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 Navy brutally assaults Tamil fishers in Mullaith-theevu

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 July 2020, 09:33 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala Navy brutally assaulted Tamil fisher families at Puthu-maaththa'lan in Mullaiththeevu causing injuries to a father, his son and three women in the early hours of Thursday. The SL Navy entered the house of fisheries society leader Mahendran Alex alias Suman. It attacked his family members using batons causing severe injuries to his father, 55-year-old Mahalingam Mahendran and 28-year-old Mahendran Nixon, the younger brother. Three women have also sustained injuries. The fisheries society leader said the violent attack was deliberate and unprovoked. The residents interpret the violent episode as part of an aggressive campaign against the peaceful protesters demanding resettlement in the nearby Keappaa-pulavu. The SL Navy is also having a dispute with Tamil fishers who are opposed to the sea cucumber poachers from the South.
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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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Monk commanding Sinhala-Buddhicisation of North-East threatens Tamil villagers in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 July 2020, 22:28 GMT]
Panamure Thilakawansha Thero, the extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk based in Arisimalai in Pulmoaddai, whom Gotabaya Rajapaksa referred as “chief prelate for the Northern and Eastern Provinces” in his Presidential Task Force for ‘archaeological heritage management’ in the East, paid a threatening visit to Batticaloa on Saturday. The anti-Tamil and anti-Muslim monk, accompanied with fifteen SL Army soldiers, warned Veaththuch-cheanai Tamil villagers to keep away from their village deity Vairavar and the nearby playground. The monk claimed the folk-deity land as a Buddhist “archaeological heritage site”. Veaththuch-cheanai is situated in Vellaa-ve'li of Poaratheevup-pattu DS division, 40 km south of Batticaloa city.
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After Naavat-kuzhi, Colombo targets Poonakari for Sinhala colonisation across Jaffna lagoon

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2020, 19:28 GMT]
Strategically located Naavat-kuzhi in Jaffna peninsula and Poonakari across the Jaffna lagoon at the entrance to the peninsula in the mainland were systematically targeted for Sinhalicisation by occupying Colombo during the previous Rajapaksa regime. Politicians, including Rajapaksa family members, were directly involved in grabbing lands and farms in Poonakari. Sinhala colonists were brought to Naavat-kuzhi in Jaffna. The colonisation of Naavatkuzhi carried out clandestinely during the Rajapaksa rule gained “legal” status under the Sirisena-Wickramasinghe rule that followed. Sections of Sinhala nationalists who joined the US bandwagon, such as Patali Champika Ranawake, allocated lands and housing schemes to the colonists. They also completed a Buddhist stupa. Now, the Rajapaksa regime is back in business escalating the project into Poonakari, informed Tamil officials in Jaffna said.
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Colombo imposes restrictions on Tamil valour related symbolism in schools of North

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 July 2020, 22:26 GMT]
Director of Northern Provincial Department of Education Sellathurai Uthayakumar has instructed the school principals to “discipline” the sport meets held in the schools within the province not to use symbols associated with the armed struggle of Tamils in the house decorations. The move comes after the SL military intelligence monitored a trend in the schools of Vanni, where Tamil students and teachers have been using the symbolism of resistance against European colonialism as well as the Sinhala occupation in the sports events. Often, the winning “house decorations” of the sports meets depicted Pandaara Vanniyan or names of Tamil Eelam War Heroes (Maaveerar) in the titles, a principal of a renowned school in Vanni told TamilNet.
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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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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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Tamils, Muslims should unite as one force against Sinhala Buddhist nationalistic machine: Guruparan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 June 2020, 13:16 GMT]
The Gazette notification on the SL Presidential Task Force (PTF) for Archaeological Heritage Management in East has particular instructions on allocating lands to archaeological sites. It is a move to give legal force to the dubious archaeological claims made by the Sinhala Buddhist groups in the East, commented Jaffna-based Attorney, academic and civil society activist Kumaravadivel Guruparan. Giving a detailed interpretation and sharing his perspectives on the terms of reference and composition of the PTF, he said: “If there is one message that the Tamils and the Muslim must take, and particularly for the Muslims I hope, we are in this fight together,” he said urging Tamils and Muslims to unite as one political force against the Sinhala Buddhist nationalistic machine. “If Tamils and Muslims unite in the North-East, we are an unshakable force against the onslaught,” he said.
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Forge unified buffer against SL State-backed alteration of Tamil heritage: Fr Ravichandran

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 June 2020, 18:40 GMT]
All the successive “Sri Lankan” governments in the island have been bent on altering the historiography of the entire island as a Sinhala-Buddhist country. The tendency was also seen during the previous regime. The latest appointment of the all-Sinhala and military-led SL Presidential Task Force is just another step in imposing Sinhala-Buddhist identity throughout the island, commented Jaffna-based rights activist, Rev Fr E Ravichandran on Friday. The pattern will be the same under any future regime. From Kantharoadai in the North to Kanniyaa in the East, there is a systematic pattern, which seeks to eradicate the Tamil heritage. The Tamil political parties, civil society groups and the Tamil diaspora must go beyond their internal differences and forge a unified buffer to defend the Tamil heritage and historiography in the North-East, he urged.
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Gotabaya institutionalises heritage genocide, Sinhala-military to supersede policing islandwide

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 June 2020, 22:08 GMT]
SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has appointed an 11-member all Sinhala Presidential Task Force (PTF) for “Archaeological Heritage Management” in the Eastern Province. The PTF team comprises of SL military, extreme Sinhala Theravada Buddhist monks, director-generals of archaeology, surveying and land affairs, a Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police as well as handpicked academics who are all Sinhalese. The PTF is to be headed by SL Defence Secretary, Major General (Retired) Kamal Gunaratne. Mr Gotabaya has also appointed another 13-member team comprising mostly of military commanders and intelligence directors as well as police and customs directors. The second PTF is to build “Secure Country, Disciplined, Virtuous and Lawful Society,” which is also led by Kamal Gunaratne.
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Occupying Colombo resumes Sinhala colonisation in Batticaloa’s interior

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 May 2020, 22:21 GMT]
Tamil dairy farmers in Batticaloa complain that SL Mahaweli ‘Development’ Authority has recently resumed Sinhala colonisation of Paduvaan-karai region of Batticaloa, particularly the pasturelands at Periya-maathava’nai and Mayilaththa-madu in the administrative divisions of Koa'ra'laip-pattu South (Kiraan) and Ea'raavoorpattu (Chengkalai). The Mahaweli authority has identified land plots to settle more than one thousand Sinhala colonists, and a preparatory meeting has taken place in this regard on Tuesday, said Nimalan Kandsamy, the president of the association of dairy farmers. Sinhala officials belonging to the Mahaweli authority have stepped up their visits into the region. Chamal Rajapaksa, a sibling of SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is the SL Minister of Mahaweli as well as the State Minister of Defence in the ‘caretaker’ cabinet of the Rajapaksa regime at the moment.
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Gotabaya’s 19 May speech, outcome of defeatism, irresponsibility, say Colombo-based Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 May 2020, 18:34 GMT]
The political struggle of the Tamil people in the North-East was waged independent of the external powers, and it continues to remain so as the people who braved the military restrictions demonstrated it on 18 May. It is Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is talking from the political backyard sustained by the external powers, notably the powers at loggerheads, the US and China. His speech on 19 May was a defeatist response to the political resolve demonstrated by the Tamils on the previous day, commented veteran human rights activist and Colombo-based Tamil Catholic priest Fr M. Sakthivel. In the meantime, Colombo-based Tamil politician Mano Ganesan questioned whether Mr Rajapaksa was transforming the SL State into a rogue state as Myanmar, North Korea and what Zimbabwe. He characterised Rajapaksa’s threat to withdraw from global bodies as an irresponsible stance.
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Eezham Tamil and Muslim solidarity non-negotiable in true spirit of Mu'l'livaaykkaal

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 May 2020, 07:42 GMT]
“The viability of the collective political goal of Tamil Eelam is the most sublime truth about Mullivaikkal. This goal of justice and freedom cannot be changed for anyone’s comfort and convenience. Nor can it be changed by New Delhi, London or Washington. It should not be changed by the imperial agendas that are designed to divide the Tamil speaking Muslims and Eelam Tamils,” observes Professor Jude Lal Fernando of Trinity College, Dublin, in his May 18 Remembrance article to TamilNet on Wednesday. “Mullivaikkal tells Eelam Tamils that they are a people who had and who have demonstrated the highest possible moral courage in resisting subjugation. Nanthikkadal lagoon connects all of us to the sea of political wisdom of numerous struggles of oppressed peoples on earth that declares no one will give us freedom, but that we have to struggle for it and gain it ourselves,” he writes further.
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Break paradigm that regards Tamils as victims to achieve equitable solution: Balakumaran in 2004

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 May 2020, 05:18 GMT]
From the colonial British Lord Soulbury to Norwegian Peace Envoy Solheim, all external interlocutors intended to render Tamils’ demand below the point of optimal compromise. Soulbury went to the extent of humiliating the then Tamil leader GG Ponnambalam in his attempt to negate the demands of Tamils. He later regretted. Now, Solheim wants to do the same, i.e., tell Tamils to drop their arms. But, he is unable to say it face-to-face because LTTE Leader has demonstrated the balance of power for the first time in the evolutional history of Tamil leaders. However, the world powers still want to weaken the Tamil side and strengthen the SL State, said KV Balakumaran, a senior leader in the armed struggle of Tamils, back in 2004. Tamils cannot achieve anything with a “victim” mindset, he said in a lengthy consultative session to TamilNet in September 2004.
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The Guardian succumbs to pressure from SL High Commission on indigenous term Eelam

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 May 2020, 16:54 GMT]
“Eelam is an indigenous name for which popular holiday island?,” was a question posed by a travel quiz published by the Guardian on 15 May. The quiz had rightfully stated the term, which is one of the ancient names for the island. However, in a political move, the High Commission of the unitary state of genocidal “Sri Lanka” reacted against the term “Eelam” sending a letter misinforming the paper that the term had “never been used as an indigenous name for Sri Lanka”. The paper has removed the question without defending the term “Eelam”.
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COVID-19 testing at Jaffna University temporarily suspended

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 May 2020, 23:17 GMT]
Following critical reports of unreliable COVID-19 testing at the laboratories of the Medical Faculty of the University of Jaffna and the prolonged delay in operationalising the test equipment at the Teaching Hospital of Jaffna, the testing activities at the Jaffna University seem to have been temporarily suspended with the explanation of ‘reconstruction work’ at the facility. In the meantime, the State Intelligence Service (SIS) of the SL State has launched an investigation to trace the source of the news leaked to media following reports of failing control tests, informed medical sources in Jaffna told TamilNet.
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Fifteenth year of Sivaram's assassination remembered in North-East amidst pandemic

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2020, 21:45 GMT]
Tamil journalists and the people engaged in continuous protests in the North and East marked the 15th anniversary of Maamanithar Sivaram Dharmeratnam’s assassination remembering his contribution to the Tamil struggle. Journalist associations in Batticaloa, Vavuniyaa and Jaffna staged remembrance events with social distancing and limited participation due to pandemic mitigation measures. Sivaram, who wrote articles under the nom-de-plume Taraki was abducted and assassinated allegedly by the SL State’s Intelligence agency in Colombo. Taraki, well versed in geopolitical affairs, was a reputed military analyst and a columnist for Colombo-based Daily Mirror. He was a senior editor of TamilNet for almost eight years until his demise at the age of 46.
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