Colombo plans Sinhala military settlement in Valikaamam North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 23:51 GMT]
While the uprooted Eezham Tamils of Valikaamam North confront the occupying Sri Lankan State against the seizure of their lands in the former ‘High Security Zone’ (HSZ), the Sri Lankan military is moving fast with its secret plans of establishing permanent Sinhala military settlements to bring in families of the Sinhala soldiers into the former HSZ in Jaffna. Informed paramilitary sources in Jaffna told TamilNet Tuesday that a Sri Lankan commander has been assigned the task of converting the former HSZ into a Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ), consisting of Palaali military base. Already, more than 5,000 houses have been constructed in Mu'rika'ndi in Vanni and families of Sinhala soldiers are being provided housing there. There are at least 30,000 Sinhala soldiers stationed in the Jaffna peninsula.
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Gotabhaya statement reconfirms emptiness in PC model

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 May 2013, 11:31 GMT]
While New Delhi and Washington harp on either the 13th Amendment or holding Northern Provincial Elections (NPC) as solutions to the national question in the island of Sri Lanka, a statement coming from SL presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa reconfirms the unworkable nature of the Provincial Council (PC) model in a unitary constitution of the Sinhala state, Tamil political observers in the island said. Mr Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was warning the government of his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa that giving police and land powers to the provinces meant that the Northern Province comprising the districts of Jaffna, Mullaiththeevu, Vavuniyaa, Mannaar and Ki'linochchi could pose a ‘major security challenge’, reported the Island on Thursday.
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SL Police arrests TNPF politicians on Mu'l'livaaykkaal Remembrance Day in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 May 2013, 11:30 GMT]
Tamil National People's Front (TNPF) politician and former parliamentarian Selvaraja Kajendran and Visvalingam Manivannan of the TNPF and thirteen others were arrested by the Sri Lankan Police at Mannaar Saturday afternoon while they were attending a Mu'l'livaaykkaal Remembrance Day function. The SL police is trying to curb the activities of the TNPF politicians by attempting to detain them under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), initial reports from Mannaar said.
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International aid complicit in Colombo’s structural genocide of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 May 2013, 21:22 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan State has stepped up Sinhala colonization in the cultivation areas that lie between Nedungkea’ni and Ma’nalaa’ru in Mullaiththeevu district. Thousands of acres of cultivation lands, belonging to resettled Tamil people in Karai-thu’raip-pattu division, lie in the area, where the occupying SL military has been blocking access to the owners of the land to even visit their lands. But at the same time in recent days, hundreds of workers have arrived from the Sinhala South and electricity supplies are being put up to accelerate the extension of Sinhala colonization of the area, Tamil civil officials in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet. The international aid providers not stopping the process are openly in complicity with the structural genocide of Eezham Tamils, the officials further said.
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Commonwealth SG upholds SL venue of CHOGM, meets Colombo’s HR outfit

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 May 2013, 22:19 GMT]
While widespread calls from credible quarters across the world were urging either change of the CHOGM venue or boycott, if it is going to take place in Sri Lanka, and while the UK Tamils staged a demonstration against the venue, the Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma upheld the venue in a press meet in London last Friday. “I meet leaders continually and continue to take soundings with leaders, and have been doing so recently as well, and no member of government has indicated remotely that it wishes to change the venue, Kamalesh Sharma said, answering a question put by Jonathan Miller of Channel 4 News. Meanwhile, Kamalesh Sharma also received a ‘human rights’ outfit of genocidal Colombo that came to meet him in London this week.
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Colombo appropriates lands of 400 Tamil families in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 May 2013, 20:33 GMT]
The Colombo government has begun to appropriate 400 acres of lands belonging to Tamils in Veerapuram in Vavuniyaa Cheddiku'lam division to settle down Sinhalese, according to Vanni district Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Sivasakthi Aanandan. In a similar move, at Nochchikku'lam GS division, private lands of Eezham Tamils have been appropriated for the purpose of 56th brigade headquarters for the occupying Sri Lanka Army, news sources in Vavuniyaa said.
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Basil wants 15,000 trainee graduates to undergo ‘leadership training’ by SL military

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 April 2013, 23:08 GMT]
SL presidential sibling and Economic ‘Development’ minister of Colombo, Basil Rajapaksa has instructed his officials to send 15,000 graduates, who were employed as ‘trainees’ under his ministry in 2012, for a 2-weeks obligatory ‘leadership training’ with the Sri Lankan military this year. As the new students to the universities who fail to attend the military programme losing their university education, the graduates employed as ‘trainees’ are at the risk of losing the opportunity for permanent employment if they refuse to attend the leadership training by the SL military, civil sources in Colombo said.
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Protest against SL military seizure of lands gains momentum in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 April 2013, 16:16 GMT]
More than 800 uprooted people gathered Monday morning in front of the Divisional Secretariat at Thellippazhai, situated near the entrance to the former High Security Zone (HSZ), which is now being permanently seized by the occupying Colombo aiming a permanent Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ) in Jaffna. Despite the refusal by the SL Police to stage any protest march on the KKS Road, the people who rallied peacefully from 8:30 to 11:30 in front of the DS office, started to block the entrance of the DS office and embarked upon a spontaneous march towards the entrance of the HSZ. The riot control police commandos and the SL military men blocked them in front of the SL Police Station located on KKS Road.
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Indian news magazine highlights accelerated Sinhalization of Tamil north

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 April 2013, 21:35 GMT]
In a commentary on the ‘post-war’ scenario in the northern part of the Tamil homeland in the island of Sri Lanka, a correspondent for The Weekend Leader, a Chennai based online news magazine, highlights the accelerated Sinhalization of the Tamil north through political, social, cultural, economic and military means, giving cases for each. In the article titled ‘Erasing the cultural leftover of Tamils to convert Sri Lanka into Sinhala country’ published on Tuesday, the correspondent writes that the Tamil north “is in the grip of Sinhala hegemony”, adding that Sinhala and Sinhalization are the watchwords in the region. The writer also underscores the vital role that the occupying Sinhala military plays in facilitating this process and how development projects are used as a ruse by the GoSL to further colonize Tamil areas.
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Geneva resolution responsible for genocidal militarisation of Tamil country

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 April 2013, 07:19 GMT]
The March resolution at UNHRC in Geneva, designed by the USA and watered down by India, is directly responsible for all the current ‘legalisation’ of the genocidal militarisation carried out by the occupying Sinhala State in the country of Eezham Tamils in the island, said alternative Tamil political activists in Jaffna, citing the ‘legal’ appropriation of 6400 acres of Tamil civilian lands at Jaffna HSZ and another 6000 acres in Vavuniyaa, openly for Sinhala military cantonment purposes, within one month of passing the resolution. The genocidal State was internationally allowed to do so by the LLRC-based resolution. Its basic concept ‘reconciliation’ a camouflage for structural genocide is a brainchild of the US State Department, the activists said.
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Colombo revives colonial rule to monitor foreign tourists

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 April 2013, 20:26 GMT]
Citing an obscure 1886 ordinance of the colonial times of British Ceylon, that has been largely ignored for decades, the Sri Lankan Police now says that it will monitor foreign tourists’ whereabouts in the entire island, a report by the International Business Times said Wednesday. The news report in the IBT has come while Eezham Tamils world over have been campaigning against tourists visiting the Sri Lankan ‘killing fields’.
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Armed squad attacks Tamil paper office in Jaffna setting ablaze press machines

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 April 2013, 07:03 GMT]
An armed squad, allegedly operated by the Sri Lankan military intelligence, stormed the main office of the Uthayan Tamil daily in the city of Jaffna in the early hours of Saturday, setting ablaze the press machines and the copies of printed papers that were ready for distribution. The squad chased media workers away at gun point and poured petrol on the papers and machinery in the fourth attack to be reported on the popular Tamil daily since January this year. The pre-dawn attack, carried out Saturday at 4:45 a.m., comes 10 days after a similar attack on its Ki'linochchi office this month. Colombo's systematic attack on the Tamil daily, owned by Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian E. Saravanapavan, seeks to destabilize the operation and dissemination of the paper in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, especially before conducting elections to Northern Provincial Council.
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Wild elephants deployed by Colombo's forest department claim lives of Tamils in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2013, 09:12 GMT]
Sri Lankan Forest Department, in recent weeks, has brought in a number of wild elephants from Sinhala areas into the jungles adjacent to Koa'ra'laip-pattu South Division of the Batticaloa district, where uprooted Tamil people have resettled after the end of war. The Divisional Secretary of Koa'ra'laippattu South, Mr Thanabalasundaram, when contacted by reporters in Batticaloa, admitted that two Tamil civilians have been killed within the last 30 days by the wild elephants that have gone amok on the villagers and their properties. The lives and the livelihood of 3,000 Tamil villagers are threatened by the presence of more than 50 wild elephants of the Sinhala forest department.
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Indian housing aid programmed for exploitation by Colombo agents in East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 April 2013, 23:53 GMT]
Disregarding the repeated requests by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) politicians in the Batticaloa district to include local community leaders such as the heads of the Rural Development Societies (RDS), representatives from women groups and trustees of temples in the committees to select the beneficiaries of the Indian housing scheme, the SL government has handed over the selection process in the Batticaloa district to its paramilitary and the political outfits of SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ruling party, civil sources in the district say. Despite their rapport with New Delhi, the TNA has failed in making India to deliver the aid directly to the affected people without the exploitation of genocidal Colombo, the civil sources in the district further said.
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China's vice minister of intelligence finds Jaffna a place to visit

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 April 2013, 23:41 GMT]
Following US, UK, Indian, Japanese, Australian and Canadian diplomats, a vice minister at China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) too finds Jaffna a ‘must to be visited’ place, political observers in Jaffna commented on the visit of the Chinese Vice Minister Zhou Qing, on Wednesday. The Chinese deputy minister's visit was marked by intense security arrangement to him by the occupying genocidal military of Sri Lanka. China's assistance to the Sinhala military in building permanent cantonments and camps in the country of Eezham Tamils is well known. The MSS is China's primary agency for internal and external intelligence.
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SL military squad attacks paper office, curbs paper dissemination in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 April 2013, 10:55 GMT]
A squad operated by the Sri Lankan military intelligence on Wednesday stormed the Ki'linochchi office of the Uthayan daily around 4:30 a.m., when the distributors of the paper arrived at the office to unload the papers for distribution. The branch manager of the office and four distributors sustained injuries and three of them with serious injuries have been admitted at Ki'linochchi hospital. The office, subjected to the attack is situated on Karadippoakku Junction on A9 Road, heavily guarded by the occupying SL military. The attack has been carried out in a similar fashion as the one reported Saturday on the meeting of ITAK, a constituent party of the Tamil National Alliance.
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Prof Gamlath passes away

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2013, 21:57 GMT]
Veteran Professor of Sinhala, Dr Sucharitha Gamlath passed away at the age of 79 in Colombo on Saturday and the funeral took place on Monday. Prof Gamlath was righteously anti-Establishment throughout his career and for nearly 15 years, the governments in Colombo kept him unemployed, which he faced heroically without compromising on his principles and convictions. To the end he steadfastly stood for the Tamil right to self-determination in the island of Sri Lanka. He was the first Professor of Sinhala at the University of Jaffna, appointed in 1975 (then the Jaffna Campus of the University of Sri Lanka) and his penalisation by the JR Jayawardane government took place in 1980 while he was serving at the University of Jaffna. TamilNet pays tribute to the scholar of a rare genre and expresses condolences to bereaving family members, friends and comrades.
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TNA MP cautions on PC elections harped on by Geneva resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 March 2013, 15:05 GMT]
“We are a distinct Nation with historic records in this soil, proving our evolution [as a Nation]. The Sinhala Nation destroyed us. A nation was destroyed by another nation here. But, the international community has handed us over to those who destroyed us to investigate the crimes against us; we have been handed over to those who fired upon us; to those who fired shells on us; to those who fired phosphorus bombs against us; to those who fired cluster munitions on us. How can you expect justice from this country [of the Sinhala Nation],” asked Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Sivagnanam Sritharan, in a press meet in Jaffna on Wednesday. “Therefore, an intervention by the international community is a must and an urgent one,” failing which the existence of the Tamil nation in the island would be wiped out from the maps of the world, he further said.
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Colombo executing structural genocide, not reconciliation - Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 11:54 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the President of the Tamil National People's Front, in a discussion with Phil Miller of "Open Democracy" in Geneva, criticized the language of "reconciliation" promoted by British officials and asserts that “structural genocide, not reconciliation, is the phrase which most accurately describes what is going on,” and adds that “[t]he land grab is not peculiar to this [Rajapakse] regime. It has been happening for the last 65 years. The only time it stopped was during the armed struggle of the LTTE, because then Sinhalese people were not willing to settle in the north and east, where a de-facto Tamil state existed."
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Colombo instructs SL intelligence to curb protests against SL State

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 March 2013, 23:52 GMT]
As the world’s attention is focused on Colombo’s crimes against Tamils, the intelligence offices of the occupying Sri Lankan military in North and East have received fresh instructions from the SL Defence Ministry in Colombo to stop people from mobilizing protests demanding the release of Tamil prisoners in the Sri Lankan prisons and to curb protests against the creation of Sinhala Military Zones in the Tamil homeland. On Tuesday, SL intelligence officers were directly involved in harassing and blocking around 700 protestors from the five districts in North, who were boarding the buses heading to Colombo for the protest which took place in front of the UN office in Colombo on Wednesday.
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