Explosion claims life of de-mining worker in Mukamaalai

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2013, 14:09 GMT]
A Halo Trust worker lost his life in a landmine explosion Monday morning, while he was engaged in de-mining at Mukamaalai, a former Forward Defence Line (FDL). The tragic incident, comes at a time when the occupying Colombo is bent on expelling all independent de-mining NGOs and the SL military is poised to take control of even the last-phase quality assurance being carried out by the UN agencies.
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‘Tamil Nadu, diaspora youth brook no compromise on Tamil Eelam’

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2013, 04:31 GMT]
Tamil students and activists in Tamil Nadu and the Eezham Tamil diaspora have firmly voiced for the creation of a sovereign Tamil Eelam in their recent protests. The trend set by the student upsurge in TN has inspired the diaspora youth to conceptually challenge the International Community of Establishments. A strong realization of the necessity of a struggle addressing the ICE and to course correct pro-establishment elements is being strongly felt among second-generation activists in the diaspora. This understanding was reflected by Tamil youth and grassroots activists from Tamil Nadu, Canada and UK.
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Trichy gathering condemns “US–Indian betrayal” of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2013, 02:05 GMT]
Addressing a mass gathering of students and common people in Trichy (Thiruchchi) district, Tamil Nadu, student leaders, youth activists, and veteran political activists condemned the betrayal of the Eezham Tamil nation by the US-Indian axis, further accusing them of abetting the genocidal Sri Lankan state, on Sunday. Not only India, but the entire world has turned its attention on the mass struggle waged by our students in Tamil Nadu over the last month, said the organisers of the gathering. If the Indian government does not pay heed to the just demands put forth by the student protestors across Tamil Nadu, the students will begin and intensify civil disobedience campaigns, student activists from Thiruchchi told TamilNet.
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Student uprising becomes theme of cultural event in Canada

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 April 2013, 19:16 GMT]
The recent student upsurge demanding Tamil Eelam as the solution to the national question of Eezham Tamils became the main theme of a live show staged by the second-generation diaspora students in Canada last Sunday. The programme, titled “I’lantha’lir – Discover Your Roots”, through multiple stage-acts, offered a live narration of the history of the Tamil liberation struggle, divided into notable time periods within the history.
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Sri Lanka in Amnesty's Get on the Bus protest in New York

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 April 2013, 03:32 GMT]
More than 250 students from Massachusetts and other states including several Tamil youths Friday participated in Amnesty's "Get on the Bus for Human Rights" [GOTB] day of action focused on human rights in Uganda, China/Tibet, Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Burma. First rally in the afternoon targetted Sri Lanka, calling on the Sri Lankan government to end arbitrary detentions, torture, and enforced disappearances. The rally was held at the Permanent Mission of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, on the 3rd Avenue.
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Colombo, Shuler, new US lobby firm, cozy alliance rumored

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 April 2013, 00:02 GMT]
Colombo has inked a lobbying and government affairs contract with the US-based "The Majority Group," after the previous lobby firm, Patton Boggs, terminated its representation of Sri Lanka in early February, sources in Washington said. While the diplomatic performance of Jaliya Wickremesuriya, Sri Lanka's President's relative and the current Ambassador to Sri Lanka in Washington, has been lackluster, Wickremasuriya-mooted relationship with North Carolina Congressman, Heath Shuler, is rumored to have played a role in the selection of the lobby firm, even while the Congressman's nexus to the Majority group has raised questions on the "revolving door" ambitions of Shuler, political sources in Washington said.
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Sri Lanka is Sinhala to Colombo film industry, media and academics

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 April 2013, 19:57 GMT]
Responding to the protest waged by the Actor’s Guild of the Tamil Nadu Film industry in Chennai against the genocide of Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, a Colombo media Ceylon Today on Thursday came out with a feature written by a “special Correspondent,” titled “A friend turned foe.” The feature detailed the long and two-way connections between the film industries of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The implied message, against the backdrop of ‘economic embrace’ contemplated in the corporate circles of India, is that ‘business should not be affected.’ Whether India’s economic embrace of the Sinhala State should take place over the annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils, and whether the Indian Establishment and corporatism are unable to conceive anything alternative, are the questions righteously raised by the protest coming from the Tamil artists, writes an academic in Jaffna.
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UAE Tamil deportees face torture, HRW raises alarm

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 April 2013, 14:51 GMT]
United Arab Emirates (UAE) authorities should not deport 19 Tamil refugees to Sri Lanka because they would be at serious risk of torture and persecution upon return. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has recognized all 19 as refugees, but the UAE authorities have told the group they must leave the country by April 11, 2013, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the US-based rights organization said. “For the UAE to return recognized Tamil refugees to a grave risk of torture in Sri Lanka would signal a total disregard for their well-being – and the most basic principle of international refugee and human rights law,” HRW said.
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Casteism, genocide, work hand in hand in Sinhala mind-set

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 April 2013, 23:49 GMT]
Casteist terms used in derogatory ways by Sinhalese in their references towards Tamils reveal the sociological nature of the genocidal mind-set of Sinhalese in the island of Sri Lanka. "How many people outside of Sri Lanka know that 'Sakkiliya' is a Sinhala term used to refer to a Tamil person [...],” asks Christopher Tuckwood, who has introduced a new Internet-based tool, named Hatebase, to study hate language in predicting and preventing genocide. Tuckwood is the Executive Director and Co-founder of The Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention, a Canada-based non-profit organisation dedicated to detecting and averting genocide throughout the globe.
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5,000 Tamils marching in London reject LLRC, demand Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 April 2013, 19:45 GMT]
More than 5,000 Eezham Tamils, from all walks of life, took to the streets in London on Friday, demanding a UN referendum to determine the creation of Tamil Eelam. “We want action, not words,” the protesters said rejecting any solution based on Sri Lanka's LLRC. Demanding the United Nations not to support the genocidal Sri Lanka, the Tamils in the UK said they are with the students of Tamil Nadu and thanked the Tamil Nadu State Assembly for passing a historic resolution demanding a UN referendum on separate Eezham. Earlier, in a referendum initiated by an independent group of British Tamils, held two years ago, 99.33% of 64,692 Eezham Tamils had voted in favour of the formation of independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam in the contiguous north and east of the island of Sri Lanka.
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Aanai-vizhunthaan-ku’lam, Aliyaa-wætuna-wæwa

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 April 2013, 01:44 GMT]
The tank where an elephant fell
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Indian housing aid programmed for exploitation by Colombo agents in East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 April 2013, 23:53 GMT]
Disregarding the repeated requests by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) politicians in the Batticaloa district to include local community leaders such as the heads of the Rural Development Societies (RDS), representatives from women groups and trustees of temples in the committees to select the beneficiaries of the Indian housing scheme, the SL government has handed over the selection process in the Batticaloa district to its paramilitary and the political outfits of SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ruling party, civil sources in the district say. Despite their rapport with New Delhi, the TNA has failed in making India to deliver the aid directly to the affected people without the exploitation of genocidal Colombo, the civil sources in the district further said.
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New Buddhist shrine built at Trinco Saiva sacred site

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 April 2013, 22:47 GMT]
A Buddhist shrine has been built at the precincts of Kanniya Hot Wells a Saiva sacred site in a traditional Tamil village in Trincomalee district. A fifteen-acre land has been appropriated by the SL Government Agent Major General (retd.) Ranjith de Silva on the instruction of Colombo. The Buddhist shrine has a signboard giving the name of the place of worship as ‘Unuthiya Lin Rajamaha Viharaya’, meaning the ‘Royal Great Temple of the Hotwater Wells’. The term ‘Viharaya’ used in the board implies that a Buddhist Sangha (monastery) has been established there. The local Saiva myths associate the place with pre-Buddhist times of the King Ravana of the Ramayana epic. For centuries, the Hindu population of the region used to come to this site to perform rituals to the deceased and ancestors like the Hindus in India go to Gaya and Varanasi.
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China's vice minister of intelligence finds Jaffna a place to visit

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 April 2013, 23:41 GMT]
Following US, UK, Indian, Japanese, Australian and Canadian diplomats, a vice minister at China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) too finds Jaffna a ‘must to be visited’ place, political observers in Jaffna commented on the visit of the Chinese Vice Minister Zhou Qing, on Wednesday. The Chinese deputy minister's visit was marked by intense security arrangement to him by the occupying genocidal military of Sri Lanka. China's assistance to the Sinhala military in building permanent cantonments and camps in the country of Eezham Tamils is well known. The MSS is China's primary agency for internal and external intelligence.
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SL military squad attacks paper office, curbs paper dissemination in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 April 2013, 10:55 GMT]
A squad operated by the Sri Lankan military intelligence on Wednesday stormed the Ki'linochchi office of the Uthayan daily around 4:30 a.m., when the distributors of the paper arrived at the office to unload the papers for distribution. The branch manager of the office and four distributors sustained injuries and three of them with serious injuries have been admitted at Ki'linochchi hospital. The office, subjected to the attack is situated on Karadippoakku Junction on A9 Road, heavily guarded by the occupying SL military. The attack has been carried out in a similar fashion as the one reported Saturday on the meeting of ITAK, a constituent party of the Tamil National Alliance.
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Relatives of detainees expecting post-Geneva release get no answer

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 April 2013, 23:35 GMT]
Following the recent UNHRC process in Geneva, hundreds of kith and kin of the missing people in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils have again started visiting the Sri Lankan military camps, the so-called human rights commission offices and the offices of the Tamil politicians to locate the details of their loved ones. Some reports that appeared in the Tamil press in recent days, citing information obtained in Geneva by the Colombo-based Committee for Investigation of Disappeared, provided a list of 35 names saying that a section of Tamil prisoners, whose whereabouts were hitherto unknown, were to be produced in the courts by the Sri Lankan authorities. However, none of the relatives of the 35 names leaked in the report have managed to locate details of their missed ones, human rights activists in Jaffna told TamilNet.
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SL military prevents Moothoor Tamil farmers from gaining back their lands

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 April 2013, 15:28 GMT]
Resettled Tamil farmers of Kangkuve'li and Paddith-thidal in the Moothoor DS division are being prevented from cultivating their paddy fields located in Muthalai-madu and Padukaadu areas by Sinhala encroachers, who are backed by the occupying Sri Lanka Army soldiers camped in the area, say Tamil civil sources in Moothoor. The affected farmers have made complaints to the Moothoor Divisional Secretary with valid legal documents and to the Seruwila Police as well as to the Moothoor Police urging immediate action to retrieve their paddy fields in the extent of 750 acres for doing cultivation. However, no action has been taken, the farmers complain.
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Prof Gamlath passes away

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2013, 21:57 GMT]
Veteran Professor of Sinhala, Dr Sucharitha Gamlath passed away at the age of 79 in Colombo on Saturday and the funeral took place on Monday. Prof Gamlath was righteously anti-Establishment throughout his career and for nearly 15 years, the governments in Colombo kept him unemployed, which he faced heroically without compromising on his principles and convictions. To the end he steadfastly stood for the Tamil right to self-determination in the island of Sri Lanka. He was the first Professor of Sinhala at the University of Jaffna, appointed in 1975 (then the Jaffna Campus of the University of Sri Lanka) and his penalisation by the JR Jayawardane government took place in 1980 while he was serving at the University of Jaffna. TamilNet pays tribute to the scholar of a rare genre and expresses condolences to bereaving family members, friends and comrades.
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SL military machinates caste, anti-diaspora violence in Jaffna villages

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2013, 07:39 GMT]
An SL Military intelligence backed attack that took place in a Marriage Hall at Aavarangkaal in Puththoor, Jaffna, on last Wednesday and Thursday, shows to what extent the occupying Sinhala military has determined to engineer caste and anti-diaspora violence in select rural areas of Jaffna Peninsula to ultimately make Eezham Tamils weakened as a nation in the island, news sources in Jaffna said. The Marriage Hall that was preparing for a marriage function and its manager who is a retired Village Officer, were brutally attacked by a gang of youth organized by the occupying Sinhala military and its collaborators in Jaffna. The reason for the attack is said to be a publication coming from the diaspora in the UK that was stocked at the Marriage Hall for release. The publication was interpreted as a talk on caste and false accusation against SL military.
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Maa-eliya, Patti-eliya, Pul-eliya, Kala-eliya

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2013, 06:26 GMT]
The big open space or plain
The open land to graze cattle
The open grassland
The open space serving as threshing floor

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