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20521 matching reports found. Showing 3281 - 3300 [TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 April 2013, 13:51 GMT]A massive Sinhala-Buddhist complex is planned by the occupying Sinhala military at the site of an ancient Kaa’li temple of Eezham Tamils at Verukal in the Eechchilam-pattai division of Trincomalee district. A five-feet tall Buddha statue has already been installed at the site where the Kaa’li temple, called Malai-neeli-amman, is located. Huge stone slabs have now been brought and stored at a two-acre land of the Saiva temple for the construction of a Buddhist temple. About 10 acres of land will be eventually appropriated for the Sinhala-Buddhist complex, news sources in Trincomalee said. Seeing precedents in the other parts of the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, the local Tamils of the ancient village that has public buildings, schools etc., are now afraid that they would be chased out and would lose their village permanently. Full story >> [TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 April 2013, 11:02 GMT] Ilangkaith-thu’rai, meaning in this context “the islet-port,” is an ancient Tamil coastal village at a scenic location in the Eechchilam-pattai division of Trincomalee district. The occupying Sinhala military has Sinhalicized the place-name as “Lankaa-patana” and insists the local villagers to use the Sinhala name even in their speech. If any of the villagers mention their village name in Tamil, they are beaten up by the Sinhala military, news sources in Trincomalee said. Two years ago, the occupying military destroyed a Murukan temple located at the port entrance, appropriated 15 acres of land, and built a Buddhist temple named “Samudra-giri Vihara,” at that spot. While the village roads are in dilapidated condition, a new, broad road now links the Buddhist temple, facilitating Sinhala visitors from the South who come in thousands nowadays. Full story >> [TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 April 2013, 21:35 GMT]In a commentary on the ‘post-war’ scenario in the northern part of the Tamil homeland in the island of Sri Lanka, a correspondent for The Weekend Leader, a Chennai based online news magazine, highlights the accelerated Sinhalization of the Tamil north through political, social, cultural, economic and military means, giving cases for each. In the article titled ‘Erasing the cultural leftover of Tamils to convert Sri Lanka into Sinhala country’ published on Tuesday, the correspondent writes that the Tamil north “is in the grip of Sinhala hegemony”, adding that Sinhala and Sinhalization are the watchwords in the region. The writer also underscores the vital role that the occupying Sinhala military plays in facilitating this process and how development projects are used as a ruse by the GoSL to further colonize Tamil areas. Full story >> [TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 April 2013, 17:32 GMT] The land defined by title deeds
The grassland defined by title deeds Full story >> [TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 April 2013, 07:19 GMT]The March resolution at UNHRC in Geneva, designed by the USA and watered down by India, is directly responsible for all the current ‘legalisation’ of the genocidal militarisation carried out by the occupying Sinhala State in the country of Eezham Tamils in the island, said alternative Tamil political activists in Jaffna, citing the ‘legal’ appropriation of 6400 acres of Tamil civilian lands at Jaffna HSZ and another 6000 acres in Vavuniyaa, openly for Sinhala military cantonment purposes, within one month of passing the resolution. The genocidal State was internationally allowed to do so by the LLRC-based resolution. Its basic concept ‘reconciliation’ a camouflage for structural genocide is a brainchild of the US State Department, the activists said. Full story >> [TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 April 2013, 06:40 GMT] The occupying Colombo, through its Land Acquisition Officer attached to the District Secretariat in Jaffna, has issued a notice dated 27 April 2013, claiming that the owners of lands for 6,381 acres and 38.91 perches in 11 GS divisions in two DS divisions, Valikaamam North (Thellippazhai) and Valikaamam East (Koappaay), have not been identified and that the officials who come under the Sri Lankan Ministry of Land and Land Development are being given necessary rights to enter the lands, survey them and to define how to take over these lands for ‘public purpose’ and for ‘planned activity’. The purpose for the land acquisition is also stated as ‘to orderly hand over the lands where Defence Battalion Head Quarters (Jaffna) High Security Zone (Palaali and Kaangkeasanthu’rai) is situated’. Full story >> [TamilNet, Monday, 22 April 2013, 22:59 GMT]The occupying Colombo, which is converting the lands of the former High Security Zone (HSZ) in Valikaamam North in Jaffna into permanent Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ), has now instructed Village level Officials of 24 GS divisions, under SL military occupation, to visit and place legal notices announcing the ‘State takeover’ of the lands in the already SL military-occupied zone on Monday. Placing such takeover-notices inside the lands of the owners without allowing them to view the announcement, is a calculated move to deny them the legal opportunity of filing suits against the appropriation move, say legal activists representing the uprooted people in Jaffna. In the meantime, informed sources said some of the land owners are scheduled to be taken to their lands on Tuesday to give consent to the move or else suffer some negative consequences. Full story >> [TamilNet, Monday, 22 April 2013, 15:21 GMT]SL presidential sibling and Economic ‘Development’ Minister Basil Rajapaksa, has deployed three officials per division in all the three districts of the Eastern Province to monitor the activities of Divisional Secretaries and Village level (GS) officers and all other public officials, informed sources in Batticaloa say. These intelligence operatives, appointed under the ‘Divineguma’ programme, are required to send monthly reports with intelligence input to colonial Colombo. The ‘civil’ intelligence officers are tasked to oversee the process of structural genocide against Eezham Tamils.
Full story >> [TamilNet, Sunday, 21 April 2013, 07:55 GMT]People of several Tamil villages in the Ampaa’rai district, affected by the war, continue using kerosene lamps. While the Tamil villagers affected in the East by SL military operations and were allowed to resettle after 2007 are not provided with any basic facilities, the Sinhala settlers and their villages get all the assistance, news sources in the East said. During the so-called resettlement and rehabilitation programmes in the East after 2007, many of the Tamil villagers were brought and left in the forests. As the “Dawn of the East” programme proclaimed with much pomp by occupying Colombo and eulogised by some world Establishments has been left to its failure, Colombo now talks about another programme “Crowning the Nation” to carry out Sinhalicisation of the East, the news sources further said.
Full story >> [TamilNet, Sunday, 21 April 2013, 07:41 GMT]Eezham Tamil fishermen of Maaththa’lan in Mullaiththeevu district resisted the arrival and occupation of Sinhala fishermen and attempted to set fire to their boats on Friday. As tension prevailed between the two groups, the occupying Sinhala navy rushed to the scene. After deliberations, finally the Sri Lanka Navy advised the southern group of fishermen to leave the area and return to the south immediately to diffuse tension. The Sinhala fishermen have then returned to their areas in the south, vowing that they would return to Maaththa'lan one day. Full story >> [TamilNet, Sunday, 21 April 2013, 06:09 GMT]The illegal confinement and brutal treatment of Tamil prisoners of war by the Sri Lankan state and the injustice by the International Community of Establishments (ICE) in facilitating this was elucidated by youth activist Krisna Saravanamuttu at the event ‘Criminalization of Dissent’ on the occasion of Palestine Political Prisoners’ Day held at the University of Toronto on Wednesday. Mr Saravanamuttu also gave examples of how former PoWs with legitimate claims to asylum were rejected by Western governments, noting that this put them at further risk from genocidal Sri Lanka. Activists from other communities also shared their opinions and experiences on other cases of incarceration for political reasons. Speaking to TamilNet, Issam Alyamani, veteran Palestinian activist, urged Eelam Tamils in the diaspora to make the release of Tamil prisoners of war and political prisoners as a priority. Full story >> [TamilNet, Saturday, 20 April 2013, 08:03 GMT] The Tehelka feature on Friday by Revati Laul is highly appreciable on many counts, as it has brought out the multifaceted genocide committed on Eezham Tamils so that they would remain “people without a nation, much like the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” the military-occupied situation that is worse than that of Afghanistan and the double game of the world cum UN expecting that the “idea of nationhood could be the next to disappear,” but yet the reality and determination of the people alive with the idea of a separate Tamil nation despite the terror and genocide. However, the feature is misled by a repeatedly told myth by the adversaries of Tamils and believed by the gullible even among the Tamils especially in the diaspora, that British colonialism once favoured the Tamils, writes an academic in Jaffna.
Full story >> [TamilNet, Saturday, 20 April 2013, 05:29 GMT] The Tehelka report on Friday by Revati Laul touches a crucial facet of the structural genocide against Eezham Tamils that takes place not only in land but also in sea, commented a Tamil political activist in the island. This facet of structural genocide, dating from the British rule in severing the natural relations of Eezham Tamils with the Tamils of Tamil Nadu was structured further by the Sinhala State after the so-called independence. It is now intensified with the complicity of New Delhi in coming to the level of sealing off the coasts of Eezham Tamils depriving of their traditional economic activity, industrial exploitation of their seas without their consent or participation, and even snatching away their subsistence by bringing in militarily protected Sinhala fishermen from the South to occupy the coasts and seas, the activist said. Full story >> [TamilNet, Friday, 19 April 2013, 21:10 GMT] Even in the aftermath of terror and genocide, the idea of nationhood has not disappeared among the Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, writes journalist Revati Laul in an investigative feature published on the Indian news magazine Tehelka on its April 27 issue. Travelling to the militarily occupied Tamil homeland in the north and east and interacting with politicians, civil society activists, NGO workers, priests, ex-LTTE cadres and ordinary people, Ms Laul provides through their accounts a picture of the intense oppression that the Sri Lankan state is subjecting the Tamils to through various means, she further notes how the UN’s “pussyfooting on the war” and the Geneva resolution in March 2013 gave a cloak for such oppression, arguing that “It is this refusal to take in the whole narrative that allows Rajapaksa to tell the world all is well now with the Tamils in his country.” Full story >> [TamilNet, Friday, 19 April 2013, 11:24 GMT]The biannual national convention of the New Democratic Party held in Montreal, Canada from April 12-14 passed a resolution recognizing Jaswant Singh Khalra, a Sikh activist who was allegedly abducted and killed by the police in the Indian state of Punjab in 1995, as a human rights defender. However, a resolution submitted from Scarborough-Rouge River calling for, among others, an independent, international and impartial mechanism in Sri Lanka to ensure justice for the Tamils and a UN conducted referendum to determine their political future, failed to make it to the tables of the convention. While Tamil activists who attended the convention argue that the resolution could have been passed had it been pushed by the Tamil NDP MP from Scarborough-Rouge River, Ms Sitsabaiesan, a NDP source claims that the resolution was brought in late but the MP made sure that it was in the policy book. Full story >> [TamilNet, Friday, 19 April 2013, 10:16 GMT] Khamshajiny Gunaratnam, an Eezham Tamil youth politician of the ruling Labour Party in Norway, who states that her political engagement began with the agony of witnessing civil war in her homeland, questions the conduct of the world powers and the policy groups of the international community, for their continued bias against the democratically proven political mandate of Eezham Tamils, both in the island of Sri Lanka and in the diaspora. In a political column of the newspaper Dagsavisen, Ms Khamshajiny, a survivor of the brutal Utøya massacre carried out by the Norwegian killer Anders Breivik in 2011, also questions the conduct of the international community in leaving the responsibility of investigating the crimes committed by the Sri Lankan State to the very hands of that State, as seen in the recent resolution of the UN Human Rights Council in March 2013. Full story >> [TamilNet, Thursday, 18 April 2013, 08:12 GMT] Expressing deep concern for the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in the island of Sri Lanka, Danish politicians from both the ruling left parties and the opposition party, academics, Eezham Tamil politicians from the island and the diaspora, Sinhala journalists, and other civil society activists called for an independent international investigation into the crimes of the Sri Lankan state during the war and after, in a conference organized in the Denmark Parliament on Wednesday. The event titled “A forgotten conflict: Conference on Human Rights in Sri Lanka” saw a general consensus among participants that Sri Lanka was incapable of investigating its crimes through its own mechanisms. Full story >> [TamilNet, Thursday, 18 April 2013, 07:35 GMT] “Eelam and Kerala share similar history. We were ruled by the same colonial powers, the Portuguese, Dutch and later English. Kerala is not very far from Eelam and the war in Eelam was something happening right in front of our eyes. Yet Eelam never became the agenda before any political organizations in Kerala. Keralites were in the streets in solidarity with Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan. This never happened in the case of Eelam,” said Dr Vinod Krishnan from Kerala in an exclusive interview to TamilNet this week. Dr Krishnan, an academic researcher involved in studies related to social exclusion in South and Southeast Asia, is currently attached to the Centre for Research and Education for Social Transformation (CREST) in India. Full story >> [TamilNet, Thursday, 18 April 2013, 01:03 GMT] The paddy field of the well Full story >> [TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 April 2013, 20:26 GMT]Citing an obscure 1886 ordinance of the colonial times of British Ceylon, that has been largely ignored for decades, the Sri Lankan Police now says that it will monitor foreign tourists’ whereabouts in the entire island, a report by the International Business Times said Wednesday. The news report in the IBT has come while Eezham Tamils world over have been campaigning against tourists visiting the Sri Lankan ‘killing fields’. Full story >>
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