India's reasons for banning LTTE false, fabricated: Vaiko tells Tribunal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 September 2010, 14:55 GMT]
MDMK leader Vaiko on Friday appeared before New Delhi’s Tribunal set to hear petitions against the ban of the LTTE in India, to argue that he should be involved in the hearing and to plead that the ban extended by the Central Government on 14 May 2010 should not be confirmed by the Tribunal. The very first reason given by GOI for the ban that the Tamil Eelam objective of the LTTE includes Tamil Nadu, falls to the ground to pieces as the LTTE never wanted to annex an inch of land of Tamil Nadu, Vaiko said, adding that GOI’s reasons are totally fabricated with falsehood. The Tribunal judge Vikramjit Sen was specific in raising the question “Don’t they [the LTTE] want to annex Tamil Nadu or part of India with Tamil Eelam?”
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20th death anniversary of Chavukkadai massacre of Tamils held

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 September 2010, 03:20 GMT]
The people of the village of Chavukkadai village located in Batticaloa district observed the twentieth anniversary of the Chavukkadai massacre of forty-two Tamils including men, women, children and elders by Sinhala hoodlums on 20th September 1990. Relations of the victims and people of the village held special prayers in Saiva koayils and churches in Chavukkadai.
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'EU should coordinate powers to bring justice to Eezham Tamils'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 September 2010, 05:08 GMT]
While powers and countries like Norway, preoccupied with geo-strategy and ‘development’, ignore the fundamentals of the crisis in the island, the European Union should work towards convincing and coordinating them in bringing political justice to Eezham Tamils, said 62-year-old Jegatheeswaran Arunachalam, an Australian national who witnessed the war in Vanni to its end. The EU, consisting of old nations that have gone through the gravity of national question in history, is in a better position to grasp appropriate solutions, he said. “As an immediate action, the EU should send a fact finding mission that includes members of the diaspora, and it should work for an internationally guaranteed situation for the diaspora to independently reach out its kith and kin in the island”, Jegatheeswaran, now on a Walk for Justice mission across Europe with two fellow activists, told TamilNet Friday.
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‘Norway wrongs by cooperating with Colombo’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 September 2010, 11:32 GMT]
The Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is naive if he believes normalisation of relations with Colombo will lay the basis for reconciliation. It is wrong to normalise relations with a regime that uses the army to expel Tamils from their land and settle Sinhalese there. Before normalising diplomatic ties Stoltenberg should demand Rajapaksa to accept UN investigation, said Norwegian Red Party deputy leader Bjørnar Moxnes, Wednesday, responding to media reports that Stoltenberg is the first Western head of government to meet Rajapaksa with a cooperation agenda after the civil war. Meanwhile, Mr. Majoran Vivekananthan, managing editor of Utrop said “it is unwise to let Solheim set the terms for Norway's relationship with Sri Lanka until a thorough evaluation of Norwegian and Solheim's role in the failed peace process is carried out.”
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Colombo hurriedly readies military colony in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 September 2010, 07:34 GMT]
One hundred houses in the military occupation scheme consisting twelve thousand houses by the Sri Lanka government in Ki’linochchi district to colonize the Tamil land of Vanni with Sinhala families of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) are being hurriedly prepared for occupation. Families of one hundred SLA officers will take possession of them in an event to be held shortly, informed sources in Ki’linochchi said. Arrangements are under way for the event in which key persons of Sri Lanka Defence Ministry will take part. Meanwhile, the owners of the land, all of them Tamils, their properties encroached by Sri Lanka government for colonisation, are not allowed even to go to their places where the military colony is being constructed. Informed Tamil officials in Vanni also said that Colombo is using foreign funds donated in the name of resettlement of uprooted families of Vanni.
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Upcountry Tamils who fled to escape attack live in fear

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 September 2010, 16:23 GMT]
Several upcountry Tamil families had fled from Kiribathgoda rubber plantation in Nivithigala in Ratnapura district 12 September night due to attacks by Sinhala gangs following the killing of a Sinhala estate watcher. The families had sought refuge in the neighbouring estates where they continue to live in fear, unable to return to their homes. The body of the watcher killed was found 13 September. Unidentified persons had abducted the watcher the previous night.
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‘Elusive international justice snatches away desire to live’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 20:42 GMT]
“We expected some country to step in to resolve the crisis... We believed that a dawn would come, a solution would come through [international] mediation after all the hardships we went through. But, nothing happened. Everything went out of hand for us to end up in the army-controlled area as living corpses. All countries have betrayed us,” told 40-year-old Ananthi Sasitharan, the wife of Elilan, the former Trincomalee Political Head of the LTTE, to BBC Tamil Saturday after complaining to the LLRC that SL President should know the whereabouts of her husband and fellow LTTE officials surrendered through a Catholic Priest in Mullaiththeevu on 18 May 2009. When asked whether she was concerned about repercussions for stating her views publicly from Vanni, the mother of three responded: “I am not afraid. I am prepared to face anything since we don't now live with the zest for life.”
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LTTE's Elilan surrendered to SLA on 18 May, wife tells BBC

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 16:21 GMT]
Ananthi Sasitharan, wife of Elilan, former Trincomalee political head of the LTTE, told BBC Tamil service that she and her three daughters witnessed her husband and hundreds of other LTTE members surrendering to the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers on 18th May 2009, after the war has come to an end. "I have been trying to trace my husband and has not been successful to locate his whereabouts. I have no doubt that Sri Lanka's president knows where my husband and others who surrendered are being held," she told the BBC.
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TNA parliamentarians to visit Valikaamam North HSZ

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 September 2010, 05:51 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) spokesman and Jaffna district parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran said that a group of TNA parliamentarians will be visiting Valikaamam North Sri Lanka Army (SLA) occupied High Security Zone (HSZ) once they get the permission from Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence. Meanwhile, Basil Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka minister and brother of SL President Mahinda Rjapaksa who is in Jaffna has again said that the families uprooted from Valikaamam North by SLA will be allowed to resettle in their places excluding the surroundings of Palaali Airport, sources in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, SLA authorities have already marked places in Palaali to construct housing schemes for the colonization of Sinhala families in the lands of Tamils evicted by SLA, sources in Palaali said.
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Tension in Ratnapura following attack on Upcountry Tamils

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 September 2010, 08:18 GMT]
More than 100 Upcountry Tamil families were displaced after Sinhalese estate workers burnt their houses and properties in Kiribatgala rubber plantation in Nivithigala in Ratnapura district Monday night. The attack on Tamils comes following the killing of a Sinhala estate watcher who was found dead Monday after being abducted by unidentified persons Sunday night. Tension prevails between in the district following the outbreak of the violence. Tamils in the district complain that they have been increasingly targeted by Sinhala mobs in recent times.
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European Court to review Jagath Dias case

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 September 2010, 03:43 GMT]
A. Muller-Elschner, the legal secretary to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), said in a letter to the Swiss Council of Eelam Tamils (SCET), the democratically elected country council of Eezham Tamils in Switzerland, that the European Court will take up the case against the appointment of ex-SLA commander Jagath Dias as a diplomat to the Sri Lanka embassy in Germany. SCET, the Norwegian Council of Eelam Tamils (NCET) and the US based NGO, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), had filed an application to the ECHR in July 2010 charging the German government for violating EU Rights conventions by accepting a Sri Lankan military commander, Major General Jagath Dias, an accused in the war crimes.
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‘Extreme position of appeasement’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 September 2010, 00:50 GMT]
“Sri Lanka sits at the crossroads of two significant contemporary geopolitical shifts. Firstly there is the rise and resurgence of China as a regional power; and secondly, many Western governments have lost their credibility in terms of morality, human rights advocacy and international law due to interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The SL government is masterful in its diplomacy and deals with a variety of governments, which are sometimes at odds e.g.: Iran & Israel, India & Pakistan, USA & China. This puts SL in a unique geopolitical position”, says ‘Minutes of the Sri Lanka Roundtable’, convened by Centre for Peacebuilding in Switzerland last month. While the West in its inability opts for extreme position of appeasement towards genocidal Colombo, Tamil voices against subjugation are ironically viewed as ‘extremism’, commented diaspora circles.
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2 Tamils die in road accident in Marawila

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 September 2010, 17:49 GMT]
A man and a five year old boy, both Tamils, died in a road accident when a Prisons Department vehicle crashed against a passenger van from behind at Marawila Sunday morning. Seven others were injured in that accident, Marawilla police said.
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Alternative Development

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 September 2010, 06:35 GMT]
There is no point in diaspora arguing with officials and politicians over development, because, they ‘do know’ what they are doing. Instead the diaspora should think creatively in identifying overlapping areas of interest in development, without compromising the national aspirations. Human resource development is a potential area, needed both by the ‘developers’ and nationalists. Eezham Tamils have credible institutions at home and grass root organisations in the diaspora to carryout it. Ask the developers whether they are prepared to give direct aid. If they decline and if their interest is only in prodding the diaspora to Rajapaksa and in devising KP-line of politics, then the diaspora need not care for them.
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‘Take care of symbols’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 September 2010, 15:12 GMT]
Tamil Information Centre (TIC), London, has called for a Round Table Discussion on “Postwar Challenges Facing ‘Sri Lanka’s Tamil-Speaking Peoples” on 25 and 26th of this month in London. The discussion is a follow-up of the Zurich gathering held last November. Commenting on the programme a Tamil-speaking social activist in Batticaloa said: “While it is appreciable to work for unity and one voice of the Tamils of the island and to find ways of rebuilding society, livelihood, institutions and political structures for them, symbols of identity that are fundamental to all their regeneration with self-respect should not be compromised. The Tamil-speaking peoples of the island have to shun the identity of ‘Sri Lanka’ that has become a symbol of state oppression ever since the constitutionality of the identity in 1972.”
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‘Tamil Youth Conference 2010’ held in Germany

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 September 2010, 08:11 GMT]
Many diaspora Eezham Tamil youths from European countries participated in the ‘Tamil Youth Conference 2010’ held Saturday in Dusseldorf in Germany with the aim of getting to know talented youths engaged in diverse pursuits and to set up a creative website connecting them. The participants shared their views related to the political situation in their homeland, the miserable life of the people there and the confusion prevailing among expatriate Eezham Tamils. The Conference is the outcome of the first effort to rally the diaspora Eehzam Tamil youths in a meeting without leanings to any particular organization, Sanjeevkanth Luxshumikumar, a digital media artist from Germany and one of the organizers of the event said. It is our intention to hold this conference annually and in a large scale, he added.
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'LLRC lessons advocate permanent subjugation of Tamils'

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 September 2010, 02:30 GMT]
LLRC, the Rajapaksa appointed Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, is created “neither to learn lessons nor to reconcile but to make Tamils accept and tolerate the crime and cruelty of the Sinhalese and live with repression forever,” says a reader, Sam Thambipillai, in sending a comment on Jayantha Dhanapala’s submission to the LLRC. Colombo’s diplomat Jayantha Dhanapala, who once attempted to contest for the UN Secretary General position, in his submission to the LLRC last month said: “We have learnt a great deal of lessons from the experience of combating one of the most ruthless terrorist groups […] We would be providing something innovative to the international community […] to give some guidance to armies of nation states as to how they should react to such a situation”.
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'Colombo teaches lessons of political culture for South Asia'

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 September 2010, 14:22 GMT]
The 18th Constitutional Amendment was passed in Sri Lankan parliament Wednesday with a majority of 144 votes. The Amendment, which has been passed in a rush by the government without pubic debate enables Mahinda Rajapaksa to contest presidential election for any number of terms besides bestowing additional powers in the appointments of key government posts. What is happening to state and democracy in the island of Sri Lanka is a warning to people who are deceived in the ‘democratic’ practices of dynasties and families in the rest of South Asia, political observers said. Sometimes back, a key diplomat of a leading power, looking after South Asia, tolerantly sounded that family rule in the island is typical of contemporary political culture in the region.
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SL Army, Archaeology dept appropriate lands of uprooted Tamils in Maathakal

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 September 2010, 07:46 GMT]
Sri Lanka government’s archaeological department with the help of Sri Lanka Army is constructing more structures in Thirvadinilai in Maathakal in Vallikaamam North SLA High Security Zone (HSZ), in addition to a Buddhist temple erected in October 2009. This area had been the home of Tamil families living there since ancient times evicted twenty years ago when Valikaamam North HSZ was established by SLA. Now the families are not allowed even to see their own places in Maathakal while thousands of Sinhala Buddhist pilgrims visit the newly built temple daily which now has become a 'tourist attraction' in Jaffna peninsula, sources in Jaffna said.
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Thousands attend Nalloor Thear festival

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 September 2010, 08:15 GMT]
The Thear (Chariot) festival of the historic Nalloor Kanthasuvaami Temple in Jaffna town was held Tuesday morning with at least a hundred thousand devotees from all over the island and abroad participating in the annual festival. The opening of A9 road had enabled the devotees to travel easily to Jaffna. Tamils and Sinhala people from South and expatriate Tamils in particular were among the thousands of devotees, sources in Jaffna said.
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