MIA tweets on Channel-4, creates wide war-crimes publicity

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2012, 03:49 GMT]
Maya Arulpragasam (popularly known as MIA), the Jaffna born music phenom, created unexpected world-wide publicity for the Channel-4's recently released documentary on Sri Lanka's war-crimes when she entered a tweet debate with CNN's Anderson Cooper when she tweeted her followers suggesting "they also tune in," and then singled out Cooper, tweeting, "someone should make @andersoncooper watch it / film it and show the world what happens when respected journos get it wrong #killingfields." In her following tweet, she said that Cooper had called her "a terrorist for speaking out."
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Eezham Tamils demonstrate outside US Embassy in London

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 March 2012, 23:08 GMT]
Targeting the US draft resolution to be tabled in Geneva later this month, hundreds of Tamils gathered outside the US Embassy in London on Friday demanding that an independent international investigation into the genocide of Eezham Tamils in their homeland be included in the resolution at the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council. Arranged at short notice by the Tamil Coordinating Committee UK (TCCUK), the demonstration drew a cross section of Eezham Tamils in the UK, including significant number of youth. Demonstrators held placards that identified Eezham Tamils as a nation and asked the international community to initiate a UN-sponsored referendum to resolve their national question.
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Eezham independence is demand of Tamil fanatics, says Kuldip Nayar

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 March 2012, 18:07 GMT]
“There is hardly any Indian who supports the division of Sri Lanka as a fringe of Tamil fanatics demand,” said Punjab-born, Indian journalist turned diplomat and politician, Kuldip Nayar, writing to Colombo’s The Island on Wednesday. Assuring Colombo that despite its China-Pakistan intimacy, India will not change its helping friendship, Nayar wants Rajapaksa to present his case to the India society, by means like press conferences in New Delhi, as presently he is not seen in good light. Some days ago, a Tamil media in Chennai lamented that the case of Eezham Tamils is not known in India beyond Tamil Nadu. Unless Tamil Nadu has the guts to tell in ways heard in the rest of India that genocide-affected Eezham Tamils can’t survive without independence, Nayars would continue with their deception, said a Tamil politician in the island.
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HR organisations urged to attend plight of ex-militants needing asylum

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 March 2012, 05:55 GMT]
While Amnesty International and other international organisations have started to look at widespread and systematic mistreatment of detained former LTTE combatants in the hands of genocidal Sri Lanka, the organisations should also attend to the way some countries have enacted laws to create conditions of detention to asylum-seeking former Tamil militants, deport them or detain them in constant fear of deportation, and at the same time encourage and assist the handling of the Tamil militants by the genocidal state, urged Tamil civil activists in the island. In the context of the island, the human rights question and rehabilitation of all ex-militants could ultimately be handled with satisfaction and dignity, only when the Eezham Tamils are restored with their sovereignty, the activists further said.
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US resolution offers bailout to Rajapaksa: Brian Senewiratne

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 March 2012, 17:42 GMT]
The US-tabled resolution, which has more to do with geopolitics than human rights, “effectively offers Rajapaksa a way of ending international criticism and the danger of government leaders and its Armed Forces facing war crimes charges,” says Brian Senewiratne, a renowned physician and an Australia based Sinhala expatriate in a 41-page long document released on Thursday. “Concerned people, in particular the expatriate Tamil community, waiting for the UN ‘to do something’, are living in a dream world. The UN and its bodies do not act this way. They never have – an abysmal record of failure, which is not about to change.” However, the latest follow-up documentary by the Channel-4 could be even more damaging for the GoSL than the previous one, according to Dr. Brian Senewiratne.
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Ram journalism faces criticism in JNU for pro-Sri Lanka bias, endorsing genocide

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 March 2012, 06:04 GMT]
Activists of Delhi Tamil Students’ Union, Democratic Students Union, Students for Resistance and other common students raised slogans against N. Ram accusing him of being a ‘media fascist’ and ‘a stooge of Rajapaksa’ at a public meeting in JNU after his reply to a question on The Hindu’s role in whitewashing the Sri Lankan state genocide of the Eezham Tamils, wherein he had extensively blamed the LTTE. The meeting on ‘Paid news and media ethics’ was organized at JNU on Wednesday by the Student’s Federation of India, which is the students wing of the CPI(M). The fact that N.Ram and The Hindu have unethically manipulated news to cover up the war crimes of Colombo makes them complicit in the genocide committed on the Eezham Tamils, a Tamil Nadu research scholar in JNU told TamilNet.
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New Delhi’s ‘historical’ Lanka relations outweigh Tamil Nadu aspirations

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 16:43 GMT]
Reading out a statement in the Rajya Sabha of Indian parliament on Wednesday, answering the demand of Tamil Nadu political parties that India should vote against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC, Foreign Minister SM Krishna said, “Any assertions on our part may have implications on our historically friendly relations with a neighbouring country.” Krishna was rather harping on New Delhi’s continued ‘engagement’ with Colombo. Tamil Nadu ruling party AIADMK’s members angered by the statement walked out of the house, after tearing the statement of Krishna. Meanwhile, participating in a panel discussion in Puthiya Thalaimurai TV on Tuesday, Communist Party of India (CPI) leader, D. Pandian said that he would start reviewing his own Indian citizenship, if New Delhi votes in favour of Sri Lanka at Geneva.
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Detention without trial, Amnesty blasts Sri Lanka's rights record

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 02:48 GMT]
"Hundreds of people languish in arbitrary, illegal and often incommunicado detention in Sri Lanka, vulnerable to torture and extrajudicial execution, despite the end of the country’s long conflict... arbitrary and illegal detention and enforced disappearances remain routine in Sri Lanka, where human rights abuses of all types go uninvestigated and unpunished," Amnesty International said in a new report "Locked away: Sri Lanka's security detainees," released Tuesday.
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Onus focuses on India

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 01:38 GMT]
Even though diffusing, deviating and hijacking the need to address the crux of the crisis in Sri Lanka, the US-tabled resolution at the UNHRC and the associated diplomatic deliberations and muscle-flexing seem to be artfully fixing the onus on India, in lines with the long legacy of Indo-US competition ruining the aspirations of genocide-affected Eezham Tamils. India could seize the opportunity and could come out with alternative righteous options to counter the trap, but the guilty-filled Congress regime is incapable of them. As New Delhi’s stand has been repeatedly proved an impediment to justice in the island and at the same time New Delhi is also not doing anything on its own other than shopping there, the question comes whether removal of the Congress regime is a prerequisite to India’s progress in the region and in world affairs, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Boyle warns Tamil diaspora against "Stall and Delay" diplomacy at UNHRC

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 March 2012, 23:55 GMT]
Noting the U.S. ambassador to UNHRC Eileen Donahoe's statement that the resolution forwarded by the U.S. has been toned down from an earlier version that sought a government action plan on accountability and reconciliation by June, to now calling for the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner to report to the council a year from now on the steps Sri Lanka has taken," Professor Boyle, an expert in international law and a keen observer of Sri Lanka politics, said the U.S. Government is going along with the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) strategy to run the clock out on the Tamils, just as the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians with USA support. The Tamil diaspora and supporters like us should not fall into this trap, but instead come up with a entirely new strategy."
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Grassroot Diaspora unites, upholds Tamil sovereignty, denounces LLRC-based resolution

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 March 2012, 18:58 GMT]
A coalition of 12 grassroot Eezham Tamil Diaspora organisations all over the world, on Tuesday, jointly urged the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to compel Colombo to free all Tamils in detention, withdraw all of its armed forces from the Tamil homeland and report back on completion by the 20th session. The organisations, consisting of democratically elected country councils, all the country branches of the Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) and Tamil Coordinating Committees (TCC) “deeply regretted” the decision of the United States to show regard for the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) and called upon the UN to initiate an “immediate independent international investigation into the genocide of Eelam Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka” and urged the apex body to conduct a referendum with a free and sovereign state of Tamil Eelam as “an explicit option”.
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LLRC will only legitimise Sinhala occupation of Tamil homeland: British Academic

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2012, 13:29 GMT]
Even as some diaspora groups who went to Geneva have unwittingly welcomed the US resolution and ‘constructive recommendations’ of the fundamentally flawed LLRC set-up to cover the protracted genocide of the Eezham Tamils, Dr. Andrew Higginbottom strongly affirmed that the LLRC will only entrench Sinhala state rule over Tamil territories and provide it a fraudulent legitimacy to do so. Speaking at Geneva last Monday, Dr. Higginbottom, lecturer in Politics and Human Rights at Kingston University, London, criticized the injustice of the powers that are pro-LLRC. “The debate should not be whether the cup is half full or half empty, which is the debate taking place between the two blocs at the UN. The problem is that what is in the cup is poison, it really does not matter so much if it is a bit fuller or not,” he said, noting that what drives the US is not humanitarianism but power politics.
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Win TV discussion sets Tamil perspective straight on US-tabled resolution, video released

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2012, 12:01 GMT]
While manoeuvres by establishments are being staged in the diaspora so as to contain them within the reconciliation paradigm at the current Geneva UNHRC sessions, the discussions opened in a Win TV programme ‘Neethiyin Kural’ on Friday has highlighted several issues which diaspora activists need to consider, political observers in Chennai said. The discussion between Prof. Dheeran, Thiyagu and Pugazhenthi, moderated by anchor CR Baskaran, delves into how and why of the tactical manipulations of the Tamils by the Western powers which under a guise of concern for human rights, are only hoodwinking the Tamils into accepting the legitimacy of the LLRC report and the unitary Sri Lankan state. TamilNet is uploading the entire video of the programme in Tamil for viewers’ benefit.
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Without international investigation accused will become judge: CPI

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 22:25 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu Assistant Secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI), Mr C. Mahendran in an interview to Junior Vikatan this week, rejected a statement by the Marxist Communist Party (CPM) central committee member and parliamentarian, TK Rangarajan saying that there is no need for an international investigation on Sri Lanka. Mr Rangarajan’s statement has found opposition even inside his party. Commenting, Mahendran said, he was surprised and he didn’t understand that in what sense Rangarajan had made the statement. Rangarajan should realise that expecting Sri Lanka to conduct the investigations is like appointing the murderer as the judge to deliver justice, Mahendran said.
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We always requested international investigation: TNA’s Suresh Premachandran

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 18:40 GMT]
“We have been to various countries like United State of America, Great Britain, Canada and South Africa, and we requested those countries that there must be an international investigation on the accountability, because the LLRC report does not have anything about the accountability as such,” said TNA parliamentarian Mr Suresh Premachandran in conducting a press meet at the TNA office, which is also the EPRLF office, in Jaffna on Sunday. On TNA’s talks with the SL government, Premachandran said Colombo has not yet fulfilled an understanding between Sampanthan and Rajapaksa that a bilateral agreement on solutions should precede before the TNA naming participants to the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC). Without third party mediation the talks are futile, as SL doesn’t want to settle the problem through power sharing, Premachandran said.
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Salvadoran Ex-defense minister convicted of torture, ordered deported

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 13:46 GMT]
A U.S. immigration judge has ruled that there are sufficient grounds to begin deportation proceedings against a former Salvadoran defense minister for his alleged involvement in torture and extrajudicial killings in the Central American country in the 1980s, Reuters reported. Center for Justice & Accountability (CJA), a human rights group involved in the case, praised the ruling saying it was "the first judicial affirmation of Mr Casanova's role in those horrendous crimes."
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LLRC-based resolution extremely disappointing: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 11:37 GMT]
The US-tabled resolution at UNHRC, based on the fundamentally flawed LLRC recommendations, is extremely disappointing and counter-productive, said Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, leader of Tamil National People's Front (TNPF), in a press meet held at the party office in Jaffna on Saturday. The resolution envisages an accused in the violation of international humanitarian law to become the investigator of the crime. If the LLRC findings are going to be the ‘starting point’ for any future prospects, chances of progress are difficult. Rather than keeping the expectations of the grieved party at the bare minimum, the resolution should begin with the UNSG panel report. What need investigation are the genocide of 60 years culminating into the war and the on-going structural genocide. Justice could come only from independent international investigation, he said.
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Tamil plaintiffs to appeal ruling on war crimes case against Rajapakse

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 March 2012, 16:37 GMT]
Bruce Fein, the attorney for the three Tamil plaintiffs who filed war-crimes charges against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse, said Saturday that his clients have given consent to file an appeal against the ruling by the District Court of District of Columbia. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said in the Court opinion that she had to dismiss the case because the Obama administration had said Rajapakse was immune from litigation as a foreign head of state. The appeal will be heard by a panel of three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after the notice of appeal is filed within 30 days of the lower court ruling on the case.
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SLA re-confiscates land ‘declared’ resettled in Jaffna HSZ

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 March 2012, 11:56 GMT]
The Sinhala state occupying the country of Eezham Tamils will never observe any of the ‘reconciliation’ hoodwink it simulates to the outside world. This becomes explicitly evident with the Sri Lanka military re-occupying villages ‘declared’ for resettlement in the Valikaamam High Security Zone, to create an extensive and fenced militarized region along the northern coast of Jaffna, news sources in Jaffna exposed. Several traditional villages of Jaffna in the fertile red-soil belt will be lost forever in the creation of an extensive Sinhala military region in the most strategic and economically important part of the country of Eezham Tamils, and civil officials in Jaffna are gagged to open their mouths on the blatant grab that takes place after showcasing resettlement to the world, news sources further said.
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Tamil Nadu activists caution diaspora of the US-resolution ploy

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 March 2012, 00:07 GMT]
Diaspora Tamils, who have witnessed several setbacks, are made to believe that they should welcome and promote anything that looks like a buoy to hold on. This is wrong and Diaspora groups should think before being carried away in an imposed trend to welcome such ploys, opined activists from Tamil Nadu belonging to various shades of polity in a flagship programme, Neethiyin Kural (Voice of Justice), in WinTV on Friday, anchored by CR Baskaran. Thoazhar Thiyagu called the resolution as an escape route being offered to Sri Lankan state by the USA. Professor Dheeran said Tamils should not be trapped once again by the joint ploy of the USA, India and Norway. Oaviyar Pukazheanthi said Tamil organisations had attributed much significance to the Geneva sessions without the knowledge of the outcome and now the draft resolution clearly exposes the agenda seeking bailout of the SL state.
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