SL minister hands over appropriated public lands in Mannaar to southern companies

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2013, 23:52 GMT]
Several acres of state lands in Mannaar district are being distributed to private sector establishments of the South on the ‘recommendations’ of a Sri Lankan Cabinet Minister Rishard Badurdeen with false deeds, while thousands of people residing in the district are languishing without lands for their existence, especially in Mannaar DS division, civil officials in Mannaar told TamilNet.
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Sri Lanka's STF commandos on sexual spree harass people of Peasaalai

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2013, 22:26 GMT]
Armed squads of the occupying Sri Lanka’s Sinhala commandos of the notorious Special Task Force (STF) in Mannaar have been sexually harassing the coastal people of Peasaalai in the country of Eezham Tamils, on a daily basis for more than a week now, residents complain. The STF has virtually banned the movement of men of all ages after 6:00 p.m. in Peasaalai so that its abuses would go unnoticed.
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Vanni visit ‘pleases’ British Under Secretary

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2013, 00:21 GMT]
Visiting the Vanni region that bore the brunt of Sri Lanka’s genocidal offensive in 2009 and which has been under military occupation and accelerated Sinhala colonization post-Mu’l’livaaykkaal, Alistair Burt, British Conservative MP and Under Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), said "I have been pleased to see progress in some areas since the end of the conflict. The destructive force of war-tearing lives, families, societies and countries apart, is only too evident in this part of the country," the PTI reported on Thursday. Mr. Burt, who was a guest at the British funded ‘Sri Lanka Unites’ center, showed more interest in lauding “reconciliation and recovery” but was conspicuously silent on addressing the need for a just political solution for the genocide affected Eezham Tamil nation, Tamil activists from the UK told TamilNet.
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‘Slap on the face reception’ to UK Under Secretary visiting Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 February 2013, 16:53 GMT]
People of Vanni closed themselves inside their huts and refused to come out when the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Alistair Burt MP, accompanied by the occupying Sinhala military, wanted to ‘speak’ to the uprooted Eezham Tamils at Keappa-pulavu on Thursday. The reason was two-fold: loss of faith in the modus operandi of foreign dignitaries visiting them with the occupying military and then coming out with statements not recognizing the on-going genocide but buttressing the genocidal State; and the other reason was suffocating intimidation by the occupying Sinhala military that no one should tell anything controversial to visiting foreigners. The same military officials bringing visitors to them in the daytime would turn into torture-interrogators in the night time, Eezham Tamils of Vanni commented.
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Refugee boat surge to Australia linked to profiteering by Rajapakse ally

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 February 2013, 02:31 GMT]
Australia's Intelligence services linked a senior Sri Lankan government official who is close to Sri Lanka's president Rajapakse as responsible for "authorizing numerous boats in the past 10 months, fuelling the surge of asylum-seekers from Sri Lanka that has threatened to overwhelm Australia's detention system," The Australian reported Friday. While the complicity of this official in people smuggling was widely known at senior levels of the Gillard government, Foreign Minister Bob Carr during his visit to Sri Lanka in December never raised the matter with the Sri Lankan government, the paper pointed out.
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Occupying military in ‘civil’ is more dangerous than military in uniform

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 February 2013, 01:17 GMT]
The Commander of the occupying Sinhala military in Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Mahinda Hathurusinghe appeared in ‘civil’ in playing the role of ‘chief guest’ at the Malayala Martial Arts performance in Jaffna on Thursday, organized by New Delhi’s Consulate General in Jaffna to mark India’s 64th Republic Day. Earlier, Hathurusinghe used to visit even temples in Jaffna in uniform. His transformation, which should be first questioned by the uniformed personnel of Sri Lanka’s genocidal military for insulting the ‘beautiful’ services they are rendering to Tamils, mark a dangerous stage of the Sinhala militarisation imposed on Eezham Tamils by the powers of vested interests in complicity with the genocidal State in the island, commented alternative political activists in Jaffna.
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Canadian First Nations activist exposes ‘multicultural’ deception of New Nations

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 January 2013, 23:05 GMT]
The so-called New Nations such as the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc., created by European colonialism bulldozing indigenous nations, their sovereignty and territoriality in those lands, are now in the forefront in preaching ‘multiculturalism’ of their understanding even to the contexts of nations facing genocide in the Old World. In an exclusive interview to TamilNet, Ms Sylvia McAdam of the Nehiyaw nation in today’s Canada, while exposing the deception in the kind of multiculturalism the Establishments preach, asserts the identity of indigenous nations, their territory, their right to protect environment and their sovereignty not ceded or surrendered. Sylvia makes contrast to Canadian ‘multicultural’ minister avoiding the issues of genocide, colonization, grab of land and denial of sovereignty faced by the nation of Eezham Tamils.
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Sinhala colonisation in sacred land of Tamil martyrs

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 January 2013, 01:01 GMT]
Puthu-maaththa’lan, a part of the Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal sacred land of the Eezham Tamil martyrs, was subjected to Sinhala colonization this week with the protection of the Sinhala military occupying the land, news sources in Vanni said. The resettled Tamil fishermen at Ira’naip-paalai and Puthu-maththa’lan resisted the arrival and colonisation of their coast by Sinhala fishermen from the South on Tuesday. The Sinhala fishermen, keeping their equipment for safe custody with the SL military, vowed that they would come back and colonize the land during the scheduled visit of Mahinda Rajapaksa to Mullaith-theevu on Sunday. But they didn’t go back. The Sinhalese were hiding in the SL military camp, and on Wednesday when the Tamil fishermen returned from the sea, to their surprise they found their coastal stretch was colonised by the Sinhalese.
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Sinhala military, Malayala martial arts to mark Indian celebrations in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 January 2013, 00:36 GMT]
Marking India’s 64th Republic Day (26-01-2013) celebrations, a performance of Malayala Martial Arts, called Ka’larip-payattu, has been organized at Veerasingam Hall in Jaffna on Thursday, by New Delhi’s Consulate General in Jaffna. The Commander of the Sinhala military occupying Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Mahinda Hathurusinghe, will be the Chief Guest at the celebrations, presided over by New Delhi’s Consul General in Jaffna, Mr. V. Mahalingam. Genocidal Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Culture and Arts and New Delhi’s Indian Council of Cultural Relations jointly sponsor the programme. Meanwhile, India is in the top in training genocidal Sri Lanka’s Sinhala military at the rate of 1400 personnel per year, admitted, New Delhi’s envoy in Colombo Ashok K. Kantha.
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Retired Tamil Justice compares between own and occupied rule in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 January 2013, 15:32 GMT]
When I came here [Jaffna] at the beginning of this century, I was told that even at midnight women could move around without any fear or concern about security. But now, there is fear and apprehension even when one is confined to houses. Rather than saying that only those who have come from the outside commit acts causing fear, it is more appropriate to say that it is the sons of Jaffna who largely commit such acts, without any shame or concern. A careful scrutiny would show how some one of us was there operating and is still operating, behind every wrong committed by the outsiders. We should build unity and an internal mechanism so that our people don’t turn into pimps and servants to the outsiders, said Trincomalee-based retired Tamil Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, while addressing the Vaddukkoaddai YMHA on the Pongkal day.
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NZ routinely rejects Tamil "Mandate-Refugees" for resettlement

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 January 2013, 03:01 GMT]
New Zealand has over the years rejected, for admission and resettlement, several Tamil refugees, who have already been declared as Refugees by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in compliance with the UNHCR Charter and associated statutes, labelled as "mandate" refugees, even while the quotas for UNHCR recommended refugee intakes, as determined by the Government of New Zealand, were not exceeded, published Government documents show. While individual states can reach independent determination of the refugee status based on the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and 1967 protocol, labelled as "convention" refugees, legal sources say, the differences between UNHCR statutes and Refugee Convention are relatively minimal to produce conflicting statuses between UNHCR and local state determination, according to refugee activists.
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U.S. Senators call for international probe into Sri Lanka war crimes

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 January 2013, 02:28 GMT]
U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) called for an independent, international investigation into potential war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE during the civil war in Sri Lanka. In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Senators said such an investigation is needed because the legitimate concerns of the Sri Lankan people have not been answered by the government, Senator Leahy's website reported. “Sri Lankans have legitimate concerns about war crimes committed during the civil war that are not being addressed by the government, and an independent, international investigation is needed to get answers,” the letter said.
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Sri Lanka cricket ban getting closer, says noted sports writer

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 January 2013, 23:58 GMT]
Commenting that “[t]he promotion of Sanath Jayasuriya is a dark day in Sri Lanka’s cricket history,” following the appointment of Jayasuriya, a Government MP and close ally of Rajapaksa, to head the 5-member selection panel of the Sri Lanka cricket team, Australia’s most respected cricket author and journalist Gideon Haigh, said in his website that Colombo's "growing authoritarianism and hubris" will likely "buttress the case for a boycott of Sri Lankan cricket," the group Boycott Sri Lanka Campaign, headed by another well-known Australian journalist Trevor Grant, said in a press release.
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Colonial governor diverts more education funds to Sinhala colonisation in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 January 2013, 22:44 GMT]
Colombo’s colonial governor in North and the former Jaffna commander of the occupying SL military in Jaffna, Maj Gen (retd) GA Chandrasiri, has again diverted a major portion of the funds, allocated for education and health sectors in the five districts in the Northern Province, to the newly carved out Ma'nalaa'rau (Weli-Oaya) Sinhala division in Mullaiththeevu district for the construction of 72 new Sinhala schools and health stations as part of a hurried expansion of the Sinhala colonisation scheme, informed sources in Vanni told TamilNet on Wednesday. To facilitate the accelerated occupation, contractors hired from South are working day and night, putting up the schools and health stations, the sources further said.
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Indigenous peoples of Americas, Tamils discuss genocide and resistance at London event

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 January 2013, 20:08 GMT]
Grassroots activists belonging to indigenous peoples of Americas, the Eezham Tamil diaspora in the UK and other solidarity groups discussed the different forms of oppression and genocide that their respective communities faced and the corresponding forms of resistance at an event in London on Monday, jointly organized by indigenous activists from the Americas based in the UK. In an exclusive interview to TamilNet, Sylvia McAdam Saysewahum, one of the co-founders of the popular “Idle No More” movement of indigenous people in Canada, spoke about the goals and strategies of the movement, question of identity and sovereignty, Canada’s multicultural policies, besides providing suggestions to the Eezham Tamils to preserve their traditions as a means to resistance.
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Boycott ‘Sri Lanka Cricket’ campaign to go global

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 January 2013, 23:49 GMT]
The Boycott Sri Lanka Cricket Campaign (BSLCC) spokesperson, Trevor Grant, a veteran sports journalist, in a statement issued on Monday said that the Australian protests against the Sri Lankan Government, via the cricket team, had been so successful that it was planned to link up with protest groups in all cricket-playing nations to ensure that the message about Tamil persecution was heard throughout the world. “We are taking as our model the very successful sports boycotts of apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s,” the statement further said.
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Visiting US team continues ‘counting trees’ in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 January 2013, 23:23 GMT]
The visit of the US Defence and State Department officials to Jaffna on Sunday was marked by denial of issues by the occupying Sinhala military, denials countered by the Bishop and civil society of Jaffna, and comments by the visiting team – all just a bickering on counting trees but deliberate refusal to see the wood, because the ambit has been set by the US-tabled 2012 Geneva resolution that has to now facilitate the 2013 resolution under preparation, political analysts in Jaffna told TamilNet. A stage has been set, knowing how the characters would act and what dialogues they would come out with, so that the play could proceed endlessly to the benefit of the director. Unless Tamils insist on a stage to talk nothing but the fundamentals for any future association with the director, they will be ‘played out’ the analysts further said.
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Ampaa'rai Tamil activist killed after protesting demographic changes

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 January 2013, 21:31 GMT]
40 year-old Seenithamby Premanathan, a father of two, was waylaid and cut to death by an unknown killer squad Sunday night around 8:30 p.m., when he was returning home in a three wheeler from his brother’s house located at Malvaththai along a paddy field between Mallikaith-theevu and Malvaththai in Chammaanthu’rai police division. The killing comes a day after he was reported to have voiced concern over the injustice done in the demarcation of boundaries of the local authority concerned, civil sources in Ampaa’rai told TamilNet. In recent days, there were also reports of targeted harassments against Tamil women in Ampaa'rai.
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Eezham Tamil writers in UK criticize India’s role in genocide of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 January 2013, 22:32 GMT]
UK based Eezham Tamil writers and journalists criticized the role of India in abetting the genocide of the Eezham Tamils and shielding the genocide perpetrators at book release function at London on Sunday. Speaking at the release of the book “Thookkuk-kayittil: Rajiv padukolai nijam” written by Tiruchi Velusami and compiled by P. Egalaivan, the Eezham Tamil writers expressed their opinions on how under the cover of eliminating the LTTE, India and other world powers effectively covered up the genocide of the Eezham Tamils.
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Resistance event in London criticises security-obsessed outlook of West

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 January 2013, 17:40 GMT]
Speaking on the topic of “Opposing securitisation, linking our resistances”, Kurdish and Tamil activists from Campaign Against Criminalization of Communities (CAMPACC) criticized the policy of the denial of the freedom of expression and assembly of activists belonging to oppressed sections by governments in West in the name of “security”, at the TINAG annual festival at London on Sunday. The Kurdish and Tamil speakers, belonging to grassroots organizations of their respective communities, also observed the similarities in the criminalization of their respective movements by Western governments and the consecutive denial of a democratic political space for the articulation of their cause.
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