Sri Lanka exclusion zone likely contains mass graves: British MEP

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 December 2011, 15:41 GMT]
Richard Howitt, a British Member of European Parliament (MEP), after leading a delegation socialist MEPs to Sri Lanka where they were allowed to visit to the edge of the demarcated Exclusion zone, said "he believes there are many bodies of dead civilians buried in exclusion zones where the final fighting of the civil war took place in 2009," BBC reported. Howitt said that there should be full access to the exclusion zone.
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SLA grabs 3,500 acres of land in Batticaloa for Sinhalicisation

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 December 2011, 17:28 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army in Batticaloa declared on Wednesday that it has taken over around 3500 acres of graze land located in Koa'ralaipttu South DS division in Batticaloa district for military purposes proclaiming the area as High Security Zone (HSZ). The SL Army has ordered the dairy farmers to remove their cattle immediately away from the lands. The said land was declared graze land by gazette notification in the year 1978. While the Batticaloa SLA Brigadier has said that the graze land area declared HSZ had been taken over by the SLA for military training purpose, Tamil farmers in the area complain say that the SLA move in declaring the area as HSZ was aimed at agricultural colonization by the Sinhalese with military protection.
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Abductions escalate in North, families urged to approach Co-Chair Ambassadors in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 December 2011, 09:51 GMT]
21-year-old Tharsan Kannuchamy, who was earlier released after detention by the Sri Lanka Army following Vanni war, has been reported missing since Monday this week, according to a complaint lodged by his family with the SL Police in Chu'n'naakam in Jaffna. Mr. Tharsan was last seen leaving for work to a shop in Jaffna from Uduvil, where his family has recently settled after living in the nearby town of Chu'n'naakam. SL Police and Red Cross declining to take complaints, helpless human rights workers now advise family members of the abducted to report matters to the Ambassadors of the Co-Chair countries that are accountable to the war and post-war in the island.
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Naalanda

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 December 2011, 04:51 GMT]
The high ground cum low jungle having Naa trees
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Translate political strength into solution: TNPF’s Kajendren

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 December 2011, 15:46 GMT]
The LTTE left endowing us with enhanced political strength in the international arena. It will be a folly if we don’t know to effectively translate that into political solution addressing to our aspirations, said the Secretary General of the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), Selvaraja Kajendren, while remembering the slain Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, N. Raviraj on Wednesday in Jaffna. The present TNA tries to project an image that the Tamils are now weak and they should not demand anything as in the past. This is a wrong projection. It is the political strength and righteousness the LTTE left with us that now makes the IC to poke its nose with seeming sympathy. Their real interests are different, but the space has to be used with firmness and not with naivety on our part, Kajendren said.
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Abductions on rise in Vanni, Red Cross joins SL Police in refusing to register complaints

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 December 2011, 07:47 GMT]
A 23-year-old Tamil youth was abducted Tuesday night by armed men who came in a white van while the youth, Ganeshamoorthy Rathan, was talking to his friends along roadside in Kaadduvinayaakar temple area of his native village, Mu'l'liyava'lai of Mullaiththeevu district. Mr. Rathan was brought to his house and instructed to park his bicycle at his house. When the mother of the victim suspected that her son was under pressure by unknown men who accompanied him, the men pulled out a gun and said they were from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the SL Police and instructed Mr. Rathan to get into the van. When the family members went to the SL Red Cross office situated in Mullaiththeevu, the officials at the office refused to accept the complaint and said they do not register such complaints.
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Tension prevails as SLA terrorizes Tamils confronting Sinhala thugs in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 December 2011, 02:44 GMT]
Scores of Tamils, including women and children, were injured and terrorized by the occupying Sinhala army at Ira'naimadu junction in Ki'linochchi on Tuesday night between 8:00 and 10:30 p.m., following 4 Sinhala thugs were confronted by the local people. Four Sinhala men from South who came to a Tamil shop at Ira'naimadu junction on Tuesday night threatened the shopkeeper and attacked him. When the people of the locality retaliated, the Sinhala men escaped into an SL military camp. Around 30 Sinhala soldiers who came in support of the thugs indiscriminately attacked the people of the locality and all people passing by the junction. The attack continued for nearly two hours.
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Colombo’s colonial rule, TNA and diaspora frustrate people in the Tamil country

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 December 2011, 00:07 GMT]
From allowing blatant burglary and fleecing businesses to harassing people and making money from fabricated petty offences, the Sinhala military, police and officials of occupying Sri Lanka aim to frustrate Tamils to make them leave their country, said a feature by S.M. Thiyagarajah appeared in Tamil media on Saturday. There are deeper political reasons in depriving Tamils of their self-respect and imbibing a feeling of insecurity in them, the article further said. Meanwhile, citing Prof. SK Sitrampalam speaking on Thursday, The Virakesari’s weekly editor V. Thevaraj wrote that Colombo-centric elements in the TNA and collaborative sections in the diaspora disappoint Tamils in the island. Tamils should be united against once again falling into traps by succumbing to collaboration and dearth of leadership, he further said.
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SL Police backed robbery group exposed in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 December 2011, 23:01 GMT]
The Sri Lankan Police in the city of Mannaar has been backing a 10-member gang to fuel communal hatred among the sections of Tamil speaking people in Mannaar, legal sources in the city told TamilNet Tuesday. The ploy has come to light after the gang leader with Muslim name, allegedly a convert from Hindu background, has been caught following a number of criminal acts in the city. Known by one name, Rahman, has been harassing Tamil women and has been allegedly behind a number of robberies while sharing the ‘income’ with senior SL police personnel in Mannaar police station, sources in the city said.
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UK lobbyists wrote Rajapakse's UN Civil war speech - paper

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 December 2011, 01:05 GMT]
During a special undercover investigation by UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, executives from Public Relations firm, Bell Pottinger, were caught on camera boasting of employing 'dark arts' to burnish reputations of countries accused of human rights violations, and were accused of "reputation laundering" using contacts in high levels of the British Government. The Independent newspaper reporting on the investigation also revealed that Bell Pottinger wrote the UN's speech for Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse, and quoted a senior executive saying that "[the speech] went a long way taking the country [accused of rights violations] where it needed to go."
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Maathakal protests Sri Lanka’s Naval base

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 December 2011, 23:22 GMT]
A major coastal village Maathakal in Jaffna staged a protest on Monday against occupying Sri Lanka building an extensive naval base there by confiscating private lands of Eezham Tamils. Maathakal is the closest point of Jaffna to Point Calimere (Koadikkarai) in the Tamil Nadu coast across the Palk Strait. The base is a security threat not only to Eezham Tamils but also to Tamil Nadu as well as to India, but New Delhi and Colombo seem to think Tamils on either side of the Palk Strait as ‘common enemies’, commented a geopolitical analyst in Jaffna. In recent times, occupying SL is silently expanding its naval bases in other points of the Palk Bay too, at Kaarainakar, Kayts, Ma’ndaitheevu, Delft and Oora’ni by confiscating private lands. Meanwhile Sri Lanka that has no claim over Bay of Bengal without the country of Eezham Tamils it occupies, is entertained in Indian dominated BIMSTEC.
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Law to take over private lands in Tamil Homeland

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 December 2011, 12:09 GMT]
Whilst the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) has been in the past taking over lands in the Tamil Homeland under the guise of High security Zones (HSZ) they have now surreptitiously introduced a Bill in the Parliament to amend the ‘Town and Country Planning Ordinance’ in an effort to take over even private lands belonging to Tamils in Tamil dominated areas under various religious and historical pretexts, writes a legal practitioner and human rights activist in the Eastern Province.
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Strategic Batticaloa borderland appropriated for colonisation

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 22:44 GMT]
2,500 acres of lands in Mangka'la Aaru, located along Chengkaladi-Badulla A-5 road, a border village of Batticaloa district, are to be sold to Sinhala businessmen and to foreign investors, informed sources in Paduvaankarai told TamilNet. SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa's Colombo government has recently taken steps to survey the lands through its deputy minister and paramilitary operative Vinyagamoorthy Muralitharan. A team of SL government officials from Colombo are on the ground conducting surveying and demarcating the lands in question for the last one week, the villagers said.
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War crime litigations reach crucial phase in US courts

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 20:19 GMT]
Civil cases against Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse and Shavendra Silva, an ex-army commander and currently Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) are waiting next round of decisions from the District Court of District of Columbia and District Court of Southern District of New York respectively, legal sources monitoring the progress of the cases said. The Rajapakse case awaits decision if the court can "force" Rajapakse to answer and engage with the Court. Shavendra case awaits decision from the SDNY judge on Silva's Motion to dismiss.
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Norway funds Sri Lanka ministry

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 December 2011, 10:52 GMT]
The Norwegian embassy in Colombo has contributed 18.5 million Rupees to Sri Lanka’s Child Development and Women’s Affairs ministry to improve mobility of Women Development Officers and to display billboards in prominent places, a press release from the Norwegian embassy in Colombo said on Friday. Norway at times had to “buy peace” through aid, observed Norway’s assessment report of the failed peace process released last month, cautioning “Aid may play a supportive role in peace process, but cannot short-circuit complex political processes.” Aid cannot be a substitute for politics, the report further said. But the Norwegian government is now interested in buying inroads into ‘Victor’s Sri Lanka’, forgetting its responsibilities to the victims of its peace process, diaspora political observers said.
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NZ assures support for IC justice and accountability to war victims

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 December 2011, 20:01 GMT]
“New Zealand remains willing to co-operate with the international community in considering appropriate investigative mechanisms to bring justice and accountability to the victims of the Sri Lankan war,” said New Zealand’s foreign minister Murray McCully, on Thursday, in a letter addressed to Tamil Forum in New Zealand. The UNSG panel report is likely to be discussed at the March Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, he further said in the letter.
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Wider public participation marks Heroes Day in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 December 2011, 11:34 GMT]
It became clear on the eve of Heroes Day, Sunday, that ruling circles in India join hands with genocidal Colombo in denying Tamils the right to remember their fallen freedom fighters. Yet the day was observed with a marked positive difference in Tamil Nadu this time. Public and grassroot initiatives replaced political party organized mass gatherings, and there was wider and spontaneous participation of a social cross-section: from workers and farmers to communities in business, education and professions. “If Tamils have contributed anything memorable to human civilization in their contemporary history that was the paradigm-setting stand taken by the Eezham Tamil heroes, defying injustice of all the world Establishments,” commented an 85-year-old Marxist who spent a life time for the communist movement in the diaspora and in the home country, ever since he was 16.
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US-UK axis drags EU into endorsing militarisation of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 December 2011, 21:12 GMT]
USA and the UK are primarily responsible for endorsing Sri Lanka’s military rule and military solution to the national question of Tamils. Europe is unwillingly manipulated by the US-British axis, says a feedback from a Sinhala reader to the feature “West endorses ethno-military rule, military solution: Tamil civil groups,” appeared in TamilNet, Thursday. The feedback cites the instance that the ‘Friend of Sri Lanka’ EU parliamentarian, Geoferey Van Orden, who went on ‘fact-finding’ to Jaffna and came up with appreciation to Hathurusinghe’s military reconciliation, is actually a Eurosceptic British Conservative Party member who was earlier serving in the British military intelligence corps.
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Unemployed Tamil graduates stage protest in SL militarized Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 December 2011, 18:13 GMT]
Hundreds of unemployed Tamil graduates Friday held a protest in front of the office of the SL Colonial Governor of Northern Province Maj. Gen (retd) G.A.Chandrasiri demanding immediate employment and condemning the lethargic attitude of the Colombo government in providing employment opportunities to the graduates in the North. The demonstration commenced from Va'n'nai Perumaa'l Kovil the city of Jaffna went through Stanley Road and Kandy Road to the final destination in Chu'ndukuzhi where the SL Governor’s Secretariat is located. Around 500 unemployed graduates participated in the protest. No government appointments are made in the North between 2005 till 2010, the protesters complained.
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‘Rehabilitation’ means mental torture in open prison

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 December 2011, 19:18 GMT]
For former liberation fighters and their active supporters who were ‘released’ after the war, the so-called rehabilitation means servitude under SL military and mental torture in open prison, news reports from the SL-occupied country of Eezham Tamils said. The latest sanction against them is that they were warned by the SL military not to try going abroad for any reason. If caught at the airport their lives are not guaranteed, they were told. Instructed to report often to SL military intelligence units, they have been repeatedly told not to talk to media, not to discuss anything with the public and not to attend to any public gatherings. Most of the former liberation fighters are already under mental stress from the ‘brain washing’ sessions before the so-called release. Now they are forced to live a completely isolated life.
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