SL military steps up harassment on resettled Tamils in Poonakari

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 April 2012, 16:29 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Vanni has stepped up harassment on resettled civilians in Poonakari and in the adjoining coastal areas, news sources in Poonakari told TamilNet Thursday. Recently, Sri Lanka Navy has taken over the occupation of the strategically located coastal stretch from the SL Army and has imposed strict ‘pass’ regulations on fishing in the seas, Tamil fishermen complain. Southern intruders with the backing of occupying military are also forcing people to sell their lands following recent reports that the Colombo establishment was planning to invite China to build an airport of international standard at Poonakari to balance India’s projects centring around KKS harbour and Palaali airport in the northern coast of Jaffna Peninsula.
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Buddhist Stupa to become ‘cultural landmark’ of Jaffna harbour

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 April 2012, 21:30 GMT]
A massive Buddhist Stupa that is being constructed at the Beach Road of Jaffna harbour by the occupying Sinhala military will be the new ‘cultural landmark’ of Jaffna city for vessels coming towards its harbour. The Stupa with pre-fabricated parts and statues, brought from the South, is being built day and night by the Sinhala soldiers. The Stupa is built in the locality of a Saivite Amman temple, between Jaffna Fort and Kurunakar, known as Aluppaanthi, meaning the wharf of the harbour. Many more Buddhist Stupas are hurriedly constructed by the SL military and one of them with extensive residential facilities is going to be just in front of the Jaffna Railway Station. During the liberation war, colonial Sri Lanka constructed a huge Buddha statue overlooking Trincomalee to give a Sinhala Buddhist cultural image to the world-renowned harbour of Eezham Tamils in the East.
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Kohona under AFP spotlight over war-crime charges

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 April 2012, 00:11 GMT]
Australian Federal Police (AFP) have said that they will evaluate a document submitted by the Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations (AFTA) charging Palitha Kohona, an Australian citizen and currently Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, over alleged war-crimes. AFP said in a letter AFTA that the referral was from the Minister for Justice, Jason Clare as a result of a correspondence to Michele Rowland, MP by AFTA.
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SL Army restricts NGO movement in Batticaloa district

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 April 2012, 18:57 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army has imposed restrictions on the movement of Non Governmental Organizations to Paduvaankarai from Batticaloa via Kiraan Bridge, civil sources in Batticaloa city told TamilNet Wednesday. The SLA soldiers at Kiraan Bridge are reported to have refused permission to several NGOs in recent days to travel beyond the bridge without SL Defense ministry authority. The NGO officials have been asked to obtain ‘pass’ from Welikanda SLA camp. The travel-ban on NGOs comes as SL military backed encroachment of Sinhalese is reported in the border areas of the Piratheasa Chapai (PS) divisions of Koa'ra'laip-pattu South, Vavu'na-theevu, Ea'raavoor-pattu and Chengkaladi.
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SL Army threatens to destroy Sivan temple to construct Buddhist Vihara in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 April 2012, 18:38 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army is said to have planned to demolish the historical Chivanakar Siva temple in Uruththirapuram in Ki'linochchi district and to construct a Buddhist Vihare in that site, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian S. Sritharan has said. The Tamil parliamentarian has urged the Colombo government to stop the demolition of the Hindu temple. Around 40 soldiers of the occupying SLA came to the temple on Friday 27 March evening in three vehicles and entered the temple without the permission from the chief priest and desecrated the temple by walking in their military boots and threatened to destroy the temple and construct a Buddhist vihara at the site.
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Mass-rape alleged in Theavipuram amid civilan slaughter

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 March 2012, 04:34 GMT]
Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group that seeks legal redress to Tamil victims of war, said Saturday that the organization is piecing together evidence based on an eye-witness testimony that up to 20 women, separated from nearly 200 civilians who surrendered to the SLA, were alleged to have been raped by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers near the village of Theavipuram, in Mullaiththeevu, in April 2009. While lack of witness protection programs in Sri lanka, and threat to life of witnesses who appear against Sri Lanka military have placed TAG's legal effort in UK on hold, TAG said that the recent legal action in UK involving Ex-Army Commander, Prasanna de Silva, may provide the momentum required to seek witnesses and to obtain corroborative evidence to identify the perpetrators of the alleged crime.
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Occupying SL Army operates behind narcotics trade in Tamil country

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 March 2012, 22:57 GMT]
Sri Lankan military intelligence is allegedly behind a systematic programme of narcotics trade in the North and East of Eezham Tamils homeland, aiming the Tamil students as the target group, reliable sources in Jaffna told TamilNet Friday. On Thursday, three narcotics traders, including the distributors from South, were arrested on Somasundaram Road near the District Secretariat of Jaffna, while they were distributing narcotics. Narcotics dealers sent from South engage in the trade involving former members of Tamil paramilitary groups, news sources further said. However, the Sri Lankan police remained tight-lipped on the arrest of southern narcotics drug dealers on Thursday in the area having leading Tamil schools.
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LLRC centered resolution, an albatross around Tamils neck

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 March 2012, 09:26 GMT]
While the passage of the US-tabled LLRC-based resolution on Sri Lanka at the UNHRC sessions has renewed expectation in some quarters of the Tamil diaspora that the resolution will be the first step towards exposing the culpability of Colombo in committing war-crimes, Tamil circles expressed the need to exercise caution, pointing out that the history of failed Commissions in Sri Lanka during the last 30 years, and the futility of UN-approved domestic transitional justice mechanisms where alleged perpetrators will be allowed to direct and control internal criminal investigations, will result in the resolution turning into an albatross around Tamils' neck, providing political space to Rajapakses to whitewash war crimes and the on-going structural genocide.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhala colonisation of coastal Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 March 2012, 15:08 GMT]
SL President's son and Hambantota district parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa has stepped up Sinhala occupation of coastal villages of Mullaiththeevu and Ma'nal Aa'ru (Weli Oya) districts of Vanni mainland this week, civil sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet. Hundreds of Sinhala fishermen were brought from South on Wednesday morning in 20 lorries with their boats and fishing equipments to Chemmalai, a coastal village of Mullaiththeevu district. Local Tamil fishermen who objected the move were assaulted by the occupying Sri Lanka Army and chased away. The SL military officials told Tamils that the fishermen from South had obtained 8-month pass to settle in Chemmalai for fishing. In the meantime Tamil families that resettled in Kokku'laay after 23 years have come under assault by SL military and Sinhalese settlers.
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‘LLRC hollow, India must use pressure to secure justice for Tamils’: Tehelka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2012, 03:03 GMT]
While a section of pro-establishment Indian media and journalists have attempted to the shield the Sri Lankan government from an external war crimes enquiry, an article published in Tehelka, an Indian magazine reputed for its investigative journalism, slams the hollowness of the LLRC citing UN panel report and referring to recently emerged images of civilians executed in cold blood when those who bear command responsibility for the atrocities have been given promotions. The article ‘Why are we not looking at these war crimes?’ dated 24 March by Tehelka’s correspondent Sai Manish further adds that future for justice for the Tamils does not lie with the pro-LLRC US resolution but “It depends more on how India can use its power to ensure that the innocent women and children who died don’t just get counted as collateral damage — as Colombo wants to make the world believe.”
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Sinhala school students attack visiting Tamil counterparts from Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2012, 08:51 GMT]
Nations divided at the grassroot in the island despite machinations of global powers, reflected in an episode this week in which visiting students from leading schools of Jaffna were attacked by fellow Sinhala students in a cadet camp at Randamba in the Southern Province. The Sinhala military officials in the camp, rather than attending to complaints, chose to send the Jaffna school students back, with a warning not to tell anyone what had happened to them in the camp. During the decades of war, Colombo had stopped cadet programmes in the schools of Jaffna. Now as a part of its militarisation and structural genocide programme Colombo has conceived the idea of obligatory military training to all university entrants and reintroduction of cadet programme in the leading schools of Jaffna.
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Indian Army commander meets occupying Sinhala commander in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 18:56 GMT]
Indian military’s southern commander Lt.Gen. AK Singh, making a one-day visit to Jaffna, met Sri Lanka’s occupying military commander in Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Mahinda Kadurusinghé on Tuesday to be briefed about the ‘security situation’ and about the ‘resettlement, rehabilitation, reintegration and development’ processes undertaken by the genocidal military in Jaffna. Sri Lanka enjoys a rare privilege of having ‘military to military’ relationship with India that allows relatively free communication between the officials of the two militaries. The Indian commander also met the SL colonial governor in Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Chandrasri.
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SL soldiers clash, killing 3 among them inside camp in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 March 2012, 06:15 GMT]
A clash among the occupying soldiers at a major Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp in the Jaffna peninsula has taken the lives of at least 3 and has injured many on Friday morning, news sources in Jaffna said. The SLA camp is located along the A9 Highway, at Nu'naavil, 5 km south of Chaavakachcheari town. In a territory where the occupying soldiers in the camps often exceed the number of local people, such clashes within the SLA are common, sporadically ending with killings, the sources further said.
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African Art found in Kayts Island off Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 March 2012, 15:42 GMT]
Head part of a metal sculpture showing features of African Art, discovered while digging a well at Allaippiddi in the Kayts Island off Jaffna, has been brought to the notice of professionals in archaeology by the efforts of a local teacher Nadarajah Vakeesan of Bharathi Vidyalayam. The artefact, found in the Palk Bay side of Kayts, an ancient as well as colonial harbour island, where pottery dating from pre-Christian centuries, a hoard of Chola artefacts and a cargo of Chinese ware dated to 12th century CE have been found earlier, and where some early Islamic and European colonial monuments are also located, now shows its Black African connections too, academics said.
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Land grabbed for Buddhist stupa, local people blocked at Kudumpimalai, Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 March 2012, 07:33 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Sinhala military occupying the scenic sacred hillock Kudumpimalai (Baron's Cap) in the Koa'ra'lappattu South Division of the Batticaloa district has not only appropriated five acres of land there to build a Buddhist stupa, but also blocks the local people from entering that area. The occupying military plans to convert the local sacred place of Eezham Tamils and a former jungle stronghold of the LTTE into a tourist place for the Sinhala-Buddhists from the south, informed civil officials of the division told TamilNet. The land has been appropriated at Alli-Oadai junction, 2km south of the hillock and the local people are blocked from going to that junction and beyond it, besides being prevented from entering their grazing lands in the nearby village Tharavai. The name of the junction also has been Sinhalicised similar to the Sinhalicisation of Kudumpimalai into Thoppigala.
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US, Sri Lanka squabble whether hang or slaughter Eezham Tamil Nation

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 March 2012, 23:32 GMT]
The LLRC recommendation of the majoritarian and genocidal state of Sri Lanka is clear on the point that ethnic territories cannot exist in the island, and ‘trilingual’ society (ostensibly paving way for total Sinhalcisation) should be achieved by 2020. While Sri Lanka in Geneva sessions wants implementation of its agenda left completely to itself, the US-backed resolution seeks international endorsement to the LLRC recommendations and international commitment from Sri Lanka in the implementation and phases. In an exclusive interview to Ceylon Today on Thursday, the US ambassador in Colombo, Patricia Butanis praising the LLRC for coming out with “some excellent recommendations,” argued why then the qualms in publicly committing to implementation. The squabble is just on whether publicly hang or secretly slaughter the Tamil nation, commented an Eezham Tamil politician.
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SLA, paramilitary, force Tamils in Batticaloa to take part in anti-UN protests

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 February 2012, 22:26 GMT]
SLA operated paramilitary operatives, dispatched by the occupying Sri Lanka Army in Batticaloa, visited the Village Development Council (VDC) leaders in various villages in the district on Monday instructing the heads of the VDCs to have at least 150 people to get on board the buses they would be bringing to transport civilians against their will to march from Batticaloa Hindu College to the Clock Tower in Batticaloa city. The heads of VDCs were told that they would have to resign their posts if they failed to meet the demand. The people, gathered against their will were then taken to Batticaloa city and were forced to burn the effigy of US President Barack Obama and to chant slogans against the UNHRC session taking place in Geneva.
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Halt deportations of Tamils, Sri Lanka tortures Tamil deportees: Human Rights Watch

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 February 2012, 01:26 GMT]
Citing own research and medical verification of rape and torture of recently deported Eezham Tamil asylum seekers from the United Kingdom at the hands of Sri Lankan CID at the airport and at the hands of Sri Lanka Army at various check-posts in the island, the New York based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Saturday urged the British authorities to immediately suspend further deportations from UK to Sri Lanka. The HRW expressed particular concern about the next scheduled deportation from the United Kingdom of about 100 Tamil asylum seekers, scheduled for February 28, 2012. “The Sri Lankan government has a long record of torture and mistreatment that has not ended with the end of the long war with the LTTE,” said Brad Adams, the UK-based Asia director of the HRW.
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Channel-4 wins trophy for Sri Lanka's war-crimes documentary

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 February 2012, 05:51 GMT]
ITN for Channel 4 scooped the trophy for best international coverage for the documentary Sri Lanka's Killing Fields at the prestigious Royal Television Society (RTS) awards in UK, BBC reported. Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, a special one-hour investigation which features devastating video evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Sri Lankan government forces and the Tamil Tigers, was first broadcast on 2nd December 2010, edited versions were replayed on 4th and 5th December during Sri Lanka's President Rajapaksa's visit to London.
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Occupying SL Army, Police jointly attack Tamil youth in Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 February 2012, 18:40 GMT]
Sri Lanka's occupying Sinhala army and police brutally attacked a number of Tamil youth below the age of 25, who were passing by the road in Nedung-kea'ni in Mullaiththeevu district on Tuesday night. The unprovoked and random attack followed some complaints of Sinhala road workers from the South, news sources in Vanni told TamilNet. Sometimes back a similar attack took place in Vanni after a confrontation between some Sinhala visitors from the South and the local people. Such attacks by the colonial forces were to remind the Eezham Tamils in Vanni of their subjugated status, the sources further said.
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