Colombo's CID questions Wigneswaran for claiming Tamil Buddhism as predating Sinhala

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 July 2020, 18:26 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Police Headquarters has directed a police CID officer to come and question former Chief Minister of Northern Province Justice C. V. Wigneswaran with regards to an article (a question per week series) he authored on 14 December 2019. "Why should they come around questioning about the article after seven months when the elections are just around the corner," Justice Wigneswaran said when TamilNet contacted him on Saturday. In the article from 14 December, Wigneswaran claimed that the Tamils were the original inhabitants of this island. He also pointed out that the Sinhalese came by their Sinhala language only in the 6th or 7th Century AD, around 1300 or 1400 years ago only. Early Buddhists in the island were Tamils, he wrote in that article. The police inspector was asking whether it was him who wrote it and whether he still stood by what he wrote.
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University students mark Black July Remembrance in Jaffna, Vavuniyaa and Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 July 2020, 22:46 GMT]
Tamil university students in Jaffna, Vavuniyaa and Batticaloa staged remembrance events within their university premises. Jaffna University Student Union leaders, who gathered at their office lighting candles for the victims of the 1983 SL State-sponsored pogrom against Tamils in the island said Black July remembrance must be integral to the process of international justice on Tamil genocide. Remembrance events were also observed at Vavuniyaa campus and the Eastern University. In the meantime, Tamil political parties that usually organise Black July Remembrance events, were too busy this time with their election campaign.
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Sinhala ‘Army & Archaeology’ target 600 sites for heritage occupation in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 July 2020, 23:38 GMT]
Colombo's Sinhala ‘Army and Archaeology’ have identified around six hundred various sites for ‘heritage’ occupation in Batticaloa district alone. There are Saiva and folk-deity temples of Eezham Tamils in most of these places. The Government officials at the District Secretariat have been explicitly instructed to inform the SL Presidential Secretariat about organisations and individuals failing to ‘cooperate’ with SL Archaeology Department and the monks of the Presidential Task Force for so-called Archaeological Heritage Management in the Eastern Province, Batticaloa District Secretary (Government Agent) Ms Kalamathy Pathmarajah has told civil society activists in a meeting on Wednesday.
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Colombo's Archaeology Department, SL Police threaten chief priest of Chiththaa'ndi temple

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 July 2020, 23:30 GMT]
Officials of occupying Colombo's Archaeology Department visited the ancient Saiva (Hindu) Murukan temple at Chiththaa'ndi, located 20 km north of Batticaloa city, last month on 26 June. The visiting team was taking photographs of stones used for crack opening coconuts and for burning camphor as well as the stone slabs used in the temple for various purposes. They claimed that the rocks resembled Buddhist artefacts and that they should be delivered back to the SL Archaeology Department. Sivasri Vasantharajah Kurukka'l, the chief priest of the temple, told them that the stones had been there for several decades while other slabs were produced in Vavuniyaa in 2010 when the temple was renovated. On Sunday, SL Policemen from Batticaloa visited the temple blaming the chief priest for ‘not cooperating’ with the officials of the department.
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SL Navy backed purse-seiners pose grave threat to fishing ecosystem in Batticaloa North

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 July 2020, 20:41 GMT]
The occupying SL Navy, with a large number of naval bases along the eastern coast of the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, has allowed Sinhala purse seiners to engage in the illegal fishing (churukku-valai) in the prohibited zone within seven to ten miles from the coast of Vaakarai in Batticaloa. Chairman of Kathirave'li Fisheries Society Murugiah Subramaniyam said the illegal fishing was destroying the fishing ecosystem as well as seriously threatening the livelihood of more than one thousand Tamil fisher families in Vaakarai. The families are dependent on their income from 15 karai-valaip-paadus (coastal drag net zones) along the stretch between Panichchang-kea'ni and Kathirave'li, he said. The poachers are also using dynamite bombs for fishing.
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Sonia-Rahul’s Congress advocates India strengthening US-led “Quad” alliance

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 July 2020, 16:30 GMT]
“Two senior Congress leaders — AM Singhvi and Deepender Hooda — advocated that India play a leading role in a more muscular Quad,” reported The Economic Times on Sunday in an article titled “Quad is shaping up as the backbone of India’s post-COVID foreign policy.” The recent India-China border standoff in Ladakh has accelerated the tendency. In the meantime, Congress’ Shashi Tharoor, a former minister of state for external affairs, observed that foundations for US-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) were pointing towards “a more substantive strategic shift”.
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Sinhala Police OIC hit Tamil women with vehicle for opposing monks-led heritage ‘task force’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 July 2020, 10:04 GMT]
The vehicle of SL Police Officer-in-Charge(OIC) of Vellave'li station PWM Anandasiri hit protesting Tamil women causing injuries to them on Thursday. The OIC has threatened the protesting Tamils of Veaththuch-cheanai village in Batticaloa that he would book them under various pretexts if they continued to agitate against the SL Presidential Task Force (PTF) on the so-called Archaeological Heritage Management. The OIC secured a court order and has named 12 residents as respondents who objected the entry by the SL Archaeology Department to the folk-deity temple of Vairavar and nearby playground, the residents said. Veaththuch-cheanai is a hamlet situated in Vellaa-ve'li of Poaratheevup-pattu DS division, 40 km south of Batticaloa city.
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CBK, Kadirgamar condemned at Navaali genocidal massacre remembrance event

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2020, 03:40 GMT]
SL Foreign Minister in 1995, the late Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Tamil, denied that Colombo had carried out the massacre targeting St Peters Church in Navaali. It has taken 25 years for the then SL President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK) to admit it to some extent, and that too as an incidental one 4 km away from the battlefield, Rev Fr SJ Emmanuel observed in his speech. He blamed not only Kadirgamar and CBK but also the Sinhala Catholic establishment as well as sections of Tamil Catholic priesthood for failing to speak the truth about the attack. Tamil politician MK Shivajilingam said CBK had failed to admit the nature of the crime. “It is not an accidental event of dropping a parcel. The bombers targeted the church with 13 bombs,” he said. Former NPC Councillor Ananthy Sasitharan said the chain of attacks including Chemma'ni mass graves establishes that they were premeditated.
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SL Police harasses Shivajilingam at 25th Remembrance of Navaali massacre in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2020, 00:05 GMT]
Hundreds of people emotionally marked the 25th remembrance of 147 Tamil men, women and children who perished in SL Air Force bombing and artillery attacks when they had sought refuge at two temples at Navaali in Jaffna on 09th July 1995. On Thursday, the Sinhala police of occupying Colombo was trying to block former TNA parliamentarian and former provincial councillor M.K. Shivajilingam when he went to the remembrance event. On Wednesday, the SL Police was attempting to secure a court order against the participation of the Tamil politician in the remembrance. Mr Shivajilingam, who has been in the forefront championing the right of Eezham Tamils memorialisation events, especially after 2009, was however allowed to take part by the courts. Yet, the SL Police was harassing him at the site, irking the Tamils.
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Sinhala colonists encroach into Kangku-veali, Mean-kamam reservoirs in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2020, 16:33 GMT]
Encroaching Sinhala colonist farmers from Dehiwatta in Seruvila division of Trincomalee district have cut the recently re-constructed bunds of Kangku-veali reservoir and drained it to seize and illegally convert more than 55 acres of the 200 acres of the tank catchment area for agriculture. The destruction has taken place at two locations of the bunds with the backing of two Sinhala politicians, Rajapaksa-aligned former deputy minister Mr Susantha Punchinilame and SLFP Trincomalee District Organiser Mrs Ariyawathi Galappaththi. The Sinhala politicians had vowed to allow the Sinhala settlers encroach the reservoir last year after the Tamil National Alliance had managed to accomplish the reconstruction by getting the SL State to allocate the needed money.
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University students, Shivajilingam brave SL harassment to commemorate fallen Black Tigers

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 July 2020, 23:06 GMT]
Reacting to SL military harassment against paying tribute to Tamil war hero Captain Miller and other Black Tigers at Nelliyadi in Vadamaraadchi, Jaffna, Tamil students at the University of Jaffna lit the flame of sacrifice within the university premises at 7:05 pm at the time of the death of Miller on Sunday. The students released the photos to journalists in Jaffna. The reaction came as the occupying SL military and police in Jaffna blocked Tamil political parties and their representatives from paying tribute to the Tamil heroes on Black Tigers Day. Former TNA Parliamentarian M.K. Shivajilingam also braved to mark the day at a public event in Vadamaraadchi on Sunday.
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Moragoda advising Gotabaya prompts Sinhala parties to scrap Provincial Councils

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 June 2020, 23:29 GMT]
Former SL Minister Milinda Moragoda, who conspired with western powers to create an ‘international safety-net’ for Colombo during the Norway-led peace process, is now demanding the Sinhala political parties to make their stand on the provincial councils. Mr Moragoda, whose Pathfinder Foundation is advising SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has urged the political parties to repeal the 13th Amendment, reported Colombo-based EconomyNext on Monday. The move to do away with the PCs was aimed at the deterritorialisation of the Tamil homeland, commented Tamil political observers in Jaffna. The rulers of the occupying unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka were also looking for creative ways to de-legitimise the validity of the 1987 Indo-Lanka accord to re-negotiate external powers’ strategic access to strategic Trincomalee harbour, they further commented.
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SLMC Chairman: Time for joint Tamil-Muslim efforts

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 June 2020, 18:17 GMT]
Intellectuals, civil society activists and politicians among the Tamils and the Muslims should jointly design a joint programme if their people are to exist with self-respect, said A.L. Abdul Majeed, the chairman of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). The Tamils and Muslims are confronting an existential threat. The tendency is going to worsen further with dire consequences to their collective rights. His party favoured a merged North-East Province, Mr Majeed, who once served as a councillor in the merged province, said. The majority of the Muslim people in the de-merged North and East will follow suit if a convincing formula was to be conceived for their coexistence within the merged unit. India needs to be reminded of its historical responsibility in ensuring the merger, he added.
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Ex-councillor: Poverty-stricken Tamils at receiving end of SL military brutality in North

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 June 2020, 23:11 GMT]
The occupying SL Army fired gunshots at 24-year-old Tamil man at a close distance between 25 and 50 meters distance on Saturday, says former civic councillor Sutharsing Vijayakanth, who is the general secretary of Progressive Tamil National Party. The soldiers fired when the victim, Ramakrishnan Nakarasa, was fleeing from the chasing SL Army after his motorbike was stuck in the sand. The four men, who were released on bail, witnessed the incident, he said after talking to them on Sunday. The SL Army was twisting facts on the episode in its report to the SL Police, Vijayakanth said. The SLA was claiming that it fired after the late Ramakrishnan had pulled down a soldier while riding a motorbike.
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Dr Amir Ali: SL Archaeology aims to obliterate Tamil traces, shrink territory of Muslims in East

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 June 2020, 23:30 GMT]
In Israel and India, archaeology is used as a weapon to disenfranchise a whole community, writes Dr Amir Ali, a renowned academic based in Australia, in a guest column of the Colombo-based Daily Financial Times on Friday. “What the Sri Lankan archaeologists did was no different from what Israeli and Western archaeologists accomplished in Palestine,” he observes. “From the time of independence, archaeology has been a powerful tool in the hands of Sinhalese nationalists to obliterate any vestiges of an ancient Tamil civilisation in Sri Lanka,” writes Dr Ali from the School of Business and Governance in Murdoch University, Western Australia.
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SL military cordons off Jaffna islet with war-time like harassment, families fear reprisals

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 June 2020, 22:12 GMT]
The occupying SL Navy, Army and Police have completely cordoned off Analai-theevu islet off Jaffna after a group of residents confronted SL Navy personnel, whom they suspected as harassing Tamil women sexually last week. In the resulting dispute, Sinhala Navy sailors assaulted the Tamils. An SLN officer and his assistant, who tried to restrict treatment for civilians who had injured in the violence meted out on them by his troopers, was attacked outside the hospital by Tamil men who were angry at the conduct of the occupying Sinhala Navy. Following the episode on 09 June, the Tamil families are subjected to relentless harassment by the SL Navy, Army and Police who are on a hunt to arrest the suspected attackers, who have gone underground. The SL Navy is not allowing journalists in Jaffna to inspect the situation and civilian contact with the outside world remains cut off.
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Former NPC Councillor urges mobilisation to protect contiguity of Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 June 2020, 11:58 GMT]
Occupying Colombo’s Department of Forest is silently demarcating thousands of acres of lands in Mullaiththeevu in addition to what it has seized already the district. The latest land grab aims at converting 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres). One-third of the lands have been already demarcated, informed civil sources in Mullaiththeevu said. In the meantime, former Northern Provincial Councillor Thurairasa Ravikaran blamed the latest appropriation as being part of a broader agenda of genocidal demographic proportions that aim to wedge the geographic contiguity of the Tamil homeland in the North-East of the island.
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Sinhala media questions Gotabaya’s alleged pro-MCC ‘connections’ with US

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 June 2020, 23:39 GMT]
Sinhala media in the South have started to raise questions on SL President Gotabaya’s intermediaries connected to Milinda Moragoda’s Pathfinder outfit, which wants to promote a slightly modified Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) project. The issue also gained focus, especially in connection with SL Police brutally suppressing a George Floyd protest held outside the US Embassy in Colombo on Tuesday. The role of four personalities, Senior SL Presidential Advisor Lalith Weeratunga, Additional Secretary to SL President Admiral (retd) Jayanath Colombage, SL Presidential Secretary P. B. Jayasundera and SL Ports Authority Chairman Lt Gen (retd) Daya Ratnayaka was taken up in the live political programme, “Salakuna” on Hiru TV already on Monday.
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Gota's Task Force on Archaeology, a direct threat to Tamils and Muslims: Fr Rohan in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 June 2020, 22:16 GMT]
The freedom of belief and religion has become questionable and the “inclusive democratic rights” of all the citizens, particularly that of Muslims and Tamils, are made uncertain in the island. The SL government authorities have brought a “huge gap between Sinhala Buddhist majorities and the Tamil Muslim minorities” through their recent actions, commented Rev Fr Rajan Rohan, the secretary of Inter-Religious Forum in Batticaloa. The latest decision by SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, legalising a Presidential Task Force to preserve the archaeological sites under the command of SL Defence Secretary is received as a threat to the Tamil-speaking peoples, he said. “The Sinhala Buddhists are colonising the homeland of Tamils and Muslims,” he added.
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SL Army & Archaeology falsify heritage traces to meet Sinhala-Buddhist ideology: Saiva priest

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 June 2020, 23:44 GMT]
The chief priest of Gayatri Amman temple, located in the suburb of Batticaloa city, has blamed the Sinhala military for planting false archaeological ‘traces’ in the vicinities of the camps in the district of Batticaloa. The tendency of planting pieces of evidence, which are then ‘excavated’ by SL Archaeology Department has been escalating throughout the past five years, said Sivasri V K Sivapalan Kurukka'l. The latest step in which the SL President appointed an all-Sinhala Presidential Task Force (PTF) headed by SL Defense Secretary has added woes to an already distressing situation. The efforts by religious dignitaries to bring inter-religious and ethnic harmony have been severely affected, not only in the East but in the entire island, he lamented.
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