India placates Sri Lanka, claims it had ‘balanced’ US resolution

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 March 2012, 08:51 GMT]
Soon after the successful adoption of the pro-LLRC US resolution, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sent a letter to the Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa claiming that the Indians “spared no effort and were successful in introducing an element of balance in the language of the resolution”. Openly admitting how India had gone out of the way to water down the resolution to make it “non-intrusive” so as to defend Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, he emphasised on a political solution based on the 13th amendment model.
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ICG acknowledges crisis but turns out cock-eyed on solutions

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 March 2012, 10:40 GMT]
The International Crisis Group in its latest reports acknowledges militarisation and Sinhalicisation of Tamil land as currently the burning crisis in the island of Sri Lanka. It is implicit admission of structural genocide faced by the nation of Eezham Tamils. Both the Sinhala militarisation and colonisation increase the risk of a return to violence, the reports caution. But the ICG doesn’t want to see the historical impossibility of any righteous solution becoming successful in the island without secession. Reducing the nation of Eezham Tamils as ‘minorities’ and focussing the crisis of only the North, intriguingly leaving out the East, the ICG is cock-eyed in perceiving that elections to the northern provincial council under the rotten unitary constitution and control through foreign ‘development’ funds could bring in solutions, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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TNPF cautions ‘first step’ myth of UN resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 March 2012, 22:58 GMT]
Projecting the watered down resolution passed at the UNHRC that doesn’t recognize the genocide committed on Eezham Tamils and that doesn’t call for international investigation, but stops only at implementing the flawed LLRC recommendations as a ‘first step to victory’ is sawing false hopes in the minds of Eezham Tamils, said Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) in the island in a press release on Friday. Confining the phenomenon to mere war crimes, the application of limited pressure serves only the interests of certain competing powers that consider the whole island as a single unit to make their economic inroads. Certain forces use Tamil aspirations for only a regime change in the island, TNPF said.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhala colonisation of coastal Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 March 2012, 15:08 GMT]
SL President's son and Hambantota district parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa has stepped up Sinhala occupation of coastal villages of Mullaiththeevu and Ma'nal Aa'ru (Weli Oya) districts of Vanni mainland this week, civil sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet. Hundreds of Sinhala fishermen were brought from South on Wednesday morning in 20 lorries with their boats and fishing equipments to Chemmalai, a coastal village of Mullaiththeevu district. Local Tamil fishermen who objected the move were assaulted by the occupying Sri Lanka Army and chased away. The SL military officials told Tamils that the fishermen from South had obtained 8-month pass to settle in Chemmalai for fishing. In the meantime Tamil families that resettled in Kokku'laay after 23 years have come under assault by SL military and Sinhalese settlers.
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Watered-down resolution passes in UNHRC, stops short of international investigations

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 March 2012, 13:57 GMT]
The UN Rights Council on Thursday approved the LLRC-based US-tabled resolution urging Colombo to probe Human Rights violations domestically with assistance and advice from the UN rights body. The resolution stopped short of calling for an international investigation. In the 47-member UNHRC, 24 countries including India, voted for the resolution while 15 voted against. 8 countries abstained. Meanwhile, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported SL minister Laksman Yapa Abeywardene as saying that Colombo's relationship with close neighbor India and powerful USA would not be changed despite the resolution passed in UN Human Rights Council. "Whatever decisions taken by India and the U.S. with regard to the resolution, that will be limited to that issue only," the Sri Lankan minister said.
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Solheim told to leave Norway government

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 March 2012, 02:21 GMT]
The Norwegian Minister for International Development and Environment, Mr Erik Solheim, who also handles the country’s peace facilitations in different parts of the world, has been asked to leave the government by the leadership of his Socialist Left (SV) Party in the coalition, according to media reports on Wednesday. He has been told to give way for younger talents from his party. The immediate reaction of the minister was strong disagreement with the decision of his party, but he refrained from commenting on his exit before an official announcement by his party. Mr Solheim is widely seen as Norway’s main player in the failed peace process in the island of Sri Lanka.
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Cannot expect solutions from NGOs tied to western bureaucracies: Kurdish Activist

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 20:54 GMT]
Stating that oppressed nations must enforce their own agendas and not rely on NGOs like ICG for solutions, Kurdish activist in UK, Mehmet Aksoy, argued that such NGOs were entrenched in bureaucracies, at a seminar on ‘State Repression and the Struggle for Self-determination: Strategies for Resistance’ organized by Campaign against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) on Sunday. The meeting at the University of London Union, London was held in association with diaspora organizations of Kurds, Balochs, Eezham Tamils, Basques, and Sindhis. The Eezham Tamil activists spoke about how the double standards in dealing with the Tamils deployed by the western governments gave a green signal for the GoSL to carry out its genocidal offensive in May 2009.
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De-miners locate remains of cluster bomb in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 20:32 GMT]
A container allegedly deployed by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) to carry cluster bomblets has been recovered recently by the de-miners of the humanitarian de-mining agency Halo Trust near a house at Thiruvaiuyaa'ru, 3 km east of Ki'linochchi town, media sources told TamilNet on Wednesday providing a photo displaying the container placed at the office of the Halo Trust. The markings on the case have been masked by painting, allegedly by the SLAF before the bombardment, a practice observed following the exposure of SLAF deploying banned weapons in 2009. Despite the systematic destruction of crucial evidences of war-crimes and genocide in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils following May 2009 by the Sri Lankan military, humanitarian de-miners have obtained parts of cluster bombs that were heavily used by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) during the war, the sources further said.
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US-led World Bank loans to Rajapaksa, fortifies Colombo-dominated structure

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 06:49 GMT]
While the Eezham Tamils are hoodwinked by the ploy and decoy of a US-resolution at Geneva, and while the plight of Eezham Tamils is considerably due to a Colombo-centric structure in the island, the US-dominated World Bank headquartered in Washington has approved a loan of US$ 213 million on Thursday for the development of Colombo city. The loan has been granted under the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) institution of the World Bank for the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project. This is the first IBRD loan to Sri Lanka. Colombo metro ‘development’ project is completely in the hands of war-crimes-accused presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, who is also a US citizen. Immediately after the war the IMF bailed out the genocidal state by granting US$ 2600 million.
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China card misleads Indian public

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 06:38 GMT]
“The question that needs to be answered now is should the UPA government [in New Delhi] be more worried about alliance politics or China’s growing dominance in South Asia,” asks a news feature appeared in The Times of India on Tuesday. By taking a stand to vote against Sri Lanka at Geneva, the UPA government for the moment seems to have calmed the political furore. But bypassing one crisis India seems to find itself in a potentially bigger threat of leaving Sri Lanka in the hands of China, the feature said. If the thrust of the Times of India feature is to discourage India from acting on Sri Lanka by showing the China card, the media is misleading the Indian public, said an Eezham Tamil politician in the island.
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Sri Lanka orientates education to conform structural genocide

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 March 2012, 18:59 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s ‘terrorism’ professor Rohan Gunaratna was the foremost of the six “prominent professionals in the education field” cited by Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute in Colombo, as lecturing in a ‘National Conference on the Role of Education in Reconciliation’ hosted by the institute last Tuesday. The professor, lecturing on the “immense success” of Sri Lanka ‘rehabilitating’ ex-LTTE combatants despite their ‘past engagement in the killings in the North and East and outside,’ stressed on the need of schools becoming “multi-ethnic” in the island, shedding ethnic and religious segregations. This means, there can be no more schools for Tamils, like that they can’t have a territory for them, and Tamil and Muslim children will eventually be ‘minorities’ subjugated in the Sinhala-Buddhist schools of the island, commented an educationalist in Jaffna.
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Centre for Peace and Reconciliation attacked in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 March 2012, 10:30 GMT]
Four armed personnel, allegedly from the occupying Sri Lankan military's Intelligence, on Saturday attacked Tamil civilians who had gathered at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation (CPR) at Grousseault Road in Jaffna City to receive free legal assistance in their effort to locate their kith and kin whose whereabouts are not known following the undeclared arrests, abductions during the mass incarceration and white-van abductions in Jaffna peninsula and Vanni. The CPR, which is run by the Church, regularly conducts free legal aid for victims of human rights violations. The attackers beat the victims and threw dirt on them forcing them to flee the Centre. Meanwhle, SL military intelligence operatives were questioning the whereabouts of a priest of the CPR alleging that he had gone to attend the Human Rights Council sessions taking place in Geneva.
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Jayalalithaa blasts New Delhi supporting US-bailout of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2012, 19:45 GMT]
Coming hard on Indian Prime Minister’s announcement in the parliament on Monday forenoon that India is inclined to vote in favour of the US-resolution at Geneva UNHRC, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa on Monday evening described the stand as evasive and useless as it is not answering an earlier TN Assembly resolution calling for international investigation on the war crimes and genocide. According to Jayalalithaa, both New Delhi and the DMK chief Karunanidhi once again enact a drama similar to the one in the last days of the Vanni war in hoodwinking Tamils. Leaving aside seeking a commitment from Sri Lanka to report to the UNHRC on progress, the US-tabled resolution at Geneva leaves everything in the hands of Sri Lanka and harps on only implementing Sri Lanka’s own LLRC recommendations.
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India inclined to vote in favour of US resolution: Manmohan Singh

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2012, 07:36 GMT]
Following extreme pressure from all the political parties and movements in Tamil Nadu, especially after the debate following the recent follow-up documentary by the Channel-4 received its highest attention in Tamil Nadu, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday informed the Indian Parliament that India is inclined to vote in favour of the US resolution on Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Council, initial reports from New Delhi said.
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Begin next stage of struggle by burning Sri Lankan constitution: May 17 Movement

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2012, 06:04 GMT]
When the International Community and India, approaching from their point of view, think of only bringing in a regime change in Colombo, buttressing failed democracy of the State and imposing farcical solutions to the Eezham Tamil question, Tamils all over the world, despite their differences, should use the situation to internationally place their demands loud and clear in unison, in ways acceptable to the world. This only will give us the morale to bring forward our struggle in future, if the powers once again fail us. Our demands could be nothing but calling for independent international investigation and asking for UN-conducted referendum on Tamil Eelam. Symbolically answering the powers upholding the State of failed democracy, the Sri Lankan constitution should be burnt all over the world, said Mr Thirumurugan Gandhi of May 17 Movement of Tamil Nadu.
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Shavendra Silva declared "persona non grata" to British event

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2012, 15:25 GMT]
The U.K.'s United Nation Mission in New York, decided not to invite Sri Lanka's Acting Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and ex-Major General in Sri Lankan Army (SLA), Shavendra Silva, to the Commonwealth Day reception, triggering a boycott from Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN, Dr Palitha Kohona, the current co-chair of the Commonwealth Caucus in New York, media in Colombo reported.
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Tamil civil society warned US officials on LLRC danger prior to Geneva

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2012, 05:45 GMT]
“The [Sri Lankan] Government’s current activities in the North and East are challenging the very existence of the Tamil people and more time to the GOSL to implement the LLRC’s recommendations will only mean further time for the Government to play havoc in the North and East and subjugate the interests and aspirations of the Tamil people,” said leading Eezham Tamil civil society members in the island, in a letter addressed to the visiting US Under Secretary of State Maria Oetro and the Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake last month on 10 February 2012. TamilNet has received a copy of this confidential letter and releases it to the public after blacking out the names and other identity of the members for security reasons. The letter clearly outlines the grave danger of initiating the accountability process with the so-called ‘positive recommendations’ of the LLRC report.
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‘LLRC hollow, India must use pressure to secure justice for Tamils’: Tehelka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2012, 03:03 GMT]
While a section of pro-establishment Indian media and journalists have attempted to the shield the Sri Lankan government from an external war crimes enquiry, an article published in Tehelka, an Indian magazine reputed for its investigative journalism, slams the hollowness of the LLRC citing UN panel report and referring to recently emerged images of civilians executed in cold blood when those who bear command responsibility for the atrocities have been given promotions. The article ‘Why are we not looking at these war crimes?’ dated 24 March by Tehelka’s correspondent Sai Manish further adds that future for justice for the Tamils does not lie with the pro-LLRC US resolution but “It depends more on how India can use its power to ensure that the innocent women and children who died don’t just get counted as collateral damage — as Colombo wants to make the world believe.”
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Chinese-helped new SL Naval base comes up in Vanni, targeting Palk Bay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2012, 09:45 GMT]
Sri Lanka occupying the country of Eezham Tamils opened a new naval base in the western coast of Vanni at Naachchik-kudaa facing the Palk Bay in a commanding position to target movements from the Tamil Nadu coast of India. Construction of the new naval base received Chinese help. SL navy commander Somathilake Tissanayake inaugurated the base on Monday. Meanwhile, journalists who have gone for the annual church fete at the uninhabited islet Kachcha-theevu in the Palk Bay has noticed a permanently built SL naval base there. The construction material of this base and a newly coming up jetty there were found with Chinese markings. Two SL naval ships are always stationed near Kachcha-theevu. The attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen deploying Sinhala gangs from the south are operated by SLN in Kachcha-theevu.
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Sinhala school students attack visiting Tamil counterparts from Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2012, 08:51 GMT]
Nations divided at the grassroot in the island despite machinations of global powers, reflected in an episode this week in which visiting students from leading schools of Jaffna were attacked by fellow Sinhala students in a cadet camp at Randamba in the Southern Province. The Sinhala military officials in the camp, rather than attending to complaints, chose to send the Jaffna school students back, with a warning not to tell anyone what had happened to them in the camp. During the decades of war, Colombo had stopped cadet programmes in the schools of Jaffna. Now as a part of its militarisation and structural genocide programme Colombo has conceived the idea of obligatory military training to all university entrants and reintroduction of cadet programme in the leading schools of Jaffna.
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