Families of missing persons subjected to threats, intimidation

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 February 2014, 20:24 GMT]
The intelligence wing of the occupying Sri Lankan military and the ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Department (TID) operatives in the North intimidate and threaten the families of the missing persons as many of the victims were not prepared to give up their complaints. The latest harassment comes in the wake of the so-called ‘independent’ Presidential Commission on Investigating Missing Persons had its first sitting in Ki’linochchi district last month. The current drive of genocidal Colombo, intimidating the kin of the missing to receive Rs 100,000 and withdraw the complaint or to face the fate of those who were ‘missing,’ raises question on what was actually meant by the US Asst Secretary of State reiterating ‘reconciliation’ last week.
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London conference explores nature of land grabs in Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 February 2014, 10:50 GMT]
Academics, legal experts, activists, journalists, and Eezham Tamil politicians gathered in London to discuss Sri Lankan state facilitated land grabs in the Eezham Tamils homeland, its nature, its effects, and possible solutions, at a conference on Saturday. While all of the presenters were in consensus that land grabs in the Tamil homeland was a phenomena that was a genuine and pressing issue, many expressed their support for a strong international campaign to put a halt to this. Likewise, some of the participants also criticised the international community’s silence and complicity in the process. There was also heated debate on whether the process could be termed “genocide”, with former UN official and Bremen-PPT judge Dr. Denis Halliday along with Tamil activists from both the presenters and the audience arguing in its favour.
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SL military steps up monitoring patrols in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 January 2014, 23:37 GMT]
The latest innovation by the US-trained SL military commander of Jaffna, Major General Udaya Perera, is the introduction of 7-member teams patrolling every interior village in the peninsula. The Sri Lankan State, while waging a propaganda campaign to the outside world that it has reduced military deployment in the North, has seized thousands of acres of public and private lands for the establishment of Sinhala Military Zones in the Jaffna peninsula. Permanent camps, built larger than ever before, have been ceremonially opened recently by the SL presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa at several places under the propaganda of relocating the camps away from civilian properties, while the SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa who visited Jaffna came with an open lie on the figure of the occupying SL troops present in the North.
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SL military robs IDP registry from Thellippazhai DS Secretariat

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 January 2014, 16:56 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military in Jaffna on Monday evening entered the Divisional Secretariat of Valikaamam North, situated at Thellippazhai, and robbed the registries containing the details of uprooted civilians from the civil officials at gunpoint. The SL military officers then instructed the DS and his officials not to talk about the incident. Informed sources told TamilNet that the robbery was carried out on the instruction by the new Jaffna commander of the occupying Sinhala military, Maj. Gen. Udaya Perera, who is trying to manipulate the statistics of uprooted people of Valikaamam North, the area where former ‘High Security Zone’ is being transformed into a Sinhala Military Zone by the SL military permanently seizing the fertile lands and properties of the Eezham Tamils.
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Compelling need to correct UN's mortal sins against Tamils, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 January 2014, 00:05 GMT]
Commenting on the Genocide Discussion held at the United Nations on the 15th January, where the Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson discussed strategies to heed to early warning of mass atrocities, Professor Boyle, an expert in International Law, said, "[w]hat is needed now is for the United Nations to establish an outside Independent Commission of Investigation of distinguished experts along the lines of the Rwanda Commission with a mandate to investigate the entirety of GOSL atrocities against the Tamils. Only then might the United Nations atone for its Mortal Sins against the Tamils." The U.N., which withheld information on Sri Lanka's killings, and refused to take up Sri Lanka in the Security Council during the Mu'l'livaaykkaal killings, continued to avoid mentioning Sri Lanka, even while it touted "Rights Up Front" doctrine modeled after Sri Lanka massacres.
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Colombo opens new military camps, ‘Red soldiers’ to monitor Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 January 2014, 21:57 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military has created a new unit, which has come to be called as ‘Red Army’ with military intelligence personnel fluent in three languages. The new ‘Red’ soldiers of the occupying military will be patrolling the interior villages of Vanni in bicycles. While Stephen Rapp, the US Ambassador for Global Criminal Justice was visiting North on Wednesday, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan presidential sibling and SL defence secretary, declared open 3 major military bases of the occupying Sri Lankan military in North. A large complex, which was earlier built by the political division of the LTTE near Ira'naimadu tank, has now become one of the new military installations of the occupying SL military in Ki'linochchi district.
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Stephen Rapp was briefed on structural genocide at Bishop's House in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 January 2014, 17:06 GMT]
After having caused massive deaths and disappearances on the Tamil civilian population during the times of war, the Sri Lankan State now continues to commit acts of structural genocide in the Tamil land. This aims at causing demographic and identity change, ethnic subordination and dilution of Tamils political power, the Bishop of Mannaar Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph told the visiting US diplomat on Wednesday. The visiting delegation was primarily interested in the details of the ‘war crimes’ during the final months of the war, according to Mannaar Bishop. Mr Rapp was told that an international investigation was necessary, not to punish any individual, but to create a conducive environment, which would in turn cause an attitudinal change on the part of the Sri Lankan State.
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Genocidal population control victim’s father commits ‘suicide’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 January 2014, 09:41 GMT]
58-year-old Chinnasamy Rajaratnam from Ki’linochchi district was pronounced dead on Thursday after he was found dead hanging on an electricity wire on January 01. He was the father of 26-year-old Manjula Satheeskumar, who lost her life after the widely reported population control experiment carried out on three coastal villages in Vanni. Mr Rajaratnam was a key witness in an ongoing case on the death of his daughter and his statement was crucial to prove how the occupying SL authorities coerced the cooperation of the victims for what has been alleged as population control with genocidal intent. Manjula had received the injection of subdermal implant while she was pregnant.
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SL military wants Railway station in North named after Sinhala soldier

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 January 2014, 23:40 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military wants to change the name of the Elephant Pass (EPS) Railway Station, being constructed with Indian assistance, to the name of a war-dead 25-year-old Sinhala soldier Lance Corporal Gamini Kularatne, who died after tossing two grenades into the first LTTE-made bulldozer tank in 1991 in the first battle of EPS Base. The destroyed railway track, which was being extended from Vavuniyaa to Ki’linochchi last year, has now reached Ezhuthumadduvaa’l.
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Trincomalee students killing - 8th Anniversary

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 January 2014, 00:31 GMT]
Parents and relatives of five Trincomalee students who were extra-judicially executed at a seafront in Trincomalee by Sri Lanka armed forces on the 2nd of January 2006 will be commemorating the eight anniversary of the death of their sons today, Thursday. Despite a determined and relentless pursuit for justice by Dr Kasippillai Manoharan, the father of Ragijar, one of the students killed, including campaigns by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, justice has eluded the families of the students killed. "Until the perpetrators of the crime, and the at Sri Lanka's helm who issued the order to kill my son, are brought to justice, I will keep on fighting," Dr Manoharan told TamilNet, adding, "I remain grateful for the Rights groups and the organizations that campaigned and highlighted the need for international involvement to bring justice to us."
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Canadian Eezham Tamil MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan under house arrest in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2013, 20:51 GMT]
Canadian Eezham Tamil parliamentarian Rathika Sitsabaiesan representing Sacarborough-Rouge River constituency, who was on a visit to the island has come under the harassment of the occupying Sri Lankan military and police establishment in Jaffna on Tuesday evening. SL ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ Officer-in-Charge in Jaffna Ranaweera accompanied by two TID female officers, who were waiting at a hotel in Jaffna, where Ms Rathika Sitsabaiesan was staying, have placed the visiting Canadian parliamentarian under an ‘unofficial’ house-arrest after she entered the hotel around 7:00 p.m., concluding a visit to the uprooted people of Valikaamam North and Vadamaraadchi with the chairman of Valikaamam North Piratheasa Chapai (PS) Mr S. Sugirthan.
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Local contacts of visiting Indian journalist exposed to TID interrogators in Colombo

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 December 2013, 21:34 GMT]
In one of the strongest investigations and monitoring conducted so far on a foreign journalist visiting the island, the experienced interrogators of the notorious ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ of Colombo had not only confiscated the electronic and non-electronic possessions from the young journalist from Tamil Nadu, but also monitored and traced all his contacts from the moment he landed at Colombo airport for the second time, informed media sources in Colombo told TamilNet Sunday. In the meantime 22-year-old Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran, when contacted by TamilNet after his deportation to Chennai, said he was subjected to ‘psychological torture’ like condition at the hands of the TID interrogators in Colombo and that the TID had his Tamil book of his first visit translated when they questioned him on his affiliations.
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Sri Lanka’s TID interrogates Indian journalist in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 December 2013, 13:19 GMT]
The journalist from Tamil Nadu, Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran, who was arrested by the occupying SL military and police in Vanni, while he was visiting Ki’linochchi was still under the custody of the ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ as late as Thursday night, informed sources in Colombo said. Earlier, the SL police spokesman in Colombo had stated that the Mr Thamizh Prabhagaran was being handed over to the immigration authorities for deportation. But, Colombo's TID officers were interrogating the Indian journalist on his contact network in the island by going through his article series that has appeared in Junior Vikatan, the sources further said.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhalicisation of land link between Jaffna and Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 December 2013, 18:25 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military has almost transformed the narrow strip of Chu’ndik-ku’lam sandbar, which links the Jaffna peninsula with Vanni mainland, into a Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ), denying the Tamil fishermen of Vadamaraadchi East and Vadmaraadchi, access to the coastal strip and the seas off Chu’ndikku’lam. While the occupying SL military is carrying out a new kind of Sinhalicisation with settlements for Sinhala fishermen, who endanger the fishing environment, the SL Ministry of Wildlife Resources Conservation has schemed occupation under the so-called extended development of the Chu’ndik-ku’lam Natural Park, bringing 11,149 hectares and a coastal strip of more than 50 square km into the exploitation of Colombo.
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Colombo steps up military deployment under SL Police in Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 December 2013, 23:40 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government is stepping up the deployment of the notorious Special Task Force (STF) commandos in all the districts in the Northern and Eastern provinces, according to latest reports in Colombo media. In August, when UN Human Rights High Commissioner Ms Navi Pillay visited the North and East, the Sri Lankan government announced that it was ‘separating’ the administration of SL Police department from the Defence Ministry and that the police was now coming under the ministry of ‘Law and Order’ according to a recommendation of Rajapaksa’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The STF, trained by the British, is a full-fledged military outfit under the SL Police, which was directly engaged in acts of genocide in the East as well as in Vanni during the war.
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Victims coerced to produce false affidavits on controversial birth control in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 December 2013, 23:49 GMT]
Colombo has instructed Tamil health officials in Ki’linochchi district to obtain ‘affidavits’ from women who were subjected to a controversial coercive population control in three coastal villages of the district. The women are being approached to sign a document stating that they received subdermal implants on their own request for contraceptive protection. The latest move has come as the women, who were coerced to receive a long-term hormonal birth control implant inserted under the skin of their upper arm, have been complaining of side effects such as blood pressure, weight gain, irregular periods as well as traumatic stress after 2 months of the birth control experiment by the SL State. On 30 November, a 26-year-old woman, who was one of more than 50 victims subjected to contraceptive control, died at Jaffna hospital after a mysterious infection.
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Jaffna Tamil daily wins Press Freedom Award

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 November 2013, 14:05 GMT]
The 2013 Press Freedom award from Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Le Monde and TVMonde was awarded to the Jaffna Tamil-language daily Uthayan and an Uzbek journalist, RSF announced Wednesday. Uthayan editor Vallipuram Kaanamylnaathan and owner Eswarapatham Saravanapavan, received the awards during a ceremony Wednesday evening in Strasbourg’s city hall, an RSF media release said. "Uthayan has never balked at covering stories that are controversial in a still fragmented society. As a result, it has been the target of repeated violence, leading to the departure of many of its employees over the years. Two were killed in May 2006 and its editor, Gnagnasundaram Kuhanathan, was beaten unconscious in Jaffna in 2011," the announcement said.
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NPC administration under iron fist of SL Governor Chandrasiri

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 November 2013, 23:46 GMT]
Demonstrating the consolidation of power in the Sri Lankan unitary and military system, the colonial governor in North, Major General (retd) GA Chandrasiri is continuing to demonstrate his executive powers including the cadre management of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) without giving room for the elected NPC to have any say in the affairs of the NPC.
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Colombo arrests visiting Tamil poet, bans gatherings ahead of Heroes Day

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 November 2013, 13:53 GMT]
The operatives of the occupying Sri Lankan military on Friday arrested VIS Jayapalan, a well-known Eezham Tamil poet and an award-winning actor in Indian Tamil cinema, while the Norwegian passport holder was visiting the island on a tourist visa. The arrest took place in abduction-style. By arresting Jayapalan, Colombo was sending a message to Eezham Tamil diaspora that Tamils visiting the island should not address any meeting or gathering. Colombo's TID operatives could claim any meeting as a ‘gathering causing communal unrest,’ academic circles in Jaffna said. In the meantime, the SL Police in Ki'linochchi, on Friday told 40 people it detained that all gatherings and meetings have been banned until further notice in the district.
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Ve'l'lai-ma'nal

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 November 2013, 07:03 GMT]
The white sands
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