Animosity of Tamils will not help India’s maritime ambitions

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2009, 16:46 GMT]
Dominating the Indian Ocean, the shores of which are shared by 47 countries, has been the long-cherished dream of India ever since its independence. As China entering into a competition, the Indian Ocean is fast emerging as the new hotspot of Sino-Indian rivalry, says an article appeared Wednesday in Pakistan Observer. India’s security concerns as well as its needs to assert as a world power may be justifiable, but it is making a grave blunder in earning the animosity of Tamils, which is not going to help in its maritime ambitions, says TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Tributes flow for Australian Tamil doctor killed in car crash

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2009, 15:52 GMT]
Hundreds of Australians have paid tribute to Dr Nagaruban “Ruban” Armugam, a Tamil paediatrician tragically killed last week in a tragic road accident in Australia on 22 June. The 32-year-old Paediatrician was commemorated Monday at a moving funeral as tributes from politicians, colleagues, former patients and members of the community marked a week of mourning.
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Sri Lanka turning Manik Farm camp into permanent ‘city’ - report

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2009, 12:11 GMT]
Despite assuring the international community that most Tamils interned in militarized detention camps would be resettled by the end 2009, the Sri Lankan government is turning Manik Farm, the largest barbed-wire ringed site, into a permanent detention centre, The Times newspaper reported Friday. Tamil refugees are being used as forced labour, UN sources told the paper. Aid workers say the site was fast becoming Sri Lanka’s second biggest city after the capital, Colombo. Whilst Sri Lanka blames mines for preventing resettlement, foreign demining agencies say that they have been given access so far to only about 30 sq km of the former Vanni conflict zone.
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Buddhism among Tamils is quenched from two sides: Peter Schalk

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 July 2009, 06:09 GMT]
“To say that Tamil tradition has always been all-inclusive of religions is modern Tamil national ideology projected into an invented past. It is not history of the Tamils”, writes Professor Peter Schalk, challenging the perspectives of looking at Tamil identity from the point of the use of Tamil language that simultaneously accommodated various religions in its history, despite of them contradicting one another or coming and going. Responding to an article on Buddhism appeared in TamilNet, Tuesday, Prof. Schalk said that Buddhism among Tamils he objectifies is different from what the Sinhala-Buddhists are envisaging.
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A "rolling" genocide?

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2009, 11:56 GMT]
"The continuing concentration of over 250,000 people in the camps both blocks the search for answers to these questions, and itself constitutes a most serious crime. If the doors are not opened quickly, this will raise questions of whether the government seriously intends a restoration of Tamil society in the conquered zone. This would indeed pose a question of genocide, in the sense of the deliberate destruction of a population group in its home territory," writes Dr. Martin Shaw, professor of International Relations at UK's University of Sussex, and a historical sociologist of war and global politics.
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3 Tamil civilians arrested in Colombo

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2009, 09:27 GMT]
Sri Lanka Terrorist Intelligence Division (TID) in Colombo took into custody Wednesday three Tamil civilians staying in a lodge located in Kotahena, sources in Colombo said. The arrested civilians are suspected to be escaped detainees from one of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in Vavuniyaa, the sources added.
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Politicized courts, Compromised rights, says ICG on Sri Lanka Judiciary

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2009, 05:28 GMT]
"Sri Lankan judiciary is not working in a fair and impartial way that secures justice and human rights for everyone regardless of ethnicity. This risks undermining the government’s recent military victory over the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). A durable national reconciliation process is only possible if human and constitutional rights are fully restored," warned a report released by the International Crisis Group (ICG) Tuesday.
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Elie Wiesel: Sri Lanka's victimization of Tamil people must stop

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2009, 02:42 GMT]
Holocaust surviver, Jewish icon, and Nobel laureate, Professor Elie Wiesel, in a message posted on his website said: "Wherever minorities are being persecuted we must raise our voices to protest. According to reliable sources, the Tamil people are being disenfranchised and victimized by the Sri Lanka authorities. This injustice must stop. The Tamil people must be allowed to live in peace and flourish in their homeland."
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Ploy of Buddhism in nullifying Tamil nationalism

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 June 2009, 01:53 GMT]
The North and East of the island of Sri Lanka should first be subjected to ‘archaeological’ investigation to prove the land’s Sinhala ownership, before its ‘resettlement’, is the demand of the National Front of Buddhist monks of Sri Lanka, reported Virakesari a few days ago. If archaeology has any say, the entire island having microlithic sites of prehistoric period has to be resettled by Veddas, and if enough Veddas are not found in the island they could still be found among their next of kin outside, ranging from the Austro-Asiatic tribes of the South Asian subcontinent to aborigines of Borneo, Papua New Guinea and Australia, commented an academic of ethnic studies in the island.
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Homeless at home, US Researcher on Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 June 2009, 16:39 GMT]
"Many of the grievances that fueled the conflict have not been met yet, and the question is what incentive does the [Sri Lanka] government have now that they have to reach out and begin reconciliation," said Dr Deepa Ollapally, Deputy Director at the Sigur Center at George Washington to an interview to Foreign Exchange TV, and added that without political leadership Tamils are "very vulnerable." She further said that diaspora Tamils who have relatives in the NorthEast and other Tamil pressure groups in the diaspora will be pushing the International community and the humanitarian organizations "to keep the Government honest and make them accountable to deliver some of the promises."
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‘Final Warning’ issued to Jaffna Tamil daily Uthayan staffers

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 June 2009, 06:30 GMT]
A group calling itself ‘Tamil Front Protecting the Country’ allegedly linked to a paramilitary group operating with Colombo issued Saturday a notice titled ‘Final Warning’ to Uthayan Tamil daily office in Jaffna warning that Uthayan staffers will be killed if they do not officially relinquish their posts with effect from 30 June 2009, sources in Jaffna said. Thursday, all the local newspapers of Jaffna that defied publishing an anonymous and defiling notice against Liberation Tigers came under attack by an armed group in which thousands of copies of the local newspapers, Valampuri, Uthayan and Thinakkural (Jaffna edition) were burnt.
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Voluntary dismissal filed in DC court as US contends IMF suit unjusticiable

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 June 2009, 17:30 GMT]
Counsel for Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group that filed a law suit in the Federal Court of District of Columbia to stop the U.S. from voting for the $1.9B IMF loan to Sri Lanka, said his group filed for voluntary dismissal in view of the strong legal position taken by the U.S. that the issue is a nonjusticiable political question, and that the plaintiff has no private right of action because Congress did not create a private right of action expressly and created alternative mechanisms for Congress itself to monitor the Executive Branch’s actions." The decision was taken after careful review of the recent developments on the loan where the U.S. and the U.K. have expressed strong objections to speedy approval without attaching conditions for improving human rights violations of Sri Lanka, TAG officials said.
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UN Jaffna officials accused of misreporting in favour of GOSL, SLA

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 June 2009, 17:23 GMT]
Civil society sources in Jaffna raised accusations against United Nation (UN) Jaffna officials for releasing facts and statistics, related to the detainees held in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps, provided by Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and SLA, instead of the true situation prevailing in the camps, to the outer world. For instance, the UN officials in their June 15 report said that only four detainees had died in the past six months in Jaffna camps where as many have died including a woman due to septicemia, in a meeting held in Jaffna town Thursday, participants in the meeting said.
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18 Tamil youths arrested in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 June 2009, 12:54 GMT]
Special Task Force (STF) commandos and police took into custody Friday eighteen Tamil youths in search operations conducted in Thirukkoayil and Akkaraippattu areas in Ampaa'rai district, sources in Akkaraippattu said.
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Police arrest 17 Tamils in Wellawatte

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 June 2009, 04:08 GMT]
Seventeen Tamil civilians including two women were arrested in a cordon and search operation conducted in Wellawatte in Colombo police division from 8:00 p.m. until 12:00 midnight on Wednesday, Wellawatte Police Officer-in-Charge (OIC), Mangala Dehideniya, told the media. The arrested are being detained in the police station and are being interrogated, the OIC added.
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120 Tamils in Welikada prison urge immediate release

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 June 2009, 00:42 GMT]
One hundred and twenty Tamil prisoners, detained in the Welikada magazine prison for the last four years under the Emergency Regulations (ER) without any inquiry and not being charged in court, have appealed to President Mahinda Rajapakse to take immediate steps to release them without any further delay. Some of the Tamil prisoners brought to Colombo magistrate’s court Tuesday in some cases against them handed over the memorandum addressed to President Mahinda Rajapakse on behalf of them and other fellow detainees to the Chief Magistrate, media sources said.
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Burning of newspapers doesn't augur well for free elections: TNA

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2009, 11:47 GMT]
"We do not believe that the elections are going to be free and fair. The burning of newspapers on the eve of nominations raises a big question about the circumstances under which the elections are going to be conducted," said Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarians Mavai Senathirajah and Suresh Premachandran at a press conference Thursday afternoon after tending nominations for the Jaffna Municipal Council elections. The government is fully responsible for the attack on newspapers that took place when two of its ministers are camping in Jaffna said Suresh Premachandran MP. "A vicious propaganda is being made that the TNA is divided, but we stand together in all respect and take decisions in our central committee," he further said.
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JMC election feared to be violence-filled - TNA

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2009, 11:03 GMT]
”The first election related violence of the burning of Tamil dailies in Jaffna Thursday morning heralds similar violence to be faced in the Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election,” Mavai Senathirajah and Suresh Premachandran, Jaffna district parliamentarians, said to the media after submitting Tamil National Alliance (TNA) nomination list Thursday to the election officer at Jaffna Secretariat. The forthcoming JMC election is not going to be free of violence but a fake election like the one the government staged for the Eastern Provincial Council, the parliamentarians told the media.
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Colombo’s concentration camps compared with Hitler’s in NZ parliament

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2009, 08:36 GMT]
Urging New Zealand government to pay immediate attention to the horrific situation faced by the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, Keith Locke, New Zealand’s member of parliament, speaking Tuesday last week on the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, compared the concentration camps run by Colombo with that of Hitler. Blaming the international community for its failure, the MP urged the NZ government to demand full access to the camps, fair treatment to the combatants and non-combatants of the LTTE and release of people to get back to their homes. He also reminded not to forget attending the underlying cause of the conflict – the Tamil aspirations that arose from the time of independence, well before the Tamil Tigers were ever thought of.
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ICJ Vice Chairman urges governments of free people to protect Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2009, 00:16 GMT]
“I call upon the Australian government to stand up and complain bitterly until something is done”, said Justice John Dowd, Vice President of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), stressing his point that it is “to not speak up but yell” in order to save the Tamils in the concentration camps. He was addressing a forum in Federal Parliament, Canberra, discussing Australia's role on human rights in Sri Lanka Wednesday last week. Sceptical of United Nations and questioning why Commonwealth is aloof, the jurist mooted an idea for governments such as Australia to hold hearings against those who violated the Genocide Convention, warning what is happening in the island is ethnic cleansing of an ancient people in their homeland.
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