Analyst: Transitional justice will never work, SL State institutionally genocidal

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2019, 17:20 GMT]
Eezham Tamils should not fall prey to the advocacy coming from the Western countries that prod them into the roadmap of unworkable transitional justice in the island, Jaffna-based Senior Lawyer and Political Analyst S.A. Jothilingam told TamilNet on Tuesday. The Tamils have almost lost their trust in the UN institutions after witnessing the events unfolding at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. If the UN system, also politically siding with the political establishment, could not deliver justice to the crimes committed against the Tamils in the island, it would not be able to resolve the political conflicts anywhere else, he reiterated. The Western states involved in the geopolitical race against China want to make concessions to the UNP government. In their greed for securing strategic interests, they are sacrificing the justice owed to Tamils, he said.
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Tamil Nadu politician's family continues ‘Sri Lanka’ investment, disregards criticism

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 April 2019, 22:13 GMT]
Despite mounting criticisms, Silver Park Oil Refineries Pvt Ltd, owned by a Tamil Nadu politician's family, has begun its investment by transferring USD 400,000 to the SL Board of Investment, reports in Colombo said on Sunday. The forces, which have tricked the family of Tamil Nadu politician into the most massive single foreign direct investment ever in the history of the island so far, are aiming at blocking Tamils from waging a global BSD campaign against the SL State, Tamil activists in Jaffna said responded on Monday. SL Deputy Minister of International Trade and Development Strategies, Nalin Bandara was revealing the details of the initial transaction and forecasts of the USD 3.85 billion investment at a special media briefing held at the SL Information Department on Friday. The SL Minister was saying that the project would add USD 7 billion to the annual export earnings.
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Employment discrimination in educational sector in East

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 April 2019, 23:39 GMT]
Tamil teachers in Batticaloa complain that the unitary system of the SL State is institutionally discriminatory as it wants to favour employment and infrastructure to Sinhala language schools while satisfying Tamil-speaking Muslims with compromises at the expense of allocations to Tamils in the Eastern province. Out of 349 teaching appointments provided to graduates in the Eastern province, 278 went to schools operating in Sinhala language and a further 7 were bilingual Sinhala medium teachers. Only 7 were Tamil medium teachers while 57 were bilingual Tamil medium teachers.
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Monks groom SL police on misusing UN rights intended for controlling hate speech

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 April 2019, 22:59 GMT]
The Magistrate of Polgahawela in the South has detained an award-winning Sinhala novelist on the charges of inciting ‘religious hatred’ for his short story on homosexuality among the Theravada Buddhist monks. The monks got the SL Police and the judiciary to invoke the clauses of the SL State's ‘compliance’ to International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which prohibited religious hatred to remand 33-year-old Shakthika Sathkumara on 01 April. Meanwhile, Jaffna Magistrate Peter Paul, a Tamil who hails from the up-country, delivered a blow to the SL ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division on the issue of Freedom of Speech and the SL State's ‘compliance’ to ICCPR on Friday. To set everything into context, a Tamil short story, Pali-peedam, authored by the late Eezham Tamil creative writer S. Ponnuthurai (Es Po) four decades ago is reproduced at the end of this news feature.
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SL State appropriates lands of Tamils in Batticaloa under ‘Mahaweli’ scheme

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 April 2019, 22:31 GMT]
Eezham Tamil land-owners in four interior GS divisions in Kiraan and Chengkaladi divisions of Batticaloa district are facing an imminent threat of losing upto 90 per cent of their paddy lands and 99 per cent of other lands which they owned for decades. Their areas are being absorbed into the Mahaweli colonisation programme under cover of ‘development’, say Tamil farmers. Agrarian Services Centre official at Kiraan T. Jeyaraj has informed the farmers that they would be only allowed to retain 2.5 acres of paddy lands and 0.5 acres of lands for homestead per adult person in their families as their lands were being taken over by the Mahaweli authority, the farmers said.
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Colombo's next step of genocide: urbanising and linking Mannaar-Trinco belt with South

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 April 2019, 23:46 GMT]
SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe was talking about the process of urbanisation and about setting up an economic corridor linking Colombo and Trincomalee. Mr Wickramasinghe was addressing media, intellectuals, and public servants on Wednesday. “The region from Mannar to Trincomalee would be brought under development. The road network linking Mannar, Trincomalee through Kandy and Dambulla and Colombo and Hambantota, would promote developed economic zones,” Daily News reported Wickramasinghe as saying. Responding, Tamil activists for alternative politics in Jaffna said the UNP regime, after consolidating itself in Colombo and Geneva with the collaboration of ITAK, is now going to accelerate the structural genocide against the nation of Eezham Tamils through so-called urbanisation.
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‘Silver Park’ boosting Hambantota not linked to China: Norwegian agency

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 April 2019, 23:41 GMT]
"Hambantota got a new boost that was nothing to do with China or the BRI," reported a global shipping news service on Monday. The reporting agency, TradeWinds, is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. The China Merchants Port Holdings (CMPH) which controls the Hambantota port has conveyed to Indian and US diplomats who visited the port that its security was led by retired Sri Lankan admiral Jayantha de Silva and not by China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the report further observed. In the meantime, UPFA MP Asanka S Semasinghe was alleging that Tamil Nadu DMK Politician S. Jagathrakshakan's family-owned business could be a money laundering project. SL Minister of ‘Development’ Strategies and International Trade Malik Samarawickrema (UNP) was rejected his allegations on Tuesday.
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Sumanthiran's rationality exposes Wigneswaran's gullibility

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2019, 22:11 GMT]
ITAK Parliamentarian and President Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran, a proven ‘revisionist’ of Eezham Tamils’ external right of self-determination who sophisticatedly denies Tamil genocide, has now assailed former NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, who mistakenly or deceptively ended up harping on IIGEP as a precedent-setting argument to justify the illogical demand for hybrid courts. After Sumanthiran's intervention, which was highlighted by Jaffna daily Kaalaik-Kathir on 31st March, Wigneswaran issued a new statement on the same day – this time in Tamil only – and said he was not asking to set up a group like the IIGEP. His initial statement also pointed out that the act of IIGEP dissolving itself was an example why an international investigation was necessary in the island, he reiterated.
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DMK billionaire downplays record investment near Chinese port in Hambantota

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 March 2019, 23:04 GMT]
DMK Politician S. Jagathrakshakan is trying to downplay the move for record-high investment in constructing an oil refinery and a cement plant by his family-owned business in Hambantota. The step, partnering with genocidal Sri Lanka and the Sultanate of Oman, which is having China as its biggest trade partner, “could see several more investors once the details were worked out”, the former Union minister has reportedly told media in India on Sunday. Eezham Tamils have severely criticised the move as being contradictory to the policy of his party and the legislature of Tamil Nadu, which has called for international investigations against Tamil genocide in the island as well as for an economic embargo.
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ITAK must act to revoke Gazette notifications, transfer Land Commissioner in East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 March 2019, 20:21 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena has only revoked one of the Gazette notifications that had been issued by his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa who had seized the lands of Tamils in Champoor. After the revocation of Gazette notification of transferring lands to SL Board of Investment under the Urban Development Act (UDA), the people resettled. However, a previous Gazette notification, which was made by Mr Rajapaksa who acquired the lands of the people under an urgency clause of the Land Acquisition Act (LAA), remains in force. Although repeated requests were made by Moothoor Divisional Secretary to re-issue necessary land permits to the people who had owned these lands for decades, Provincial Land Commissioner of the Eastern Province D.D. Anura Dharmadhasa has been blocking the move citing the initial Gazette notification, say Tamil-speaking Muslim officials at Moothoor DS.
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Senior TELO leader urges DMK to withdraw Hambantota investment

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 March 2019, 22:04 GMT]
M.K. Shivajilingam, the senior political leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) and former TNA parliamentarian, has urged DMK politician Samikannu Jagathratchagan in Tamil Nadu to reconsider the decision of his family to invest in the big business of building an oil refinery and cement factory in Hambantota in the South. “I urge Mr Jagathratchagan to reconsider his decision [...] Eezham Tamils have not yet gained justice to the genocide committed against them. A political solution is still far away [..] At this juncture, the investment move is also contradictory to the unanimous position of Tamil Nadu State Assembly which had called for economic sanctions on Sri Lanka until these issues are resolved,” Shivajligam told TamilNet on Friday.
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Religious leaders in Mannaar lack statesmanship

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 March 2019, 23:21 GMT]
The forces seeking to escalate religious disharmony among Eezham Tamils in Mannaar have been both influencing and criticising the religious establishments of the Tamil Catholics and the Tamil Saivites in the district, trapping the two communities further into a prolonged conflict this week. The board of trustees of Thirukkeatheesvaram Saiva temple organised a protest on Thursday, a day before the SL Magistrate’s Court in Mannaar is set to hear the religious skirmish that took place in Thirukkeatheesvaram on 03 March. The protest drew four thousand participants from across the district bringing the traffic in the city to a standstill for two hours. In the meantime, SL Minister of Power, Energy and Business ‘Development’, Ravi Karunanayake, a Sinhala Catholic from Colombo, rushed to Madu shrine in Mannaar to discuss ‘development’ of the shrine.
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Interior village faces imminent Sinhalicisation in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2019, 17:22 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military chased away the residents of four villages in Kudumpi-malai GS division, which is also known as Thoppik-kal and Baron’s Cap, during the times of war in 2007. The villages are located close to Polonnaruwa border. Although the uprooted Eezham Tamils were allowed to resettle back in 2013, the fertile highlands at Periya Miyaang-kal village, owned by Tamil settlers since 1969 were being retained by the occupying Sinhala military occupation. Even though the SL Army relocated its 11th Regiment troops from the location two years ago in 2017, the Tamil landowners are not being allowed to enter their lands. Now, the SL authorities have started to claim that the grounds have become ‘state property’ says Nagarasa Nagathamby, who was living there since 1969. The Buddha statue and the structures are intact, and the Tamils fear a Sinhala colony at the locality.
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IC urged to pressure Colombo to allow ICMP to detect more mass graves in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2019, 09:23 GMT]
If the Colombo government wants to establish that there are no war-time mass graves in Mannaar district, it should invite the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) to initiate systematic scanning of all former and present military zones for mass graves, say families of persons subjected to enforced disappearances during the times of genocidal war in the district. More than 800 Tamil people have been subjected to enforced disappearances in Mannaar district alone within 19 years between 1990 and 2009. The families of the victims want to initiate a broader campaign calling for an independent international competent authority to take charge of the entire process. The families suspect there are potential sites of mass graves the Sunny Village in Mannaar island as well as in the notorious SL military base in the mainland.
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Colombo ‘reminds’ Eezham Tamils on significance of theorising war historiography

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2019, 19:47 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) has filed a ‘B Report’ requesting the Magistrates’ Court in Jaffna to demand the editor of Colombo-based Thamizhth-thanthi weekly to reveal the author and the source of an article, which was published in May 2018. The article was about the late Brigadier Balraj, a highly esteemed military commander of the LTTE, who played the key role in the Tiger victory of the Elephant Pass garrison in 2000. The TID has approached the SL Court in January 2019, eight months after the article, titled “Balraj, the unparalleled war hero of the 21st century”, appeared. The SL State wants to suppress the media freedom of Eezham Tamil writers to file articles under pen names. It wants the editors to impose self-censorship and not to protect the identity of the authors. Colombo wants to make an example through this case, journalists in Jaffna said.
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Acid test for Tamil Nadu: DMK politician tricked into geopolitics of genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 March 2019, 23:29 GMT]
Within a few days after getting over with the ‘mere formality’ at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramsinghe is moving ahead with upholding the very same ‘development’ paradigm of the former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa through securing USD one billion loan from China to link the centre of the island to the Chinese-built seaport Hambantota, which Mr Wickramasinghe leased out to China for 99 years in 2017. The SL Prime Minister has also tricked the family-owned business of Tamil Nadu's DMK politician Samikannu Jagathratchagan to invest 70% of USD 3.85 billion to build an oil refinery and cement factory in Mirijjawila in Hambantota district. The investment, made along with Oman's Oil Co (30%), is the largest foreign direct investment in the island, according to media reports in Colombo.
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Sinhala monks deploy different tactics to make inroad into Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 March 2019, 21:18 GMT]
Trincomalee and Ampaa'rai, two of the three districts in the East, are long subjected to systematic Sinhala-Buddhicisation. Although the district of Batticaloa is facing structural occupation across the interior villages that border with Polonnaruwa and Ampaa'rai districts, the supremacist Sinhala Theravada Buddhist establishment and the unitary state system were unable to make headway for Sinhalicisation agenda in the urban areas of the district. However, two Sinhala monks have been experimenting with different tactics to achieve that agenda in the city and its suburbs after the end of the genocidal war in Vanni in 2009. The latest experiment seeks to deceive Tamils through accommodating two Hindu temples within the Sinhala Buddhist monastery establishment which is being expanded with a Vihara at “Jayanthi-pura,” 5 km northeast of the city where no Sinhala people reside.
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UNHRC ‘Sri Lanka’ roadmap premeditated not to deliver genocide justice to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2019, 15:28 GMT]
The successive UN Human Rights High Commissioners starting from the Canadian jurist Louise Arbour (2004–2008), South African Tamil jurist Navaneetham Pillay (2008-2014), Jordanian diplomat Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein (2014-2018) and the incumbent Chilean politician Michelle Bachelet, have all been following the same roadmap, laid out during the times of Ms Arbour at height of the genocidal war. That approach was based on the paradigm of avoiding looking into the crime of genocide, equating the GoSL and the LTTE and only concentrating on the war crimes and crimes against humanity that occurred during the last phase of the war in 2009. The roadmap came to light, straight from the horse's mouth in 2010 when Ms Arbour was the head of the ‘International Crisis Group’ (ICG). The paradigm was also a part of the larger ‘intended’ failure on the part of the UN system.
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Happiness dwindles for residents of genocidal Sri Lanka in 2019

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2019, 11:17 GMT]
The unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka is being welcomed and provided with extended escape routes for its protracted genocide against Eezham Tamils at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. “The judiciary and independent commissions, including the Human Rights Commission, continue to play a vital role in strengthening reforms and cementing good governance in Sri Lanka,” was the certificate UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, was extending in her report presented at the fortieth session in Geneva. However, the happiness of the people in the island is deteriorating, slipping by 14 ranks and dropping from 116th position to 130th position in the World Happiness Index. The Index produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), which is also operating under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General.
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Colombo's rights body failed to report on anti-Muslim pogrom: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 March 2019, 17:09 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the leader of Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF) on Tuesday exposed the so-called Human Rights Commission of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka as failing to release a report on the anti-Muslim pogrom that shocked the island in 2018. The SL commission was supposed to issue it by July 2018. “But after 10 months, no report has been released and the SLHRC is yet to make an explanation on what has caused the delay,” he said while addressing the UN Human Rights Council under the general debate on Agenda Item 9, which deals with racism, xenophobia, other forms of intolerance and the implementation of the Durban Declaration.
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