M K Narayanan declares war on Tamil diaspora

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 11:54 GMT]
Addressing Director Generals and Inspector Generals of Police Monday, India’s National Security Advisor and one of the architects of Indian Establishment’s policy towards Eezham Tamils, M K Narayanan, told them of the need to keep watch against Tamil diaspora reviving the LTTE and cautioned them to be prepared for any eventuality. “The funding lines of the LTTE are still intact and there is always a possibility that disgruntled elements in the Tamil diaspora across the globe could get together to help the terror outfit regroup and rearm,” said M K Narayanan, according to The Economic Times, Tuesday. His fear stems from his own policy 'haunting him back,' commented Tamil circles in the diaspora.
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Court further remands 4 returnees from Fiji

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 11:09 GMT]
Colombo Chief Magistrate Nishantha Hapuarachchi Tuesday ordered further remand till September 22 for three Tamils and a Sinhalese who were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officials at the Katunayake International Airport on their return from Fiji islands, rejecting their bail applications. CID told court said that the suspects had immigrated to the Fiji Islands for employment and the Fiji Islands authority had deported them.
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War and disregard make Tamils hard and determined

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 08:44 GMT]
“After looking at the people dying and dead bodies everywhere, it is like nothing threatens me any more, it is like I have had the hard time in my life and I think I am prepared to take up whatever happens in life now,” says Damilvany Gnanakumar, an Eezham Tamil of British citizenship, who witnessed war and internment camp in the island of Sri Lanka. "I'm not that old Vany that sits down and cries for little things. I'm stronger now after going through and seeing all that problem. My mind is clear now," she told Gethin Chamberlain of The Guardian in an interview Tuesday, asking at the same time, what have the people done wrong? Why are they going through this, why is the international government not speaking up for them?
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Colombo's paranoid secrecy

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 September 2009, 16:20 GMT]
"Why must the military be in control of the camps, why not civilian agencies? Why can't visitors enter the camps? Why are journalists barred? Why are international agencies kept out? Why is it taking the courts so long to make a straightforward order to allow members of parliament to visit the camps?" and quoting Mangala Samaraweera, "I can walk into any prison at will and meet any criminal, but I am not allowed to meet these people held in detention for no reason," Prof Kumar David, in an opinion column in Sunday's Lakbima, writes, "[t]he reasons offered for this paranoid secrecy varied from the need to hide human rights violations to calculations relating to the upcoming elections. I think it will be some time before the real reason comes seeping out."
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US's war crimes report, a canary in coalmine - Rapp

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 September 2009, 11:44 GMT]
With United Nations remaining impotent to act carry out investigations into the conduct of Sri Lanka military during the last several months of the war, a report to be released by the United States State Department on September 21, remains, perhaps the last credible instrument in the hands of the West to begin to find the truth on the allegations of war-crimes by the Sri Lanka Government and the Liberation Tigers, a spokesperson for a US-based activist group said. Stephen Rapp, US's ambassdor at large for War Crimes Issues (WCI) told Time that his office is responsible "to collect information on ongoing atrocities... [and] give a signal [when] something serious is occuring."
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Rajapakses' incipient personality cult would shame a Chinese communist - Guardian

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 September 2009, 03:20 GMT]
In the second article in two days, UK's Guardian, warned Monday that by making Tamils feel newly repressed Sri Lanka is sowing seeds of future rebellian, noting that "in the months that have followed [the military victory] there has been little magnanimity, let alone reconciliation. Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians are still being kept in camps surrounded by barbed wire." The article further said that "Colombo's streets are littered with so many pictures of president Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brothers that the incipient personality cult would shame a Chinese communist. The triumphalism in Colombo means those who dare to question the government are deemed Tiger collaborators, terrorist sympathisers or Tamil secessionists."
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Starvation, rape, killings, torture in Sri Lanka camps, Murphy tells Australia parliament

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 September 2009, 12:04 GMT]
Noting that "hundreds of thousands of innocent Tamils displaced by the military offensive are living in camps in appalling conditions. Moreover, foreign media channels have reported horrifying evidence of the worst violations of human rights, including starvation, rape, killings and torture. International agencies are calling for full access to these camps in order to provide life-saving treatment and medical supplies and to allow free and independent media access," parliamentarian, John Murphy, appealed at the House of Representatives Thursday, "to all governments of the world who have respect for human rights, the rule of law and free speech to join together and call on the government of Sri Lanka to right the wrongs forthwith."
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Police arrest 5 Tamil, Muslim civilians in Puththa’lam

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 September 2009, 10:29 GMT]
Puththa'lam Police Sunday arrested six civilians including three Tamils and two Muslims who were staying in a house at Thampapanni in Puththa’lam police division. Police said they rushed to the site and arrested them on reports that a group of unidentified persons from Murungkkan in Mannaar district were staying in Thampapanni.
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Documentation of Norwegian Tamil mandate released

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 September 2009, 07:49 GMT]
Comprehensive documentation of a referendum conducted among Eezham Tamils of Norway is now released in the form of a 48-page publication by Utrop newspaper, which conducted the poll on 10th of May this year. In the referendum, 99 percent of the voters endorsed the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution of 1976, calling for an independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam in the traditional homeland of Eezham Tamils in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. 90 percent of eligible voters in Oslo, and an average 80 percent of them in entire Norway turned out for the voting, a first of its kind exercise in that country and among the world diaspora of Eezham Tamils. The documentation is widely seen inspiring global democratic efforts of Eezham Tamils for their liberation.
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Rivers of sewege cascade through tents in Menik farm - Guardian

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 September 2009, 01:55 GMT]
Cataloguing emerging stories of families destroyed by war and separated through internment in Sri Lanka's fortified camps, UK Guardian's Sunday story describes feeble attempts by the Government of Sri Lanka to resettle refugees criticized as "chaotic and underfunded." Malnutrition-related complications have resulted in increased deaths, the paper notes, and adds that doctors in Vavuniyaa have warned of "impending disaster if conditions do not improve." Humanitarian workers recently allowed in to Menik Farm had criticized "persistent water shortage," and described precarious health, inhumane conditions as "heavy rain sent rivers of sewage cascading through tents and tin sheds," the paper said.
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Boycott Sri Lanka campaign expands to multiple US cities

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 September 2009, 05:22 GMT]
North American Tamils expanded their boycott campaign over Sri Lanka goods to over a dozen cities across the US and Canada, targeting GAP and Victoria's Secret stores on Saturday, youth organizers of the event said. Leveraging the "No to Sri Lanka" website run by Canadian youth activists to spread the campaign message, the organizers held protests in San Francisco, Chicago, North Carolina, Boston, Atlanta, New York city and in several Canadian cities. The protesters stood inside malls, outside shopping centers, and some in the median of busy streets, urging ethical shoppers to resist buying garments made in Sri Lanka.
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Executions: Sri Lanka refuting processed video, not original

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 September 2009, 09:32 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s technological refutation of the authenticity of a video of Army (SLA) soldiers executing unarmed Tamil men broadcast by Channel 4 in August is based on a processed video-file taken from the broadcaster’s website, rather than the original mobile phone footage, experts said. An analysis commissioned by US-based pressure group Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) of the original video distributed by Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) and Sri Lanka’s subsequent technological refutation says Colombo’s experts looked “at a second generation transcoded video to derive erroneous conclusions.”
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India denies visa to US rights activist

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 September 2009, 03:47 GMT]
Indian embassy in New York denied a visa to US-based humanitarian worker and a critic of the Sri Lanka Government, Dr Ellyn Shander to travel to New Delhi to address the Delhi Tamil Sangam on 20th September, Deccan Chronicle reported. Shander was to address the Delhi meeting with MDMK General Secretary Vaiko, after attending meeting in Bangalore with the local Tamil Sangam on 15th of September.
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BBC: UN patience wears thin in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 12:59 GMT]
The United Nations says it cannot continue to indefinitely fund the sprawling, overcrowded and militarized camp in which Sri Lanka has interned hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians. Speaking to the BBC, the UN's Sri Lanka chief, Neil Buhne, said people should be allowed to leave the barbed wire-ringed Manik Farm camp. Mr Buhne also criticised Sri Lanka’s denial of access for the International Red Cross to 10,000 Tamils whom the government calls LTTE suspects. Meanwhile the UN says it is extremely concerned for two staff members arrested by Sri Lankan authorities in June, being amid reports they were mistreated during the early days of their detention.
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US bemoans Sri Lanka inaction on camps, reconciliation

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 09:02 GMT]
The United States this week criticised the Sri Lankan government’s continued internment of hundreds of thousands of Tamils and Colombo’s not taking steps towards a political reconciliation. “President Rajapaksa did meet on Monday with representatives of the Tamil National Alliance, but in general there have been few other concrete steps to re-unite the country and begin to heal the wounds of a long war in such a way that all Sri Lankans feel they enjoy equal rights and opportunities,” US Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake said Wednesday.
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Remove SLA camps, HSZ, checkpoints from NE - Sampanthan

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 05:19 GMT]
R. Sampanthan, parliamentary group leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), told parliament Thursday that the government could not cite any reason for the delay in resettling hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Tamils in their own places in Vanni region. "High Security Zones (HSZs) should be removed from the north and east. Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camps and check points should be dismantled immediately to restore normalcy in the provinces," Mr.Sampanthan said while speaking in parliament Thursday opposing the motion moved by the Government of Sri Lanka to extend the State of Emergency for another month.
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Western inaction the building blocks of Chinese vassal state - Former Australian Diplomat

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 00:22 GMT]
Nations operating behind the Sri Lankan Governments’ manipulation of the post 9-11 global climate in equating 'Tamil and terrorist' continue to ignore their humanitarian obligations to the point of complicity accused former Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh, referring to the imprisonment of 300,000 Tamil refugees in government camps. Speaking at a forum held at The University of Sydney last week, Haigh described the actions of the Sri Lankan Government as one of “pure vindictiveness…towards people who are totally dispossessed and totally powerless”, before warning that the island may become “a vassal state of China.. not averse to carrying out acts of terror and in the future that may be directed towards India in ways to be determined by the Chinese".
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No change in dire camp conditions - CAFOD

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 September 2009, 11:41 GMT]
As monsoon floods loom, CAFOD (Catholic Fund for Overseas Development) has called on Sri Lanka’s government “to end the forced confinement” of hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians. “Nothing has changed over the last three months for the people that are living in the camps. They are overcrowded with poor sanitary conditions and inadequate health care,” CAFOD’s head of international programmes said this week. Another CAFOD official who visited one of the barbed-wire ringed militarised camps told the BBC this week that “a potential crisis could brew there if the rains come through and those camps are still as congested as they are [now].”
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Channel-4 broadcast of internment camp conditions irks Colombo

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 September 2009, 00:11 GMT]
Following the broadcast of shocking video footage showing Sri Lanka Government soldiers executing Tamils stripped naked and hands tied behind their backs, British Television Channel-4 Monday revealed a new film that showed Tamil "victims of Sri Lanka's war suffering poor conditions in UN-funded camps." The new footage, allegedly taken by a mobile phone, was sent to Channel-4 from the group War Without Witness, and was reportedly shot two weeks ago in Vavuniyaa, in northern Sri Lanka, where more than 300,000 Tamils are being interned in Sri Lanka military supervised camps. Sri Lanka's spokesperson, while insisting that United Nations is active inside there [the camps], responded that the malnutrition statistics reflect "Western standards," indeed malnutrition is present in other parts of Sri Lanka, and also that the situation was worse under the Liberation Tigers.
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SLA massacred civilians in bunkers - medical worker

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 September 2009, 08:57 GMT]
The advancing Sri Lanka Army massacred civilians by paving their bunkers with tanks, by throwing explosives inside the bunkers and by shooting the injured, says a medical worker who came out of Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal during the last days of the war, became incarcerated in a camp and now escaped the island. "Around a hundred thousand captured civilians herded to Mullaiththeevu were kept in rows within barbed wires, most of the time without water or food under the hot sun, and were bullied and ill treated with arrogance," he writes in a lengthy note that reached TamilNet this week. The note in Tamil was provided by the Norwegian Tamils Health Organisation (NTHO), urging TamilNet not to reveal the identity of the health worker for reasons of his security.
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