SL Supreme Court wants assessment report on Fonseka’s security

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 December 2009, 17:05 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court directed the Attorney General to furnish a security assessment report on General (retd) Sarath Fonseka when the latter’s Human Rights Violation petition was taken up for inquiry Wednesday. The former SLA commander, who has been nominated as the common presidential candidate of the opposition, has filed FR petition seeking the court to order the government to provide adequate security for him and to direct the government to allow him to stay in his official residence, legal sources said.
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Australians slam 'Indonesian Solution'

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 December 2009, 15:08 GMT]
Over a 150 people marched through the streets of Sydney on Sunday calling upon the federal government to abolish its harsh stance on refugees and grant asylum to hundreds of Tamil refugees currently being detained in Indonesia at Australia’s request. Citing persecution faced by Tamils at the hands of the Sri Lankan Government, protestors labelled Prime Minister Rudd’s “Indonesian Solution” as “racist” and called for the closure of the Christmas Island offshore detention centre, currently housing hundreds of Tamils.
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Resilience marks Maveerar Day in Sydney

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 December 2009, 09:03 GMT]
Thousands gathered on Saturday to commemorate Heroes Day 2009 in an outpouring of grief in Sydney. A series of artistic and visual tributes, including a spectacular centre piece display carrying the symbols of Tamil Eelam set behind commemorative tombstones, illuminated Parramatta Park amid an atmosphere of reflection and resolve as over 2000 members of the Diaspora paid tribute to the fallen soldiers of the liberation movement and reaffirmed their commitment to the establishment of Tamil Eelam. The sister of LTTE Political head B. Nadesan, along with family of Colonel Amuthap lit the flame of sacrifice to mark the event, which featured songs, poetry and a series of provocative dramas portraying the horrors of Mullivaiykal and the sacrifices made by the fallen soldiers throughout the struggle.
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Grabbing land for wrecking contiguity of Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 December 2009, 10:22 GMT]
‘Investors’ may see the eastern coastal tract of the island of Sri Lanka, from Kokku’laay to Kuchchave’li, potential for minerals, tourism and fisheries. But the tract is of utmost importance to Eezham Tamils in linking the north and east of their historic homeland. Tamils wouldn’t have been averse to the idea of anyone coming and investing in this tract had there been a guarantee to the territorial integrity of their nation. It would have even been welcomed. But the genocidal Sinhala State and powers of greed have chosen the cruel way to achieve ambitions by crushing the Tamil nation – killing, maiming, chasing, incarcerating and weakening the historical inhabitants. If India that has a particular eye on this tract wants its gratification peaceful and long lasting it should take the responsibility of not altering the demography, writes a university academic of the Eastern Province.
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International System tests itself on a national question

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 December 2009, 10:02 GMT]
A set of countries in the International System initiate a dangerous argument that national questions cannot be resolved resulting in secession through democratic means in peaceful times, but can be decided only through violence in war times. A case is now being heard at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in which Serbia, backed by Russia and China, argues that Kosovo's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) is an 'ethnically motivated secession' that took place 9 years after the war during 'peacetime' and thus is invalid.
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'Resettled' by forced labour, without food or freedom to move

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 November 2009, 02:30 GMT]
The few thousands who have been resettled in selected divisions of Mullaiththeevu and Ki'linochchi districts, are reportedly affected by the lack of food supply, news reports reaching Vavuniyaa said. The 'resettled' are actually kept in schools in those areas and are extracted of forced labour to clear the locations of resettlement. Their freedom of movement is restricted. The whole operation doesn't look like resettlement of 'citizens' but of slaves, said a Tamil official on conditions of anonymity.
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SLA abductions of Tamil youth continue unabated in camps

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 November 2009, 02:19 GMT]
Several Tamil boys and girls including teenagers interned in the camps are called by name through announcing system by the Sri Lanka Army intelligence officers and are taken to unknown destinations, reports reaching from Vavuniyaa camps said. At least 10 young men and boys were thus 'abducted' on 21 November and around 30 youth, including girls, were taken on 27 November from Zone-0 IDP internment camp in Cheddiku'lam alone last week. They were taken in SLA vehicles and their family members lost all contacts with them since then, sources in Vavuniyaa told TamilNet Sunday.
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Book Review: The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 November 2009, 13:01 GMT]
The engagement of Professor Francis A. Boyle, an eminent American expert in international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, during the last years of Sri Lanka's conflict is traced in a forthcoming book published by Clarity Press of Atlanta. Titled "The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka: The Global Failure to Protect Tamil Rights Under International Law,” it is the first book to develop an authoritative case for genocide against the Government of Sri Lanka under international law.
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Fonseka to contest presidential election on swan symbol

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 November 2009, 12:42 GMT]
Former Sri Lanka Army Commander General (retd) Sarath Fonseka, the common opposition candidate for the Sri Lankan presidential election, which is scheduled to be held on January 26 is to contest on the symbol swan and on the ticket of a newly registered political party. He held the first press briefing Sunday morning at Jaica Hotel in Colombo.
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Resettle IDPs in Jaffna before Presidential Election – IDP Welfare General Committee

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 November 2009, 19:09 GMT]
The Welfare General Committee (WGC) of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Jaffna demands the speedy resettlement of IGPs in their own places occupied by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in its High Security Zones (HSZs) in Jaffna peninsula before the Presidential elections, WGC sources said. WGC has decided to present its request directly to Sri Lanka President, Mahinda Rajapakse when he visits Jaffna 8 December. Meanwhile, WGC strongly condemns Minister Douglas Devananda’s recent announcement that resettlement in HSZs in Jaffna peninsula will take place only in July 2010 after the presidential election.
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Locking Tamil nationalism through presidential candidature

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 November 2009, 12:27 GMT]
A Tamil candidature in the presidential elections, proposing a political solution deviating from the goals of Tamil nationalism, is a tactic to bind and nullify the aspirations of Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo. In the current circumstances, Tamils naturally boiling with anger about both the main candidates are most likely to cast their votes en masse to any respectable Tamil candidate. But it is an artful move to get a mandate by stealth from the surviving people of the North and East for dropping the fundamentals of Tamil nationalism set earlier in 1977 and for locking them with political subjugation within a single state in the island. Therefore the election proposal of any potential Tamil candidate should be the removal of the 6th Amendment to the constitution and not any half-backed formula, the commentator further said.
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Rapp snubs Sri Lanka's comment to US's war crimes investigations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 November 2009, 00:29 GMT]
United States will "press for accountability at the national level, at the level closest to where the crimes were committed," Washington Post said quoting Stephen Rapp, Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues appointed by President Obama. Rapp told the Post that last month, to a request by Rapp to investigate war crimes by the Sri Lankan military, which allegedly killed thousands of civilians in an offensive against the country's separatist insurgency, a Sri Lanka diplomat [not named] had told Rapp, "[w]e're following your [US's] lead. We [Sri Lanka] believe in eliminating these terroristic threats and resolving these issues once and for all."
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Thousands attend Heroes day remembrance at Excel Centre, London

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 November 2009, 15:42 GMT]
Over 50,000 British Tamils gathered at the Tamil National Remembrance Day held in the Excel exhibition centre. Specially designed interior props and the lighting resembled the “Maveerar Thuyilum Illam” Graves of fallen heroes. British Tamils carrying red roses, Gloriosa lilies (Kaarthikaippoo: Tamil Eelam national flower) and lamps, are filing into the main venue, at the Excel Centre in East London, where large cut-outs of Tamil Eelam were displayed on either side of the stage.
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Heroes’ Day address highlights political formation for liberation

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 November 2009, 11:58 GMT]
Heroes’ Day Address 2009, released from the headquarters of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Friday, stressed the importance of people evolving elected political bodies in the diaspora for the liberation of their home country and to mobilise international support for the liberation. “We are aware that Tamil people will not accept or forgive structures already formed for achieving the goal of Tamil Eelam and activists of them deviating at anytime from the goal,” the address said, citing in the meantime that “the way ‘Sinhala chauvinism’ behaved even after causing grave human catastrophe has brought in permanent rift between Tamils and Sinhalese.” The address came hard on Colombo for serious human rights violations it is committing on interned LTTE cadres, especially women and mothers, and urged the silent IC to act immediately.
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SLAF helicopter gunship comes down in Buttala, 4 killed

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 November 2009, 10:48 GMT]
A Russian built MI-24 helicopter gunship of the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF), which was engaged in air cover to provide security to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's visit to Hambantota, crashed in Badalkumbura area in Nilakandura, Buttala, killing the pilot and three gunners Friday afternoon, according to informed sources in Colombo.
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Vikramabahu Karunaratne invokes support among Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 November 2009, 10:17 GMT]
After supporting the federal aspiration of Eezham Tamils in the 1956 elections, now for the first time left political parties led by Sinhala leaders have come forward to field a common presidential candidate, Dr. Vikramabahu Karunaratne, with a main programme recognising Tamil Nation, its homeland in the north and east, its right to self-determination and autonomy as solution for the unity of the island. When agenda-setting powers harping on chauvinistic elements keep mum on recognising the fundamentals, and when Tamil political parties including some Tamil left leaders locked in agendas don’t have guts to spell out the fundamentals, why not voice-deprived Tamils and peace-loving Sinhalese register opinion and explore co-existence through support to the Left Front, is a topic widely discussed in the Tamil circles.
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Travel restriction on Jaffna IDPs lifted

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 November 2009, 09:14 GMT]
Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence Thursday lifted the travel restriction on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) brought from Vavuniyaa camps to Jaffna who were not allowed to leave Jaffna, sources in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, it is reported that Ministry of Defence will be allowing private sector buses in Jaffna to operate Jaffna-Vavuniyaa travel service through A9 route. The government, in view of the forthcoming presidential election, has begun to announce concessions to the people of Jaffna peninsula, the sources added.
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Sri Lanka fully intends to destroy Tamil Homeland, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 November 2009, 02:17 GMT]
Responding to Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse's statement to heads of media Tuesday ruling out the re-merger of Northern and Eastern provinces, Professor Boyle said, "[o]bviously, the Government of Sri Lanka fully intends to carve-up, destroy, and dismantle the Tamil Homeland on the Island of Sri Lanka for all time, and towards that end inflict even more acts of genocide against the Tamils living there. Historically, the only way for this to be counteracted is to establish an Independent State for the Tamils on Sri Lanka."
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Heroes and rulers, eternal struggle of humanity

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 November 2009, 22:50 GMT]
The roots of the current tragedy of the island lie in the unscrupulous competition between India and USA over the control of the island as a whole. None of the adamantly competing powers wanted to address the national question in the island with justice. In a way, over the death and captivation of Tamils, powers are now wooing and competing for the ‘democratic’ votes of the Sinhalese. The war has metamorphosed the main personalities in the election fray to full-fledged dummies, as they are not as brave or honest as Pirapaharan in resisting the diktats of powers. When viewed against this backdrop, the universal as well as civilisation-perspectives of the struggle under the LTTE of Pirapaharan and the sacrifices made by thousands and thousands of fighters and people could be understood in an altogether different light, sidelining all the accusations on the modus operandi of the struggle.
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Nearly 3000 IDPs from Jaffna released

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 November 2009, 20:54 GMT]
Jaffna Government Agent (GA), K. Ganesh said that 3,117 persons of 983 families from Jaffna district who had been held in the camps in Vavuniyaa and Kodikaamam Raamaavil camps have been released Tuesday. He further said that 445 persons of 425 families brought to Jaffna and held in Kodikaamam Raamaavil camp were sent to their own places in Jaffna district Tuesday.
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