2 Tamil opposition MPs join SL government

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 August 2010, 20:29 GMT]
Praba Ganeshan, Colombo district parliamentarian of the Democratic Peoples Front (DPF) and P.Digambaram, parliamentarian of Workers National Congress representing Nuwareliya district Thursday joined the ruling United Peoples Front Alliance (UPFA) after meeting Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse at Temple Trees, according to President’s media unit. Praba Ganesan and P. Digambaram later crossed over to the government side in Parliament Thursday afternoon.
Full story >>

New Delhi academic comments in Colombo on diaspora transnationalism

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 August 2010, 06:31 GMT]
“Nationals settled in distant lands often nurture identities that may well be historically untenable and outdated in the culture of the home country. But they are a source of solace to the migrant in an alien culture and underline a claim to connectedness. Such identities frequently deny the plurality of South Asian civilisation and the intersections within it. The replacement of these becomes a problem of transnationalism,” said Romila Thapar, emeritus professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, delivering on Sunday Neelan Thiruchelvam Memorial Lecture of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo. Responding, an academic in Jaffna said, the Eezham Tamil diaspora is not settled but forced, carrying contemporary historical memories to which India was a party.
Full story >>

Assert Eezham Tamil identity in international arena: Es Po

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 August 2010, 01:18 GMT]
“The identity of Tamils in the island is not Sri Lankan. For over half a century the Sinhala chauvinists constantly staging devil dance tell that the identity belongs only to the Sinhalese. A Tamil who has ancestry in the island has no choice other than claiming for the identity Eezhath-thamizhan in the international arena. If that identity is not there he has neither face nor name,” says veteran Eezham Tamil creative writer S. Ponnuthurai (Es Po), in writing a forward to a poetry collection a few months ago. Meanwhile, veteran academic Prof K Sivathamby in an interview to Frontline last month regretted that “we did not have a situation in which all our people could join as Sri Lankans”, but added, “ Now we realise... The Sinhalese people also should realise that we are part of the landscape, and Tamils also should realise that this is the only country where the Sinhalese live”.
Full story >>

Dias case filed in European Court, German Ambassador meets Swiss Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 August 2010, 00:21 GMT]
Following the filing of a complaint against the Federal Republic of Germany with the European Courts of Human Rights (ECHR) for violating the ‘European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms’ in accepting Maj. Gen. (retd.) Jegath Dias as deputy Counsel in Sri Lanka’s embassy, German Ambassador to Switzerland, Hon. Von Schubert, met with a delegation of the Swiss Council of Eelam Tamils (SCET) led by Tharsika Pakeerathan, the president of SCET, Wednesday evening in Bern, Switzerland, sources in Bern said. "The discussions were very productive and were centered around the main arguments in the complaint on the violations of Germany to preserve the dignity of Tamils as enshrined in Articles 3, 8, 11(2) and 13 of the convention," Tharsika told TamilNet.
Full story >>

Searches in Colombo instill fears among Colombo resident Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 July 2010, 02:18 GMT]
The re-commencement of registration of Tamils with the police and targetted search operations have created a renewed sense of insecurity and injustice amongst the larger Tamil population that is detrimental to national reconciliation, said Democratic People's Front Leader Mano Ganesan, according to Colombo media. Ganesan has requested Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa to intervene to halt the police registration of Tamils in the Wellawatte Police division in Colombo saying that the searches are discriminatory and against the spirit of reconciliation.
Full story >>

Development crimes, Norway and Tamil diaspora

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 July 2010, 23:52 GMT]
“While the West is hoodwinking Tamils with war crimes investigations, what takes place in the island in full swing with the abetment of those who abetted the war are development crimes, demographic crimes and cultural crimes to complete genocide. The balance tilted by the international community has now placed Eezham Tamils to face several armies: an occupying army, settlement army, a retrogressive cultural army and the ‘development army’. Meanwhile, some Tamil individuals argue that diaspora should stop prioritising politics, but should ‘reconcile’ to subordination and engage in ‘rehabilitation’, without realising that it is they who have imperceptibly fallen into a vicious political agenda of the oppressors”, commented a social activist responding to ‘development’ circles in Norway advocating the diaspora to engage in ‘development’ accepting a questionable Sinhala NGO as the ‘monitor’.
Full story >>

Tamil hunger striker wins libel claim against Daily Mail, Sun

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 July 2010, 09:36 GMT]
British newspapers Sun and Daily Mail, represented by their Counsel at the Royal Court of Justice in London on Thursday, apologised sincerely and unreservedly for untrue and highly defamatory allegations against Parameswaran Subramanyam, who was on a 23-day hunger strike April, last year, demanding international community to stop Colombo’s war on Tamils. The newspapers also agreed to pay substantial damages and legal costs, according to Carter-Ruck solicitors. “The false allegations about Parameswaran were not just hurtful but clearly aimed at undermining Parameswaran’s credibility and the credibility of the whole Tamil protest,” commented Liberal Democrats' Deputy Parliamentary Leader Simon Hughes. According to Labour MP, Siobhain McDonagh, the ‘authorities’ who gave the information to the newspapers, “did it to undermine and shame the Tamil demonstrators in Parliament Square”.
Full story >>

Indian Bank to open branch in Jaffna to channel Delhi’s rehabilitation aid

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 July 2010, 01:14 GMT]
The Chennai-based, state-run Indian Bank is planning to open a branch in Jaffna, and to facilitate an Indian government loan to Sri Lanka of US$ 200 million for the rehabilitation of internally displaced Tamils, media reports said. "Talks [with Sri Lanka] are in an advanced stage at the moment," chairman and managing director Mr. TM Bhasin told The Times of India earlier this week. Indian Bank has at present over 1,700 branches, the majority in Tamil Nadu (757) and Andhra Pradesh (230).
Full story >>

Tissamaharama potsherd evidences ordinary early Tamils among population

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 July 2010, 03:18 GMT]
A potsherd inscription in Tamil Brahmi found some times back in an archaeological excavation by a German team at Tissamaharama in the Hambantota district of the Southern Province of Sri Lanka can be interpreted as meaning an equipment to measure, and thus evidences the presence of ordinary Tamil speaking people in the population of that region as early as at 2200 years before present, says archaeologist and epigraphist, Ponnampalam Ragupathy. The identification of the script of the legend as Tamil Brahmi and the decipherment getting the reading Thira’li Mu’ri in Tamil by veteran epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan in an article last month in The Hindu, has stirred interest of the archaeological circles in the island to unearth this old find from obscurity to limelight.
Full story >>

British Tamils seek boycott of defiant Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 July 2010, 12:21 GMT]
British Prime Minister David Cameron will Monday be handed a memorandum on behalf of UK’s Tamil community urging his government to support an international probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka, and to pressure the Colombo government to resettle in their homes tens of thousands of Tamils still languishing in refugee camps, and allow international access to thousands held in its prisoner-of-war camps. The UK is also being urged to boycott Sri Lanka till Colombo complies with international law. The handover follows a march and ‘midnight vigil’ outside 10 Downing Street staged Friday night by thousands of supporters of the campaign who marked the anniversary of the 1983 ‘Black July’ anti-Tamil pogrom.
Full story >>

Tamils sue Germany for accepting alleged war crimes commander as ambassador

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 July 2010, 23:54 GMT]
In an unprecedented legal move, three diaspora Tamil organisations have decided on Friday to file a case against Germany in the European Court of Human Rights. The Switzerland Council of Eezham Tamils (SCET), the Norwegian Council of Eezham Tamils (NCET) and the US based NGO, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), are to submit an application to the European Court of Human Rights 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, as Sri Lanka’s diplomat to Germany. Meanwhile, German based International Human Rights Association at Bremen, while welcoming the move said that real thrust could be achieved only by exposing and suing what this general is doing in Germany, violating human rights with the tacit approval of the German government.
Full story >>

STF appropriates Tamil land to erect Buddhist temple in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 July 2010, 17:10 GMT]
The Special Task Force (STF) in Batticaloa district, after asking the Kannaipuram Tamil villagers in Vellave'li DS division to vacate their lands to construct a Murugan Temple, has reportedly started unloading bricks, cements and sand for the construction of a Buddhist vihare.
Full story >>

Boyle urges divestment-disinvestment campaign against "apartheid" Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 July 2010, 00:07 GMT]
Speaking at the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FeTNA) convention during the US Independence day weekend, Professor Boyle, an expert in International Law, said that Sri Lanka is a violator of the Apartheid Convention, and that Tamils across the world should, without delay, intensify a divestment and disinvestment campaign against Sri Lanka "in the same lines and for the same reason the world did this against the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa." The July event held in Waterbury, Connecticut, is traditionally the largest event of the Tamil speaking people in the US every year, and the Connecticut event this year drew more than 2000 Tamils.
Full story >>

TNA seeks TN Chief Minister's help, writes Sinhala daily

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 July 2010, 00:05 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has appealed for assistance from the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi to help influence the Sri Lankan government to speed up the resettlement of the thousands of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and to develop the war ravaged north and east provinces, Sinhala daily Lakbima reported Thursday. According to Lakbima, the TNA is currently holding meetings with Indian leaders, in an effort to obtain the Indian government’s assistance to pressure the Sri lankan government into speeding up the resettlement of the IDPs.
Full story >>

Tamil Country Councils, TAG announce legal partnership

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 July 2010, 01:02 GMT]
Four democratically-elected Country Councils (CCs) of Eezham Tamils in Europe announced Tuesday the signing of a formal "Collaboration Agreement" with Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group, to form a co-operative relationship to pursue criminal and civil litigation against Sri Lanka officials complicit in war-crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity in the courts of European Community member countries and in international courts. "Norway, Switzerland, France and Italy have already signed the preliminary agreement. The National Council of Canadian Tamils has also decided to formally join the partnership and other countries are expected to join the collaboration effort," spokesperson coordinating the effort in Europe told TamilNet.
Full story >>

NPC calls on SL government to ensure no discrimination targeting Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 July 2010, 08:59 GMT]
National Peace Council (NPC) in its media release 16 July titled ‘Discriminatory Practices are Detrimental to Reconciliation’ called on Sri Lanka government to ensure that there is no discriminatory targeting Tamils. “The re-commencement of the practices of registering Tamils with the police and of conducting search operations that target them have been widely reported in the Tamil media in particular and have created a renewed sense of insecurity and injustice amongst the larger Tamil population that is detrimental to national reconciliation,” NPC said.
Full story >>

Non-derogable rights under international law

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 July 2010, 14:25 GMT]
While the United Nations charter guarantees "the sovereign equality of all its Members," evolving legal doctrines dealing with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity are leading to the theory that the national sovereignty is not absolute, but is qualified by peremptory norms determined by jus cogens or "compelling law." Despite Sril Lanka's persistent opposition, based on sovereignty claims, to international attempts to investigate alleged killing of more than 40,000 of Tamil civilians, the egregious nature of these crimes is unlikely to disappear from the consciousness of the world community and the Tamils affected by war. Until the issue is taken up at the world courts, expatriate Tamils should seek to assert jus cogens based cause of action in the courts of Europe and elsewhere to bring Sri Lanka officials complicit in war-crimes to justice.
Full story >>

Weiss: Colombo dominated by racist ideologues

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 July 2010, 23:28 GMT]
Arguing the reasons why Sri Lanka is making "fanciful" claims that "as many as half of all Tamil boatpeople have "links" to the Tigers," Gordon Weiss, UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka during the war, says "Its [Sri Lanka's] government is dominated by racist ideologues who promote the notion of the Sinhalese as a "chosen people." Government death squads have snatched thousands of people from the streets over the years. The country's highest court has explicitly rejected the role of international human rights instruments in Sri Lanka's affairs. And the government continues to deny that it killed civilians during the recent war, that there were battlefield executions, that it bombed hospitals, or that there is anything wrong with the sham democratic machinery of the state. The repressive creature of extreme nationalism is alive and well in Sri Lanka."
Full story >>

Naakappaduvan-ku’lam

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 July 2010, 18:47 GMT]
The pond named after Naakan of the Paduvar community
Full story >>

Verdict on Sri Lanka should be warning to others: Pakistan Newspaper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 July 2010, 18:07 GMT]
“The verdict on Sri Lanka should come as a warning to other armies fighting on their own soil”, says Thursday’s editorial of Pakistan’s influential newspaper Dawn, commenting on UN’s efforts of war crimes investigation and Sri Lanka’s opposition to it. “The war was conducted by the army but had the full backing of the president who believed that Tamil Eelam was an intractable problem which could not be resolved through political means”, the Dawn said. Meanwhile, Tamil circles were commenting on the war crimes of peace brokers. The former peace facilitator Erik Solheim made a statement last month that lives would have been saved and the UN, the USA and India would have taken over the situation had the LTTE surrendered. Why didn’t he tell this possibility when hundreds of thousands took to street to stop the war, asks Dr. T. Sivakanesan, a member of Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam.
Full story >>