TN Assembly passes resolution to indict Sri Lanka, impose economic sanctions

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 June 2011, 08:44 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu State Assembly on Wednesday mid noon unanimously passed a resolution requesting the Indian government to indict Sri Lanka for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the UN, and to work along with world countries to impose economic sanctions on Sri Lanka until Tamils in the island are rehabilitated and get equal rights. The resolution accused Sri Lanka on five counts based on the UN panel report. The DMK was absent at that time as it was boycotting the house on some other issue. The resolution was passed unanimously when more than two third were present in the house.
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TN govt was voted for getting justice to Eezham Tamils: CPI member

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 June 2011, 23:07 GMT]
Participating the debate on Governor’s Speech in Tamil Nadu State Assembly on Tuesday, the Communist Party of India (CPI) Deputy Leader in the Assembly and Sivagangai MLA, Mr. K. Gunasekaran, pointed out that the new government was voted by the people of Tamil Nadu to bring those who committed genocide on Eezham Tamils across the Palk Strait to justice. Declaring that the CPI considers what happened in the island is genocide and not merely war crime, Gunasekaran said that the TN Assembly should unanimously pass a resolution to penalise Mahinda Rajapaksa for the genocide. He also requested the TN Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalitha to lead the struggle for the right of Eezham Tamils over their country and said that the 100 million Tamils all over the world expect this from her.
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EU Court of Justice takes up LTTE case

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 June 2011, 16:49 GMT]
Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice, on Tuesday, informed Victor Koppe, attorney for the LTTE, that the Court has taken up the case “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) vs Council of the European Union” (Case T-208/11-9) for hearing. The Registrar of the General Court informed the attorney that the case has been assigned to the Court's Second Chamber. Victor Koppe, filed the case against the European Union for the annulment of the European Union's ban on Liberation Tigers.
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Campaign in London against war on Indian people

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 June 2011, 22:34 GMT]
Campaigning against the war the New Delhi establishment is waging on peoples in the Indian subcontinent, Arundhati Roy of India, Jane Myrdal of Sweden and Basantha Indramohan of Nepal, convene a meeting and discussion in London this Sunday afternoon at Friends House in Euston Road, London. International Campaign Against War on People of India and the Indian Workers Association (Great Britain) organize the programme. Speaking to BBC last week, Arundhati said India’s economic success a ‘lie’ as the countries poorest masses are suffering at the hands of corrupt governments bought and sold by big corporations.
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Paradigm hub is Sri Lanka: Jaffna academic responds to Chomsky

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 June 2011, 00:23 GMT]
“The U.S. and its allies are not going to want governments which are responsive to the will of the people. If that happens, not only will the U.S. not control the region, but it will be thrown out,” said renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky, addressing 25th anniversary of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), last month and commenting on the US response to popular uprisings in West Asia and North Africa. Responding, a Political Science academic in Jaffna said that even the progressive Western intellectuals, in their preoccupation with the Islamic World, pay little attention to more dangerous happenings in the island of Sri Lanka, where not only the US and its allies but all the powers in their greed to grab the island as a whole, set a new world record in collectively upholding genocide and extermination of a nation as means of ‘stability’ of their interests.
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US attaché clarification, a linguistic legerdemain, accuses Boyle

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 June 2011, 00:03 GMT]
Response from the US State Department on the comments made this week by US defence attaché Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith in Colombo at the controversial 3-day seminar organised by the Sri Lankan military to expound on its defeat of the LTTE earlier this week that the remarks "reflected his personal opinions," and that "[t]hey [the comments] do not reflect the policy of the United States Government,” was "all linguistic legerdemain by the United States Government," accused Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in International Law and a professor at the University of Illinois School of Law.
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Tamils protest at Lords over allegations of Sri Lanka war-crimes

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 June 2011, 04:47 GMT]
Tamil youth activists in Britain took their ‘Boycott Sri Lanka Cricket’ campaign to the Lords cricket grounds on Saturday, the third day of the second Sri Lanka v England test match this summer. Several dozen Tamil activists and supporters handed out leaflets to arriving spectators and cricket officials and staged a noisy demonstration opposite the famous grounds in the latest in a series of events organised by the Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) to raise awareness of the mass killings of Tamil civilians during the final months of Sri Lanka’s war in 2009, and call for a boycott of Sri Lankan cricket until Colombo agrees to an independent international investigation.
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LTTE mounts legal challenge, says post-Mu’l’livaaykkaal EU ban illegal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 June 2011, 00:20 GMT]
Amsterdam-based Bohler Group's attorney, Victor Koppe, brought an action on behalf of the European wing of the LTTE against the Council of the European Union at the European Court of Justice Thursday for the annulment of the ban on Liberation Tigers, arguing that the LTTE no longer uses military means to achieve its goals, and in post-Mu’l’livaaykkaal context, uses political and non-violent methods to achieve the movement's goals of obtaining Tamil justice and exercising the right to self-determination of the Tamil people. Koppe argues that these rights are protected by the doctrine of fundamental freedoms of speech, association, assembly and movement.
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US Defence Attaché in Colombo ‘embarrasses’ Obama administration

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 June 2011, 16:53 GMT]
“Remarks earlier this week by the U.S. Embassy’s Defense Attaché at a conference in Colombo reflected his personal opinions. They do not reflect the policy of the United States Government,” said a spokesman for the U.S. State Department Friday. The comment came in a statement officially distancing the USA from remarks made this week by its own defence attaché Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith in Colombo at the controversial 3-day seminar organised by the Sri Lankan military to expound on its defeat of the LTTE. The USA had earlier declined Sri Lanka’s invitation to attend the controversial seminar. The latest US controversy has raised questions whether the US military officials were also playing a ‘personal counter-insurgency’ role in the Sri Lankan State's war against Eezham Tamils.
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330,000 voters ‘missing’ in Jaffna, Ki'linochchi electoral list after 2009 war of genocide

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 June 2011, 12:21 GMT]
In 2009, the number of registered voters in Jaffna electoral district that comprises of the administrative districts of Jaffna and Ki'linochchi was 816,005. This figure has dropped to 481,791 entries in the register of the electoral district of Jaffna. On Thursday, Assistant Commissioner of Elections (ACE) of Jaffna Electoral District S. Karunanithi confirmed that the SL Election Department has removed 331,214 names from the list. “Most of them have fled the country,” was the official explanation by the ACE. The untold story is that the figure also includes the victims of genocide in Vanni from the Ki'linochchi district. Meanwhile, the date for local elections for 16 Piratheasa Chapais (PS) and three Urban Councils is fixed by the department to take place on July 23, the day when Tamils remember the victims of state-sponsored anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983.
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STF collects details of exiled Tamils from Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 June 2011, 08:56 GMT]
The Special Task Force, an elite commando wing of the Sri Lankan Police and a part of the SL armed forces in the war against Tamils, has begun registering the names and other details of Tamils from Batticaloa, who are settled abroad. A group of personnel of Special Task Force dressed in black uniform conducted house to house search operation in Ea'raavoorpattu Chengkaladi division in Batticaloa district Thursday from 4:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
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European United Left upholds Tamil right to self-determination including secession

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 June 2011, 12:52 GMT]
A conference organised by the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) at the EU Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday, resolved that it supported “the right to self determination of the Tamil-speaking people, up to and including separation, if that is what they wish, while safeguarding the rights of all minorities” and demanded the SL state to shut down the military bases of the “army of occupation” in North and East and sought a political solution addressing the “national and democratic aspirations” of the Tamil people. Heidi Hautala, Green MEP and Chair of EU Parliament's Human Rights Sub Committee, a key speaker at the event, called for a GUE/NGL fact finding mission to the island of Sri Lanka. Vaiko, the leader of the MDMK in Tamil Nadu and Sinhala and Tamil political activists from the island and the diaspora took part in the event.
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U.S. case: Rajapakse ducks service, Court order sought for alternate service

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 June 2011, 00:04 GMT]
Attorney for the three Tamil plaintiffs who filed civil action against Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse for monetary damages under US's Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) in the District Court of District of Columbia, informed the Court Tuesday that defendant, Mahinda Rajapakse, has avoided service of process by not accepting mail sent by recorded delivery to the Sri Lanka embassy and "Temple Trees," and that Plaintiffs are in the process of attempting to serve via Sri Lankan central authority in accordance with the provisions of "The Hague Convention," to which the U.S. and Sri Lanka are signatories. Plaintiffs will seek authorization from the court for alternate means of service, such as notification via a legal publication.
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War-crimes film, Heyns report, drown Colombo theatrics on terror

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 June 2011, 00:22 GMT]
Channel-4's announcement of screening of an hour-long film on Sri Lanka's killing fields at UN on 3rd June, and the presentation of video footage to the UN Human Rights Council by the UN special investigator into extrajudicial killings, Christof Heyns, spread a gloomy war-crimes cloud over Sri Lanka making the terror-summit in Colombo, a holiday-extravaganza for the military brass of several rogue nations. The terror-summit is widely perceived as an ill-conceived attempt to whitewash the criminal enterprise the Rajapakse brothers took in slaughtering more than 40,000 civilians and incarcerating more than 300,000 Tamils in internment camps in the war to defeat the Tigers.
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Australia should speak up against war crimes: Navi Pillay

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 May 2011, 16:13 GMT]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has said that Australia, that has ratified and committed to end impunity, has a responsibility to speak up and call for accountability to end impunity for serious crimes in the region. Ms. Pillay was responding to the question by Dr. Sam Pari of Australian Tamil Congress at at panel discussion held at Human Rights 2011 event on 23 May in Sydney. Citing the response by Ms. Navi Pillai, a Greens MP, in her official blog said Australian Government's silence during and since the 2009 war adds to the pain the Tamil community is enduring.
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SL Navy chases away Tamil fishermen from the seas off Kayts

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 May 2011, 16:43 GMT]
Sri Lanka Navy on Friday chased away hundreds of Tamils fishermen from Vadamaraadchi and Kurunakar North, engaged in fishing in the seas off Melignchi-munai of Ooraath-thu'rai (Kayts), blocking them from engaging in fishing in the seas off the islets. The fishermen said they have been fishing in the seas off Ooraath-thu'rai for many years with the permission from the fishermen association of Kayts. Sri Lanka Navy has chased the Tamil fishermen away to bring in Sinhala fishermen from south to occupy the fishing resources of Tamils, the fishermen alleged.
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Tamil independence, a universal issue going beyond state reformation in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 May 2011, 09:36 GMT]
India could do much better by acknowledging the right to independence of Eezham Tamils, by working for international consensus towards it, by structuring an IC-facilitated transition arrangement for it, and by creating an environment for the diaspora to freely interact through Palaali and Trincomalee, for India’s own reconciliation with Tamils and for relieving the island from endangering the entire region, rather than covertly waging ‘counterinsurgency’ and psy-op wars with people of Tamil Nadu and the diaspora through intelligence operatives to save establishments indicted, writes TamilNet commentator in Colombo. The Frankenstein Monster in Colombo is now difficult for its creators and the UN to handle, but Sinhalese alone may able to bring it down and strike true reconciliation if there is an IC decision that Tamil Eelam is inevitable. That is the only way out now, he further said.
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Rain helps Tamil protesters at Cardiff cricket match

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 May 2011, 03:29 GMT]
Rain that drenched Tamil youth activists conducting a major leafleting effort in support of the ‘Boycott Sri Lankan Cricket’ campaign on Saturday, the third day of Sri Lanka’s first test match against England, proved a blessing in disguise when it stopped play till lunch, allowing them to canvass crowds of spectators milling outside the Swalec Stadium in Wales. Two dozen activists received warm support and encouragement from spectators, including several members of England’s colourful ‘Barmy Army’, as they handed out leaflets and conversed with them over several hours, organizers said.
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Colombo encourages local politicians to create racial dissention in east

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 May 2011, 02:43 GMT]
A planned move to create dissension between the two communities -Tamils and Muslims- now living with understanidng and in harmony in the Batticaloa district is being orchestrated by the ruling party local politicians with the backing of Colombo authority, sources in the east said. Mr.Ali Zahir Mowlana, Chairman of the Era’voor PS is taking steps to shift the office of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) now located in a building in Ward 5 along Nallathamby Road in Era’voor Chengkaladi DS division to a Muslim suburb in the PS area. Tamil civic groups have urged the Regional Commissioners of Local Government Administrations in Batticaloa and Trincomalee to stop relocating government offices from Tamil areas to Muslim suburbs.
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Challenge Delhi, Convince Paris on investigations: Tamil Nadu journalist

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 May 2011, 11:01 GMT]
With its influence on UN Security Council and as an elected member of the 47-member UN Human Rights Council, the current Indian establishment will secretly put its weight behind Colombo's efforts to block international investigations, K. Aiyanathan, a senior journalist in Tamil Nadu told TamilNet Saturday. Urging the political forces in Tamil Nadu to checkmate New Delhi by calling for war crimes investigations against key Indian personalities if they continue to abet the Rajapaksa regime, the journalist told TamilNet that Diaspora Tamils should convince France, a permanent member in the Security Council and a member state of the Human Rights Council to stay the course of justice as the Council is scheduled to hold its 17th session from 30 May to 17 June at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
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