IIFA showbiz event blamed for promoting ‘paradise of genocide’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 May 2010, 16:24 GMT]
As Tamils world over mark one-year of Indian abetted genocidal war against Eezham Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, the Hindi film industry known as Bollywood and the major Indian conglomerate of trade unions, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) are joining hands with Rajapaksa regime in Colombo in staging 11th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards weekend during the first week of June in Colombo. The FICCI, the largest and oldest business conglomerate of India is the flagship organiser of the business event named FICCI-IIFA Global Business Forum, where hundreds of CEOs and business heads from India would be signing various investment contracts and tie-ups in the island on the second day of the celebrity and corporate event.
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Detained SL asylum seekers in Malaysia launch hunger strike

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 May 2010, 15:43 GMT]
Seventy-five political asylum seekers from Sri Lanka arrested on Malaysian seas and held in Malaysia International Airport since 23 April are to go on a peaceful hunger strike Tuesday placing three requests to the Malaysian State and to the International Countries that grant political asylum, organizers of the event said. In the first stage, sixty males will fast until their demands are met and the hunger strike is not at all intended to hurt the Malaysian government or to go against its laws, they further said.
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Rwandans, Kurds join Tamils commemorating massacre anniversary

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 May 2010, 03:38 GMT]
Armenian, Rwandan, Kurdish and the Native American communities joined Northern Californian Tamils in commemorating the first year anniversary of the Mu'l'livaikaal massacre of more than 40,000 Tamils by the Sri Lanka Security forces during the first five months of last year. The event held Saturday between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. in Palo Alto California was attended by more than 150 people, organizers of the event said. The attendees wore a decal depicting the National flower of Tamil Eelam (Gloriosa superba), with the words “We Remember” written underneath, according to attendees to the event.
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Boston Globe: Probe War Crimes in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 May 2010, 02:35 GMT]
Noting that "outside world has received credible accounts of war crimes perpetrated on a large scale by Sri Lanka security forces as well as by the Tigers," during the military offensives by Colombo in the early months of 2009, Boston Globe, in Monday's editorial said that "President Obama, who has drawn criticism for soft-pedaling human rights concerns in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere, should insist that Sri Lanka’s government be held accountable for shelling civilians and hospitals and murdering fighters who surrendered on the battlefield."
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Camouflaged ban on Tamil Eelam by New Delhi, Chennai

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 May 2010, 23:07 GMT]
The Government of Tamil Nadu has gazetted a notification by the Indian Central Government's Ministry of Home Affairs, dated 14 May, banning the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as an 'unlawful association'. The announcement falsely linked 'Tamil Eelam' as threatening the 'sovereignty and territorial integrity of a part of the territory of India'. Questioning when Tamil Eelam became part of Indian territory, Eezham Tamil circles in the diaspora said the notification reflected the guilt related paranoia of New Delhi and Chennai and urged the democratic bodies in the diaspora and the legal activists in Tamil Nadu to address the false interpretation, politically and legally.
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Youth activists favoured in TGTE elections of Australia

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 May 2010, 20:11 GMT]
Youth activists Seran Sribalan and Darshan Gunasingham received overwhelming support, tallying 1272 and 1231 respectively out of over 1300 votes registered in the NSW ballot for electing members for Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) held Saturday in the suburbs of Homebush and Wentworthville. Meanwhile, Kulasegaram Sanchayan, a long-time activist of the Tamil Diaspora in Australia, received the highest number of votes for an individual candidate, with 1300 out of 1363.
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Taking stock on the first anniversary of Internationally abetted genocide

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 May 2010, 14:07 GMT]
The Tamil struggle for independence, one of the longest running struggles of Asia, which has progressed through the Colonial phase and the World Wars, through Cold-War era and through the period of War on Terrorism and the times of economic conquest, now stands at the juncture of a paradigm shift, one-year after the end of asymmetric, but largely conventional Eezham War IV. If Eezham Tamil Nation is to advance successfully forward from where it stands, it needs to adopt its own set of paradigms, capable of not only defeating opposing maneuvers of the Sri Lankan state and the abettors from outside, but also powerful in addressing the future from a broad perspective, rising above the classical dialectic approach.
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Peiris US bound amid war crime calls in US Congress

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 May 2010, 23:30 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister G.L.Peiris is to visit the United States next week for talks with the US government, and is expected to meet US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during his stay in US, Colombo electronic media reported quoting External Affairs Ministry sources. The hurriedly arranged visit occurs in the wake of a week of concerted calls by several human rights organizations for independent investigations into Sri Lanka war crimes. Congressmen David Price (D-4th District North Carolina) and Danny K Davis (D-7th District Illinois) added their voices for expeditious action by the international community to probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka. Three more Congresspersons made floor statements referring to traditional Tamil homeland and Tamils as a community under threat, and on the condition of Tamil refugees.
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Tamil Nadu Film society to shun IIFA Festival in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 May 2010, 11:06 GMT]
Tamil Nadu Film society in its joint statement to media Wednesday said that it has decided to shun the India International Film Awards (IIFA) Weekend Festival to be held in Colombo in June first week for three days. “The death wails of the Tamils killed in the massacre of Tamils in Sri Lanka last year still echoes in the hearts of the Tamils in the world and Sri Lanka should not conduct the film festival while the Tamils mourn,” the statement said.
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Diaspora cine artists initiate web project to promote Eezham Cinema

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 May 2010, 12:21 GMT]
A web-based project to launch a bilingual database and news services related to Eezham Cinema has been initiated by some Tamil diaspora film artists. The move was launched on 18 May, the Gencidal War Crimes Day against Eezham Tamils, and the first phase of the project lasts till 25 July, the Black July Day, according to the initiators behind the project eelamcinema.com.
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British MPs call for war crimes probes at Mu’l’livaaykkaal Remembrance

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 May 2010, 09:36 GMT]
Parliamentarians from all three main British political parties addressed a rally Tuesday at Westminster to commemorate the forty thousand Tamil civilians massacred last year by the Sri Lankan government forces during the closing months of the island’s civil war. Addressing 10,000 people who filled the permitted space in Parliament Square, MPs from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, which comprise Britain’s new ruling coalition, and the main opposition Labour party were united in their condemnation of the war crimes and the need for international action on Sri Lanka’s war crimes.
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New political party in Tamil Nadu vows to fight for Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 May 2010, 18:18 GMT]
Around 75,000 Tamils, most of them of younger generation, attended the May Remembrance of Vanni massacre and the inauguration rally of Naam Thamilar political party at Virakanoor in the city of Madurai in the Tamil Nadu state of India, vowing to fight for the creation Tamil Eelam by politically capturing the power of the Tamil Nadu state as Tamils world over observed Genocidal War Crimes Day on Tuesday, remembering thousands who perished one year ago. “The Tamil Eelam struggle has been transcended into the hands of Tamil Nadu Tamils and the younger generation in particular,” S. Seeman, a Tamil activist and a popular film director told media. “War is politics with bloodshed, our way would be Politics without bloodshed,’ he told the gathering vowing to take forward the struggle for the freedom of Eezham Tamils and to voice for global Tamil freedom.
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War Crimes Day observed in Norway, France, Canada, Italy

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 May 2010, 07:22 GMT]
Norwegian Council of Eelam Tamils (NCET) commemorated the first anniversary of Mu’l’livaaikkaal massacre Tuesday and declared 18 May as ‘War Crimes Day’, sources in Oslo said. Representatives of Norway political parties participated and spoke in the gathering where a memorandum was handed over to them by NCET. Meanwhile, similar events in France, Canada and Italy took place with the participation of Eezham Tamils and political leaders and people from the respective countries.
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SLA releases 495 Tamils detained in special detention centres in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 May 2010, 05:51 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) released 495 Tamil detainees held in Thellippazhai Special Rehabilitation Centre and Kaithadi SLA detention centre in an event held in Jaffna Veerasingham Hall Tuesday. 270 students, 198 boys and girls of school going age, 72 Jaffna University students, 125 men and women claimed to have been former Liberation Tiger cadres were officially handed over to their parents at the event.
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SLA soldiers force Tamils to hoist Sri Lankan flag in Jaffna peninsula

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 May 2010, 05:47 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Jaffna celebrating its victory in the war on the Tamils in Vanni forced residents in Jaffna peninsula to hoist the Sri Lankan flag in their houses and vehicles Tuesday, sources in Jaffna said. SLA had issued strict instructions to all private and government institutions to hoist the Lion flag Tuesday as a mark of celebrating the SLA victory. Meanwhile, Sri Lankan soldiers had blocked all events that were arranged to commemorate the Tamils killed by SLA in the war on Vanni.
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Senior SLA officer: ‘Kill everybody!’ order came from the top

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 19:33 GMT]
A senior Sri Lankan Army commander and frontline soldier have told Britain’s Channel 4 News that point-blank executions of Tamils at the end of the civil war in May 2009 were carried out under orders ‘from the top’. In an extended segment on Sri Lanka Tuesday, Channel 4 broadcast translated video interviews with the two soldiers. Surrendering LTTE fighters and their families were detained, tortured and shot, the trooper said. Channel 4 also interviewed in the studio the former Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, Louis Arbour, who slammed the impunity enjoyed by Sri Lankan forces throughout the armed conflict. Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United Nations, Palitha Kohana, failed to show up, despite agreeing beforehand to appear to defend his government’s record.
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Accounting for 2009 will define Sri Lanka’s future - editorial

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 11:10 GMT]
“2009’s single, protracted program of state-conducted slaughter in Sri Lanka has a sixty year-long antecedent, beginning well before the armed conflict erupted in 1983 … Since independence from Britain the Tamils have been a clear target for state-sanctioned and, later, state-conducted violence on a massive scale. … In that sense, the Tamils today embody the raison d’etre of the ‘responsibility to protect,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper argued in its latest editorial.
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Colombo, SLA 'poking spear into an unhealed wound' : JUSU

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 10:17 GMT]
Sri Lanka government and its army celebrating their Vanni war victory in the the North and East while the Tamils continue to suffer bearing the wounds inflicted by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Vanni is like ‘poking spear into an unhealed wound’, Jaffna University Students Union (JUSU) said in a media message titled Monday in Jaffna. Meanwhile, SLA key officials took part in several ‘Victory Celebrations’ held in Vanni mainland while people travelling along A9 road were kept waiting on sides for nearly four hours Monday while SLA conducted its celebration event in Ki’linochchi, sources in Jaffna said.
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Tamil Nadu Police denies permission to Muthukumaran statue

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 May 2010, 13:43 GMT]
Tanjavoor police in Tamil Nadu Sunday denied permission to erect the statue of Muthukumaran of Kolaththoor in Tamil Nadu who had set himself ablaze demanding to stop the war waged on Eezham Tamils by Sri Lanka Army. ‘I’lanthth Thamizhar Iyakkam’ (Young Tamils Movement) had decided to erect the statue of Muthukumaran near Tanjavoor in Tamil Nadu and to hold a public meeting named ‘Mu’l’livaaikkaal Veerava’nakkam (Mu’l’livaaikkaal Homage of Valor) Sunday. Tamil Nadu Police banned the meeting and the Torch Marathon that was to be held before the meeting and the opening of the statue event, sources from Tamil Nadu said.
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Sri Lanka responsible for mass killings - ICG

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 May 2010, 01:24 GMT]
The report by International Crisis Group, a Europe based NGO, said that despite its [Colombo’s] promises to protect civilians and aid workers as it made its assault on the Tigers, the Sri Lankan government had bombed relentlessly in areas where it knew unarmed people were present, according to the Monday edition of New York Times. “Evidence gathered by Crisis Group provides reasonable grounds to believe that during these months [the security forces intentionally and repeatedly shelled civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations,” the paper said quoting from the text of the ICG report, and added that “[i]t [the report] also provides reason to believe that senior government and military officials were aware of the massive civilian casualties due to the security forces’ attacks, but failed to protect the civilian population as they were obliged to under the laws of war.”
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