British envoy in Colombo speaks on diaspora engagement with Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 November 2012, 01:54 GMT]
The British High Commissioner in Colombo was answering a question on “the ways in which the Sri Lankan diaspora in the UK could support development in Sri Lanka,” said a note of the High Commission’s website last Tuesday, introducing the 13th edition of a PR exercise video series, “Ask the High Commissioner,” initiated by the mission in Colombo. The High Commissioner was in fact answering a question, “What is the Sri Lankan diaspora in the UK doing to assist Sri Lanka,” and he was citing the example of a multi-ethnic group of young doctors from the diaspora visiting the island recently.
Full story >>

Student associations mark Tamil Eelam Heroes Day in Canada

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 November 2012, 23:13 GMT]
Tamil Student Associations (TSAs) in over eight University campuses in Canada engaged in commemorating Heroes Day last week. Annually the TSAs individually commemorate Heroes Day during the week leading up to the broader Tamil Youth remembrance event held on the 25 of November. Commending the solidarity work that Eezham Tamil youth in Canada have been undertaking over the past years, James Clark from the Canadian Peace Alliance said at the event at York last Monday: "Maaveerar Naal is an occasion not only to remember and pay tribute to the martyrs and heroes of Tamil Eelam, but also to reflect on the lessons of the struggle for peace and justice."
Full story >>

Genocidal Sri Lanka forbids Kaarthikai festival as it falls on Heroes Day

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 November 2012, 22:41 GMT]
The Heroes Day observed by Eezham Tamils on 27 November to remember their fallen fighters, falls on a full moon day this year, coinciding with the Kaarthikai festival of lights observed by Tamils since ancient times. Sri Lanka that has made a practice of banning even routine religious observations in the temples of the occupied country of Eezham Tamils on the Heroes Day, dares this year to forbid the Kaarthikai festival observations too. Occupying Sri Lanka’s practice of banning temple rituals, including toll of bells on the Heroes Day, started first in Nov 2009, while New Delhi’s Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna was visiting Jaffna. New Zealand Tamils appeal to the UN on the continued cultural genocide of their kith and kin in the island.
Full story >>

Emotion-charged homage paid to slain diaspora activist in France

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 November 2012, 18:30 GMT]
Thousands of Eezham Tamils paid their last respects at a state-like funeral given on Saturday to Nadarajah Mathinthiran alias Parithi, who was assassinated outside Tamil Coordinating Committee office in Paris two weeks ago. While the International Community has been unable to exert any meaningful pressure on the Sri Lankan state, the continued ban of the LTTE in countries outside the island, only encourages the SL state to deal with the diaspora through a militaristic counter-insurgency approach, activists in Paris said, adding that the mass attendance at the funeral of the slain Tamil activist was also a message to the International Community of Establishments (ICE) that was projecting the Tamil diaspora as a hostile actor, from the UN panel report to the latest document of the International Crisis Group (ICG).
Full story >>

Demographic genocide aimed in SL military surveying Batticaloa border villages

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 November 2012, 08:59 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military of Colombo, stationed in more than 10 military bases along the villages in Batticaloa district in the area bordering Polannaruwa district, has enforced Eezham Tamils to register their households and their lands. The enforced registration is carried out in a military operation style, is claimed to be under the so-called ‘Eastern Province Development Plan’ of the Mahaweli Development Ministry. The intention is to appropriate excess lands to be distributed among ‘landless’ people, a SL military intelligence officer involved in the project said when confronted by the villagers. The enforced registration is being carried out without involving the SL Government Agent of Batticaloa district and the divisional officers under him.
Full story >>

‘UN internal report meaningless without action, long term solution needed’: Tamil activist

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 November 2012, 21:01 GMT]
Criticizing the UN for its deliberate silence which “protected the Sri Lankan state from international criticism and allowed it to strategically conduct a genocidal campaign under the guise of a “war on terror””, Dr. Sam Pari, an Eezham Tamil activist with the ATC, argues in news site Crickey.com that the recently released internal review report of the UN on Sri Lanka is meaningless to the Eezham Tamils without concrete steps in action. Giving an outline of different ways in which the Sri Lankan state is conducting genocide of the Eezham Tamils, she writes “The Sri Lankan regime’s strategy of eradicating the Tamil people through various avenues is only being abetted by the super powers’ silence. What is required is a longer term solution that deals with the root cause — an oppressive force, the racist Sri Lankan regime, intent on erasing the identity of a people, the Tamils.”
Full story >>

ICG plays mischief with TamilNet

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 November 2012, 08:40 GMT]
The International Crisis Group (ICG) in its latest report on Sri Lanka, No. 239, dated 20 November 2012, came out with the following sentence: “The influential website TamilNet, whose editors are linked to the so-called Nediyavan faction of the LTTE, frequently criticises the TNA for moderation allegedly imposed by the Indian and U.S. governments.” In the footnotes for the statement, the ICG cites Norway questioning Nediyavan, the Dutch investigating illegal LTTE fundraising and D.B.S. Jeyaraj writing on “Tigers overseas chief Nediyavan” getting questioned in Oslo over alleged links to LTTE fund raising (page 13).
Full story >>

Colombo disregards school development in North-East: TNA MP

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 November 2012, 15:42 GMT]
The Colombo government has been systematically neglecting the development of Tamil schools in the North and East provinces and the trend has been evident in the proposed 2012 budget proposals now being debated in the Sri Lankan parliament, says Batticaloa district Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian P. Selvaraja.
Full story >>

Appellants granted time extention in Rajapakse war-crimes case

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 November 2012, 15:41 GMT]
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted appellants’ motion for extension of time to file the Reply brief, by two weeks, in the appeal case against Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse for civil damages on war-crimes charges, according to the court docket. The revised briefing schedule indicated that the Appellant's Reply brief will now have to be filed by December 7, 2012. Attorney for the Appellants, Bruce Fein, told the court that the the intervening holidays and his case work load had necessitated the request for extension and the Court granted his motion.
Full story >>

Honest intellectual discourse missing in Tamil Nadu: Thirumurugan

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 November 2012, 08:38 GMT]
Lack of honest intellectual discussion in Tamil Nadu is the reason why the Tamil Eezham cause has not been taken up for intense intellectual discussion at a larger All-India level, said Thirumurugan Gandhi, coordinator of May 17 civil society movement of TamilNadu in an interview to TamilNet earlier this month. Such intellectual discourses usually dominated by Marxist Communists and Brahmanistic sections in Tamil Nadu failed the Eezham Tamils. But the biased sections that theoretically opposed Tamil Eezham, opposed the LTTE, pushed back the cause and contributed favourably to the Sri Lankan state now find themselves sidelined in Tamil Nadu due to civil society awakening, Thirumurugan said, adding an appreciating note on the support of Muslim civil society in Tamil Nadu.
Full story >>

"Multimedia book to unbury facts of Sri Lanka war"

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 November 2012, 00:18 GMT]
Benjamin Dix, a former UN staffer who spent four years in Sri Lanka from 2004 till 2008 when Sri Lanka asked all NGOs to leave the island, and who with illustrator Lindsay Pollock, is documenting the effects of Sri Lanka war through the story of a Tamil refugee, in an interview given to TamilNet says, "I felt terrible after the UN evacuation from Vanni and very angry that they international system had abandoned civilians at their time of need....Due to the media blackout on the conflict, I felt that it was very important to tell the stories of the dead and the survivors of the conflict." Arundhati Roy, writes in support of Dix's project, "tens of thousands of tamil civilians who were brazenly and brutally killed and powerful countries which have strategic and business interests in the region are rapidly burying these facts," and that the book will unbury these facts.
Full story >>

British diplomat briefed on demographic genocide taking place in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 November 2012, 23:43 GMT]
The leader of opposition in the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC), Mr Singaraveloo Thandayuthapani, a Tamil National Alliance (TNA) politician on Monday briefed the Deputy High Commissioner of UK Mr Robbie Bulloch, who was on an official visit to Trincomalee district. The TNA politician described the land appropriation by the Sri Lanka Army affecting Eezham Tamils in the district as a systematic and planned act of demographic genocide.
Full story >>

Naarang-goda-paa’luwa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 November 2012, 06:37 GMT]
The wasteland or desolate land of Naarang-goda
Full story >>

SL ambassador cites China for ‘autonomy within unitary structure’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 November 2012, 06:25 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka’s ambassador in France, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke, on Sunday reiterated his stand of finding ‘autonomy’ solutions for Tamils within a ‘unitary’ state. The model he cited was China. He was replying to criticism on his stand by Emeritus Professor Peter Schalk that appeared in TamilNet last Thursday. “The reply of the ambassador only confirms what we all have a foreboding of, namely that the ambassador of Sri Lanka has a totalitarian system like the Chinese as a model for the unitary state of Lanka. What about the "autonomy" of Tibet in practice? There is no autonomy,” commented Peter Schalk in a note sent to TamilNet on Monday.
Full story >>

Eyewitnesses to Kumaarapuram massacre summoned to Anuradhapura

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 November 2012, 20:16 GMT]
Witnesses to February 1996 brutal massacre of 24 Tamils by the occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) at Kumarapuram vilage in Trincomalee, have been sent summons to appear on Monday in Anuradhapura High Court situated in predominantly Sinhala district, more than 16 years after the genocidal massacre. “This gang rape and massacre of innocent civilians, including children and women, forms part of a system evidence of Genocide against Eezham Tamils,” a lawyer from Trincomalee told TamilNet commenting “justice delayed is justice denied.” Many of the witnesses are poor labourers who do not know Sinhala. The witnesses have also been threatened by the SL military not to appear in the Courts, the sources further said.
Full story >>

SL police detains 65-year-old Tamil mother in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 November 2012, 19:39 GMT]
Sri Lankan Police personnel who arrived in Mannaar from Jaffna Monday morning took into custody a 65-year-old Tamil woman, who was alone at her residence in Moor Street. SL Police in Mannaar and the police from Jaffna detained her and took her back to her house and photographed her in front of her house and at the backyard.
Full story >>

UN culpable under "complicity clause," says Professor Boyle

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 November 2012, 22:22 GMT]
Dismissing the "recommendations" of the Petrie report as "UN double talk" similar to the language used by the UN to excuse UN's complicity in the Srebrenica massacre, Professor Boyle, an expert in International Law, said that the Petrie report, however, provides legal evidence to establish UN's culpability on the element of "complicity" to war crimes and genocide, as defined in the Article 3(e) of 1948 Genocide Convention. Further, Boyle said, contrary to the claims in the Petrie report, the UN Secretary General (UNSG) has independent powers, and need not adhere to the dictates of the Security Council.
Full story >>

Politics of Genocide

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 November 2012, 09:51 GMT]
While the Mu'l'livaaykkaal killings and the on-going cultural destruction in the NorthEast can be argued to constitute "Genocide" within the definition of the Genocide Convention of 1948, a virtual codification of the “Never Again” ethos, Western Nations including the United Nations have shown not only any inclination to accept that the crime occurred, but also are likely complicit in allowing the allegedly criminal state to continue to commit genocidal crimes, and to avoid accountability for crimes committed during the war. The criminality that may befall the West arising from Article 3(e), and the violation of Article I of the Genocide Convention for failing to prevent genocide, are likely reasons for the officials of the UN and UN member states to avoid calling the killings a "Genocide."
Full story >>

Tamil activists take different view of Canada’s support to UN’s internal report

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 November 2012, 00:16 GMT]
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird issued a statement on Thursday regarding the UN Secretary General’s Internal Review Panel Report on Sri Lanka. Offering support to the report, the statement laid stress on the failure of the Sri Lankan government to make progress on ‘reconciliation, accountability and respect for human rights in Sri Lanka’. Responding to this, Tamil activists in Canada told TamilNet “ if the Canadian government is genuinely concerned about ensuring that mistakes made in Sri Lanka are not repeated, then they must acknowledge that addressing the fundamental national question of Eezham Tamils and providing justice for the genocide they suffered should be a prerequisite to any ‘work’ of the international community.”
Full story >>

Ba’ndaaranaayaka- pura,
Chelvanaayaka-puram

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 November 2012, 23:47 GMT]
The settlement named after SWRD Ba’ndaaranaayake

The settlement named after SJV Chelvanaayakam
Full story >>