SL authorities plan to seize 50 acres as ‘Buddha Pooja Boomi’ in Thennai-maravadi

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 June 2019, 20:39 GMT]
Tamil civil sources at Kuchchave'li said the controversial monk Galgamuwa Sandhabodhi thero has been harassing the Divisional Secretariat to demarcate fifty acres of lands at the temple site of Eezham Tamils along the strategic border between the Northern and Eastern provinces. The monk has claimed that the properties were needed to generate income for a future Buddhist temple. SL Archaeology Department and the occupying Sinhala military are planning to erect a Sinhala Buddhist temple at the locality after destroying the Hindu temple, the sources further said.
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Kokku'laay-centric united action needed to counter Colombo wedging North-East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 June 2019, 20:36 GMT]
The resettled Tamil residents of the strategic Thennai-maravadi village bordering the Northern and Eastern Provinces in the Trincomalee district are facing Sinhala colonisation and Sinhala Buddhicisation of Tamil heritage sites on two fronts, at Pa'nikka-vayal to its west and at Kanthasaami-malai, which extends eastwards into Kokku'laay lagoon. The Sinhala colonisation and the Buddhicisation of Tamil heritage site of Kanthasaami-malai are being accelerated under the Emergency Regulations and the situation prevailing after the Easter Sunday attacks that have triggered the extremist monks to escalate their chauvinistic schemes in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The two-pronged attack, which is being stepped up in the recent days, is part of a larger design of permanently wedging the territorial contiguity of the Tamil homeland along the narrow border between the North and the East.
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Tamils, Muslims need strategic alliance to protect heritage rights in North-East

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 June 2019, 17:16 GMT]
The Tamil Saiva Priest of Then-Kayilai Aatheenam, Thavath-Thiru Akaththiyar Adika’ laar, has urged legal activists to find ways to contain the hostile acts of the Sinhala Buddhist monk from the Velgam Vihara, who has dismantled the foundation of Hindu Pi’l’ laiyaar temple at the heritage site of Kanniyaa hot springs in Trincomalee. The Saiva priest said it was not merely a religious dispute, but rather a cause of preserving the heritage rights. The best option, in his opinion, was to address the issue through the courts. In the meantime, TNA Leader R. Sampanthan was taking up the burning question with the SL President and the Prime Minister. However, both the legal avenue and the political appeals made with collaborative orientation only have minimal impact in the unitary system of genocidal Sri Lanka, especially under the Emergency Regulations, commented legal activists in Trincomalee.
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Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalism ultimate trump card in unitary ‘Sri Lanka’: Suresh

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 June 2019, 19:18 GMT]
The successive SL governments continue to behave hostile towards the Tamil people through ‘celebrating’ victory in the month of May. Furthermore, the SL State and its military sustain the Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalism unabatedly erecting Buddhist temples in the North and the East. The same trend is also witnessed in the way the Islamophobia is deployed in the electoral politics of the South, particularly after the Easter Sunday attacks, commented Tamil politician Suresh Premachandran in a video interview to TamilNet this week. The SL Army’s 11-day ‘Walk of Warriors’ launched from Medawachchiya to Colombo coinciding with the May’ victory celebration’ seems to be a display of warning to the Muslim people as well as being propaganda targeting the Sinhala people with the message that the military force is their ultimate protection, the former Tamil militant turned politician observed.
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Sinhala monk named Galgamuwe ‘Santhabodhi’ spearheads Buddhicisation of Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 June 2019, 23:20 GMT]
A group of Sinhala colonists from the remote places along the Trincomalee - Mullaiththeevu district border accompanied Galgamuwe Santhabodhi Thero to stage a protest at Neeraaviyadi in Naayaa’ru, Mullaith-theevu, on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the SL Police was chasing away the Tamil journalists who went to cover the protest. The latest move, opposing the Tamils restoring their Saiva temple rights, comes as the extremist monk was emboldened after the hunger strike staged by Athuraliye Rathana Thero demanding the SL State to act against the Muslim governors and ministers, was yielding results in favour of their demands, commented Tamil activists in Mullaiththeevu.
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SL military, police suppress traces of officer involved in fatal accident

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 June 2019, 19:02 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military and the police are trying to suppress photographic traces of a fatal accident as well as exerting pressure on the family of the 67-year-old victim who was killed on the spot in the accident caused by the speeding vehicle, which was driven by an officer-rank SL Army person. The accident took place in front of Nedungkea'ni Maha Viththiyaalayam school on Sunday around 7:00 pm in Vavuniyaa North. The driving officer was wearing a green military uniform, eyewitnesses said. The victim, Kanapathippillay Perampalam, was on his way to buy short eats for his grandchildren. He was on a bicycle.
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Muslims learn hard lesson on modus operandi of Sinhala majoritarianism: Journalist

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 June 2019, 22:32 GMT]
Tamil-speaking Muslims, particularly their politicians, who have been siding with the ruling regimes of the mainstream Sinhala parties the past, should now review their strategy and consider joining hands with the Tamils. They must have learned the lesson of their past failures, commented veteran Muslim journalist ALM Saleem, based in Kalmunai of the Ampaa’rai district. A single monk has managed to move the entire SL regime resulting in the resignation of the Muslim governors and the politicians holding portfolios in the government on Monday. It is an important lesson. The Muslims should not place their trust on the majoritarinist political parties anymore, Kalapoosha'nam Saleem said.
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SL Forest Department seizes 1,500 acres of lands opposite Tamil Heroes Cemetery in Champoor

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 June 2019, 12:14 GMT]
Sinhala guards belonging to the SL Forest Department have hurriedly marked many of the outgrown trees in the private agricultural lands at Aalang-ku’lam in Champoor, Trincomalee with the letter ‘F’ claiming the trees as the properties the SL department, Vairamuthu Pathmanathan, the chairperson of Aalang-ku’lam Farmers Federation, said. The SL Forest Department has marked the trees at the extent of 1,500 acres of lands, located just opposite the razed Aalang-ku’lam Tamil Heroes Cemetery where more than 800 LTTE fighters lay buried. The latest move indicates that the SL Forest Department was also claiming the private agricultural lands that belong to the people, who possess deeds and permits to prove their ownership to many plots of farms in the area.
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Prejudiced Archaeology Dept escalates ethnic tensions in Trincomalee: Civic Councillor

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 June 2019, 23:18 GMT]
Chandirarajah Vipooshan, a member of Trincomalee Town and Gravats Predesiya Saba, says that the overtly prejudiced behaviour of the SL Archaeology Department which selectively promotes the interests of the Sinhala Buddhists has escalated ethnic tensions between the Tamils and the Sinhalese in Trincomalee district. The civic member said it was the SL Archaeology Department, which was instigating construction projects of the monks to accelerate the Sinhala Buddhisication in Thennai-maravadi and in Kanniya. The monks were from different temples. It is the Archaeology Department that coordinates the activities timing the situation prevailing the in the island, he said.
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IC failing to impose mediated solution, ultimately responsible for escalating Sinhala chauvinism

[TamilNet, Friday, 31 May 2019, 22:11 GMT]
Even though one feared the outbreak of an anti-Muslim pogrom immediately after the Easter attacks, silence prevailed for two weeks. Then the mob violence targeted the properties of Muslim traders. It was not an act of immediate responsive impulse, but an engineered move instigated by an organised force. Despite their differences in the scale, there are certain similarities between the 1983 Black July anti-Tamil pogrom and the post-2009 anti-Muslim pogroms, says Batticaloa-based human rights activist Kathir Barathythasan. During the war, the International Community (IC) was acting as a mediator. But, it was also abetting the SL State, causing massive civilian deaths. The IC, now wants the anti-terror legislation to fit its global designs ignoring the drastic internal consequences. The IC must, therefore, be convinced to deliver a negotiated settlement to the national question, he said.
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SL Archaeology Dept steps up controversial construction work in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 May 2019, 17:37 GMT]
The SL Archaeology Department, which had stopped the controversial construction of a building at the hill-top of Kanthasaami-malai in the strategically located ancient village of Thennai-maravadi at the provincial border between the North and East, has all of a sudden accelerated the building project hurriedly completing the building, violating the ban imposed by the Divisional Secretariat. Eezham Tamil residents, their Rural Development Society (RDS) and the trustee board of the 400-year-old Saiva Kanthasaami-temple, have complained on Monday and Wednesday this week. Thennai-maravadi was the seat of a Tamil Vanni chieftaincy until the Dutch times in the mid 17th century. The interior hamlet is situated in the narrow strategic corridor linking the Northern and Eastern provinces, 70 km north of Trincomalee city.
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SL police, backing monk, commit hate-crimes against Tamils, says assaulted journalist

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 May 2019, 21:28 GMT]
Two officers-in-charge (OICs) of the stations of Kokku’laay and Mullaith-theevu of the occupying SL police in Vanni, verbally abused a Tamil journalist, K. Kumanan, on Monday, a day after he reported their biased conduct against the Tamil Saiva devotees, who had gone to reinstate the name board at the disputed heritage site of Neeraaviyadi in Naayaa’ru. The OIC of Kokku’laay went a step further physically slapping the journalist at his neck as well as deliberately shaking his camera. The SL Police was also intimidating Kumanan by taking photos. “The police officers were not only attacking me, but they were also verbally abusing the entire Tamil media in a collective sense,” said the freelance reporter. The assault came a day after his report appeared in the Veerakesari daily.
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Colonising Sinhala Buddhist monks, officials provoke Saiva Tamils in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 May 2019, 18:04 GMT]
A group of encroaching Sinhala Theravada Buddhist monks, who had illegally built a Buddhist shrine in 2013 near the Saiva (Hindu) shrine of Kanniyaa hot wells in the traditional Tamil division of Uppu-ve’ li in the Trincomalee district, have recently started to dismantle the remaining foundation-structure of the Saiva Pi’l’ laiyaar temple. The Saiva temple was destroyed during the anti-Tamil pogroms, and the occupying Colombo establishment has been blocking the Tamil landowner from reconstructing the temple. After dismantling the square-shaped foundation of the Saiva temple, the occupying Sinhala monks started to lay a circular foundation at the locality on 21 May. The controversial move has drawn strong objections from the Tamils, including the owner of the lands, Ms Ganesh Kokilaramani, triggering religious tensions between the intruding Sinhalese and the native Tamils since 22 May.
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Muslim prisoner alleged of LTTE gets back-to-back life sentence in genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 May 2019, 09:09 GMT]
Anuradhapura’ Special High Court’ of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka has served three jail terms, 20 years each, to be followed one after the other for the first three indictments and a life sentence for the remaining 29 charges to a Tamil-speaking Muslim political prisoner on Tuesday last week. The accused, 45-year-old Abdul Hameed Umar Hattaaph, was the second accused in the case regarding the assassination of a notorious Sinhala military commander, Major General (retd) Janaka Perera in October 2008. Umar Hattaaph had pleaded not guilty. He has been languishing in SL prisons for the past ten years. There was no lawyer prepared to defend him. Umar Hattaap is a father of three and hails from Neariya-ku’lam, Maangku’lam, Vavuniyaa.
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Tamil Genocide Remembrance marked in Melbourne opposing Australia's deportations

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 May 2019, 17:25 GMT]
Australian Tamil diaspora marking the tenth Tamil Genocide Remembrance was supported by the Australian, Filipino and aboriginal progressive and internationalist solidarity activists, who took part in the vigil and delivered messages of support to the remembrance event. The protesters gathered in the city on 15 May, and the Tamils marked the commemoration event on 18 May. “What happened to Eelam Tamils was not just war crimes - it was genocide,” said one placard carried by the solidarity activists while a banner stated: “Keep away from bloodstained Sri Lankan military”. “Don’t deport to danger. Let them stay” was their message. The son of a war-dead LTTE commander addressed the participants of the commemoration event on 18 May, sharing his experiences of the genocidal onslaught as a 12-year-old boy at Mu’l’ li-vaaykkaal in 2009.
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Profound experience of attending Tamil Genocide Remembrance in Vanni: Bremen Tribunal Judge

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 May 2019, 18:06 GMT]
Colombian theologist Rev Fr Javier Giraldo Moreno was visiting the island this month taking part in the tenth Tamil Genocide Remembrance event, which was held at Mu'l'livaaykkaal in Vanni on 18 May. Fr Javier Giraldo was one of the eleven judges of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT) which found the unitary state of Sri Lanka guilty of the crime of genocide in the hearings held in Bremen, Germany in January 2014. Before leaving the island, Fr Giraldo addressed journalists at a press conference held at Jaffna Press Club on 20 May, and he was responding to four specific questions. Re-examining Norway-facilitated 2002 peace process was necessary to advance the struggle for the rights of the Tamils, he said. Furthermore, the leaders of all religions should get together to counter the divide-and-rule tactics of the SL government, especially after the Easter attacks, the Catholic priest said.
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Tamil Genocide Remembrance marked in geostrategic Pacific islands of Okinawa, Jeju

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 May 2019, 17:26 GMT]
The people of the Island of Okinawa, located between Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea of the Pacific, marked the tenth Tamil Genocide Remembrance in two separate events reflecting their resistance to the protracted geopolitical militarisation of the islands in the Indo-Pacific. In 1945, almost one hundred thousand civilians along with an equal number of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers and 12,000 US military personnel perished as the USA went on capturing Japan’s southernmost island in one of the bloodiest amphibious invasions in the modern history. Around 30,000 US troops are now stationed there with a changed focus towards China. The grassroots movement among the Okinawan population is strongly opposed to their island being continuously militarised. Mu’l’ li-vaaykkaal Remembrance events were also held in Kyoto, Japan, and on the strategic Jeju island off the Korean peninsula.
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Wigneswaran writes to Guterres: Urgent need for UN Monitoring Mission to North-East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 May 2019, 22:33 GMT]
Former Chief Minister of Northern Provincial Council Justice CV Wigneswaran has written to UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres urging the latter to appoint a United Nations Monitoring Mission to record ongoing human rights violations in the North-East. The SL military has put up ten checkpoints between the Tamil-dominated areas of Vavuniyaa and Jaffna, and these checkpoints have become sites of countless human rights violations, mainly targeted harassment of Tamil women and arbitrary detentions, Justice Wigneswaran said in his letter sent to UN offices on Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day.
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‘Eelam War V’ is knowledge-war against ‘political COIN’: Swiss youth group

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 May 2019, 13:46 GMT]
Switzerland-based Eezham Tamil youth group, ‘Phoenix the Next Generation’ and its media front ‘Puradsi Media’ (meaning revolutionary media) has announced a three-point programme to confront the ongoing political counter-insurgency (political COIN) that has been deployed against the Tamil diaspora by the powers and the SL State who want the diaspora to either abandon or compromise the doctrine of Tamil Eelam. The Phoenix group came up with the initiative at the book launch of “Structures of Tamil Eelam: A Handbook”. The book launch took place at the Archives Centre, known as “Thmaizh-ka'la'ri”, which is attached to Chaiva-ne'rik-koodam Archives Centre in Bern, Switzerland.
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Sikhs, expatriate Indian Tamils mark May 18 questioning role of Norway, USA

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 May 2019, 23:03 GMT]
The expatriate Indian Tamils from Tamil Nadu living in Scandinavia took part in the 10th Mu'l'livaaykkaal Genocide Remembrance event organised by Eezham Tamils in Oslo, the capital of Norway. They also staged a separate marking on their own at Gustaf Adolf's square in the city of Gothenburg in Sweden on 20th May. In the meantime, expatriate Tamil Nadu Tamils living in the USA staged remembrance events at 20 different places on 18th May, criticising the US abetment of genocidal Sri Lanka, both before and after the 2009 onslaught. The role of the expatriate Tamil Nadu Tamils in marking the tenth remembrance gains more significance than the hundreds of emotional events marked by the Eezham Tamil diaspora in the North-America, Europe and elsewhere with massive participation, said Tamil diaspora activists, who also appreciated the way a Sikh editor marked his remembrance to the same effect.
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