SLFP office officially opened in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 December 2009, 02:27 GMT]
The ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) officially opened its office in Jaffna in a private building located on Fourth Cross Street in Jaffna town Wednesday. Sri Lankan Minister of Education, Susil Premajayantha, SL Media Minister, Anura Priyadharshana Yapa, Deputy Education Minister, Nirmala Kotalawela, Deputy Education Minister, Sachithananthan and EPDP paramilitary leader and Minister Douglas Devananda were present at the event presided by Jaffna district SLFP organizer Velmurugu.
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Sinhala Buddhists, Christians clash over attacks on Vihare, Church in Ja-Ela

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 December 2009, 13:38 GMT]
Police riot squads, Special Task Force (STF), Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) and Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Sunday were called to prevent clashes between two groups representing Sinhala Buddhists and Sinhala Christians following two separate attacks on a Buddhist Vihare and a Catholic church in Ja-Ela area by unidentified persons, Police spokesman I . M. Karunaratne said.
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Civilian killed in army fire at Vaazhaichcheanai beach

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 December 2009, 23:47 GMT]
One person was killed and another was injured when soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) of Kumburumoolai camp fired at a group of persons in an attempt to flee in boats Friday night from Vaazhaichcheanai sea beach. SLA soldiers rushed to the Vaazhaichcheanai beach on receipt of information that a group of people suspected to be asylum seekers assembled there Friday evening.
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SL Police Sub-Inspector, businessman abducted in Colombo

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 December 2009, 10:29 GMT]
An unidentified gang Wednesday night abducted four persons, including a leading Sinhalese businessman from Wattala and a police sub-inspector of the Colombo Crimes Division (CCD) at Borella police division Wednesday night, Police said. They were abducted while they were returning after dinner after a famous fast-food outlet along Cotta Road in Borella.
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Facing offensive presidential election with self-respect

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 December 2009, 23:04 GMT]
The Tamil parties thinking of fielding a common candidate should rise above outside diktats, should do justice to the Tamil cause at this formative stage of new Tamil polity and should come out with an election agenda that doesn’t harm the cause of Tamils in the long run. Any mistake made now will be irreversible, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Locking Tamil nationalism through presidential candidature

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 November 2009, 12:27 GMT]
A Tamil candidature in the presidential elections, proposing a political solution deviating from the goals of Tamil nationalism, is a tactic to bind and nullify the aspirations of Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo. In the current circumstances, Tamils naturally boiling with anger about both the main candidates are most likely to cast their votes en masse to any respectable Tamil candidate. But it is an artful move to get a mandate by stealth from the surviving people of the North and East for dropping the fundamentals of Tamil nationalism set earlier in 1977 and for locking them with political subjugation within a single state in the island. Therefore the election proposal of any potential Tamil candidate should be the removal of the 6th Amendment to the constitution and not any half-backed formula, the commentator further said.
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Vikramabahu Karunaratne invokes support among Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 November 2009, 10:17 GMT]
After supporting the federal aspiration of Eezham Tamils in the 1956 elections, now for the first time left political parties led by Sinhala leaders have come forward to field a common presidential candidate, Dr. Vikramabahu Karunaratne, with a main programme recognising Tamil Nation, its homeland in the north and east, its right to self-determination and autonomy as solution for the unity of the island. When agenda-setting powers harping on chauvinistic elements keep mum on recognising the fundamentals, and when Tamil political parties including some Tamil left leaders locked in agendas don’t have guts to spell out the fundamentals, why not voice-deprived Tamils and peace-loving Sinhalese register opinion and explore co-existence through support to the Left Front, is a topic widely discussed in the Tamil circles.
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NLF leader Karunaratne to contest presidential election

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 November 2009, 18:20 GMT]
Dr. Wickremabahu Karunaratne, leader of the New Left Front (NLF), Wednesday announced his candidature for the forthcoming Presidential election. He disclosed his decision at a media briefing held in Colombo. Meanwhile, General Sarath Fonseka, former Sri Lanka Army commander and the Chief of Defence Staff, said that he is to announce his future plans Thursday.
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Counter-national conspiracy against Tamils comes to light

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 November 2009, 07:56 GMT]
LTTE members either in custody or operating units in the island have become the most vulnerable to counter-Tamilnational conspiracies of Colombo government, well informed sources in Colombo indicate. The Colombo government’s focus now is to get the section of the LTTE in its trap to denounce Tamil Eelam and efforts are intensified to make use of the Heroes’ Day to test the conspiracy. Colombo is as usual abetted by certain powers in this exercise, the sources further said. Meanwhile, Tamil diaspora circles responded to the news saying that under current circumstances any ‘statement’ addressed to the public has to be viewed not from the point “what is said or who has said but from where it has been said.” The free LTTE has a great responsibility in promoting the emergence of new democratic political leadership that truly represents the national aspirations of Tamils, they further said.
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'Future bleak, but do not give up,' veteran Marxist reviewed

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 November 2009, 21:19 GMT]
“Fifty years of ethnic cleansing have wiped out whole generations who knew any sort of peace, and made cohabitation with the Sinhalese people virtually impossible,” says veteran Marxist A.Sivanandan on the political future of the island of Sri Lanka in an interview to the New Left Review 60, November-December 2009. The 87 years old ideologue, who in his younger days “had no sense at all of being a Tamil” while living in the south, and who now feels “not only for the Tamils but also for the Sinhalese people,” further said: “The Sinhala elite has transformed the country into a counter-insurgency state like Colombia, in which repression, torture, imprisonment without trial and disappeared people are institutionally embedded. I don’t think anything now can be done from above, let alone from the debased self-interests of the ‘international community’.”
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Main suspect in 1996 Central Bank bombing claimed arrested in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 November 2009, 09:34 GMT]
Sri Lanka police spokesman and Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), I. M. Karunaratne, claimed that the main suspect in the bomb attack on Sri Lanka Central Bank in 1996 has been taken into custody in Cheddiku’lam in Vavuniyaa district when he tried to get out of the detention camp with a forged National Identity Card (NIC).
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Age of struggle Tamil poetry comes in English

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 November 2009, 09:01 GMT]
Eezham Tamil poetry since 1970s by three leading poets has been translated into English and for the first time appears in an exclusive volume, which is to be launched in Canada Saturday. One of the poets, Puthuvai Rathnathurai, regarded as Tamil National Bard, was last seen among the displaced moving towards internment camps during the closing days of the war in Vanni and was taken into custody by the Sri Lanka Army. He is reportedly kept in undeclared captivity under rigorous conditions.
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Reconciliation of two nation states requires parity

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 November 2009, 18:42 GMT]
Considering all what had gone before, 'reconciliation' has to first take place between the powers and Eezham Tamil psyche and the probabilities are remote unless the powers recognize the national question as national question and come forward to address it in ways fit enough for chronic cases. Ultimate reconciliation has to take place between Sinhala and Tamil nation states but genuine reconciliation cannot come without parity and dignity. The issue has to be approached reconciling to the reality of two nation states, not only for peace in the island but for even achieving shared sovereignty of a regional model, if that is going to be the demand of time in future. Present day International Community will register a point of progress in the polity of humanity by collectively eradicating baneful states like Sri Lanka that habitually use the card of geopolitics to resist restructure.
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Addressing ambiguity of Right to Self-Determination

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 October 2009, 00:26 GMT]
The international system is erratic in justifying right to self-determination (RSD) of nations set against right to security of states. All areas of discretion were interpreted against, in the case of Eezham Tamils. As the militant-created de facto state that has been making a case for RSD all this time doesn’t exist in its territory today, democratic political move should create a new de facto situation. RSD can be invoked when peoples of more than one state are involved, but Mr Karunanidhi nullified the opportunity. The option now is not asking for RSD, but exercising it and mandating democratic de facto situation or situations. This is why spelling out the goal of independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam is paramount for transnational governance. Elected country councils enhance meeting the task by structurally involving ‘peoples of many states.’
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'Time for South India to take care of its own geopolitics'

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 October 2009, 00:26 GMT]
The historic duty of Tamil Nadu today is to cast with far sight its diplomatic weight internationally, convincing New Delhi and the international community to come out with fundamental solutions recognizing the national aspirations of Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo. "Saying foreign affairs is an exclusive domain of the Centre is only an excuse in contemporary world, especially when a federal government fails in it seriously affecting the strategic interests of a state. A Tamil Nadu delegation visiting Sri Lanka is perhaps for the first time an external affairs exercise of a state in India, but it has cut a negative image with the people to whom it was meant for, raising questions on the bona fides of the whole exercise," the commentator further says.
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Public demonstration in Chennai in support of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 October 2009, 08:12 GMT]
More than a thousand people from various parts of Tamil Nadu gathered in front of Munro Statue in Anna Salai in Chennai, Tamil Nadu Sunday around 11:00 a.m and marched in a procession to the Government Guest House in Cheppaakam, demanding the UN to hold a referendum among the Eezham Tamils to know whether they want a separate state and to free at once all the Eezham Tamils detained behind barbed wire in the internment camps in Sri Lanka, sources Chennai said. Protection Committee for Tamils (PCT) organized the demonstration and later in the evening held a conference in T-Nakar in Chennai where resolutions related to the demands were passed, the sources added.
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Indian strategic analyst writes on 'lost leverage'

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 October 2009, 11:58 GMT]
“Today, India stands more marginalized than ever in Sri Lanka. Its natural constituency—the Tamils—feels not only betrayed, but also looks at India as a colluder in the bloodbath. India already had alienated the Sinhalese majority in the 1980s,” writes Professor Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, in a forthright article appeared in Forbes, Friday. Welcoming his admissions and responding to him, Tamil circles said that who ever now addresses the national aspirations of Eezham Tamils, holds the key to the region of South India-Sri Lanka- Maldives, but India is yet to learn the lesson and may continue forfeiting leverage even with its own people, by blunting the national question.
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Civilian killed during curfew hours in Thenmaraadchi

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 October 2009, 09:17 GMT]
Unidentified men entered the house of a civilian Friday night during Sri Lanka Army (SLA) imposed curfew hours in Raamaavil in Kodikaamam and killed him by cutting his throat, Kodikaamam police who recovered the victim’s body and handed it over to Jaffna Teaching Hospital said. The killing took place close to the SLA detention centre in Raamaavil where IDPs are held.
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UNP leaders attacked in Deniyaya by ruling party supporters

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 October 2009, 09:04 GMT]
Supporters of the main opposition United National Party (UNP) led by its parliamentarians Mr.Tissa Attanayake , the general secretary of the party and Mr. Ravi Karunanayake, including media personnel were attacked in Deniyaya Sunday morning while they were on their way to inspect the alleged Presidential palace under construction in the area.
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Tamil Nadu fishermen assaulted, driven naked by Sri Lanka Navy

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 September 2009, 17:34 GMT]
Twenty-four fishermen from Keechchaangkuppam in Naakarkoayil area in Tamil Nadu, fishing in Kanniyaakumari seas in five boats Friday night, were brutally assaulted and cast naked in the seas by Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) soldiers, sources in Naakarkoayil said. SLN soldiers had beaten the fishermen on their heads with the ice blocks taken by the fishermen to preserve their catch, the sources added. Fishermen in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu saved the 24 fishermen who managed to swim ashore Saturday morning and admitted them in the local hospital, the sources further said.
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