"Current International law trumps archaic doctrine of state sovereignty"

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 March 2010, 13:19 GMT]
Warning that "[t]o denigrate those who criticize us [Sri Lanka] or to demonize those who seek to hold us to account, is only to lay bare our own culpability," a former Sri Lankan Secretary of Justice, in an article in the weekend Island, points out that Sri Lanka's politicians and political commentators are invoking erroneously the doctrine of State Sovereignty which has long been eroded under the weight of customary international law, wherein firstly, "the international community could presume to judge, or even legitimately express its concern at, a government’s treatment of its own citizens," and later the Charter of the United Nations made "a government’s treatment of its own nationals" into a matter of "legitimate concern of the international community."
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Sydney launch of CJPD's book on Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 March 2010, 22:41 GMT]
“Sri Lanka 60 Years of 'Independence' and Beyond" a publication by Switzerland based NGO, Center for Just Peace and Democracy (CJPD), and edited by Program Director at CJPD, Ana Pararajasingham, was launched at the popular Gleebooks bookshop in the heart of Sydney Friday. John Murphy, Member of the Australian Parliament, David Feith, an academic attached to Monash University, and Professor Bruce Kapferer who were contributors to the publication, and Gordon Weiss, the former UN diplomat, attended the event.
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Resettled families in Vanni suffer in unrelenting rain

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 March 2010, 18:45 GMT]
Vanni uprooted faimiles resettled in haste by the Sri Lanka government without any basic facilities or proper structures have sought refuge under trees as persistent rain, gale and floods had destroyed their temporary tents and tin-roofed shacks, sources in Vanni said. There are no solid buildiings for them to seek shelter in as all of them have been razed to the ground by the Sri Lankan Army during the last phase of the war on Vanni, the sources added.
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New generation takes lead role in forming country council of Switzerland

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 March 2010, 16:30 GMT]
More than 40 candidates, including talented Tamil youth of the second generation have come forward to participate as candidates in the elections for the country council of Eezham Tamils in Switzerland across 26 cantons of Switzerland. The voting to elect 25 representatives of the Swiss Council of Eezham Tamils (SCET) and its federal units is scheduled to take place in 19 cantons between 10:00 a.m. and 17:00 p.m. on Sunday. The Tamil Elections Switzerland (TES), a coalition formed by seven Tamil organisations in the country, has also come up with an experimental mechanism for allowing the voters to appoint and vote for their favourite candidates at the same time. In addition to those who have already nominated as candidates, each voter will have the possibility of adding two possible candidates for the respective Canton, the organisers said.
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Confederation of nations, solution to save Trincomalee: Varatharajan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 March 2010, 12:23 GMT]
Demographic genocide of Trincomalee cannot be stopped unless the two-nation reality in the island is recognised. Tomorrow even Jaffna will have the fate of Trincomalee, warned S. Varatharajan, the main candidate of Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) for the Jaffna District. Based on official census, the economic teacher came out with a graphic presentation showing how the percentage of Tamils dropped in Trincomalee district from 66 to 33 percent and the percentage of Sinhalese went up from 3 to 33 percent, even before 1981. “This is why we advocate a confederacy of two nations as a solution,” he said.
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Uprooted Champoor families undergo hardships in welfare centres

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 March 2010, 12:07 GMT]
Two thousand and five hundred members of seven hundred and ninety four uprooted families from Champoor in Moothoor East have been undergoing untold hardships without drinking water and water facilities for bathing purposes in temporary shelters which are located in Ki'liveddi, Paddiththidal and Ma'nalcheanai in Moothoor Divisional Secretariat (DS) division.
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Coup in The Hindu means more than a family feud

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 March 2010, 19:35 GMT]
Battle for control breaks out in The Hindu, very divided family, reported Indian Express Thursday. At the heart of this battle is the proposed retirement of publisher and the group Editor-in-Chief N Ram and his decision to dig his heels in. According to people close to the developments, the board is split, one group supporting Ram and the other seeking his retirement, Indian Express reported further. In the corporate dictated scenario of polity in India, the coup means more than a family feud – a panic in the Indian corporate world over a failed course and scurried attempts to revise it, political observers said. Similar tensions are noticed in recent times in India’s External Affairs and Home establishments too, the observers further said.
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Fate of 100 Vanni detainees taken away by SLA not known

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 March 2010, 10:52 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers had blind folded one hundred Vanni youths and young family men detained Kaithadi Palmyra Development Board Special IDP detention centre in Jaffna peninsula and taken them away in vehicles in the last one week, according to complaints made by family members of the persons taken away to Jaffna Human Rights Commission (HRC) and International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC). SLA soldiers had taken 70 of the above IDPs in the first instance and 30 in the second, and the SLA authorities refuse to reveal any information of their whereabouts or what had happened to them, the complainants said. The SLA authorities also refuse to reveal the number of IDPs detained in this detention centre, sources in Jaffna said.
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Nambiar, Kohona assembling Ban's expert panel on war-crimes

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 March 2010, 04:19 GMT]
United Nations expert panel to advise Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on the accountability process required to address the alleged war crimes committed by Colombo and the LTTE, is being assembled by Moon's chief of staff Vijay Nambiar and Sri Lanka's UN representative Palitha Kohona, two officials widely believed to be complicit in the extra-judicial killing by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers' of civil and political officials of the Liberation Tigers who surrendered to the SLA during the final days of the war in May 2009, Inner City Press (ICP) reported.
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Confederation of nations, manifesto option of TNPF

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 March 2010, 02:03 GMT]
The election manifesto of the Tamil National Peoples' Front (TNPF) comes out with an option for confederation of Tamil and Sinhala nations in the island, said former MP Selvarajah Kajendren to Tamil media on Wednesday. While stressing on Tamil homeland, nationalism, self-determination and nation of identifiable sovereignty as political aspirations, the other distinguishing features of the election manifesto of the TNPF were demand to repeal the 6th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, inclusion of the diaspora in the political processes of Eezham Tamils and an outlook to involve the international community in providing security and support to the political struggle of Tamils. The All Ceylon Tamil Congress led by Mr. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, which came out of the TNA alliance recently is the major constituent of TNPF.
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India’s genocide of its own tribal nations

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 March 2010, 02:21 GMT]
India had larger plans when it backed genocidal Colombo in the UN Human Rights Council. India is now embarked upon a greater genocidal war against its own tribal nations, picking up the footsteps of Colombo, making use of its partnership experience in crushing Eezham Tamils, exploiting the impotency of international community and encouraged by the electoral endorsement from Tamil Nadu. The precarious dimensions of the ongoing war in Central India, vividly brought out by Arundhati Roy in Outlook India this week, need careful study by all Eezham Tamils to device apt political moves for them and for the benefit of entire humanity. The IC, Tamils in India and progressive Sinhalese have to realise that acknowledging Eezham Tamil independence is a test case in reconstructing State outlook that is messing up life in entire South Asia and in achieving wider solidarity of peoples in the region.
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Sri Lanka denies Akon visa for ‘defaming Buddhism’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 March 2010, 01:39 GMT]
Sri Lanka has refused US rap star Akon a visa for a planned concert next month, following Sinhala protests that a music video of his was offensive to Buddhists. Stone throwing extremists on Monday protested outside a media network sponsoring the concert. Sri Lanka’s decision comes after the powerful Buddhist clergy expressed its displeasure. In the music video, shot around a pool party with a number of swimsuit wearing women, the statue of Buddha is occasionally seen on the pool house’s roof. Akon has denied intent to cause offense and protested the violence against the TV station.
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Sinhalese soldiers, hooligans destroy Thileepan memorial in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 March 2010, 10:45 GMT]
A gang of Sinhalese army soldiers and hooligans went on rampage Monday night, demolishing the memorial pillar of Lt. Col. Thileepan (Rasiah Parthipan) located behind the historic Nalloor Kanthasuvami Koayil on Point Pedro-Nalloor road, residents of the area said. Lt. Col. Thileepan began his fasting on 15 September 1987 in front of the Nalloor Kandasuvami temple placing five demands to the Indian government but died as India failed to meet the demands, on September 26, 1987.
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BBC: Fox and Love lobbied for Sri Lanka after junkets

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 March 2010, 04:00 GMT]
Two British MPs, Mr. Andy Love of the ruling Labour party, and Dr. Liam Fox of the main opposition Conservative party, made visits to Sri Lanka paid for by the government there, and while not declaring their trips, spoke in support of Sri Lanka in parliament, a BBC investigation has revealed. Both MPs were hosted by Mahinda Rajapakse regime in the past three years amid Sri Lanka’s onslaught in which tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed. Mr. Fox, some of whose trips coincided with international outrage over the ongoing slaughter, told the BBC his visits were to “promote peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka.” Following his second visit in 2008, Mr. Love urged British ministers to send more aid to Sri Lanka.
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2 resettled Vanni IDPs gone missing in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 March 2010, 16:19 GMT]
A 17-year-old student from Sangkaanai in Jaffna peninsula and a family man from Naaranthanai in the islets of Jaffna, both Internally Displaced Persons brought from Vavuniyaa camps and resettled in Jaffna district by Sri Lanka Army, had been reported missing by their family members to Human Rights Commission (HRC) Jaffna office. The mother of the student and the wife of the family man had made the complaints to HRC.
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‘Engaging’ Tamil diaspora to elude the cause

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 March 2010, 21:45 GMT]
Engaging sections of vested interests in the diaspora to elude righteous causes of struggling people, in order to achieve imperialist goals in war and peace, is a long time strategy of powers. International foundations, firms and other such outfits are created from time to time for this purpose. How such outfits envisage to blunt the cause of Eezham Tamils by locking vulnerable sections of the Tamil diaspora into a Sri Lankan diaspora identity, and how the outfits wish to achieve it behind the back of Tamil people and their media, is clearly revealed in a ‘confidential’ Assessment Report and Program Strategy of the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), prepared in March 2009. Engaging the diaspora should take place confidentially and by neutralizing ‘spoilers,’ says PILPG, citing a failed initiative in Malaysia in 2008, exposed by TamilNet.
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Prof. Boyle: PCIJ precedent brings GoSL's war-crimes within UN jurisdiction

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 March 2010, 20:58 GMT]
Quoting a landmark 1923 decision on rules governing international agreements by the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ), Professor Boyle, an expert in international law, referred to Colombo's claim that UN is infringing on the sovereignty of a member state, and said, "I am not going to spend a lot of time here refuting this erroneous and disingenuous interpretation of international law and the requirements of the United Nations Charter by the GoSL (Government of Sri Lanka) and its Foreign Minister. There is one definitive answer to their objection. Namely, the GoSL Army undoubtedly inflicted numerous violations of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 upon the Tamils in Vanni a year ago, and in particular but not limited to gross violations of Common Article 3 thereof, which constituted war crimes. Sri Lanka is a contracting party to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949."
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Dengue deaths toll increases to 63

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 March 2010, 16:48 GMT]
The highest number of fourteen deaths due to dengue has been reported from Jaffna district, eleven from Colombo district and seven from Gampaha. The death toll has risen to sixty three in the island. There were twelve deaths in February and the rest in January but no death has been reported in the month of March till Friday, according to Epidemiology Unit sources of the Health Ministry
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Real war is just beginning, get involved: Brian Senewiratne

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 March 2010, 18:47 GMT]
“Despite my involvement over many years, I was taken aback by the result,” writes Brian Senewiratne on the overwhelming mandate for Tamil Eelam in the referenda of the diaspora in several countries. The time for federation has long since gone. Until the Tamil areas are separated from the control in Colombo there will be neither peace nor prosperity in the island. If there is a genuine referendum in the Tamil areas of the island the ‘yes’ vote might be 100 percent and Delhi will have to duck for cover if such a ballot is taken among the 70 million Tamils of Tamil Nadu, he writes. According to him this major crisis of global dimensions, the genesis of which lies in British colonialism, and the global fall-out in resolving it, demands global response. The real war, not in a military sense, is just beginning. Loss of hope has achieved nothing and the ray of hope is the Tamil youth, he says.
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“All military camps in Jaffna peninsula will be scrapped if UNP wins” – Ranil

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 March 2010, 16:25 GMT]
Ranil Wickremasinghe, leader of United National Party (UNP), who arrived in Jaffna accompanied by his wife said that all the military camps in Jaffna peninsula will be scrapped except Palaali Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp, in the UNP election campaign meeting held in Jaffna Veerasingham Hall Friday. “High Security Zones are no longer necessary in the peninsula and the people evacuated from these places will be immediately resettled in their own properties if UNP becomes the ruling party in the general election,” he further said.
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