ICC's focus on Africa examined

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 March 2013, 14:04 GMT]
Defining the International Criminal Court (ICC) in glowing terms, Kofi Annan said 15 years ago, after the Rome Statute was drafted in Rome, “Until now, when powerful men committed crimes against humanity, they knew that so long as they remained powerful, no earthly court could judge them." But, American University professor David Bosco asks, "[a]fter more than a decade, all eight investigations the court has opened have been in Africa. All the individuals indicted by the court — more than two dozen — have been African. Annan’s proclamation notwithstanding, some very powerful people in other parts of the world have avoided investigation," and mentions Sri Lanka as one of the countries that escapes ICC scrutiny, in the latest Sunday edition of the Washington Post.
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Rajapakse immune from war crime charges while in office, rules US Court

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 March 2013, 12:04 GMT]
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit in the opinion delivered this week on the appeal case against Sri Lanka's President Rajpakse filed by three Tamil plaintiffs claiming civil damages on war-crimes charges ruled that "as a consequence of the [U.S.] State Department’s suggestion of immunity, the defendant [Rajapakse] is entitled to head of state immunity under the common law while he remains in office...," and affirmed the judgment of the district court dismissing the plaintiffs’ complaint. The plaintiffs' attorney Bruce Fein told TamilNet that he will advise his clients and the sponsoring organization if they should consider filing a writ of certiorari keep the option open to move the case further forward to the Supreme Court.
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SL military operatives attack ITAK meeting in Ki'linochchi, 20 wounded

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 March 2013, 08:04 GMT]
Four Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians, Mavai Senathirajah, S. Sritharan, E. Saravanapavan and MA Sumanthiran, who visited Ki'linochchi Saturday for a meeting at Sritharan MP's office, were besieged by a Sinhala mob, numbering more than 100, that attacked the meeting at 11:00 a.m. The alleged SL military intelligence operatives, carrying Lion flags, were shouting slogans against the TNA and were pelting stones on the public meeting. 20 people have sustained injuries. The public providing security to the TNA parliamentarians caught two of the Sinhala attackers. However, the SL police, who came to the site 75 minutes after the report of the attack, allowed the two alleged military personnel to walk free without detaining them for investigations. The brutal assault has been carried out in a similar fashion as the attack reported at Thellippazhai in Jaffna in June 2011.
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TN resolution needs to be legally and politically binding: SP Udayakumar

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 March 2013, 02:53 GMT]
Recognizing the significance of the resolution passed in Tamil Nadu state assembly recently calling for a UN referendum among the Eezham Tamils, TN grassroots activist SP Udayakumar emphasised that the resolution needs to be made politically and legally binding. “Tamil Nadu resolutions are only resolutions right now. We need to make them legally binding,” he said in a video interview to TamilNet from Idinthakarai. Likewise, speaking on the student protests in Tamil Nadu, Mr. Udayakumar, who is at the heart of the peaceful struggle against the nuclear reactor in Koodangku’lam, further said that it was too early for the students to give up the protests unless “the Tamil Nadu resolution is accepted by the Indian parliament and if the India government is willing to act on it”.
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TNA MP cautions on PC elections harped on by Geneva resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 March 2013, 15:05 GMT]
“We are a distinct Nation with historic records in this soil, proving our evolution [as a Nation]. The Sinhala Nation destroyed us. A nation was destroyed by another nation here. But, the international community has handed us over to those who destroyed us to investigate the crimes against us; we have been handed over to those who fired upon us; to those who fired shells on us; to those who fired phosphorus bombs against us; to those who fired cluster munitions on us. How can you expect justice from this country [of the Sinhala Nation],” asked Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Sivagnanam Sritharan, in a press meet in Jaffna on Wednesday. “Therefore, an intervention by the international community is a must and an urgent one,” failing which the existence of the Tamil nation in the island would be wiped out from the maps of the world, he further said.
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SL Navy appropriates lands of Muslims in Pulmoaddai

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 March 2013, 11:40 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Navy in Trincomalee district has appropriated lands belonging to Muslim villagers in Ma'nki'ndimalai, Ponmalai-kudaa, Theaththaatheevu and Veerantheevu in Pulmoaddai village that comes under the Kuchchave'li DS division in Trincomalee district. SLN sources say that these lands are urgently needed to construct camps. The villagers who were displaced during the war, who now want to resettle in their villages, are being prevented by the Sinhala Navy that tells them to find alternative places.
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SL military steps up militarisation of Batticaloa, new camp at Tsunami settlement

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 March 2013, 07:59 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army is constructing a new army camp in Ma'nmunai-North DS division of Batticaloa district, at a site where Tsunami affected people are settled. The residents of the Tsunami Housing Scheme area of Ma'nmunai North, threatened by the construction of the new military base, questioned the motive behind the establishment of a new camp, while a camp is already situated at Paalameen-madu, just one km close to the site. An SL police station, at Kokkuvil, is also in the close proximity. The sheer extensiveness and intensity of SL militarization and Sinhalicisation of the predominantly Tamil district in the East, are not even taken up for any discussion by the so-called international community that ‘hailed’ the ‘liberation’ of the East by genocidal Sri Lanka in 2007, Batticaloa Tamil activists said.
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Marakkalaha-watta

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 March 2013, 06:48 GMT]
The grove or garden of a navigator
The grove or garden of a Muslim
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Tamil Nadu Assembly resolves for UN referendum on separate Eelam

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2013, 10:03 GMT]
In a historic move, the Tamil Nadu State Assembly on Wednesday, unanimously passed a resolution for bringing in arrangements at the level of the UN Security Council to conduct a referendum among Eezham Tamils in the island as well as in the diaspora on the question of Separate Eelam. In addition, the resolution passed at the Tamil Nadu Assembly demanded the Government of India to stop calling Sri Lanka a friendly country. The resolution also included the earlier demands ie., Independent International Investigations on Genocide and War Crimes as well as imposition of economic sanctions on Sri Lanka. The resolution, unanimously passed, was moved by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa.
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Sinhala military takes over UN demining following Geneva resolution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2013, 07:10 GMT]
One of the immediate results of the US-resolution at Geneva “welcoming and acknowledging the progress” of genocidal Sri Lanka in various avenues, including in demining the country of Tamils, is the UN entirely handing over demining and supervision of demining to the occupying Sinhala military. This will pave way for the genocidal SL military to make money, Sinhalicize even demining and to come out with excuses for years in handing back lands, news sources in Jaffna said. The last international organisation involved in demining the country of Eezham Tamils and has an office in Jaffna, i.e., a UN outfit of Tamil staff that was supervising, monitoring and issuing certificates on demining, will be closed down in June. The work will be handed over to the SL military and its Sinhala staff.
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BBC blames Sri Lanka for targetted interference, suspends broadcasts

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2013, 03:50 GMT]
"We regret the disruption in service to our loyal audiences in Sri Lanka, but such targeted interference in our programmes is a serious breach of trust with those audiences, which the BBC cannot allow," BBC World Service Director Peter Horrocks announced Tuesday suspending broadcasts to Sri Lanka. Both English language and Tamil services broadcast via the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) have been stopped with immediate effect, the BBC reported.
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Ambassador Blake cannot reverse Tamil genocide: Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2013, 00:43 GMT]
Responding to the statements made during the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Robert Blake's, interview with the BBC, where Blake appears to characterize the "GOSL’s mass extermination of over 100,000 Tamils in Vanni in 2009" as nothing more than “some of the negative trends that have occurred with respect to rule of law and human rights in Sri Lanka," that needs to be "reversed," Professor Francis A. Boyle, an expert in international law, said, while Blake cannot reverse the genocide, the "start of “revers{ing}” them is to establish an International Investigative Commission in order to prosecute them." Blake also denies in the interview that he [and the international community] had any knowledge of the magnitude of the casualties during the final months of the war.
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Tamils should resist being taken into current western agenda: N Malathy

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 12:36 GMT]
Tamils should be wary of the intentions of the Western Establishments that are pricking Sri Lanka with this or that war crimes evidence released year after year. They hold possession of a lot more hard evidence of Sri Lankan atrocities, but still do not address the question of genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation, opines N. Malathy, arguing that, “the best option for the Tamils world all over is to use the insights they have gained in recent years and refuse to be taken into the Western fold. Tamils should firmly stand their ground about the genocide of Eelam Tamils and the necessity of the creation of independent Tamil Eelam.” In an article to TamilNet, Dr. Malathy, a key member of the NESoHR and the author of ‘A Fleeting Moment in my County’, gives a concise outline of how the West was playing the human rights card to bring both Sri Lanka and the Eezham Tamils into its fold.
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SL Forest Department lets loose wild elephants on resettled Tamils in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 12:28 GMT]
Wild elephants in large numbers are systematically driven into villages where Tamils predominantly live in the Ampaa'rai district by a section of Sinhalese connected to the Sri Lankan Forest Department, presumably to prevent the uprooted Eezham Tamils from returning and resettling in their places of origin, sources in Ampaa'rai said. The Colombo government that exploits the poverty status of these people, while not providing them with the basic amenities, sponsors Sinhala colonisation schemes that also include settlement of SL military men in the area. So far, after 2009, seven new Sri Lanka Army camps have been established in Ampaa'rai district.
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Queen to skip CHOGM - paper

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 11:34 GMT]
Quoting officials from the Commonwealth Secretariat, Sunday Guardian, an Indian English paper, said that the November scheduled Commonwealth Head of States Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo will "most likely go ahead," several heads of government will boycott "in protest at Sri Lanka's human rights record," and that Queen Elizabeth, is "almost certain to skip the meeting". Former UK Foreign Secretaries Malcolm Rifkind and David Miliband had jointly called the Queen's scheduled attendance at the Colombo CHOGM "grotesque", a sentiment apparently shared by the David Cameron government, the paper said.
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Colombo's land appropriation to be accelerated in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 00:09 GMT]
Aiming to alienate lands from the people of North and East and to enable the colonial governors and SL government agents to abet an accelerated land appropriation, circumventing even the legal challenges posed by Tamil activists and NGOs, the Sri Lankan Minister of Lands and Land Development, Janaka Bandara Tennakoon, has set forth parameters for a land programme with the participation of the Sri Lankan military in the North this month. But, the projection given to the world during the Geneva session was that the SL State was establishing two offices in Jaffna and Ki'linochchi, to hand over thousands of acres of lands back to civilians. When questioned where these lands are situated and under which GS areas they come in, the minister or the military commander had no specific answer to provide, news sources in Ki'linochchi and Jaffna said.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhala colonisation in Trincomalee district

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2013, 13:23 GMT]
The SL government is actively engaged in settling Sinhalese families from the Southern districts of the country in Sri Mangalapura, a Sinhala village in the Seruwila electorate in the Trincomalee district. Temporary huts are hurriedly constructed in Sri Mangalapura to accommodate hundreds of southern Sinhalese families brought to Trincomalee district, news sources in Trincomalee said. Tamil civil sources say this is an attempt by the Colombo government to change the demography of the Trincomalee district.
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‘US resolution annihilates aspiration of Eezham Tamils’: Tamil Nadu writer

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2013, 00:43 GMT]
Criticizing the pro-LLRC US resolution passed at Geneva, Tamil Nadu based writer, activist and poet, Meena Kandasamy argues that “Carrying out the diktats of such a document will only annihilate the genuine aspirations and right to self-determination of the Eelam Tamils” basing her argument on the fact that the LLRC categorically denies the existence of a Tamil homeland in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. Criticizing both the US and India for abetting the genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation, she further states “Justice in this unipolar world revolves around the UN and the imperialist powers that it serves. Even though the Eelam Tamils have historical sovereignty and earned sovereignty, if they believe that separation alone can guarantee them safety, their last recourse to save themselves from complete extermination is to stake a claim to remedial sovereignty before the UN.”
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Geneva resolution will impede progress: NYT

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2013, 20:42 GMT]
The Human Rights Council voted once again to urge the Sri Lankan government to investigate “alleged violations of human rights” for the growing evidence that government soldiers killed tens of thousands of civilians in their bloody campaign to crush the LTTE. "But as with last year’s resolution, this year’s Council vote offers little more than hand-wringing," an opinion column in the New York Times said, adding, "[w]hile they carry symbolic weight, such resolutions may, in fact, be impeding progress rather than facilitating it."
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New US Secretary of State responsible for Geneva injustice: Boyle

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2013, 15:15 GMT]
The New US Secretary of State John Kerry, who assumed office on 1 Feb 2013, was the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations in 2009 that brought out a report advising the USA to help Sri Lanka’s military without insisting on political solutions. Finding a clear link between the 2009 Kerry Report and Kerry’s State Department, US Professor of Law, Francis A Boyle said, "The callous and callow Kerry Report came right after the GOSL genocidal massacre of about 100,000 Tamils in Vanni, recommending that the United States government abandon all principles and instead aid and abet the continued GOSL repression and persecution of the Tamils. That is precisely the policy we now see in operation with Kerry as U.S. Secretary of State. This latest UNHRC Resolution sponsored by Kerry’s State Department and acting pursuant to his instructions proves it. Kerry should be fired," said Boyle.
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