Jayalalithaa demands nullification of Indo-Lanka IMBL agreement

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 17:30 GMT]
A permanent solution to resolve the Tamil Nadu fishermen's issue lies only in the retrieval of Katchatheevu islet, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Ms Jayalalithaa reiterated in a letter to Indian Prime Minister on Thursday. “The unconstitutional Indo-Sri Lankan Agreements of 1974 and 1976 should be nullified and the traditional rights of our fishermen to fish in the Palk Bay restored,” she told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in her letter. “Hence, the Government of India should not treat the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) with Sri Lanka as a settled question as the constitutionality of the 1974 and 1976 agreements have been challenged on extremely valid and legal grounds by me in my personal capacity and also by the Government of Tamil Nadu in the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India.”
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Rajaratnam Snr, an icon in Tamil philanthropy, passes away

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 June 2014, 16:24 GMT]
Jesuthasan Rajaratnam (JMR), born in Alvai, Point Pedro, and an old boy of Hartley College, later of Jaffna Central College, passed away at the age of 86, in Tenafly, New Jersey 17th June, Tuesday. His funeral was held on the 21st Saturday with a large gathering of his relatives, friends and leaders of various Tamil diaspora organizations in which he was a prominent member. A long-term friend who had known JMR for more than 60 years, while Rajaratnam was a student in accounting in U.K. in the 50s and later while holding executive positions in several Colombo-based corporations, described JMR as the most noteworthy person in his life "who has shown singular commitment to the rights and welfare of Tamil people in the NorthEast of Sri Lanka, and who took action to alleviate the debilitating conditions of his people."
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Pogrom spreads to Colombo district while ‘Sri Lanka’ claims normalcy

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 June 2014, 22:55 GMT]
While genocidal Sri Lanka was telling the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that it had restored ‘normalcy’ after what it described as ‘communal tension’ in Aluthgama and in Beruwala, an unidentified squad set fire to a Muslim-owned cloth store in Panadura (Paa’nan-thu’rai), a town in Colombo district, in the early hours of Saturday. In the meantime, the Sri Lankan Minister of Justice, a Muslim leader collaborating with the ruling Rajapaksa regime, who is under the pressure from his community, termed it as an attack on Muslims while the SL police was trying to project it as an accident.
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Anti-Muslim violence is systematic pogrom, not communal riot

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 June 2014, 21:09 GMT]
After waging war against the nation of Eezham Tamils, there is a clear, systematic pattern of violence against the Muslims in the island of Sri Lanka during the last two years, said the State president of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), Mr KKSM Tehlan Baqavi, in an exclusive interview to TamilNet this week. The Tamil Nadu politician of the pan-Indian Muslim political party urged the world to pay particular attention that the Buddhist extremist Bodu Bala Sena is a creation of the SL military system led by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. There is a clear nexus between the military and the extremist force, he said. There is also a serious question why the pogrom is getting instigated at this juncture, despite the global focus on the records of the SL State, he said.
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Tamil Nadu Muslims protest against genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 June 2014, 23:39 GMT]
On the 17th of June two Tamil Muslim organizations, the Tamil Nadu Thowheedh Jamaath (TNTJ) and Tamil Nadu Muslim Munneatta Kazhakam (TMMK) staged protests outside the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission office at Nungambakkam protesting the recent anti Muslim riots in the Altuhagama and Beruwela in the island of Sri Lanka. While a section of the Muslim leaders in the Colombo parliament were avoiding any overt condemnation of the Sri Lankan state, the Muslims in Tamil Nadu vehemently condemned the SL State and the Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism. Such a move was also reflected in what Asad Sally, the leader of the Muslim solidarity front told TamilNet on Tuesday.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka shields terror against Tamil Muslims

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 June 2014, 08:27 GMT]
The legal and police system of the Sri Lankan State was indirectly aiding the Sinhala extremist mob to incite violence against Muslims in Aluthgama and Durgah-nagar in Kalutura district, Muslim reporters from Kalutara told TamilNet on Tuesday. The shut-down of mobile communications and the curfew imposed by the Sri Lankan State also strengthened the hands of the Sinhala Buddhist extremist Bodu Bala Sena mobs that went amok on innocent Tamil-speaking Muslim villagers in Beruwala, Alutgama, Kotapitiya, Meeripenna and Adigarigoda. In the meantime, journalists, Muslim politicians and activists who rushed to Kalurara to witness the anti-Muslim violence were blocked at road barriers. Even those who attended the funeral of the three slain Muslim youth were also attacked Monday evening by a Sinhala extremist mob.
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Navalar documents: Tamils should work for own revival of culture links

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 June 2014, 03:22 GMT]
Tamil Nadu government should come out with an independent cultural initiative in reviving the identity and involvement of Eezham Tamils in their charities at Chithamparam. Eezham Tamils living in the island, in Tamil Nadu and in the diaspora should be able to participate and be benefitted by the cultural initiative in which education, publication, heritage museum and heritage tourism should get priority. While documentation on the Mutts of Eezham Tamils at Chithamparam from the times of the Kings of Jaffna appeared earlier in TamilNet, the documents currently released on Arumuga Navalar charities at Chithamparam speak for themselves on what the Eezham Tamils should do. There is no substitute to self-initiation in the cultural pursuance of a people.
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Art, literature, should enlighten masses on larger forces at work

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 June 2014, 23:29 GMT]
When the last king of Kandy in the island of Ceylon, who belonged to the Telugu-speaking Nayaka dynasty of Madurai in Tamil Nadu, was conquered and captured by British imperialism in 1815, history, literature and plays written on him by both Sinhalese and Tamils in the island were focussing only on a historically still unproven point that he killed the children of the Sinhala chieftain Ehelapola who joined the British and made the chieftain’s wife to pound the heads of the children in a mortar. That was the highlight of all the plays on the king, performed to this date. None of the writers or playwrights saw the ultimate culprits or the larger dimensions of the onset of colonialism. That was the success of British colonialism.
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Ensure safety of TN fishermen, find permanent solution: Jayalalithaa to Modi

[TamilNet, Sunday, 08 June 2014, 23:07 GMT]
Condemning the Saturday arrest of 82 Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lanka Navy, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa impressed upon Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure the safety of Tamil Nadu fishermen. In a release dated Sunday, she urged the PM “to put an end to the unabated, brutal, unprovoked attacks on and abduction of our fishermen by the marauding Sri Lankan Navy” and to arrive at a permanent solution to this problem along with “a strong and robust diplomatic response”. Referring to consistent attacks on the Tamil Nadu fishermen in the past three years, she also lamented that despite a change of regime in the centre, these brutal assaults by the Sri Lanka Navy continued unabated. As an immediate measure, she called on India to register “the strongest disapproval of the belligerent actions of the Sri Lankan Navy.”
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‘Proliferation of micronarratives assists the logic of counterinsurgency’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 June 2014, 23:48 GMT]
In the context of the Tamil Eelam liberation struggle, when a “micronarrative” discourse about gender, caste, region or other “special interest groups” claims autonomous status, “when it divorces itself from the primary contradiction between the Tamil nationalist metanarrative and the Sri Lankan state, it only ends up fracturing a resistance movement against genocide” argues Karthick RM. In an article published on Indian journal Sanhati, providing examples of how such differences were used to fracture the Eezham Tamils liberation struggle in the past and the present, he shows that such “dissidence” only assists the logic of counterinsurgency (COIN). Drawing from classical and contemporary COIN experts and from the writings of psychologists, Mr. Karthick also observes how such micronarratives and a defeatist mentality complement each other.
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SL Army conducts ‘archaeology’, The Hindu relays ‘history’

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 June 2014, 17:23 GMT]
In addition to doing agriculture, industries and tourism, genocidal Sri Lanka’s occupying Sinhala Army, groomed to set a new paradigm jointly by Washington, New Delhi, Beijing and the UN, has started conducting archaeology too in the country of Eezham Tamils. The military claims ‘exploring and discovering’ a Buddhist site at the locality of Uruththirapuram Siva temple in Ki’linochchi. Meanwhile, The Hindu last week relayed a one-sided history projected by Colombo’s High Commission in New Delhi, on the Buddhist connections of Lanka and Odisha (Orissa), to envisage new business enterprises. The relay also added on Sita temple in Nuwara Eliya, a fake promoted into a larger regional myth in recent times.
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Karaiyoor, Karaawe-goda

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 June 2014, 20:28 GMT]
The seaside village

The seaside bank or village
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India should call for genocide investigation, referendum: Jayalalithaa tells Modi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 June 2014, 07:01 GMT]
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Selvi Jayalalithaa, in a memorandum submitted to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has firmly reiterated the stand expressed in four Tamil Nadu State Asssembly resolutions, demanding the Indian government to move a UN resolution demanding investigations on Tamil genocide and a UN referendum on Tamil Eelam among the Tamils in the island as well as among those living outside the island. Selvi Jayalalithaa, who didn’t attend the swearing-in ceremony due to the controversial invitation extended to SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa, met Mr Narendra Modi at New Delhi presenting him the demands of Tamil Nadu in the 25 point memorandum where the genocide investigation and UN referendum on Tamil Eelam was the second point of the agenda.
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Obama’s West Point address ‘missing’ Sri Lanka is double edged

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 May 2014, 15:26 GMT]
The US President Barack Obama missing Sri Lanka in a key foreign policy address is double edged, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. Obama was addressing the US Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday. He was listing out his administration’s direct, indirect and collaborative deliberations as well as achievements over ‘terrorism’ all over the world and was coming out with his vision for future. Sri Lanka didn’t figure among the 30+ countries noted by Obama, in past, present or future. Whether the USA now feels embarrassed in claiming its unprecedented ‘achievement’ in the island, or is it another tactic of down playing the gravity and establishing a paradigm, asked the Tamil activists.
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Kerry calls Sushma Swaraj, countering ‘extremism’ on the agenda

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 May 2014, 14:18 GMT]
John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, called the recently appointed Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj to discuss strategic ties, besides inviting her to the US. Further, Kerry conveyed his desire “to continue broadening and deepening our bilateral ties, including our robust economic and defense relationship, and working together on global challenges like climate change and countering violent extremism," Times of India reported on Friday quoting US state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. While one set of analysts predict a strengthening of Indo-US ties under the BJP rule, others however suggest that the possibility of the centrist Modi government aspiring to be a regional hegemon cannot be ruled out.
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Polarization widens between New Delhi and Tamil Nadu following Rajapaksa visit

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 May 2014, 23:24 GMT]
Protests have proliferated in Tamil Nadu state against what activists have termed as “New Delhi’s unwavering courting of genocidal Sri Lanka”, at the very inception of the new BJP government. The decision to invite the Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa to the swearing-in ceremony of the newly elected Indian Prime Minister is interpreted as New Delhi’s disrespect to the democratic mandate expressed in Tamil Nadu State Assembly resolutions calling for sanctions on Sri Lanka and for a referendum to be conducted among the Eezham Tamil nation.
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Acid test for Eezham Tamil Bishops, TN Archbishop should intervene

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 May 2014, 16:33 GMT]
The announcement of Pope Francis to visit Mahinda Rajapaksa’s genocidal Sri Lanka in January 2015 is not a small matter. It is like giving a ‘spiritual finishing touch’ to the temporal conquest achieved through genocide cum agent State paradigm by current imperialism. What is actually meant by the idea, ‘reconciliation’ for a united island after genocide, hatched by the US State Department in 2009, is explicitly evident in the last five years in the form of Sinhala militarisation, colonisation, structural genocide and annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils. The Pope now visiting the island carrying the banner of ‘reconciliation’ is not going to reverse the process, but will only confirm the process.
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Tamils protest against New Delhi’s invitation to Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 May 2014, 23:41 GMT]
Tamil Nadu Tamils took to the streets protesting against New Delhi inviting the president of genocidal Sri Lanka to the swearing in ceremony on Monday. The General Secretary of MDMK Vaiko led a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi condemning the invitation extended to the genocide accused SL president, whose presence was ‘polluting the sanctity’ of Modi’s swearing in ceremony. Protesters across Tamil Nadu burnt the effigies of SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The entire Tamil Nadu was on protest as the Chief Minister and key leaders of political parties have strongly opposed the invitation extended to the SL president.
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Tamil Nadu students rally against BJP invitation to Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 May 2014, 23:38 GMT]
Shedding differences among different formations of activists in Tamil Nadu, the student groups came together on Saturday to protest against the newly elected BJP government inviting the president of genocidal Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to the swearing in ceremony of the Prime Minister Elect Narendra Modi, amidst strong opposition from the Tamil Nadu State Government and the opposition against the invitation. The latest justification given by BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman has irked the entire Tamil Nadu, the protesting students who courted arrest told TamilNet. In fact the first protest against the newly elected BJP government in India has emanated from Tamil Nadu, the students added. The organisers also said that a protest was planned by several social organizations on the 26th of May in Chennai as well as other places against BJP inviting Rajapaksa.
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Jayalalithaa to boycott PM swearing-in over ‘ill-advised’ invitation to Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 May 2014, 07:15 GMT]
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalithaa will boycott the swearing-in event of India’s new Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi on 26 May, over the issue of invitation to Mahinda Rajapaksa, latest news reports said on Friday, citing AIADMK party sources. Earlier, Ms. Jayalalithaa described the invitation to genocide-accused Rajapaksa as “ill-advised” and as “rubbing salt into the wounds.” Modi’s camouflage in inviting SAARC heads of governments is impelled by his priority to Pakistan and Muslim factor, and the Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s immediate response to come shows the US advice behind the move, political analysts said, adding that the USA and India long sidelining and sabotaging the Tamil question is the boon for genocidal Colombo and the Rajapaksas.
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