KP-Diaspora programme operated by SL Military Intelligence: Doctor Arudkumar

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 June 2010, 21:31 GMT]
Sri Lankan Director of National Intelligence, Major General Kapila Hendawitharana, the longest serving intelligence officer of the military, is in charge of the covert and overt programme of dividing and conquering the Tamil diaspora, alludes British Tamil doctor Velauthapillai Arudkumar, who visited the island recently as part of a ‘Tamil diaspora visit’ organised by Colombo through Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias KP. TamilNet releases an exclusive video interview with Dr. Arudkumar taken two days ago, in which he reveals the details of the trip. SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Maj. Gen. Hendawitharana and External Affairs Minister G.L.Peiris, all spoke in a well-synchronised way. Military counterinsurgency and 'post-war development' are intertwined aiming at Tamil subjugation, the doctor infers in his interview.
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Colombo schemes Sinhalicised capital for North

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 June 2010, 05:52 GMT]
Similar to the Sinhalicisation of Trincomalee, the capital of the East, Colombo plans for a new, Sinhalicised capital for the North too at Ki'linochchi, administrative sources working for Colombo on the project said. Ki'linochchi is being prepared for that with an extensive military cantonment with permanent houses for military personnel, cultivation lands for them, an airstrip at Ira'naimadu, new Buddhist temples and by not allowing the local population to their lands. For every three people there is one military personnel at present. When resettled, the local Tamils will be herded into pockets and there will be a new population, considerably Sinhalicised, the sources said adding that with the completion of the plot, there won’t be even one city or administrative centre existing for Tamils in the island.
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Malaysian corporates jump at Mahinda-KP plot for development, says Colombo media

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 June 2010, 16:01 GMT]
Top entrepreneurs of the Ceylonese Tamil diaspora in Malaysia gathered Saturday to raise funds for Selvaraja Pathmanathan’s (KP) ‘development’ of the North and East of Sri Lanka, media circles in Colombo said, citing Sri Lankan High Commission sources in Malaysia. The tables at the gathering were priced one million rupees upwards and the Maxis Communication CEO donated 35 million rupees, Lakbimanews said, adding that the fund will be for resettlement, reconstruction as well as rehabilitation of the LTTE cadres and disabled army soldiers. Two years back, a group of Ceylonese Tamils naming them newly as ‘Sri Lankans’ organized a conference for the diaspora attended by the Sri Lankan High Commissioner. The conference failed in its results, said the New York based Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG) in a report last year.
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Supreme scrutiny

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 June 2010, 12:34 GMT]
Starting Monday, for nearly a week, Senate confirmation hearings on US Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, the third potential woman justice in the highest court, will draw the attention of US television viewers. Analysts indicate Kagan's tenure, a life time appointment, will mark a complete alignment between the liberal-conservative split in the supreme court and the Democrat-Republican party presidential appointments. Kagan, if appointed, will become, together with her liberal collegues Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Bryer, the 4th appointee by a Democratic President.
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Tamil Brahmi inscription found in Tissamaharama

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 June 2010, 02:59 GMT]
An early historic inscription in Tamil language and in Tamil Brahmi script, dateable to c.200 BCE, has been found in the archaeological excavations by a German team at Tissamaharama in the down south of the island of Sri Lanka. The inscription deciphered by I. Mahadevan as ‘Thira’li Mu’ri,’ which means ‘written agreement of the assembly,’ was incised on an early historic Black and Red Ware pottery. The last letter of the inscription, which is retroflex Tamil ‘Ri’, is very clearly a Tamil phoneme in Tamil Brahmi script, academics commented. The Tamil Brahmi inscription is also found mixed with megalithic or early historic graffiti marks, which were probably the symbols of the guild, they further said. Tissamaharama or ancient Mahaagama is located close to Kathirkaamam (Kataragama), a famous pilgrim centre for Tamils as well as Sinhalese.
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UPFA promises gone with the wind

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 June 2010, 06:32 GMT]
The United People’s Freedom Alliance which had lavished promises prior to April general election including a monthly increase of 2500 rupees to public servants, on the contrary, has increased the price of essentials like fuel, flour, milk products and other services hitting the common man who had been already struggling to make ends meet. The Sinhalese people, kept under the spell of the ‘Victory’ of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime over the Tamils and the propaganda of 'Mahinda Chintana', but are becoming frustrated by the reality of spiralling prices of essential utility items while Rajapaksa regime is calculating ways to to benefit economically by playing the 'geo-political' card with the powers that are locked in a corporate race.
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Development without politics dangerous to Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 June 2010, 06:06 GMT]
By blackmailing the Tamil nation through the plight of its people and by handling ‘development’ in counterinsurgency style, Colombo is trying to lock the diaspora away from political cause, and by demonstrating it, Colombo is seeking acquittal of its crimes in the international arena as well as money for its greed. De-linking development from decision-making political sovereignty of Tamils is advantageous to sectarian Sinhala polity, it is convenient to the international polity of the corporates, but how it is beneficial to the affected, is the question. Diaspora Tamils taking individual or petty-group decisions on development is suicidal. Rather they should demonstrate that they have collective polity and political control independent of Colombo, in dealing with their development. It is for such purposes the diaspora has elected a number of bodies and they should do the orientation.
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Speech criminalized in US Supreme Court material support case

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 June 2010, 01:51 GMT]
In a decision announced Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to criminalize speech in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the first case to challenge the Patriot Act before the Supreme Court, and the first post-9/11 case to challenge primacy of national security claims over free speech guarantees. The plaintiffs were organizations and individuals who wanted to continue to support lawful political and humanitarian activities of two groups designated as terrorist: the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an advocate for self-determination of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
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Russia opposes UN Panel on Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 June 2010, 19:29 GMT]
UN Secretary-General should have asked the Security Council or the General Assembly before appointing the panel to advise him on war crime investigation on the sovereign member state of Sri Lanka, says a statement of the foreign ministry of the Russian Federation Thursday. The UN should allow Sri Lanka's own investigations and the Secretary General's decision for the panel is unwarranted, is the Russian position. Russia's earlier stand against Eezham Tamils in the Human Rights Council and its present position have evoked serious concern among the traditional supporters of Russia in Tamil Nadu. The Russian stand paves way for international abetment of structural genocide of Eezham Tamils in their homeland, which the Sri Lankan state is presently carrying out, leftist circles in Tamil Nadu said.
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Continuing ‘counter insurgency’ approach to chronic national question

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 June 2010, 11:41 GMT]
Colombo’s latest deployment of Selvarasa Pathmanathan (KP), a victim of circumstances, to blunt the Eezham Tamil struggle only reveals that ‘counter insurgency’ is the style continued to be envisaged by some powers in approaching the chronic national question in the island, commented Tamil circles watching the developments. The move, bereft of any political promises, but aiming at roping in the diaspora for ‘development,’ comes after the visit of G L Peiris to Washington, Robert Blake lamenting that still “some polarisation” exists in the island and amidst heavy visits of dignitaries in the last couple of weeks. The move is not surprising. It is a sequence of a long-existing design, operated simultaneously through good and ugly faces of the West, observers said. The KP operation in Colombo is handled by a controversial group of foreign-trained Sri Lankan military intelligence personnel.
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Plans afoot to Sinhalicise Paasikkudaa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 June 2010, 04:23 GMT]
Sri Lankan Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa Tuesday paid an official visit to Paasikkudaa in Batticaloa district and laid the foundation stone for a tourist complex. The tourist complex is viewed as another step to settle yet more Sinhalese in the traditional Tamil areas of Batticaloa district, by the local residents.
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Colombo intensifies spread of Buddhism in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 June 2010, 17:51 GMT]
Buses carrying around two thousand Buddhist priests under heavy escort carrying a sacred statue of Buddha on a pilgrimage to Jaffna had passed Vavuniyaa Monday and entered Vanni main land through A9 road, sources in Vavuniyaa said. The buses, however, have not reached Jaffna until Tuesday evening and it is assumed that the Buddhist priests, on an urgent mission to spread Buddhism in the North, are engaged in some unannounced opening ceremonies of newly erected Buddhist Viharas in Vanni by the occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) directed by Colombo government, sources in Jaffna said.
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Failure of international system results in slave camps for POWs

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 June 2010, 21:27 GMT]
The plight of the captured LTTE cadres and alleged supporters numbering more than 10,000 in the slave camps of Colombo is a direct result of the deliberate failure of the international system in not recognising them as Prisoners of War. The war broke out by Colombo breaching an internationally enacted peace. The war against the LTTE was internationally abetted. Personnel of some countries, especially India, were known for directly operating in the ground, proving the international dimensions of the war. The call for the surrender of the LTTE was made internationally. The Norwegian peace facilitator publicly made the call. Yet, the international system tries to maintain the issue as ‘internal’. The failure of the system in either not taking direct responsibility of the cadres or declaring them as POWs questions the credibility of the powers dominating the system, Tamil circles said.
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Champika Ranawaka visits to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 June 2010, 17:29 GMT]
“Identified United National Party men were responsible for the burning of Jaffna Public Library that was the foremost library in South East Asia and a valuable cultural asset of Tamils and I as a Sinhalese and a Sri Lankan cannot pardon the atrocious act,” Power and Energy Minister and Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) theoretician Patali Champika Ranawaka said Monday in an event in Jaffna Public Library where he donated a batch of books to the library. Mr. Ranawaka is a key founder of Sinhala extremist National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT) in 1998 and Sinhala Urumaya (SU) in 2000. He was known for his Nazi shade of anti-Semitism, in his speeches comparing Tamils with Jews and Sinhalese with Aryans.
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Australian Greens to call for War Crimes Probe

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 June 2010, 07:24 GMT]
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young is set to put forward a motion in parliament this week urging the Australian Government to lobby the U.N to investigate alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka. Citing a recent report by the ICG that highlighted the complicity of Sri Lankan Government and military officials in atrocities committed during the final stages of armed conflict and Australia’s role as an “active member state of the United Nations”, the motion has been praised by Tamil circles in Australia.
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Illegal excavation of limestone threatens ecology of Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 June 2010, 04:05 GMT]
Threatening the entire groundwater and fragile ecology of Jaffna peninsula, a private Sinhalese company is engaged in the illegal excavation of limestone in the High Security Zone (HSZ) in Valikaamam North while Rajapaksa government refuses to reveal details of this enterprise in the area from Maaviddapuram to Keerimalai where the uprooted residents have not been allowed to resettle for the past twenty years. The indiscriminate excavation of limestone in a 4 sq km area at depths of nearly 40 feet has already caused seepage of sea water and it is feared the area becoming submerged. The underground channels that bring in freshwater to the innumerable aquifers of the peninsula, have an underneath entry into sea adjacent to the locality of the quarries. It is obvious how indiscriminate quarrying and the possibility of seawater coming inside can affect the potable water of the masses.
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Intoxicating hubris

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 June 2010, 00:01 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who is widely believed to be the key Sri Lanka official responsible for instituting procedures and issuing commands that allegedly violated international norms in the conduct of war, has provided enlightening clues to inner workings of his mind in several interviews recorded on film by reputable international media. "His unchecked power, authorized by his brother and Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse, appears to have blunted his reasoning faculty, triggering him to compulsively express open threats against journalists and unwittingly admit to abject disregard for civilian casualties while issuing military commands. Many of his statements border on self-incrimination," said a spokesperson for Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group. A collection of Gotabhaya interviews are compiled in this feature.
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Japan backs UN war crimes probe into Sri Lanka war

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 June 2010, 18:28 GMT]
Japan is backing efforts by the United Nations to investigate war crimes committed in Sri Lanka during the final months of the island’s war, Tokyo’s visiting envoy, Mr. Yasushi Akashi, said Sunday. Amid Sri Lanka’s vehement rejection of any international scrutiny into the conduct of its armed forces, two days ago, Mr. Akashi had seemed to imply his government was supporting Colombo when he told reporters "It is up to the Sri Lankan government to define the precise role [of an inquiry]”. However, speaking on Sunday Mr. Akashi endorsed a UN probe and suggested Colombo was not heeding his advice towards a proper accounting of the war.
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Venezuela and the 'law of the fishes’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 June 2010, 00:18 GMT]
"Instead of making connections with the illegitimate opposition of Sri Lanka, Venezuela should be strengthening the hand of an ally that is also suffering imperial aggressions," says Eva Golinger, a friend of the President of Venezuela and English editor of the Venezuela government newspaper Correo del Orinoco. Writing a feature of factual and perceptual errors, Golinger says, Rajapaksa who is supported by left and communist parties put an end to the LTTE that has strong ties with the CIA. Tamil circles don’t believe that the reputed left-wing writer failed to do her homework on Sri Lanka or on the Eezham Tamil struggle. Instead, they think that in a world where the villains and the heroes are together nowadays, some forces are working on luring Latin America to enter into South Asia from the wrong direction, hanging onto the deceptive red shawl of Rajapaksa soaked in genocidal blood.
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Akashi visits Ki’linochchi for the first time after war

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 June 2010, 19:06 GMT]
Yasushi Akashi, the special envoy appointed by Japan during the Norwegian facilitated negotiations between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), accompanied by Basil Rajapaksa, handed over agricultural implements to some of the resettled Vanni civilians Friday in an event held in Ki’linochchi town. Yasushi Akashi who had held talks with the LTTE in Ki’linochchi was visiting the town for the first time after Sri Lankan military occupied the entire Vanni.
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