Sivaram’s life work is direction-setter for future Tamil struggle: Viraj Mendis

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 April 2017, 23:16 GMT]
The quality of the life work of Sivaram, especially the geopolitical analysis he brought out on the struggle of Eezham Tamils 15 years ago, is deeply relevant even today to interpret the external factors seeking inroads in the island. Despite the time and space, the paradigm which Sivaram exposed remains the same, says exiled Sinhala activist Viraj Mendis, who has been supporting the cause of Eezham Tamils for more than four decades. Sivaram was talking about the Iraq war and its relevance to the interest of the Americans in Trincomalee harbour. Historically, the interests of Americans in the Middle-East and their interest of the island were interlinked. But, also in terms of the future, the American interests in the Pacific and the tensions that are emerging now in that region, the geostrategic location becomes an important factor.
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North-East shuts down, Tamil protests gain momentum

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 April 2017, 22:18 GMT]
Only the notorious ‘Special Task Force’ (STF) commandos of genocidal Sri Lanka and street dogs were plying the roads of Jaffna city on Thursday when North-East was brought to a complete standstill by trade unions, civil groups and the struggle-centric political parties among the Eezham Tamils, heeding the call from the families of enforced-disappeared people in Vanni. The shutdown also received the support of Tamil-speaking Muslims at several places in the North-East. Even a trade union, which was reluctant to heed the call extended full support in Vavuniyaa. The shutdown was a big blow to the promoters of the genocidal concept of Sri Lanka, its ‘strategic’ partners and their collaborators, commented Tamil activists in Jaffna.
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Keappaa-pulavu protesters denounce compromises, demand all their lands released

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 April 2017, 23:16 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military and the so-called ‘Resettlement’ Ministry in Colombo are giving confusing, and often contradicting, information on the release of lands in Keappaa-pulavu, say uprooted Tamils, who have been waging a continuous protest outside the so-called ‘security force headquarters in Mullaiththeevu’ for more than 2 months now. Last week, there was yet another deceptive move by the SL Resettlement Ministry and the SL military. The role being played by the ITAK hierarchy has also come under fire from the uprooted people on the ground. The proposal of releasing only 30 acres of their 482 acres of original lands along with additional 90 acres of jungle lands, is not going to put an end to the protest, the protesting people say. The protesting families have vowed to intensify their campaign despite the harsh conditions prevailing at the site of protest.
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“Why is Sirisena dodging to meet me,” asks mother of enforced-disappeared girl in Vavuiniyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 April 2017, 23:17 GMT]
Jeyavanitha Kasippillai, the mother of Jeromy Kasippillai reported missing at the age of 16 at Iraddai-vaaykkaal in Mullaiththeevu during the genocidal onslaught in 2009, has been claiming that her daughter’s photo appeared six years later in an election propaganda meeting. Jeromy was featured with SL President Maithiripala Sirisena on 07 January, 2015. Mrs Kasippillai managed to meet the Mr Sirisena in person on 07 August 2015 in Jaffna and the SL President promised the mother to trace the whereabouts of the girl featured in the photo with him. All he needed was just 27 days. Now, 19 months have elapsed and there has been no response from Mr Sirisena or anyone else, she says. “I have taken several attempts to meet him again. But, he dodges to meet me. I don’t know why,” the trauma-stricken mother who has been on a continuous protest for 58 days in Vavuniyaa told TamilNet on Saturday.
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SL deceptions multiply as protests demanding lands intensify in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 April 2017, 19:55 GMT]
The so-called ‘Resettlement Ministry’ of the genocidal state of Sri Lanka has sought the support of the hijacked hierarchy of the Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK), the dominating component of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to contain the escalating protests in Mullaiththeevu, Ki’linochchi and Mannaar of genocide-affected Vanni region of the homeland of Eezham Tamils. The ITAK hierarchy has been approached to facilitate compromise between the uprooted Tamils and the occupying Sinhala military, a source close to Maavai Senathiraja, the leader of the ITAK told TamilNet on Thursday on condition of anonymity. The source also provided photos documenting how occupying SL Air Force has transformed the lands of uprooted Tamils in Keappaa-pulavu into military resorts and how new structures are being hurriedly constructed inside the occupied zone.
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Countries backing Colombo in UNHRC complicit in genocide against Eezham Tamils: Ravikaran

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 April 2017, 23:05 GMT]
“The countries that promoted SL State with giving more time and space at Geneva are complicit in the structural genocide against Eezham Tamils. You are all joining hands in destroying us. Tamils will be completely losing the coast of Mullaiththeevu within two years. The IC should not delay any further in bringing international justice,” said elected councillor from Mullaiththeevu Thurairasa Ravikaran in an interview to TamilNet this week. Each and every Tamil now miss their security and dignity which was there during the times of the Liberation Tigers, he further said. An old mother who was chased away from Kokku’laay in 1984 and resettled back in Kokku’laay after being exiled in Tamil Nadu, India, narrated how the uprooted Tamils are languishing in Kokku’laay and Naayaa’ru. A senior fishermen leader explained how Tamils lived in Kokku’laay for decades without Sinhala intrusion.
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Direct involvement of SL Fisheries Department in Kokku'laay structural genocide exposed

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 April 2017, 22:03 GMT]
Two Sinhala officials from Colombo’s Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources were taking the side of occupying Sinhala fishermen in Kokku’laay, who on Tuesday went to the extent of violent threat against the Tamil officials from Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat, Land Commission and Village Officers (GS) of Kokku’laay East and West. The surveying was to be carried out according to the instruction of the courts. But, Sinhala fishermen, occupying all the 10 paadus (coastal sea-beds falling within the scope of a draw net) in the coast of Eezham Tamils at Kokku’laay, were aggressively opposing Tamil fishermen and the officials from Mullaiththeevu district. The showdown on Tuesday was illustrating the pathetic state of so-called reconciliation being advocated by the global and regional ‘strategic partners’ and their agent State in Colombo, commented Tamil activists in Vanni.
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UN, Western governments fund genocidal Sinhala militarisation of Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 April 2017, 18:57 GMT]
After deceiving Eezham Tamils on international investigations, the UN, its development agencies and the western governments that talk about post-conflict ‘reconciliation’ and ‘development’ without resolving the conflict, have now gone to the extent of deploying their funds to sustain the genocidal Sinhala military occupation of Vanni. Millions of rupees, channelled through the SL Resettlement Ministry in Colombo to the SL Defence Ministry are being deployed by the occupying military to buy out the lands belonging to uprooted Tamils in Keappaa-pulavu in Mullaiththeevu district, where uprooted Tamils have been continuously fighting for more than two months now. It now transpires that a two-storied resort has been built inside the military-seized lands at Keappaa-pulavu. The SL Air Force is constructing a Buddhist vihara to defend the case for continued Sinhala militarisation.
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SL military releases 0.6% of occupied Valikaamam lands with big propaganda

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 April 2017, 23:14 GMT]
There are at least 7,900 private landowners, still uprooted from Valikaamam North in Jaffna division. The extent of private lands occupied by the military of genocidal Sri Lanka in Vali North stands at 4,589 acres, according to the statistics from the District Secretariat. On Friday, the new Jaffna commander of the occupying SL military, Maj. Gen. Darshana Hettiarachchi released 28.81 acres of lands in Oo'ra'ni, a coastal village in Valikaamam North in Thaiyiddi North (J/249) and a section of Mayiliddith-thu'rai North (J/251). The landowners witnessed that all their houses have been completely demolished, except a few houses that have been modified and extended into military-resorts. These houses, except one, were being fenced off. The house owners were told that it would take 8 months or 1 year to release the houses. The entire coastal stretch is also fenced off by the military.
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SLAF hurriedly erects Buddhist Vihara in Keappaa-pulavu

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 April 2017, 23:17 GMT]
In a fresh move to permanently Sinhalicise the military-occupied village of Keappaa-pulavu, the occupying Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) of genocidal Colombo is constructing a Buddhist Vihara inside the school lands of the village while the uprooted Eezham Tamils from Keappaa-pulavu are on a continuous protest outside the military cantonment, Tamil journalists who have been monitoring the activities of the SLAF told TamilNet on Wednesday. The SL Defence Ministry is using the ‘constitutional’ clause of ‘foremost place to Buddhism’ and ‘territorial integrity’ of the genocidal State to permanently Sinhalicise Keappaa-pulavu. In the meantime, SL Ministry of Resettlement has donated 50 million rupees to SL Defence Ministry to find alternative pockets of lands to the uprooted people. The people who are on continuous protest said they are firm in their struggle.
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Protesting Musali villagers expose structural genocide at strategic Mu'l'lik-ku'lam

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 April 2017, 21:43 GMT]
The entire village of Mu'l'lik-ku'lam with its fertile lands, at least 7 irrigation tanks and a thriving fishing infrastructure has been under SL military occupation for 10 years since 2007. Tamil villagers were having at least 200 cement houses, a school, church, temple and a multi-purpose cooperative society, says 75-year-old Tamil fisherman Antony Lambert, who is one of the uprooted Tamils waging a continuous struggle for the last 12 days. All the houses except the few numbering between 27 and 30 have been destroyed by the military, he says. After languishing at different places for more than 4 years, a section of the people went back to Malang-kaadu, a jungle locality near Mu'l'li-ku'lam with a resolve to get back to their fertile village and they were braving military threats. Now, they are resolved to continue the fight to the end, says 63-year-old mother Anthoniya Vaz Sinnappu.
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Intruding Sinhala fishermen ridicule Tamil officials in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 April 2017, 17:12 GMT]
Sinhala fishermen, who have occupied the fish-rich coast of Naayaa'ru coast of Eezham Tamils in Karaithu'rai-ppattu division of Mullaith-theevu have challenged the Tamil officials refusing to leave the coastal stretch they have violently occupied from Tamils since 2011. There are more than 2,000 Sinhala fishermen from outside the traditional homeland of Eezham Tamils, who are refusing to vacate from the coastal line which they have occupied. The Tamil fishermen from Mullaith-theevu have been repeatedly staging protests and demanding access to their coastal stretch. Tamil officials in Mullaith-theevu, who went to convey the message to Sinhala fishermen were ridiculed, threatened and challenged by the Sinhala fishermen who were citing the backing of the SL military and the same Colombo-based SL Fisheries Ministry, civil sources in Mullaith-theevu told TamilNet on Saturday.
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Muslims, Tamils protest against Colombo’s land grab in Musali, Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 March 2017, 07:02 GMT]
Around 150 Tamils are staging a continuous protest demanding Colombo to release the lands seized by the occupying Navy at Mu’l’lik-ku’lam in the Musali division. In the meantime, more than 50 Muslims from Ma’richchuk-kaddi staged a protest condemning the Colombo government, SL President Maithiripala Sirisena and the SL Forest Department for having annexed their residential areas as part of the Vil-pattu reserved forest. Extremist Buddhist monks have been exerting pressure on SL State to Sinhalicise the reserved forest of Tamil-speaking peoples into Wilpatha. Despite repeated protests by Tamil-speaking Muslims, the Colombo Establishment, both during the times of Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithiripala Sirisena, has been trying to seize the lands of Muslim residents.
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CBK draws flak in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 March 2017, 23:44 GMT]
Former SL President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK), who is the Chairperson of so-called Office For National Unity (ONUR) visited Jaffna on Saturday and addressed the Tamil audience along with NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran at Pazhai Veeman-kaamam in Thellip-pazhai, where she laid foundation stone for a Primary Health Care Centre. She was confronted by an uprooted mother, Ms Sarasvathy Tharmalingam, who demanded demilitarisation of villages with houses, properties and agricultural lands of more than 3,000 families just 500 meters away from the site of the event. NPC Chief Minister also went on record exposing serious lack in the so-called Peacebuilding Priority Plan (PPP) framework, which has excluded the participation of the key stakeholder, the Tamils as a party shaping the process.
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Establishment-centric Geneva approach, built on Colombo's LLRC, loses credibility

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 March 2017, 23:48 GMT]
Tamil Nadu activist Thirumurugan Gandhi from May 17 Movement and Tamil diaspora activist Lathan Suntharalingam from Switzerland, who have been observing the UN Human Rights Council discourse in Geneva throughout this session urged Eezham Tamils in the homeland to continue to focus on building struggle-centric movements that really go beyond the electoral politics in the island urging them to focus sharply on the fundamentals of the Tamil struggle in their continued protests. The constitutional discourse is a deception without political justice. Political justice cannot be achieved without justice for genocide, they told TamilNet in an in-depth interview this week. The entire UN Human Rights Council discourse in Geneva is Establishment-centric and not victim-centric, as people tend to believe, they said.
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Muslims in Mannaar expose systemic inability of SL State in delivering justice to victims

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 March 2017, 22:48 GMT]
“2 years or 20 years, it doesn't matter. You can't expect real justice to be delivered by the SL State,” commented Tamil-speaking Muslim activists in Mannnar while TamilNet recently interviewed three Muslim women who have been languishing without justice or remedy for 20 years. The occupying Sri Lanka Army shot and killed the fishermen from Erukkalampiddi-East on 23 May 1997. The massacre took place while the victims were on their way to the seashore in bicycles carrying their fishing nets in the early hours of the fateful Friday. The dead bodies were released to the families on a condition that they signed in a document stating that their husbands were LTTE members, says 44-year-old Rifanu Beham Yaseen, the widow of the late Meerasa Marikar Yaseen and a mother of two girls. Her husband was 32 when he was massacred by the SLA and Ms Rifanu was one-month pregnant carrying a second child.
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Colombo's structural genocide against Eezham Tamils reaches its peak in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 March 2017, 22:38 GMT]
The structural genocide being waged by Colombo against the nation of Eezham Tamils has reached its peak in Mullaiththeevu district, particularly in Karai-thur'aip-pattu, says NPC Councillor T. Ravikaran in an interview to TamilNet. Tamil fishermen being systematically deprived of even accessing one of their fishing jetty (vaadi) is the latest contention. All the coastal points with vaadis have been seized from Tamils and given to Sinhalese. Tamil people were able to freely engage in their livelihood during the times of the LTTE. But, now they have fallen victims to the structural genocide although the physical genocide ended in May 2009. The Sinhala fishermen, who have been brought from South are using all possible means of banned forms of fishing destroying the fishing ecosystem, the Tamil fishermen complain.
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Uprooted people of 5 coastal villages in Jaffna issue 4 weeks ultimatum to Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 March 2017, 22:21 GMT]
Three senior leaders of the newly launched ‘Five Villages Development Joint Committee’, representing 6,000 families from Kaangkeasan-thu'rai, Oo'ra'ni, Mayiliddi, Thaiyiddi and Palaali, the five coastal villages that have been subjected to military occupation and complete annihilation of civilian infrastructure during the past 27-years, declared this week that their organiastion would launch a mass struggle. They have issued 4 weeks of ultimatum to SL President to respond to their appeal. If there is no positive response to their final appeal, they would undertake a relentless mass struggle until full resettlement, said veteran rights activist Vijayaratnam Ratnarasah, who has been involved in trade union, civic bodies and a convenor of one of the first citizens’ committees in the Tamil homeland since 1960.
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Colombo instructs civil administration in East to alienate lands to occupying military

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 March 2017, 22:04 GMT]
Fearing continued protests that could spread to the three districts in East against genocidal land grab, the occupying SL State has in recent days issued circulars to all the three government agents in East to speedily alienate lands through so-called legal measures making sure that the lands already seized by its three armed forces and the STF that comes under the SL Police. The military forces should ‘legally’ own all the private and public lands that remain militarized since 1990, a source close to Batticaloa GA told TamilNet on Wednesday. Similar instructions have also been given to land officials. The GA has come under increased pressure from Colombo to collaborate with the occupying military in surveying and transferring the lands.
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Uprooted Tamils to launch mass struggle against SL military housing deception

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 March 2017, 20:50 GMT]
The organizations representing the uprooted people from Valikaamam North in Jaffna, who are all fed up by decades of deceptions by the changing regimes in Colombo that refuse to de-militarize and allow the people to resettle in their fertile villages, have resolved this week to step up their struggle by joint action in the future. Only some of the occupied lands were returned at Keappaa-pulavu and at Puthukkudiyiruppu. The occupying military is undeterred in its project of militarization. The human rights politics in Geneva advanced primarily by Obama’s USA bandwagon had completely neglected Tamil demands. While deploying Tamil victims and activists at side-events, the discourse targeting regime change through appeasing the genocidal State of Sri Lanka, has only contributed to accelerated militarization of Tamil homeland.
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