UN Rights Chief joins her predecessors in watering down collective rights of genocide affected people

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 September 2020, 06:37 GMT]
Without imposing a robust follow-up on the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka, which withdrew its support to UN Human Rights Resolution 30/1 that failed to address genocide justice, international investigations and ensure the collective rights of the people of the occupied traditional Tamil homeland in the North-East, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet was just “encouraging” the Council to “give renewed attention to Sri Lanka, in view of the need to prevent threats to peace, reconciliation and sustainable development.” Ms Bachelet was only referring to “commitments” made by the Rajapaksa regime “since it withdrew its support for resolution 30/1”.
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Diaspora youth group re-aligns Tamil narrative on enforced disappearances

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 September 2020, 22:13 GMT]
The misrepresentation and interpretation of enforced Tamil disappearances and Tamil Prisoners of War (POWs) represent an extension of Colombo’s genocidal agenda which continues to be mirrored through the engagements of the genocidal state’s global counterparts. In that regard, the Swiss-based Tamil Youth group – “Phoenix – the Next Generation” have condemned such internal and external diversions away from the contextualisation of enforced Tamil disappearances as a component of Colombo’s genocidal agenda through a social media initiative coinciding with the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.
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Jude Lal Fernando’s Sputnik interview exposes unfolding British duplicity on KMS ‘investigations’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 September 2020, 15:41 GMT]
The UK investigative journalist Phil Miller has revealed with an immense amount of details how the UK’s security company, Keenie Meenie Services (aka KMS), was involved in training the SL commando force, the Special Task Force (STF), which massacred, abducted and tortured scores of Tamils in the island. However, British paramilitary forces like Keenie Meenie give ‘credible deniability’ to the British state. Even the use of the word ‘mercenary’ is misleading, says Professor Jude Lal Fernando of Trinity College, Dublin, in an interview to Sputnik on Thursday. The exiled Sinhala academic and activist, who has been actively engaged in seeking global justice to Tamil genocide, claimed that the British paramilitary was operating “only within the interests of the British state and as part of the state”.
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Gotabaya's ‘Task Force’ monk threatens Tamils to stay away from their paddy fields in Thiriyaay

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 September 2020, 22:03 GMT]
The extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk based in Arisimalai in Pulmoaddai, Panamure Thilakawansha Thero, has threatened Eezham Tamil farmers of Thiriyaay in Kuchchave'li division of Trincomalee district to stay away from their agricultural lands on Wednesday. Panamure Thilakawansha is the monk whom the SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has referred as “chief prelate for the Northern and Eastern Provinces” in his Presidential Task Force for ‘archaeological heritage management’ in the East. He has claimed that ancient Buddhist artefacts were lying spread across more than one thousand acres spanning six farming tracts. The Tamil farmers have demanded the Tamil National Alliance and other Tamil national political parties to act against the move.
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Families of war-disappeared send strong message braving SL restrictions on International Day

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 August 2020, 16:36 GMT]
The district organisations of the families of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying SL military and its paramilitary groups courageously staged protests in the North and East passing a strong message to the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka on the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on 30th August. Tamil protesters who mobilised in Batticaloa passed a strong message to the Rajapaksa establishment as they refused to adhere to the restrictions placed on them by the SL judiciary and the police. District coordinator, Amalanayaki Amalraj, received an interim order from Batticaloa Magistrate, AC Rizwan, following SL Police OIC, Samantha Bandara’s accusation that she was trying to convene more than one thousand people violating the pandemic restrictions.
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2020 election resembles 1970 polls that formed genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 August 2020, 10:08 GMT]
The SLFP led by Srimao Bandaranaike replaced the British drafted Ceylon constitution doing away even the minimal and symbolic safeguards for external justice through the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. Enacting a unitary constitution without the democratic mandate of Eezham Tamils, Ceylon was transformed unilaterally into genocidal Sri Lanka by the Sinhala politicians. Now, the SLFP is replaced by the SLPP, ten years after genocidal annihilation of the armed movement and the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam. The SLPP is poised to enact a constitutional discourse emboldening the unitary state towards the final phase of heritage and structural genocide in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. As far as the Eezham Tamils are concerned, there is very little left for them to achieve within the scope of SL Parliamentary politics.
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Occupying Sinhala military reminds Eezham Tamils of whose elections they partake

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 August 2020, 20:57 GMT]
The occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka has been harassing the Tamil candidates contesting in the general elections, particularly Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) led by Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam and Tamil Makkal Thesiya Koottani (TMTK) led by CV Wigneswaran in the Northern and Eastern provinces. The SL Army has been deploying surveillance teams and field-bike units during their campaign meetings. The TNPF has publicly alleged that SL military intelligence operatives were behaving in a threatening manner in their election meetings. The SL military intelligence had also threatened its candidates in Batticaloa to withdraw from the elections, the TNPF blamed. TMTK Leader and former Chief Minister of Northern Province, Justice Wigneswaran, was harassed by the field-bike group of the SL Army recently, when he went for an election meeting to Kurunakar, a suburb of Jaffna.
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Manifestos of TNA, TNPF and TMTK expose lacuna, hint areas for corrections of Tamil polity

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 August 2020, 18:29 GMT]
The revisionist ITAK hierarchy-led Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has issued its manifesto exposing and justifying its deviationist and revisionist approach to the Tamil national question in the island. The TNA, which is engaged in Quisling politics post-2009, issued its proclamation in Tamil and English as it has nothing to ‘fear’ from the judiciary of genocidal Sri Lanka and its Sixth Amendment. In the meantime, the TNPF and the TMTK, both claiming to be more struggle-centric and principles-oriented, have ‘tactically’ avoided issuing their proclamations in English for reasons best known to themselves. Journalists in Jaffna said both the alliances were dodging questions on the topic.
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Unified Eezham Tamil national front, beyond electoral politics, is next step: Jothilingam

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 August 2020, 21:17 GMT]
The bi-polar big-power geopolitics unfolding in the Indo-Pacific region and the ever-accelerating Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism on the ground in the island are the primary factors shaping the political fate of Eezham Tamils. When the Tamil National Alliance played out in the hands of the US-led alliance causing miseries to Tamils, there was a need for alternative politics, particularly under the previous government in Colombo. What Eezham Tamils need now is an effort towards unified Tamil national politics, rooted in the principles of their nationhood, homeland, sovereignty, right of self-determination and the international dimensions of justice, mediation and necessary guarantees related to these. The political parties must be involved as components in this wider effort, but not be the sole actors determining the Tamil discourse, said senior Tamil political analyst S.A. Jothilingam.
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Criminals banished from South deployed for Sinhala colonisation in Musali, Mannaar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 July 2020, 20:09 GMT]
Criminals and former military men absconding from law enforcement authorities for crimes committed in the South, particularly those with a previous military background, have been provided with an escape route if they agree to take part as settlers in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The tendency has been observed in Ko'ndaichchi in Musali division of Mannaar district, informed sources in the division said. In addition to Sinhala workers who previously worked in Ko'ndaichchi cashew farm, there are tens of Sinhala colonists with criminal background from Colombo, Kegalle, Matara and Gampaha districts in the South. Although only twenty-seven families are registered in the voters' registry, and they were provided with housing scheme, there are scores of other Sinhalese living in the so-called “Sinhala Gammana” village in Ko'ndaichchi.
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SL Police blocks protest by families of missing persons in East

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 July 2020, 20:24 GMT]
Ea'raavoor Police has blocked a demonstration on Monday in Batticaloa. The kith and kin of Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances organised the protest after informing SL Police in advance. However, the SL Police, which had verbally assured that the protest could proceed, suddenly stopped the rally in a ransacking spree, securing a court order just 30 minutes before the protest. The coordinator of the campaign, Ms Amalanayaki Amalraj, told TamilNet that she had informed the SL Police Officer-in-Charge at Ea'raavoor Police station through a CID officer attached to the central police station in Batticaloa well in advance, three days before the event.
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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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Vadamaraadchi North fishers mobilise against Colombo's discrimination

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 2020, 22:33 GMT]
Former Tamil paramilitary operative Douglas Devananda, who collaborated with the genocidal military of occupying Sri Lanka, is now SL Minister of Fisheries in the “caretaker” cabinet of Rajapaksa regime. Sinhala poachers from South are allowed to encroach and engage in destructive fishing along the coast of the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The quisling minister is citing the law imposed by the SL State during the times of war. The law is known as Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Act of 1996. “The 1996 law was drafted with southern fishers in mind. It has not taken into consideration the concerns of Tamils. We are not opposed to others fishing here. But, we are opposed to poaching and destructive fishing methods destroying our fishing ecosystem by the Sinhala fishers,” said N. Varankulasingam, the chairman of the Federation of Vadamaraadchi North Fisheries societies.
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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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Sumanthiran’s nexus with “Raava'na Senai” in Kanniyaa heritage dispute questioned

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 July 2020, 21:47 GMT]
Sinhala Buddhist extremist monk Ampitiye Seelawansa Tissa Thero has been escalating a heritage dispute at Kanniyaa Hot Wells by pushing for the construction of a Buddhist temple within the Saiva temple premises located in the lands that belong to a private landowner. When the case was taken up by the courts on Thursday, ITAK Parliamentarian and President’s Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran represented the owner of the temple lands Ms Ganesh Kokilaramany. Meanwhile, “Ravana Senai,” a shady outfit allegedly connected to Hindutva organisations in India is also in a dispute with Kokilaramany as it had transformed the mutt belonging to Pi'l'laiyaar temple into a Sivan temple. The group maintains rapport with the Seelawansa Tissa Thero and with Mr Sumanthiran who represents Kokilaramany.
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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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