Swiss youth group brings out publication on de-facto state of Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 May 2019, 23:35 GMT]
A Swiss-based Tamil youth group has come up with a print compilation, titled “Structures of Tamil Eelam: A Handbook”, based on online and textual research on the LTTE-run de-facto state of Tamil Eelam. The compilation, made by a 20-year-old author, is structured into eight parts and twenty-six chapters with articles and photographs. “Almost ten years since the destruction of Tamil sovereignty through the global conspiracy conducted at Mullivaikkal, the ongoing nature of Tamil genocide reiterates the need for Eelam Tamils to understand the fundamentals of our struggle in formulating a legitimate path for a permanent political solution for the Tamil struggle,” says the preface of the book. Prominent Tamil and Sinhala diaspora activists and writers of first generation N Malathy (New Zealand), Ana Pararajasingham (Australia) and Viraj Mendis (Germany) have praised the work.
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SLA exerts pressure on ex-LTTE members to act as informants after Easter attacks

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 April 2019, 23:12 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala Army in Jaffna is trying to set Tamils against the Muslims in the peninsula by attempting to recruit former LTTE members to work as informants. On Tuesday, more than fifty ex-LTTE members were instructed to attend a meeting at the SL Army's 512 Brigade camp at the Sinhala Maha Vidyalaya in the city of Jaffna. The SLA officers were offering biscuits with a soothing talk, an ex-LTTE member who attended the meeting said. A former LTTE political division member openly stated in the meeting that he had joined the movement to serve the cause of the people and not to operate against any people. However, the SLA officers were attempting to turn the argument to their favour saying that the Tiger members knew their society well and it should be in their interest to serve the public interest by detecting the strangers, who were infiltrating to seek safe havens in the North.
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Muslims fear next wave of attacks could target Sufi Dargahs in Mannaar, Musali under cordon

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 April 2019, 17:52 GMT]
Security has been beefed up at the five pilgrimage sites in Mannaar district as the Muslim religious leaders expressed fear of the next wave of externally influenced Islamist attacks could target their traditional pilgrimage sites as the ring leader of the terror attacks on Easter Sunday was also opposed to such worship as “anti-Islamic” practice. In the meantime, the occupying SL Army, SL Navy, the STF commandos and the SL Police have subjected the entire 107 km coastal road from Puththa'lam in the North Western Province to Mannaar in the Northern province with ten check posts since Saturday. The security beef-up has increased the travel time from Mannaar to Puththa'lam from two hours to six hours. The SL forces are mainly targeting the Tamil-speaking Muslims in Musali division with three large cordon-and-search operations for the past three days, civil sources in Musali said.
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SLM Hanifa remembers Sivaram's insight, warns of more challenging times ahead

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 April 2019, 14:42 GMT]
The inhumane terror attacks on Easter Sunday have worsened the chauvinist paradigm prevailing in the island and exposed it as the terrain for global power politics. None of the three powers, the USA, China nor India would be doing anything meaningful for the merger of the North-East or to secure the rights of the people here, said veteran writer SLM Hanifa, interviewed by TamilNet on the occasion of the 14th remembrance of the late Senior Editor of TamilNet, Maa-manithar D. Sivaram (Taraki), on Sunday. Unlike those who passionately talk about Tamil-Muslim unity and do nothing on the ground in practice, Mr Hanifa, a long-term friend of Sivaram, is one of the very few, who have been working for Tamil Muslim unity at the grassroots level in the East.
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Dr Amir Ali: Neoliberal institutions, religious extremism major hurdles of resolving conflict

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 April 2019, 13:11 GMT]
The global neoliberalist institutions such as the IMF and three particular religious extremist tendencies aggravated by external factors manifesting in the island were going to be the major future hurdles in achieving a lasting resolution to the conflict affecting the Tamils and the Tamil-speaking Muslims in the island, said Dr Ameer Ali, a renowned academic based in Australia, in a video interview to TamilNet in May 2018. He identified the Hindutva coming from India, militant Theravada Buddhism getting exposed in Myanmar and the Wahhabism which had started-off from Saudi Arabia as the three far-right religious tendencies. The expulsion of Muslims from Jaffna was a crime, but it was not ethnic cleansing as some propagandists tend to project it, he stated further.
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Colombo's COIN backfires, solidarity key to ensure Tamil-Muslim territoriality: Diasporic academic

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 April 2019, 16:30 GMT]
The growth of Wahhabism in the island has only served Colombo, and its external backers' interests in weakening the possibilities of unified Tamil speaking peoples' resistance to the unitary state, argues Norway-based Eezham Tamil anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan in an article following the serial Easter Sunday bomb attacks in the island. The Wahhabis were contributing to the severing of the ties held by Tamil Muslims to their territory, and in the case of north and east, to their Tamil neighbours by targeting, destroying or marginalising traditional Tamil Muslim Sufism in the island in the past. “Time has again come for Tamil – Muslim solidarity and alliances to bloom, to arrest divisive measures of the Colombo state and external powers,” to counter the dangers of the future, he writes narrating the trends of the past and his experiences during the field trips to the island.
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Unity between Eezham Tamils and Muslims key to true freedom: Exiled Sinhala academic

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 April 2019, 18:43 GMT]
Whoever carried out the Easter Sunday attack seems to have implemented, knowingly or unknowingly, the grand plan of fully integrating the Sri Lankan state into the geo-strategic imperial complex led by USA, UK, India and China by sharpening the globally imposed imperial faulty lines, says Professor Jude Lal Fernando of Trinity College, Dublin, in a comment to TamilNet on Wednesday. With the Easter Sunday attack on Christians (Sinhala and Tamil), many have lost their lives. The entire Muslim community has been demonized and Islamophobia has been heightened. Sinhalese do not know what they do – really like those who carried out the attack on Easter Sunday, he says. “The only wake up call can come from a strong unity between the Eelam Tamils and Muslims on the island who can truly resist the colonially carved state,” says the exiled Sinhala activist who hails from Negombo.
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People of all walks of life victims in ‘chosen island’ of geopolitics, religious extremism

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 April 2019, 23:12 GMT]
The families and the relatives of the victims of the serial terror attacks on Easter Sunday mourned their dead with mass burials and an island-wide day of mourning with three minutes of silence on Tuesday. At least 45 of those killed were children, according to the figures gathered by the United Nations. As the death toll from the bombings rose to 321, the Syria-based Islamic State group, which had lost all its territorial control in Syria and Iraq, claimed that it stood behind the serial terror attacks, publishing photos and a video of the attackers. In the meantime, reports also said that the US Indo-Pacific Command had wrapped up a joint naval training, four days earlier than it was scheduled to conclude in Hambantota.
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West influencing regime-change politics responsible for worsening situation: Fr Sakthivel

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 April 2019, 23:46 GMT]
The serial terror attacks on the churches and the hotels during the Easter Sunday has sparked fear of repercussions among the Muslims in Colombo, Negombo and the suburbs of the capital. They fear that a preplanned backlash could come from the forces operating among the other communities, Colombo-based human rights activist and Tamil Catholic priest Fr M. Sakthivel told TamilNet on Monday. In general, the people are also afraid that there might be other bombs as a bomb went off in Colombo on Monday while the SL Police was about to defuse it, he said. The priest who knows the grassroots situation prevailing in the South of the island said that the outside forces, particularly the West, which has been heavily intervening in the affairs of the island with a regime-change agenda, was to be blamed for the deteriorating security conditions of the non-Sinhala-Buddhist peoples in the island.
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207 killed, 450 wounded, series of bomb blasts target churches, hotels on Easter Sunday

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 April 2019, 09:17 GMT]
At least 207 people, including foreign tourists, have been killed in Colombo and Batticaloa in a series of bomb blasts that targeted worshippers, who were attending Easter Sunday services at three Christian churches. Most of the victims at the churches were Tamils. The bomb blasts have also targeted three hotels in Colombo. Thirty-five victims were foreigners. Around 450 people have sustained injuries. Fourteen of the 28 victims killed at the Zion Church in Batticaloa were children playing outside the church, medical sources at Batticaloa Teaching Hospital told TamilNet. Two more attacks have been reported at Dehiwale and Dematagoda in Colombo. The attacks on Christians and foreign nationals almost coincide with US - Sri Lanka naval exercise along the Hambantota port, which is owned by China under a 99-year lease.
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Tamil journalist released on bail fears targeted persecution by SL military

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 April 2019, 22:18 GMT]
The SL Police in Mullaith-theevu was acting on a false accusation filed by a Sinhala navy sailor who was blaming Tamil journalist Shanmugam Thavaseelan in Mullaiththeevu as having assaulted him and insulted him on 07th April at Vadduvaakal. “It was the intervention by journalists like me that prevented the situation getting into worse when the people protesting at Vadduvaakal caught him for suspiciously photographing them,” the 33-year-old journalist told media on Saturday after being released on bail. The hearing of the case is scheduled for April 30.
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Colombo closing down schools with less than 50 students tantamounts to educational betrayal

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 April 2019, 23:23 GMT]
The education of the students living in the rural and remote villages in the North-East would be severely affected if the SL Government goes ahead with the proposed move of closing down schools with less than fifty students in the island, said former Education Minister of Eastern Province S. Thandayuthapani on Friday. The resettlement has not been fully completed even though ten years have elapsed since the end of the war. It also takes time for the people to resettle in a meaningful way. The move to cut down the access to education is an educational betrayal, Mr Thandayuthapani said. The international actors, such as the World Bank and the IMF who provide ‘development’ assistance to the SL State are also betraying the Tamils in the North-East if they were giving input to the SL Government to close down the schools with fifty or less of students, he said.
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Sinhala colonisation escalated in Vavuniyaa North with a multitude of players backing infrastructure

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 April 2019, 21:24 GMT]
Elected civic members of Vavuniyaa North Divisional Council (PS) complain that the Sinhala colonisation is relentlessly targeting the eastern side of their division. The occupying Sinhala Army and its home-guards paramilitary act as the guardians of the colony while the extremist Buddhist monks coordinate the systematic expansion. Various SL ministries provide the infrastructure. Besides, a host of actors from a leading socio-economic NGO with Buddhist philosophy to a local extremist group known as ‘Sinhala Power in the North‘ (‘Uture Hela Balaya’ or ‘Utura Rakina Raṭa Surakina Jātika Balaya - Vanni’) facilitate it through different approaches. Also, sections of expatriate Sinhalese, including a retired professor from Australia, have funded the housing projects of the scheme. The Sinhala settlers are being radicalised without any provocation or hostility from the Tamils.
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Journalist harassed after exposing SLN surveillance on peaceful protest in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 April 2019, 23:18 GMT]
The SL Police in Mullaith-theevu has instructed Tamil journalist, Shanmugam Thavaseelan, to attend questioning at its station on Thursday. The move is interpreted as harassment against the Tamil journalists covering the peaceful protests in the district. A Sinhala intelligence operative of the SL Navy, who was caught red-handed by the Tamil protesters while taking close-up photos of the participants of a peaceful protest at Vadduvaakal, was behind the complaint. The Sinhala operative was claiming that he belonged to the SLN Intelligence Wing. However, he was not in possession of papers or identity card to document his military identity. The people handed him over to the naval base, Gotabhaya SLNS, after verifying his identity. He was also forced to delete some of the surveillance photos during the intervention.
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Uprooted Tamils in Karanthaay enter their lands in dispute with SL authority

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 April 2019, 22:20 GMT]
The Coconut Development Authority (CDA), which comes under the unitary occupying system of Colombo was claiming 90 acres of lands that belong to private land-owners at Karanthaay village near Mukamaalai, which was a ‘Forward Defence Line’ during the times of war. The lands were to be released back to the rightful owners in 2012-2013 when mines clearance in the area came to an end. However, the SL CDA was quick to claim the lands despite the owners proving their ownership. On Tuesday, the land-owners entered their lands and put up temporary huts. They said the SL authority was trying to convert their properties into state-owned farm without resolving the dispute of ownership.
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Linguistic discrimination, insensitive iconography used to establish Sinhala Buddhist hegemony

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 April 2019, 23:44 GMT]
“Three things that cannot be hidden for long in the North-East are the sun, the moon and the genocide,” commented a photojournalist documenting post-2009 structural and heritage genocide in the occupied traditional homeland of the Eezham Tamils. Not only the Sinhala military and the intruding extremist Buddhist clergy from the South but all the ministries and the departments of the unitary state system of Colombo are implementing their projects in the North-East without respecting the diversity and cultural sensitivities involved. Often, the underlying agenda of establishing the Sinhala Buddhist supremacy is visually exposed very quickly, the journalist said referring to the flag and plaque sites erected in the ‘Semata Sewana’ model villages being put by the ‘National Housing Development Authority’ (NDHA), which comes under the SL Ministry of Housing, Construction & ‘Culture Affairs’.
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Colombo schemes new settler colony for intruding Sinhala fishers in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 April 2019, 22:43 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DFAR) has recently permitted twenty-six migrant fishers from outside the Mullaiththeevu district to put up huts as season settler fishers along the Chaalai lagoon in Mullaiththeevu district. None among these 26 settlers are Tamils. Eighteen of them are from Negombo, Chilaw and Puththa'lam while eight are Tamil-speaking Muslims from Trincomalee, informed civil sources in Mullaiththeevu said. The scheme is going to be a Sinhala colony as the one in Mukaththuvaaram in Kokku'laay, Tamil civil sources said.
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Tamil youth in Batticaloa irked by SL State-backed southern company bent on ilmenite mining

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 April 2019, 08:01 GMT]
Tension prevailed in Kathira-ve'li, and the surrounding villages located 75 km north of Batticaloa city on Wednesday when Tamil youth went on a motorbike rally opposing the move for mineral excavation by a corporate from the South. Protesters were riding around 60 motorbikes from Verukal Bridge to Vaakarai through Panichchangkea'ni. The residents of three villages, Kathirave'li, Puchchang-kea'ni and Puthoor have been protesting against the exploitative ilmenite excavation project launched with the backing of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka. “Now, the people here are outraged, especially the youth. Recently, one youth wanted to self-immolate himself to protect his soil. We struggled to stop it,” Kathirve'li Fisheries Society leader M Subramaniyam told TamilNet. “We are finding it difficult to control the youth, and they could resort to extreme response any time,” he warned.
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SLA deployed Tamils as human shields in 1990, activists allege mass graves in Jaffna islet

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 April 2019, 21:01 GMT]
The occupying SL Navy harassed 25 Tamil protesters who had mobilised to wage a peaceful protest against the seizure of their lands at Ma’ndai-theevu, an islet off Jaffna, by photographing and recording them. However, the protesters successfully blocked the survey officials for the second time in two years. After the last attempt in June 2018, on Thursday the SL Survey Department tried again to measure the eighteen acres of residential and agricultural lands belonging to eleven families. The lands in question are already fenced off within the premises of SLNS Welusumana naval base and are declared as a no-go zone by the SL Navy, which wants to militarise them permanently. Ma’ndai-theevu, an islet located at a strategic locality towards the entrance from the Palk Bay into the Jaffna lagoon, needs to be subjected to excavations for alleged mass graves, say Tamil rights activists in Jaffna.
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Tamils discriminated in demarcation of education zones in Ampaa'rai district

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 April 2019, 21:25 GMT]
The Eastern Provincial Council passed a resolution almost thirty months ago approving creation of two new Education Zones in Ampaa'rai district. Now, the SL colonial Governor to the Eastern Province, MLAM Hizbullah is launching one of them, Poththuvil with predominantly Tamil-speaking Muslims. However, the other approved proposal of creating Kalmunai Central Education Zone by joining the Tamil schools from the zones of Kalmunai and Chammaan-thu'rai has not been implemented. In the meantime, a Sinhala Education Zone, Uhana has been separated from Ampara. Poththuvil is being separated from Akkaraip-pattu, which is also a Muslim majority zone. Tamil Education Directors in Ampaa'rai complain that the proposals of Tamils are being sidelined in the province.
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