimacy, and makes light of its brutal conduct, than continuing sporting links,” the TYO said in a statement.
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