Colombo backed Muslim group threatens Tamils to leave their lands in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 January 2012, 17:11 GMT]
A gang of Tamil-speaking Muslim persons with the backing of government politicians has been engaged in a campaign of threat against Tamil families of Upcountry origin residing in U'rukaamam in Kiththu'l area in the Ea'raavoor Chengkaladi DS division to leave their place and seek residence elsewhere. U'rukaamam-Kiththu'l area is located along Chengkaladi-Badulla highway (A-15). The villagers are of upcountry Tamil origin who fled from their area in the SL state-sponsored anti Tamil pogrom of 1957 and had settled in U'rukaamam-Kiththu'l area after clearing the forest. The villagers were also affected in 1983 anti Tamil ‘Black-July’ pogrom.
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Award winning filmmaker presents documentary on exiled Sinhala, Tamil journalists

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 22:45 GMT]
‘Silenced Voices – Tales of Sri Lankan Journalists in Exile’, a new documentary by Norwegian filmmaker Beate Arnestad, who directed and produced the award winning documentary ‘My Daughter the Terrorist’ in 2007, is to be pre-premiered in Oslo, Norway, on 09 February. The screening of ‘Silenced Voices’, which is about journalists, who contributed to international exposure of the internationally abetted genocidal war without witnesses, will be followed by a debate featuring journalists Bashana Abeywardane, the former chief editor of Hiru weekly, Frances Harrison, the former BBC foreign correspondent to Sri Lanka and Sverre Tom Radøy, a Norwegian journalist. The film features Mr. Bashana Abeywardene, his wife Sharmila Logeswaram, Sonali Wickrematunge and A. Lokeesan, TamilNet wartime correspondent, who was reporting from 2005 to April 2009 from Vanni.
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Chaos inside Welikade prison, Tamil prisoners shifted, Fonseka safe

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 12:18 GMT]
Tamil political prisoners detained in the Magazine prison in Welikada have been removed to the main prison complex for safe custody following tense situation created by suspects who are involved in drug trafficking offences, prison sources said.
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Unidentified gang ransacks Tamil NGO office in Colombo

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 12:14 GMT]
The Colombo office of "Vi'luthu," a non-governmental organization that has been implementing development projects for the welfare of the underprivileged people in the North and East by providing free legal advice and conducting courses in journalism, was ransacked by an unidentified group of persons in the late hours of Monday or early hours of Tuesday, according to an official of the NGO.
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Kalam risks his image in salvaging New Delhi in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 07:04 GMT]
While India’s former president Abdul Kalam has real work to do in addressing his own Establishment in New Delhi what brought him to genocidal Colombo and its India-partnered colony in the North and East of the island, wonders genocide-affected Eezham Tamils. Mr. Kalam may not be worried about criticism against him, as his interview to The Hindu has shown. But the general public is worried about India’s projected ‘sane’ faces getting more and more discredited, paving way for people distrusting any face that come from India in future, comments an academic in Jaffna. Kalam and India know that the deception will not work with Eezham Tamils but the mission is more aimed at engineering opinion in Tamil Nadu for the ‘Asian Model’ the Indian imperialism is experimenting in partnership with Rajapaksa, the academic further said.
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Colombo-backed gang threatens resettled Tamil families in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 02:59 GMT]
A gang of more than one hundred fifty Sinhalese who were brought to Channaar village in Mannaar district on Sunday by a government minister had threatened resettled Tamil families to leave the village immediately to give room for the majority community. The intimidation of Tamil families who have suffered in the conflict and relatives of the killed LTTE cadres had been engineered by Minister Rischard Bathiudeen and Maanthai West Divisional Secretary with the blessing of the Colombo government, according to reports emerging from the area.
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Kalam unaware of Tamil fishermen's plight

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 January 2012, 23:56 GMT]
Jaffna District fisheries societies representatives on Monday urged the visiting former Indian President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, who was in Jaffna as part of his visit to the island, to impress upon the Indian government to facilitate the Eezham Tamil fishermen to resume their livelihood by containing the Indian poachers who destroy the nets of the local fishermen and cause serious destruction to the environment necessary for sustaining the fisheries industry. Dr. Kalam was listening to the plight of the fishermen in the peninsula as if he was totally unaware of the decades long dispute in the sea and the destruction caused to the Eezham Tamil fishermen by the intruding Indian trawlers that engage in poaching close to the coast of Jaffna peninsula. The visiting former president of India, later visited the University of Jaffna and gave a speech at a fully packed Kailasapathy auditorium.
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SL Navy militarises Jaffna lagoon

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 January 2012, 21:37 GMT]
Sri Lanka Navy and Army have denied resettled fishermen along a major part of Jaffna lagoon from accessing their sea from Sunday, citing training purposes of the military at a major cantonment of the occupying SL military at Allaarai on Chaavakachcheari - Kachchaay Road. The SL military has blocked the fishing boats from Koayilkudiyiruppu on Sunday giving instructions to the fishermen that the entire stretch from Chavakachcheari to Kachchaay will remain blocked until further notice, representatives of fishermen from Koayilkudiyiruppu in Chavakachcheari told TamilNet Monday. The SL military has also said that access to sea will be blocked five to ten days every month in future.
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Buddhist viharas grab Tamil lands for Sinhalicisation in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 January 2012, 21:28 GMT]
Hundreds of acres of lands are being alienated to Buddhist Viharas in Trincomalee district on the instruction of the Colombo government and at the request of the heads of such Viharas, civil sources in Trincomalee told TamilNet. After the war, the SL military-led administration in the district had allocated initially 2 acres per new Buddhist stupa in Tamil areas at Pulmoaddai, Ilaththik-ku'lam, Thiriyaay, Chempiyan-malai in Kuchchave'li DS division. Later, more lands are being allocated at the request of the heads of these Viharas, who aim Sinhalicisation of the Tamil areas. Informed sources said upto 400 acres have been alienated for this purpose.
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TNA should use its Tamil national mandate: Bishop of Mannaar

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 January 2012, 15:32 GMT]
The aim of the Tamil civil groups’ memorandum dated 13 December 2011 and addressed to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) was in fact to strengthen the Tamil national polity and its democratically mandated representatives. It was not meant to weaken the TNA. There is a mandate given by the people to the TNA about continuing talks with the SL government and that the TNA in its course of action should stick to its mandate is the thrust of the memorandum, clarified the Bishop of Mannaar, Most Reverend Rayappu Joseph, in a press release issued on last Monday on behalf of the civil society signatories of the memorandum.
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Krishna visit patterns Indo-Sri Lanka deceit on Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 January 2012, 21:23 GMT]
There was no enthusiasm or expectation in Jaffna on the recent visit by India's Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, media circles said. Civil groups in Jaffna also reflected the same opinion. Just as the visits of MK Narayanan and Shiv Shankar Menon patterned the course of the genocidal war, the visits of the Indian dignitaries in the subsequent phase show a pattern in consolidating the structural genocide of the nation of Eezham Tamils in order to facilitate overlapping interests of India's imperialism and the militarized Sinhala state in the island. Rather than pointlessly expecting India's 'development' help or 'mediation' role, all shades of Tamil polity should firmly demand India to get out, if India's imperialism is incapable of finding any overlapping interest in conceding the right to self determination of the genocide-affected nation of Eezham Tamils, civil circles in Jaffna said.
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Tamil couple knifed to death in Vavuniyaa resettled village

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 January 2012, 12:27 GMT]
A husband and his wife were knifed to death on Thursday at a resettled village, Pan'rikkeitha-ku'lam in Vavuniyaa district. Kanthaiah Muthiah, 67, and his wife were living in a temporary hut with tin sheets, and have been doing paddy cultivation in the resettled village when the murder occurred.
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Tamil plaintiffs oppose US Government's stand on Rajapakse immunity

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 January 2012, 01:41 GMT]
Judge Kotelly of District Court of District of Columbia, after considering the Tamil plaintiffs' motion asking the court to allow the plaintiffs to file a response to the United States suggestion of immunity to Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse, issued an order Tuesday granting permission to plaintiffs' attorney Bruce Fein to file the response on or before 3rd February, and to the United States Government to file a reply on a before 13th February. In the process, Judge Kotelly rejected defendant Rajapakse's opposition to plaintiffs request to be permitted to respond to the U.S. Government's suggestion of immunity.
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Rejected asylum seeker kills herself and her child in Norway

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 January 2012, 23:14 GMT]
A 24-year-old Eezham Tamil asylum seeker has set fire to herself and her 20-month-old baby child Tuesday at an asylum camp in western Norway. The Norwegian newspaper Bergens Tidende reported Thursday that the mother succumbed to her injuries the same day and the son on Wednesday after doctors fought to save their lives. The future was very bleak for the victim, who was living in Norway since 2006 undergoing a lot of suffering. One week before her death, her 18-year-old sister was found dead in Jaffna.
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Tamil sovereignty alone can check protracted genocide: Jose Maria Sison

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 January 2012, 13:28 GMT]
“The Eezham people have a very direct obligation of fighting for their own sovereignty against a state that presumes to have a unitary power over them,” stressed veteran Filipino left ideologue, Prof. Jose Maria Sison. In an exclusive interview to TamilNet on Sunday, Prof. Sison spoke on the questions of sovereignty of the Eezham Tamil nation, the protracted nature of genocide that Sri Lanka imposes on Tamils in their homelands, the principled position of leftists on the national question, and on the imperative to look beyond both the human rights and reconciliation paradigm. Prof. Sison, a long standing activist of the left movement in Philippines, criticised the Sri Lankan government’s military strategy as ‘barbaric’ and western governments for supporting this, and welcomed the Tamil Sovereignty Cognition declaration that aims to build solidarity among progressive forces.
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Indian FM exerts pressure on TNA, wants Sampanthan in Rajapaksa's PSC

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 January 2012, 18:11 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance has been pressurised by the visiting Indian Foreign Minister S. Krishna to take part in the SL Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC), sources close to TNA told TamilNet Wednesday. At the same time, demanding the TNA to come through the PSC farse, the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's delegation that has been engaging with the TNA in fruitless talks, boycotted scheduled talks this time for the second day. Reacting to the behaviour of the Sri Lankan government, which has failed to meet the TNA as scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday, Mr. M.K. Sivajilingam, the political leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), which is a constituent party of the TNA, said Wednesday that the Tamil alliance should at least now realise that there is no point in talking about the 13 amendment, or something plus or minus to it.
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Fishermen from South deployed in recent attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 22:34 GMT]
Five Sinhalese fishermen from South engaging in trawler fishing in the seas off Neduntheevu (Delf) in Jaffna arrested last week for attacking fishermen from Tamil Nadu, have been released together with the two Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Oorkaavattu'rai (Kayts) court. The latest episode has revealed the involvement of Sinhalese fishermen engaging in deep sea fishing in the Northern seas behind violent attacks on intruding fishermen from Tamil Nadu, legal sources in Kayts said. The two fishermen from Tamil Nadu narrated the courts how they were attacked by the Sri Lankan fishermen. In the meantime, informed sources in Jaffna said the latest episode was a diversion maneuver to hide the involvement of Sri Lanka Navy operated gangs in the attacks against Indian fishermen.
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‘Galle literary festival, backed by establishments, gives mask of normalcy to genocidal Sri Lanka’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 06:49 GMT]
The Galle Literary Festival, which is scheduled to begin Wednesday is reported to involve diverse participants with the funding from a variety of corporate houses and Western embassies in Colombo. But the prevailing opinion in Eezham Tamil circles is that such occasions and the participation of high profile writers only serve the purpose of providing cultural and ideological legitimacy to the Sri Lankan state and the structural violence it imposes on the Tamil people. While the moral thing to do would be to boycott this literary festival that gives a mask of normalcy to a genocidal state, the least the socially and politically committed writers who are attending the event can do is to recognize that what Eezham Tamil nation has faced and is facing genocide, a Tamil academic in Colombo told TamilNet.
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Toronto declares January 2012 Tamil Heritage Month

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 04:11 GMT]
City Council of Toronto, Canada's largest city issued a proclamation declaring January 2012 "Tamil Heritage Month," providing the opportunity "to showcase and share the community's vibrant culture and traditions and longstanding history with Toronto residents and visitors." Toronto's Mayor Rob Ford signed the proclamation on behalf of the City Council.
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Indian Foreign Minister Krishna visits Colombo, holds talks with TNA

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 January 2012, 23:02 GMT]
India’s External Affairs Minister Mr. S.M. Krishna arrived in Colombo Monday evening on a four-day official visit. He was scheduled to meet the parliamentary delegation of the Tamil National Alliance the same day evening around 6:30 p.m. at Taj Hotel in Colombo, according to TNA leader Mr.R.Sampanthan.
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