Cancel CHOGM, appeals Prof. Lynch

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 April 2013, 00:31 GMT]
Prof. Jake Lynch, director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, in an opinion column in the ABC website, called for cancellation of the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM), pointing to 'serious allegations of violations of international human rights law' in Sri Lanka "including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture and violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, as well as intimidation of and reprisals against human rights defenders, members of civil society and journalists, threats to judicial independence and the rule of law, and discrimination on the basis of religion or belief," which prompted UNHCR voting to send its own investigators to Sri Lanka.
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Sri Lanka torture concerns well founded, says Time

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 April 2013, 06:17 GMT]
The popular biweekly, the Time magazine, commenting on Sri Lanka's deteriorating rights climate, said that amid abuse and fear, Tamils are continuing to flee Sri Lanka, and that torture and sexual violence by Sri Lanka's military against Tamils with alleged separatist ties during the 26-year civil war make credible the threat of torture to a well-known Tamil TV reporter who the UAE is threatening to deport to Sri Lanka. Also pointing to the attack on Uthayan, the Time said, "[t]he tensions revealed in the incident [at Uthayan] are becoming depressingly familiar. The clouds have been darkening over this picturesque island nation in recent years as euphoria over the end of its long-running civil war has ebbed."
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Tamil activist Neethan Shan elected to represent NDP at federal level

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 April 2013, 00:58 GMT]
"As regards [Canada’s] foreign policy on Sri Lanka, I will continue to advocate for recognizing the political aspirations of the Eezham Tamils in the homeland and to push for justice for genocide and war crimes committed on the Tamil nation by the Sri Lankan state,” said 34-year-old Eezham Tamil activist Neethan Shan, who has been elected to represent Ontario at the federal level for the New Democratic Party (NDP) on Saturday.
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Three-pronged land grab against Eezham Tamils stepped up in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 April 2013, 23:41 GMT]
The occupying SL military, Buddhist monks and Sinhala civil officials have stepped up appropriating lands belonging to Eezham Tamils in Ampaa’rai district. The instructions for land grab come from Colombo and the appropriation of Tamils’ lands has accelerated since the Provincial Council elections in the East and the recent ‘development’ exhibition held in Ampaa'rai. Threatened by prevailing ‘disappearances’ and other forms of harassments in the district, the victims hesitate to lodge complaints with the SL Police.
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Kamal Haasan, Prakash Raj strengthen ‘encyclopaedia’ myth on Sambar

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 April 2013, 20:57 GMT]
A Vijay TV programme for ‘Winning One Crore’ on Monday, anchored by Prakash Raj and participated by Kamal Haasan, both celebrities of Indian cinema, said the famous Tamil Nadu food preparation Chaampaar (Sambar) got its name from the Maratha ruler Shahuji at Thanjavur, who invented the recipe and named it after Sambhaji, son of the Maratha king Shivaji. Chaampaar (Sambar) got the name as it is prepared by making Champaaram (ground paste of spices) and the use of the word Champaaram is found in Tamil inscriptions predating Shahuji or Sambhaji, Eezham Tamil academic circles told TamilNet, citing inscriptions and the usage of the words Champal in Eezham Tamil and Sambol in Sinhala for the paste made of spices together with coconut.
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Plight of UAE refugees expose human rights deception of IC, UN

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 April 2013, 08:08 GMT]
No country in the West should have any problem with providing political asylum to the fleeing Tamil Journalist Ms Lokini Rathimohan, currently held at detention in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), rights activists in the island concerned with the protection of journalists fleeing genocidal Sri Lanka told TamilNet. As the journalist's name and photos have been published in the international media now and as there have been write-ups in the hostile press in Colombo suggesting to the SL government to get her deported to Colombo to ‘disprove’ the killing of Isaippiriya, a colleague of Lokini at the National Television of Tamileelam (NTT), the need to assure Lokini's security has become much more important than ever before, the activists further said. In the meantime, a former administrative official at the NTT confirmed that Ms Lokini was not an LTTE member, but was an employed journalist.
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TN government requested to protect heritage site of Eezham Tamils in Chithamparam

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 April 2013, 00:05 GMT]
Eezham Tamil circles in the island and in the diaspora, connected to charities established in Chithamparam by their ancestors, request the Tamil Nadu government, especially the Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa, to make legislation to protect the charity enclave at Chithamparam and to promote it as a heritage site of Eezham Tamils, participated by Eezham Tamils in the island and in the diaspora. They cited at the promotion Sri Lanka’s Maha Bodhi Society gets in India, but the dilapidated condition of the Tamil-Saiva heritage site of Eezham Tamils in Tamil Nadu. The Eezham Tamil charities at Chithamparam that record from the times of the Kingdom of Jaffna and that make an enclave around the Gnaanap-pirakaasar Tank are found in almost ruined conditions today.
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Geneva resolution answerable to arson committed on Tamil press: Jaffna activist

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 April 2013, 15:37 GMT]
Burning the press of Eezham Tamils in the island has more than three decades of history. The office and machinery of the Jaffna-based Tamil Daily Eezha Naadu was burnt down the very night the Jaffna Public Library was put to ashes in 1981. Arson was once again committed on Eezha Naadu while the IPKF of the New Delhi Establishment was occupying Jaffna. The Washington-New Delhi deception carried out in the name of Geneva resolution, allowing Sri Lanka to escape from genocide indictment and to continue with structural genocide, is answerable to the current attacks and arson committed on the press of Eezham Tamils in the island, said a new generation political activist in Jaffna.
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Torture is systemic in Sri Lanka, HK Court sends chilling message

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 April 2013, 10:02 GMT]
Giving additional impetus to world-wide protests of Tamils against the gross rights violations, including torture, on Tamil civilians by Sri Lanka security forces, and reinforcing that torture is endemic to Sri Lanka's oppressive state apparatus, and systemic across successive Sri Lanka governments, Hong Kong's appeals court granted asylum to two Tamil men, declaring that the men face torture and can claim "well-founded fear of persecution" if returned to Sri Lanka, reports from Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, reveal. The two Tamils are believed to be the first and the second to win appeal cases since a new appeal process was set in place in 2009 in Hong Kong. The first man arrived in Hong Kong in 2003, at age 20. The names of the two were not made public due to security reasons, reports said.
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Armed squad attacks Tamil paper office in Jaffna setting ablaze press machines

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 April 2013, 07:03 GMT]
An armed squad, allegedly operated by the Sri Lankan military intelligence, stormed the main office of the Uthayan Tamil daily in the city of Jaffna in the early hours of Saturday, setting ablaze the press machines and the copies of printed papers that were ready for distribution. The squad chased media workers away at gun point and poured petrol on the papers and machinery in the fourth attack to be reported on the popular Tamil daily since January this year. The pre-dawn attack, carried out Saturday at 4:45 a.m., comes 10 days after a similar attack on its Ki'linochchi office this month. Colombo's systematic attack on the Tamil daily, owned by Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian E. Saravanapavan, seeks to destabilize the operation and dissemination of the paper in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, especially before conducting elections to Northern Provincial Council.
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Joke and a fraud, Boyle slams Kerry's New Year message

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 April 2013, 11:46 GMT]
Noting the new U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry's New Year Statement that included, "[t]he New Year brings with it a new opportunity for all Sri Lankans to join together in the spirit of peace and reconciliation," Professor Boyle, an expert in international law and a keen watcher of the treacherous conduct of the international community in watching the genocide of Tamils unfold in Sri Lanka, said, "Kerry [is] lumping the Tamils in with the genocidal Sinhala. It would be like Kerry congratulating the German Jews together with the German Nazis on the German New Year."
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Australian detainees demanding release enter fifth day of hunger-strike

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 April 2013, 10:33 GMT]
27 asylum seekers, including 24 Eezham Tamils, kept in Broadmeadows detention centre in Melbourne, Australia are entering the fifth day of hunger-strike demanding release. The Tamil refugees had arrived in Australia by boat in 2009 and have been in detention ever since as the Australian government considered them a ‘security threat’, even as they get support from Australian media and civil society activists. They include 4 women and 7 children below the age of ten, some still toddlers. Speaking to TamilNet from the detention centre, a 40 year old detainee said that despite being recognized as refugees by the UNHCR, there was no move by any international agency or by the Australian government to release them into normal society. “We are like a people without a future. Some individuals in depression are also feeling that suicide would be better than such a life,” he said.
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Kurulu-wæwa, Kuruvi-ku'lama

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 April 2013, 21:10 GMT]
The tank of birds
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NZ Intelligence alleged of monitoring former Green MP for involvement in Tamil question

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 April 2013, 16:50 GMT]
New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service (SIS), which is part of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence network, comprising the intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, Britain and the USA, was alleged of monitoring former Green party politician Keith Locke, who has been sympathetic to the Tamil cause. Mr Locke believes the SIS began covert operations on him in 2003, when he travelled to Sri Lanka, reports The Dominion Post. The former Green Party politician has demanded apology for illegal spying and that all 88 New Zealanders who were being spied on should be notified if the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) has illegally snooped on them.
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Tamil genocide framework highlighted in Slovenia Conference

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 April 2013, 11:14 GMT]
The framework of genocide carried by Colombo on Eelam Tamils is featured in a poster presentation at the Slovenia conference on R2P being held in the Faculty of Law, University of Lkubljana, Thursday by Tamils Against Genocide [TAG], a US-UK based activist organization, the conference details reveal. More than 80 speakers and poster presenters from almost 40 states and international institutions will discuss issues regarding R2P in 2 parallel panels each day, according to the conference program.
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Colombo answers Indian political visit by simultaneously inviting Pak defence visit

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 April 2013, 12:00 GMT]
While representatives of a section of Indian political parties were on a fact finding mission to the island, meeting various Tamil political, civil society, chamber of commerce and former civil members in Jaffna on Tuesday and Wednesday under the aegis of the Indian High Commission and the Indian Consulate in Jaffna, the SL government in Colombo is engaging with a high level Pakistani Defence delegation comprising 19 members who are on a one-week visit to the island. The visit by Pakistani defence delegation follows the visit of the Chinese Deputy Minister of Intelligence last week.
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CHOGM heats up, Rae calls Sri Lanka a "Rogue Member"

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 April 2013, 00:34 GMT]
As the members of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group [CMAG] meeting in London scheduled to be held on April 26 draws close, the CHOGM [Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting] boycott call has increased, with DMK chief M. Karunanidhi sending his emissaries to meet the CMAG envoys to demand shifting of the CHOGM venue out of Sri Lanka, Indian media reported. Meanwhile, Canada's Liberal party leader, Bob Rae, urged Commonwealth states to boycott the meeting if held in Colombo, and said "[t]he Commonwealth is too important to allow its business to be disrupted by a single rogue member’s violation of the association’s beliefs and values."
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Don’t be spectators to attack on Muslims sharing language and homeland: Sampanthan

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2013, 22:49 GMT]
"When our Muslim brothers and sisters are harmed on the street; or attacked by mobs; or have their Mosques vandalized; we cannot be unconcerned spectators,” declared Mr.R.Sampanthan, leader of the Tamil National Alliance and the Trincomalee district parliamentarian while making a statement in the parliament on Tuesday afternoon. The Muslim people have been historical inhabitants of this island. The bonds of a common language and home that hold us together cannot be broken easily, Sampanthan further said in voicing for the plight of Muslims who are predominantly Tamil-speaking in the island.
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‘TN student movement opens possibilities of new political futures’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2013, 22:41 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu student movement that has “thrown up a new young leadership” that is unaffiliated to any political party and is challenging the US-sponsored UNHRC resolution on conceptually firm grounds “clearly shows that here is a new generation of Tamils which is imagining new political futures,” write Prof MSS Pandian and PhD scholar A. Kalaiarasan in a commentary published on the April 13 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW). In the article titled ‘A Tamil Spring?’ making a concise sociological analysis of the evolution of the student protests, the authors show how the student uprising, besides affecting the mass sentiments of the TN public and effecting greater awareness on the nuances of the Tamil Eelam struggle, is also influencing, challenging and changing the political discourse of parliamentary parties in Tamil Nadu.
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Wild elephants deployed by Colombo's forest department claim lives of Tamils in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2013, 09:12 GMT]
Sri Lankan Forest Department, in recent weeks, has brought in a number of wild elephants from Sinhala areas into the jungles adjacent to Koa'ra'laip-pattu South Division of the Batticaloa district, where uprooted Tamil people have resettled after the end of war. The Divisional Secretary of Koa'ra'laippattu South, Mr Thanabalasundaram, when contacted by reporters in Batticaloa, admitted that two Tamil civilians have been killed within the last 30 days by the wild elephants that have gone amok on the villagers and their properties. The lives and the livelihood of 3,000 Tamil villagers are threatened by the presence of more than 50 wild elephants of the Sinhala forest department.
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