ITAK announces NPC ministers, EPRLF challenges

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 October 2013, 12:43 GMT]
A press note coming from the ITAK, the main party in the TNA, on Thursday, has announced the list of chairperson and deputy chairperson of the council and the provincial ministers to function under Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran. But EPRLF, the party next in line in terms of number of seats in the council, challenged the list, saying that it was highhandedly decided by a few in the ITAK. In a hastily convened press conference in Jaffna on Thursday, Mr. Suresh Premachandran of the EPRLF, denouncing the list, blamed Mr R. Sampanthan for creating internal dissension within TNA. He also condemned the act of C.V. Wigneswaran taking his oath before Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Full story >>

TNA should learn from history: Poonkuzhali Nedumaran

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 October 2013, 23:38 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) should learn from history, and from the experience of their predecessors, on what should NOT be done, writes Tamil Nadu political activist Poonkuzhali Nedumaran in a feature sent to TamilNet this week. She cited the history of TNA’s predecessor TULF failing in upholding the responsibility it was vested with by the people in 1977, compromising with District Councils and how that triggered the Tamil youth to lose confidence in parliamentary methods. The NPC election results mean communication of a will than participation in governance. With the Eezham Tamils rejecting the polity and rule of the State in Colombo, the TNA must understand the responsibility vested with them by the people, she further said.
Full story >>

SL military sends back officials inspecting illegal encroachment of pasturelands

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 September 2013, 23:29 GMT]
A team of civil officials and affected Tamil farmers, who went to witness illegal encroachment of pasturelands were blocked and sent back by the occupying Sri Lankan military in Koara’laip-pattu South and Ma’nmunai West divisions last week, news reports in Batticaloa said. The SL police was accompanying the visiting officials when the team was blocked by the SL military.
Full story >>

North decisively rejects Colombo rule

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 September 2013, 21:41 GMT]
More than 67% of the voters, who have cast their votes in the NPC elections on Saturday were overwhelmingly (78%) in favour of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and have categorically rejected Colombo’s political parties. Despite all manipulations, the TNA has secured 84% of polled votes in Jaffna, 81% of votes in Ki’linochchi, 78% in Mullaith-theevu, 66% in Vavuniyaa and 62% in Mannaar polling divisions, according to the official results released Sunday noon. The TNA has secured 30 seats, including 2 bonus seats, of the 38-seat NPC. Colombo's UPFA, mainly represented by Douglas Devananda's EPDP, secured 7 seats and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress received 1 seat. Despite demographic manipulations, threats, intimidations and the psy-ops war waged by the occupying SL military, the people have been firm in passing their message, political observers in Jaffna said.
Full story >>

TNA activist killed in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 September 2013, 19:25 GMT]
A 35-year-old Tamil National Alliance (TNA) activist, Mr Rasiah Kavithan, also known as Suresh, was beaten to death by a criminal squad associated with the ruling UPFA of the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Mullaiththeevu on Monday around 6:00 p.m., initial reports from Vanni said. The killing has taken place while the sons of the SL President, Namal Rajapaksa MP and Yoshitha Rajapaksa (SL Navy), have been spearheading the election campaign in Mullaiththeevu district for the ruling UPFA. A UPFA supporter and an operative of the SL military intelligence, Mr Raja Karuna, is contesting the elections in Ma'nal-aa'ru. The election campaign undertaken by Rasiah Kavithan on behalf of the TNA was challenging the UPFA in Mullaiththeevu.
Full story >>

TNA MP calls for international investigations on prisoners of war

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 September 2013, 23:51 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran has called for an international investigation on the state of Prisoners of War (POW) according to international law on the conduct of war. Addressing a press conference in Jaffna on Friday, Mr Premachandran said the latest witness declaration by the SL military at Vavuniyaa High Courts that there are no former LTTE surrendees in their custody any more, while there are still hundreds of family members looking for their kith and kin, who had been handed over personally by them to the SL military, clearly indicated that the international community should now take the initiative to bring about international investigations on both war crimes and on the state of the Prisoners of War (POW).
Full story >>

‘Yaazh Theavi’ claims life of 78-year-old man in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 September 2013, 18:56 GMT]
A 78-year-old Tamil man, who survived the genocidal onslaught on Vanni, was killed Friday in Ki'linochchi where ‘Yaazh Theavi’ train, which was under a trial run, knocked him down at a crossing without an operational barrier. The accident comes two days ahead of SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa is scheduled to declare the train service extended to Ki'linochchi from Vavuniyaa in a hasty election propaganda move on Sunday.
Full story >>

Tamil hamlet Sinhalicised in Vavuniyaa: Sivasakthi Ananthan

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 September 2013, 05:48 GMT]
The colonial governor of North, Major General (retd) G.A. Chandrasri, together with a SL military officer in Vavuniyaa and a Buddhist monk, has appropriated the lands of ancient Tamil village, I’rampai-veddik-ku’lam in Vavuniyaa and carved out a Sinhala colony with a Sinhala name ‘Agbo-pura’. The ceremonious declaration of Agbopura has taken place on August 30, Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian from Vavuniyaa Sivasakthi Ananthan told media on Thursday.
Full story >>

‘Military presence in North-East worrying’: Navi Pillay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 August 2013, 21:09 GMT]
“I was concerned to hear about the degree to which the military appears to be putting down roots and becoming involved in what should be civilian activities, for instance education, agriculture and even tourism,” Ms Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at a press conference in Colombo on Saturday. Speaking at the conclusion of her visit to the island, Ms Pillay said that that the military presence in the North-East seemed “much greater than is needed for strictly military or reconstruction purposes,” also referring to the vulnerability of women to sexual abuse. While sympathizing with the spirit of the address of Ms Pillay, who has been at the receiving end of vulgar verbal abuse from Sinhala nationalists, Tamil activists in the island expressed regret that she was still conferring legitimacy to the GoSL’s genocidal blueprint called LLRC.
Full story >>

Navi Pillay meeting Tamils in Jaffna ended in eyewash, say Tamil activists

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 August 2013, 01:04 GMT]
The UN Human Rights Commissioner Navanetham Pillay met a group of 15 Tamil rights activists and civil representatives at the UN office in Jaffna. While she spent more time with the Sri Lankan State officials, the independent Tamil activists were given just 90 seconds each to present their cases under 8 different themes that included the cases of missing persons, detention of prisoners, land grab, colonization and attacks on religious institutions.
Full story >>

Colombo schemes new ways to appropriate more lands for Sinhalicisation in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 August 2013, 22:50 GMT]
Thousands of acres of land in the Batticaloa district in the Eastern Province are likely to be appropriated under the Land Reform Laws of the occupying Sri Lankan State, according to informed civil sources in Batticaloa. The Colombo government is to appropriate lands that have been legally possessed by Tamils for the last fifty years under the one-acre permit scheme. Colombo and its Eastern Provincial Council are to formulate necessary legislation to appropriate lands above one-acre in 14 DS divisions in the Batticaloa district. More than one hundred acres of lands are to be appropriated under the Land Reform Laws of the Sinhala government.
Full story >>

SL military provides lands to Sinhalese in North ahead of PC elections

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 July 2013, 22:46 GMT]
More than five hundred Sinhala families from the border villages of the Northern Province are being settled down within the Northern Province by the occupying Sinhala Army, which systematically violates the Land Development Ordinance and the Election Law, civil sources in Vavuniyaa said. One thousand and five hundred members of these families would be entitled to vote in the forthcoming election to the Northern Provincial Council that is scheduled to be held in September, media sources said.
Full story >>

Mission seeks answers to killing of Tamil MPs

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 July 2013, 23:57 GMT]
Members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union's [IPU’s] Committee on the Human Rights are to begin a three-day mission, 9-11th July, to Sri Lanka to advocate investigations into the attempted assassination of an opposition Tamil MP, as well as seek answers on the unresolved cases of two other Tamil MPs killed in Sri Lanka, a press release issued by the IPU said. The mission is being led by the Vice-President of the Human Rights Committee, Chilean MP Juan Pablo Letelier. The timing of the visit, ahead of the Commonwealth meeting in Colombo, by an organization which has not been vocal on Sri Lanka's human rights record, raises questions on the motives of the key players behind the mission, political sources in Colombo said.
Full story >>

USA, India, UNHRC answerable to provincial meddling in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 July 2013, 23:56 GMT]
However condemned by Eezham Tamils, the USA and India have committed on several occasions to ‘provincial’ solutions to the national crisis of Eezham Tamils. The ‘provincial’ wording has also got into the UNHRC resolution, tabled and fine-tuned by the two and passed by 47 Establishments. But, what do they say for Colombo’s current meddling in creating a new Sinhala division, Weli-oya, in the Northern Province, by altering district boundaries and thus endangering the province’s demographic security and contiguity, ask Eezham Tamil civil service circles in the island. While official survey maps show that the Vavuniyaa district of the Northern Province has a boundary with the East, it is now erased out in the 2012 census map, while Anuradhapura will fill the gap.
Full story >>

Sinhalicisation, demographic wedging accelerated in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 July 2013, 17:11 GMT]
Sinhalicisation of the Mullaith-theevu district of the Northern Province and demographically wedging it from the adjacent Trincomalee district of the Eastern Province in the country of Eezham Tamils, is structuralised in an accelerated way by the occupying genocidal Sri Lanka through recent activities in the newly created division called ‘Weli-oya.’ The name of the division itself is Sinhalicisation of its Tamil name Ma’nal-aa’ru. At the end of the war the Establishments of the USA, India, several other stooges and the UN were in complicity in sending the Eezham Tamils into barbed-wire camps. While their resettlement is stalled in many ways, every structural effort is now being made with full financial and material support to bring in Sinhalese into the land of Tamils.
Full story >>

NESoHR revives reporting, highlights collective rights

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 June 2013, 20:30 GMT]
“Tamil Eelam today is a crucible of ‘excess of power’ - Lankan President with unchecked executive power, the very heavy presence of his military in Tamil Eelam and the Prevention of Terrorism Act still in place almost four years after the defeat of the LTTE,” says the latest Human Rights report issued by the North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR). “The leading human rights groups are hoping to deal with this situation of ‘excess of power’ only through appeals to individual rights. Indeed their mandates restrict them from dealing with it in any other way,” the NESoHR, which was formed during the internationally mediated peace process as the Human Rights body of the Tamil Nation, said on Friday, reviving its reporting on human rights in the country of Eezham Tamils and launching an international wing for dissemination of its reports.
Full story >>

Vanni, Vanniyan-madu, Vanniyanaar-madu

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 June 2013, 06:33 GMT]
The territory of the commander-chieftains
The tank of the commander-chieftain
Full story >>

Iyangkan-ve'li, Isankan-ku'lam

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 June 2013, 06:26 GMT]
The open land of Mistletoe Berry Thorn
The tank in the locality of Mistletoe Berry Thorn
Full story >>

Sinhala paramilitary steps up land appropriation in border villages of East

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 June 2013, 22:17 GMT]
A retired Sinhala police officer and his son who is currently employed in the Sinhala paramilitary ‘Civil Defence Force’, operate as key persons in appropriating lands by force from Eezham Tamils from the villages of Kevu’liyaa-madu and Chuvaami-malai in Batticaloa district, say affected Tamils, whose lands have been occupied for Sinhalicisation, Buddhicisation and colonization by the Sinhalese from South. Sinhala officials in the bordering Ampaa’rai district are tasked to carry out the administrative side of the demographic genocide while the extremist Sinhala Buddhist Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force) is deployed in bringing in hardcore Sinhala nationalists from the South to occupy the appropriated lands by offering an attractive assistance of 100,000 rupees per family.
Full story >>

Indian military intelligence visits Jaffna, Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 31 May 2013, 10:18 GMT]
A team of high-ranking Indian military intelligence officials, led by Indian Armed Forces Intelligence Unit Director General R.N. Singh, visited Jaffna and Vanni on Wednesday and Thursday. The team was received by the genocidal Sinhala military occupying the country of Eezham Tamils. The Indian visit, that took place while Rajapaksa delegation was in Beijing and was signing major agreements on money and defence, follows China’s Vice Intelligence Minister’s visit to Jaffna and Trincomalee in April. Any visit of Indian officials is nowadays considered a jinx and is much feared by Tamils in the island, just as they fear sooth-saying persons coming in the middle of the night with curses from the cremation ground, because of the long history of such Indian visits foretelling escalation of miseries during the war and aftermath, commented news sources in Jaffna.
Full story >>