Jayasuriya's inclusion in cricket team raises awareness of SL mass killings

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 June 2011, 19:35 GMT]
Several dozen British Tamils leafleted Saturday outside the Bristol grounds where Sri Lanka’s cricketers played a Twenty20 match against England to further raise awareness of the mass killings of civilians at the end of the war in 2009. Their efforts were assisted by critical commentary in the British press of Sri Lanka’s inclusion of all rounder Sanath Jayasuriya, who is also a parliamentarian of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ruling party, for the remaining one day matches of their tour. Ahead of the match three of Britain’s top broadsheets – The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian - slammed the decision as a ‘scandal’ and urged spectators not to applaud Jayasuriya.
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Sexual violence against Eezham Tamils carried out with genocidal intentions

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 June 2011, 14:25 GMT]
Sexual violence committed against Eezham Tamils by the occupying Sri Lanka Army in Vanni is on the increase in the recent months, reliable civil sources told TamilNet. Personnel in military vehicles and auto rickshaws parked under the trees away from the roadside in Ki'linochchi commit sexual violence to girls forcefully brought from the resettled villages and sometimes even to girls passing by on the road, by grabbing them into the vehicles. The wails of the victims are commonly heard, but people are unable to do anything about it, the civil sources further said. The violence is systematically committed with genocidal mentality and soon by replacing the civil administration of Ki'linochchi entirely by the Sinhalese, all protests will be silenced, the sources added.
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Sivajilingam, Sri Kantha decide to join TNA, restructure TELO

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 June 2011, 14:46 GMT]
Former Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians as well as Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) leaders Mr. Sivajilingam and Mr. Sri Kantha have decided to dissolve their newly formed party Tamil National Liberation Alliance (TNLA) and to re-join TELO and TNA, with a view of strengthening TNA and restructuring TELO to meet the demands of the times. They took the decision after a group of former TELO members in the diaspora taking the initiative to speak between them and the TELO president cum TNA parliamentarian Mr Selvam Adaikalanathan. The decision revealed in a press meet in Jaffna on Saturday will be officially announced in the 20th Annual Conference of TELO convened to take place in Vavuniyaa on Sunday. TELO is one of the constituent parties of the TNA. Mr. Selvam Adaikkalanathan confirmed the reunity that is taking place in TELO.
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Work with the ‘other’ International Community: leftist MEP

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 June 2011, 17:56 GMT]
“Tamil diaspora activists are very capable and able to put pressure on governments around the world. But, alongside this work, I would really like to encourage the Tamil diaspora to focus on the 'other' international community – which isn't represented by these governments or institutions,” said Socialist Party and United Left Alliance MEP for Dublin, Paul Murphy MEP, in an e-mail interview to TamilNet on Thursday. The Irish MEP who played a key role in organising a hearing at the EU Parliament earlier this month also said: “For us in the Committee for a Workers' International, the right to self-determination for the Tamil people is vital.” He urged the Eezham Tamil diaspora to join hands with the progressive Sinhala forces in the South.
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Tamils' land acquired to construct Arabic institution in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 June 2011, 16:41 GMT]
Ea'raavoor Urban Council Chairman Ali Zahir Mowlana, a close ally of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, has been blamed for illegally acquiring lands that belong to 17 families of forcefully displaced Tamils from Ward 3 and 4 of the Ea'raavoorpattu in Chengkaladi division, to construct Arabic College with aid from Arab countries while the Sri Lankan police refuses to vacate the other 40 houses it has occupied with a police station.
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Eezham question gets entangled in competition of SCO and NATO

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 June 2011, 23:38 GMT]
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), if materialises as alliance of China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Central Asian countries accounting for more than half of humanity, it will make NATO (and Pax Americana) simply irrelevant to an entire landmass. NATO may face a piquant situation when it aspires to claim that it is the only global security organization available in the 21st century, writes M K Bhadrakumar, formerly of the Indian Foreign Service, in Asia Times Saturday. With the SCO summit last week admitting Sri Lanka as a ‘dialogue partner,’ the organization brings itself to the waters of the Indian Ocean, Bhadrakumar pointed out. The question of Eezham Tamils would be muffled by both of them competing for control of the island as a whole, unless awareness of people counters them.
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Tamil youth in UK mark Eezham identity with I'lantha'lir event

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 June 2011, 19:14 GMT]
The Tamil Youth Organisation in Britain hosted Sunday an awareness event for ‘Eezham Thamizh identity’, with an evening of music, drama, dance and poetry. The event, named I'lantha'lir 2011, held at the Walthamstow Assembly Hall, began with the ceremonial raising of the Tamil Eelam flag outside the imposing art deco building, chosen for the quality of the acoustics which make it one of the UK's top venues for recording classical music. The performances opened with instrumental music using traditional Tamil instruments: Murasu, Thappai, Udukku, Changku (conch) and Kompu (horn). Many of the visitors touched or ran their hands through soil from Mullaiththeevu beach placed in a bronze bowl, and encouraged their children to do the same.
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Colombo to declare permanent ‘Sacred HSZ’ at Maathakal

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 June 2011, 10:01 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka plans to keep Thiruvadinilai area of Maathakal, the northwest tip of the Jaffna Peninsula, as a permanent ‘High Security Zone’ by building a naval base there, but camouflaging it as a ‘Sacred Place’ of the Sinhala-Buddhists, news sources from Jaffna said. The location is one of the two closest spots of communication between the island of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. While Thalai Mannaar in Mannaar district is the closest to Rameasvaram, Maathakal in Jaffna Peninsula is the closest to Koadikkarai (Point Calimere) in Tamil Nadu. Colombo’s archaeologists claim Thiruvadinilai as the landing place of Sinhala-Buddhism to the island in 3rd century BC, and are building modern Buddhist establishments there. A gazette notification of Colombo is soon expected to declare the area a ‘Sacred Place’ to facilitate permanent confiscation of lands belonging to Tamils.
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After ‘eradication’ of 30 years of conflict Sri Lanka searches for ‘attackers in uniform’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 June 2011, 08:12 GMT]
After the complete eradication of 30 years of conflict, those who were present at the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) meeting at A’laveddi last Thursday have said that attackers had come in ‘uniforms similar to those of the Army.’ The SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has therefore directed Jaffna Army Commander Major General Mahinda Haturusinghe to inquire into the incident and take into custody those who were involved and punish them, said SL state run newspaper Daily News on Monday. The TNA parliamentarians in a press meet Friday said that they could identify two commanders of the Sri Lanka Army who led the Army assault on them Thursday.
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Law becomes an ass by inaction on UN report: Miliband, Kouchner

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 June 2011, 18:30 GMT]
“If foreign policy is about anything, it should be about stopping this kind of inhumanity,” said David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, writing in New York Times Monday and commenting on how Sri Lanka conducted the Vanni War and treated Tamil life as fourth or fifth class in the refugee camps. Both Miliband and Kouchner were foreign ministers of Britain and France respectively during the Vanni War. They said that in April 2009 they tried to stop the war. Now, responding to the UN panel report on war crimes in the island and citing the need of action, both the former foreign ministers said “We therefore call on our governments to set a deadline, soon, for satisfactory response from the Sri Lankan government, and if it is not forthcoming to initiate the international arrangements recommended by the report.
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CPI calls for all India solidarity with Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 June 2011, 12:36 GMT]
The Communist Party of India (CPI) in its National Council Meeting at New Delhi on 18-19 June, passed a resolution, demanding the Indian government to take into account the resolution passed by the Tamil Nadu State Assembly on war crimes investigation and economic sanctions against Sri Lanka. Accusing Sri Lanka Army for violation of human rights, state terrorism and perpetration of mass murder of Tamil population in the island, the CPI demanded India to facilitate open enquiry on war crimes and resettlement of Tamils in their own places as well as media entry to monitor Indian aided rehabilitation. The party’s national council decided to observe July 8 as “All India Solidarity with Sri Lankan Tamils Day” to press for peaceful political settlement to the ethnic conflict and appealed to other left and democratic parties to join.
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Sinhala GS actions threaten to disenfranchise Ka'n'nakipuram Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 June 2011, 10:13 GMT]
Tamil residents in traditional Tamil village Kannagipuram East in Poratheevupattu Vellave’li DS division in Batticaloa are in the danger of losing their voting rights due to the discriminatory action taken by a Sinhala village officer T.Sugathadasa who is responsible to register their names in voters’ list by visiting each house in the village. The village is located between two Sinhala villages Bakkiella and Nugalanda along the border of the two districts Batticaloa and Ampaa'rai. Instead of visiting each house and register their names the Sinhala GS has asked Tamil people to come to his office located at Paalaiyadiveddai, several miles away from Ka'n'nakipuram.
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Sri Lanka’s “Novel way to kill tens of thousands”: The Times

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 June 2011, 09:54 GMT]
“In a grotesque perversion of humanity, the military had considered the mechanics of human grieving and come up with a novel way to kill tens of thousands: they would drop an initial shell on a village, usually killing those too old, weak or young to take shelter in time. Then they would wait ten minutes — until people had gathered around dead or dying loved ones, trying to save them, or weeping over them — and then shell for a second time; thus wiping out whole families in 11 minutes flat,” says Caitlin Moran, in UK’s The Time’s review of the Channel-4 “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields,” widely believed to be “the most visceral war footage ever broadcast.”
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Sri Lanka internment camps compared to Nazi gas chambers

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 June 2011, 18:42 GMT]
“We saw how the Sri Lankan government created protected zones whose only equivalent that I can think of are the gas chambers of the Nazis who duped their victims into believing they were safe and then killed them. Corralled into an ever-shrinking space, civilians were bombed and shelled. Thousands died. Desperate doctors performed amputations on children without anesthetic. Disease, starvation, infection decimated the population,” says an Israeli blogger in an article titled “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields – what genocide actually looks like” written after viewing the Channel-4 documentary on Sri Lanka’s war.
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Tamil Eelam is the solution: Loyola opinion poll in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 June 2011, 16:15 GMT]
65 percent of the participants in an opinion poll conducted in Tamil Nadu this month by Centre for Public Studies of the Loyola College in Chennai said that an independent Tamil Eelam is the appropriate permanent solution for the question of Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka. 70 percent of them said that the Government of India should declare Mr. Rajapaksa as war criminal in the coming sessions of the parliament. According to 74 percent of the participants, all political parties of Tamil Nadu should jointly lead a struggle on the question of Tamils in the island, after giving an ultimatum to the Centre. An overwhelming 81 percent welcomed the resolution on Sri Lanka in the Tamil Nadu State Assembly. The opinion coming from the effective civil society initiative challenges obsolete views of the intelligence-operated analysis groups in Chennai, political observers in Tamil Nadu said.
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SLA commanders of the assault could be identified: TNA

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 June 2011, 09:44 GMT]
Convening a press conference at the Martin Road office on Friday, to brief about the blatant attack on a Tamil National Alliance (TNA) meeting at A’laveddi by the Sri Lanka Army on Thursday, the TNA members said that it was a calculated demonstration by the occupying Army to tell the Tamils of the north and east of the island that they are under military rule. Two of the commanders who led the attack could be identified, said TNA parliamentarian Mr. M.A. Sumanthiran. TNA would seek legal action and would hereafter go for house-to-house campaign, the parliamentarians said. The realities of the military rule by a genocidal Army prevent even the TNA holding public meetings in future, political observers in Jaffna said.
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US-UK responsible for ‘killing field’ war on Eezham Tamils: papers

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 June 2011, 13:52 GMT]
“The war on terror served as a justification for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries which ten years latter are still shattered and fractured, with a rather bleak future. It seems that it has, under the eyes of the International community, also been used as a cover up for a conflict that was nothing more than a racist war,” says Anissa Haddadi writing on Sri Lanka in International Business Times, Friday, asking the question, “Is the US war on terror responsible for Sri Lanka Killing Fields?”
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Buddhist Stupa, Sinhala colony in the making in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 June 2011, 12:27 GMT]
Following a Buddhist stupa complex and Sinhala colony planned in 3000 acres of land in Trincomalee city, depriving Eezham Tamils the territoriality of their country, a similar venture in Mullaiththeevu town is being undertaken by the military governor of genocidal Sri Lanka in the north, Maj. Gen. Chandrasri. The stupa complex is planned in a locality where the LTTE earlier had its memorials for combatants laid down their life in fighting for the liberation of Eezham Tamils. Apart from allotting a huge sum from the funds of Colombo’s administration for the north, The SL governor is intimidating NGOs and civil society institutions functioning in the Tamil country to ‘donate’ unspecified amounts of money in ‘unaccounted ways’ for this project of structural genocide schemed by Colombo.
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British commentator questions suitability of English cricket tour to Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 June 2011, 12:18 GMT]
Following the airing of Channel-4 documentary “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields,” Mike Atherton, cricket correspondent for UK’s The Times, compares Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse’s regime to that of Robert Mugabe’s in Zimbabwe and questions the suitability of England’s tour to Sri Lanka, scheduled for this winter. Atherton is a former England captain and Sports Writer of the Year 2010.
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SL Army brutally attacks public meeting of politicians, journalists in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 June 2011, 16:34 GMT]
In what is seen as retaliation for Channel 4 broadcast Tuesday, the genocidal SL Army occupying Jaffna brutally attacked TNA parliamentarians, journalists and public in Jaffna on Thursday, causing injuries to an unspecified number of people, according to initial reports. The blatant attack by SL Army in uniform took place when the TNA politicians held a meeting at A’laveddi in Jaffna, inaugurating their political campaign for the forthcoming civic elections. Tension prevailed as SL Army was deployed in the area and the public that came for the meeting sought refuge in the nearby houses. “British diplomats satisfied with Army’s role in Jaffna,” said a website of the occupying Army on Tuesday, after the visit of the Deputy High Commissioner of UK, announcing ‘reintegration’ of ex-LTTE combatants in detention through the occupying Army.
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