Families of missing Tamils in Vanni turn their protest against EPDP

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2019, 17:41 GMT]
The families of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying Sinhala military in the genocidal war up to 2009 have turned the focus of their protest against SL Minister Douglas Devananda, who has been a close ally of the Rajapaksa regime. Mr Devananda's EPDP was a former Tamil paramilitary group, operated by the occupying Sinhala military. The families have been irked by the attempts by Devananda to dilute their continues protests that have passed one thousand days this month.
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Sinhalese have right of return to North, says lawyer from South rejecting Tamil rights

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 December 2019, 22:03 GMT]
The North is “just as much the historical habitation of the Sinhalese as it is of the Tamils”. And, the Tamils “do not have a right to sovereignty and self-determination adverse to the rights of the Sinhalese and other groups in the island,” writes Attorney-at-Law Dharshan Weerasekara, a Sinhalese, in an article ‘clarifying’ a judgement delivered by the SL Supreme Court in 2014. The denial of Tamil homeland and Tamils right of self-determination comes as the cabinet led by SL Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa also refused to allow the Tamil version of the SL ‘national anthem’ at the forthcoming ‘independence day’ celebrations on 04 February 2020. “Sinhalese have moral and historical rights in the North and East of the country, and this would include the right of return,” the Sinhala lawyer claimed in his response.
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No need for Eezham Tamils to ‘namō namō’ Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 December 2019, 21:10 GMT]
Eezham Tamils ended their emotional attachment to the 1951 ‘namō namō tāyē’ (‘sri laṅkā tāyē’) when their political move for powersharing in what they aspired as the Federal Republic of Ceylon was thoroughly denounced by the Sinhala nation in 1972. The dream for an inclusive and federal Ceylon/Ilaṅkai (Lanka) or Eezham, as Tamils had identified the island for centuries, lost its meaning with the constitutionalization of the ‘Sri’ prefix. The term meant ‘auspiciousness’, but in practice implied the establishment of the ‘holy’ island as chosen by the Buddha to be exclusively destined for the Sinhala people with the mission to protect Buddhism. When it gained constitutional precedent, the Tamil attachment to it ended. After decades of genocidal hegemony and without a political solution to their national question, Eezham Tamils have no moral or legal connection to the anthem.
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Gotabaya seems to have bought 5 years from India to wage ‘development’ genocide in North-East

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 December 2019, 23:46 GMT]
Genocidaire Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the newly elected SL president has refused to implement the pending devolution powers such as police and land powers to the provincial councils in the North and East. “[Y]ou can’t do anything against the wishes and feeling of the majority community,” he told The Hindu during his stay in India. “Look, the 13th Amendment is part of the constitution and is functional, except for some areas like control of police powers, which we can’t implement. I am willing to discuss alternatives to that,” he told the paper. Only a day before the interview appeared, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had expressed confidence at the presence of Mr Rajapaksa that the latter would be implementing the 13th Amendment to the SL Constitution.
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Concentrate on nation-building beyond choiceless electoral politics of South: TCSF

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 November 2019, 22:09 GMT]
The post-war electoral politics in the South of the island has narrowed down the options available to the Tamils in the presidential elections to the survivalist choice between the lesser of two evils, as witnessed in 2010, 2015 and also this time, says Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) in a statement issued on Tuesday. It is outright stupidity to believe that one should choose the long-term danger than the immediate one or vice versa. The Tamil people should have this in mind while voting, the TCSF statement said.
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Sajith Premadasa intensified heritage genocide against Tamils through departments in his ministry

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 October 2019, 23:36 GMT]
The successive governments of the occupying unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka have gazetted 167 ancient heritage monuments, which they want to convert as ‘Sinhala only’ Theravada Buddhist monuments in the traditional homeland of Eezham Tamils in the North-East after 2010. Rajapaksa government gazetted 123 sites in two notifications in May and August 2013. The regime led by Maithiripala and Wickramasinghe has gazetted forty-four monuments in May 2015 and March 2016. The heritage genocide accelerated under Sajith Premadasa as minister of cultural, housing and construction affairs. A range of departments from the SL Department of Archaeology to Central Cultural Fund, which sophisticatedly undermines Tamil heritage involving Tamil and foreign academics function under him, Tamil civil officials and activists in Jaffna and Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet.
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SL Police, STF refuse Tamil devotees accessing Kachchatkodi hill-top for worship

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 September 2019, 21:08 GMT]
Tamil villagers from Kachchatkodi-Swami-malai village, which is located 18 km southwest of Batticaloa, complain that the SL Police and the Sinhala Special Task Force (STF) commandos discriminate them from worshipping their village deity of Murukan represented at the hill-top in the form of a ‘divine javelin’ (Saiva Veal). The occupying Sinhala police and commandos are also blocking them from conducting rituals for Naaka-thampiraan deity at the foothills. The STF is providing security to the Sinhala monks who have established a Theravada Buddhist temple. The hill-top with ancient Buddhist remains from the times of Tamil Nagas have been Sinhalicised and projected as Sinhala heritage in the island, the Tamil residents complain.
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India should change sterile attitude, IC must stop naming Tamil fighters as terrorists: Wigneswaran

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 September 2019, 23:03 GMT]
“There are no terrorists among us. Only those affected by State terrorism are among us. We ask the powers that be not to couple the names of our people with those who have been identified as fundamentalist religious terrorists. Our youth and others fought for a noble cause – the independence of their people. It is as a reaction to State terrorism that our youth resorted to arms,” declared Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, the former chief minister of the North at the massive rally held in Jaffna on Sunday. Wigneswaran demanded India to change its ‘hitherto sterile attitude’ towards a more robust and judicious one. He urged the Sinhala and Muslim people to recognise the Tamils right to Self-Determination. The rally in Jaffna drew between 3,000 and 6,000 people and was a success despite the weather conditions and the rifts caused by various political actors including the SL Governor to the North.
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UNF schemes Sinhalicisation as ‘development’ transforming Jaffna into ‘megacity’

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 September 2019, 16:40 GMT]
SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe and SL Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera were visiting Jaffna during the weekend along with SL minister for Megapolis & Western Development, ‘Patali’ Champika Ranawaka, the secretary of Sinhala-Buddhist ultra-nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU). Mr Wickramasinghe was reciting the mantra of ‘development’ and was repeating the talk of ‘devolving more powers’ to the provincial councils through securing a majority in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. However, Mr Ranawaka, who is opposed to the concept of Sinhalese sharing political power with Tamils in a federal arrangement, was claiming that a ‘megacity’ project would be transforming the city into one of the four main economic hubs in the island. Furthermore, Ranawaka contended that the plan was part of an integrated ‘national physical plan’, which conceived at Battaramulla in Colombo.
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Buddhist monks whip up anti-Muslim hate twisting facts on coastal lands in Poththuvil: Civic Chairman

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 September 2019, 18:16 GMT]
Poththuvil Divisional Council (PS) Chairman MS Abdul Wazeeth has blamed the extremist Sinhala Buddhist monks for waging hate-campaign against Poththuvil Muslims. An extremist monk based at the newly constructed vihara has claimed that the Muslim villagers were attempting to assault him and he keeps alleging that the ancient Buddhist monuments found close to the beach were being destroyed as the SL Government in Colombo, particularly the UNP led by Ranil Wickramasinghe, had allowed the Muslims to encroach the lands of the so-called Muhudu Maha Viharaya. The archaeological monuments and the monks are protected by armed Sinhala soldiers and the police round the clock. How could the villagers assault them, he asked. It was the monks who had encroached into the areas that come under the purview of the SL Archaeology Department, MSA Wazeeth said.
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Widespread logging backed by SL military in Mannaar continues to escape scrutiny

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 August 2019, 23:35 GMT]
The commanders of the occupying Sinhala military stationed in three of the five divisions of Mannaar district have been partnering with millionaire wood traders from the South in a widespread and systematic illegal logging going on for a long time after 2009, Tamil officials in Mannaar District Secretariat said. The massive-scale exploitation has reached dangerous proportions and was causing severe environmental effects, the officials told TamilNet. The SL Forest Conservation Department or the SL Police do not act against the conduct of the SL military officers. Now, the SL military is also enjoying the police powers, overriding the authority of the SL Police, the officials further said.
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Pirapaharan’s statements between 1984 and 1993 reproduced in book form in Europe

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 August 2019, 23:55 GMT]
A Switzerland-based Eezham Tamil youth group, ‘Phoenix - the Next Generation’, has photostatically reproduced the rare 314-page compilation officially published by the Headquarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in September 1993 in Jaffna. The book contains selected letters, interviews and statements of LTTE Leader Velupillai Pirapaharan starting from his first media interview in March 1984. The compilation consists, amongst others, of a letter that declines LTTE representation at a meeting held in New York in May 1985, appeals to the leaders of India and Tamil Nadu during the LTTE-IPKF war in 1987, and a letter of solidarity addressed to South African (ANC) leader, the late Oliver Tambo, in July 1988. The reproduction has been made from a book obtained at the public library of Jaffna in the past. The book, with ID 9907, is no longer accessible at the library.
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Tamils must fight back against illegal seizure of lands by SL Forest Department: Kurunathan

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 August 2019, 21:18 GMT]
The SL Forest Department has been systematically thrusting upon the divisional secretariats in the North-East various mischievous interpretations of forest conservation laws of the unitary state system to seize the lands of the uprooted Tamils. The SL department was violating the constitution by declaring 220 acres of lands that belonged to 200 landowners at Kanakar-kiraamam in Ampaa'rai as coming under its domain in December 2015. It took four years for the SL Forest Department officials to admit the seizure as a 'failure', said Former Eastern Provincial Land Commissioner Kathrigamathamby Kurunathan. He was confronting the SL department officials at a meeting organised by the SL Human Rights Commission in Ampaa'rai on 20th July. However, the people are yet to see any positive sign on the ground.
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Politicians whipping up ‘sovereignty’ fears in South, déjà vu 1956 for Tamils: Guruparan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 July 2019, 23:35 GMT]
Whenever the SLFP or the UNP resorts to a high-handed Sinhala Buddhist nationalist projection as part of the electoral politics, the other party simply follows suit opting to strengthen the same paradigm because they don’t want to be left out. The trend has always been the same throughout the entire electoral political history of the island as far as the Tamils are concerned, said Jaffna-based academic, attorney and civil activist Kumaravadivel Guruparan. For Tamils, this is just another déjà vu of experiencing 1956 when SWRD Bandaranaike bringing the ‘Sinhala Only’ Act and JR Jayawardene making Kandy march the same year, he commented. The SL polity as a whole has demonstrated to the United Nations and the West that the Sinhala-Buddhist ethnonational politics would always be the over-riding factor as far as the politics in the island is concerned, Guruparan observed further.
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Questions raised over ‘double-edged conduct’ of ITAK on Kanniyaa affairs

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 July 2019, 19:08 GMT]
Just a day after TNA (ITAK) Parliamentarian and President’s Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran made a sudden legal move of securing interim orders from the courts in favour of Tamil concerns regarding the heritage site of Kanniyaa, Mr Kugathasan, a coordinator of the party in the district, has caused controversy by meeting the extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk at Velgam Vihara on Tuesday. The coordinator of the so-called mega-development of Trincomalee, which has been conceived by an extremist Sinhala nationalist politician, Patali Champika Ranawake, was meeting the monk with a pro-Sinhala group of Tamils aligned with the JVP along with the controversial outfit calling itself “Raava'na Senai”. The latest move has raised several questions, says Vipooshan Chandirarajah, who is an elected Councillor of Trincomalee Town and Gravets Divisional Council (PS).
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Students, TNPF mark 36th Black July Remembrance in Jaffna, Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 July 2019, 23:38 GMT]
The student community of the University of Jaffna and Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) offices in the North and the East marked the 36th anniversary of the collective trauma of the ‘Black July’, the SL state-sponsored genocidal pogrom that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Tamil residents in the south of the island in 1983. Tamil-speaking Muslim students also took part in the remembrance event organised by the students in Jaffna.
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SL Archaeology must be reconfigured to respect Tamil parity on heritage: Ganesan

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 July 2019, 23:30 GMT]
The SL Archaeology Department is the evil of all heritage related tensions in the North and East, and thirty-two Sinhala only experts currently advise it. This ‘Sinhala’ Archaeology must be reconfigured, said SL Minister of ‘National Integration’ and Hindu Religious Affairs Mr. Mano Ganesan, in an exclusive interview to TamilNet on Monday. The conservation of the protected sites in the North-East, including the ancient traces of the Tamil Buddhist heritage, must be carried out with the advice of Tamil historians. Mr. Ganesan said he would be moving a cabinet paper to this effect. At least five Tamil experts must be assigned the specific task, he said. Ganesan also warned Tamils against falling prey to the heinous designs of the anti-Muslim extremist monks who want to set the Tamils against the Tamil-speaking Muslims.
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Suppression of Kanniyaa protest, yet another lesson for Tamils: Trinco councillor

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 July 2019, 14:15 GMT]
The discrimination meted out to the peaceful protesters at Kanniyaa in Trincomalee on Tuesday was yet another lesson for Tamils, says elected Piratheasa Chapai (PS) Councillor Vipooshan Chandirarajah, who was reflecting upon the level of SL injustice he witnessed during the occasion. The way the SL State's security and justice system chose to deal with the rally has exposed the inherent militarised nature of the state apparatus. The system advances the chauvinistic Sinhala-Buddhist agenda as its foremost interest. The deployment of more than five hundred Army and Police personnel with riot control and STF commandos was uncalled for at a peaceful protest, he said. Five busloads of Sinahal goons had been brought into the venue in advance, and how could they be allowed to enter Kanniyaa heritage site while a restriction was in force limiting tourism to the ‘archaeological’ place, he asked.
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Eezham Tamils set to mobilise against heritage genocide in Kanniyaa, Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 July 2019, 19:03 GMT]
Following the call from the Saiva priest of Thenkayilai Aadheenam at Kanniyaa, Trincomalee, the grassroots of the Eezham Tamils are mobilising for a unified protest against the heritage genocide at Kanniyaa Hot Wells. Former Chief Minister of Northern Province Justice CV Wigneswaran expressing his solidarity named the joint activity against Tamils at Kanniyaa as an “open act of genocide”. The pattern of the cultural and heritage destruction as well as the landgrab by the various SL Departments has become a widespread phenomenon especially after the Easter Sunday attacks, he said in a statement issued in Tamil on Monday. In the meantime, the District Organiser of the Tamil National People's Front in Trincomalee Dr Ra Shrignaneswaran urged the UN agencies such as the UNICEF and UNESCO as well as the foreign governments that fund the SL State not to back the heritage genocide.
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Unprecedented uprising marked at Sinhala-Buddhicised Naayaa'ru in Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 July 2019, 20:16 GMT]
Eezham Tamil grassroots activists from the Northern and Eastern provinces transformed the mobilisation for the feast of their deity, Neeraaviyadi Pi'l'laiyaar in Naayaa'ru in the Mullaiththeevu district, into a successful uprising, establishing it as a wave of unceasing Pongku Thamizh. They were braving the harassments of the occupying Sinhala police, military and the extremist Sinhala-Buddhist section, Sinhala Ravaya, that had come to the locality with a confrontational attitude on Saturday. The grassroots activists-cum-devotees came from all directions from six of the eight districts in the North-East. The scheduled 108 Pongkal pots were increased to 150 as more than four hundred people from all walks of life took part in the emotional marking. Hindus, Christians and non-believers came together in the sense of Tamilness. The mobilisation has taken place through the social media.
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