Indian railway aid helps Colombo to wedge North and East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 September 2011, 00:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka occupying the country of Eezham Tamils proposes to lay a railway link between Mannaar and Trincomelee through Medawaachchiya in the Sinhala territory of North Central Province, while the shortest link between the two cities is through Vavuniyaa in the north. As the railway line between Thalai Mannaar and Medawaachchiya has been restored with Indian assistance, Colombo now plans to extend it to Trincomalee through the North Central Province. The link of Thalai Mannaar in the Palk Bay and Trincomalee in the Indian Ocean is strategically important to Indian interests as Trincomalee could be directly linked through land and a short ferry with the Indian railway network coming up to Raameaswaram. But the link planned through Sinhala territory aims to structurally wedge the Tamil country and Sinhalicise the Tamil port cities.
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SL Army uses public buildings to ‘transform’ into ‘grease devils’

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 September 2011, 23:32 GMT]
The genocidal military of Sri Lanka occupying Jaffna uses some particular public buildings to ‘transform’ themselves into ‘grease devils’ in the nights, eyewitnesses told TamilNet. Scores of SL military men in uniform, who come to these buildings in the nights change into a different costume, apply grease on their face and disperse in different directions to terrorise residents of the locality. They also wear gloves and carry a small kris-knife with them. When one group disperses like this, another group with military vehicles wait in the building to provide ‘security’ for the ‘grease devils’ if any need arises.
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Hi-tech Chinese ship spied on India using Colombo harbour: NDTV

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 September 2011, 10:26 GMT]
A hi-tech Chinese ship with 22 in-built laboratories, but disguised as a fishing trawler, has spied on India using Colombo harbour facilities and Sri Lankan territorial waters a few months ago, an Indian media has reported on Wednesday. The Delhi-based NDTV in its exclusive report said that by the time ship figured in the Indian radars, “it had operated already for about 22 days and was positioned off-the cost of Little Anadaman - an area which is considered sensitive and crucial in the ongoing battle for supremacy over the Indian Ocean region between India and China”. According to the report, although an Indian naval ship was deployed immediately to deal with the target, no punitive action could be taken against the Chinese ship as it was in international waters.
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Grease devils – a new military phenomenon unleashing State terror in NE: JDS

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 September 2011, 06:42 GMT]
The Journalist for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), a media organisation of exiled group of Journalists from the island, Thursday said that the introduction of so-called grease devils was nothing but “a new military phenomenon to instil a chilling fear psychosis among the Tamil and Muslim communities living in and around their traditional homelands of North and East” and to unleash “a full-scale State-terror to curtail their collective rights”.
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Grease devils, occupying forces, intensify terror in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 September 2011, 23:00 GMT]
The ‘grease devil’ terror, staged by Sri Lanka’s occupying forces in the country of Eezham Tamils in a systematic way, clearly shows signs of a master-minded genocide emboldened by international inaction, said political and civil activists in Jaffna, commenting on terror unleashed on Wednesday and Thursday in the Jaffna University locality and in the Kurunakar suburb of Jaffna city. The events followed the model of the attack on residents of the Naavaan-thu’rai suburb of Jaffna a few days ago. “You cannot protect your women form us, is the psychological challenge posed by the ‘grease devil’ terror to provoke Tamils and then to attack them like they attack dogs to establish the point that militarisation and genocide have to be submissively accepted, because the occupying forces are sure that the powers that ignore genocide are on their side,” commented a politician in Jaffna.
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Colombo brings in new legislation to replace Emergency Regulations

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 September 2011, 14:22 GMT]
Having hoodwinked the international community by announcing an imminent withdrawal of the three decade-long Emergency Regulations, Colombo has decided to introduce new set of laws with immediate effect to replace the draconian law that gives sweeping powers to SL Police and military forces to arrest and detain people without any charges indefinitely. Sri Lanka’s Justice Minister Rauf Hakeem has said that the new set of laws will be in place with the expiry of similar provisions under the island’s controversial emergency laws, which Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa proposed to lift by the end of August. Badly hoodwinked by the mere propaganda exercise by the genocidal Rajapaksa regime many members of the powerful international community, including the United States quickly hailed as “significant step” the move to do away with the emergency regulations.
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Welimuva-pothana

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 September 2011, 05:00 GMT]
The grassland/ scrub of white-faced monkeys
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Canada's TYO hosts landmark Ki'liththaddu tournament

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 August 2011, 02:58 GMT]
Tamil youth teams from across Canada assembled in Toronto on Sunday, August 28th, 2011 to play Ki'liththaddu, recognized as one of the national games of Tamileelam. The tournament where teams vied to win Tamileelam Heritage Trophy was a TYO-Canada’s initiative, and was organized to promote and preserve Tamil identity, tournament organizers said. The game originated from the agricultural roots of Eelam Tamils is played by people of all ages in Tamileelam.
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Tamil Nadu Assembly, Madras High Court, make precedent in Indian democracy

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 19:34 GMT]
In an extraordinary development in Indian constitutional history, the Tamil Nadu State Assembly on Tuesday unanimously and strongly resolved that the President of India, respecting the sentiments of the people and political parties of Tamil Nadu, should reconsider the clemency appeals of the three Tamils fixed for execution and convert their death sentences into life imprisonment. In the meantime, acting on a legal move by Vaiko and N. Chandrasekaran, The Madras High Court on Tuesday stayed the executions for 8 weeks giving time for the government to file counter affidavit. The President of India earlier rejected the clemency appeals of Perarivalan of Tamil Nadu and two Eezham Tamils, Murugan and Shanthan condemned to death in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, and their hangings were fixed to September 09.
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Tamil Nadu tensed over execution of death sentences

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 06:41 GMT]
The people of Tamil Nadu and Tamils all over the world are agitated over the Indian government decision to execute death sentences to three Tamils after keeping them in prison for more than 20 years. Perarivalan of Tamil Nadu, and Eezham Tamils Murugan and Shanthan arrested in 1991 on charges of involvement in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi were sentenced to death in 1998. Their clemency petition was rejected last month and the hangings are fixed to September 9. The politics behind the case is 30 years of India-involved war in the island of Sri Lanka that turned into genocide of Eezham Tamils. While the Indian foreign minister in the parliament last week sought to respond to the war crimes investigations without endangering India’s relations with Sri Lanka, the hangings are sure to endanger New Delhi’s relations with Tamils, political observers said.
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Wikileaks: Captive Tamil doctors "coached" to recant casualty figures

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 August 2011, 03:41 GMT]
Two WikiLeaks cables from U.S. Embassy in Colombo, released to the public last week said that four Tamil doctors who worked with the injured civilians during the last months of the war, and who recanted the casualty figures at a Sri Lanka Government organized press conference, had told the US Embassy officials that "they were heavily coached for the press conference [by Colombo], given specific lines to say, and even practiced with several members of the local media beforehand. They said they had not lied when giving their original statements during the war."
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Blake will draw blank if truth not recognized

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 August 2011, 01:57 GMT]
The US Asst Secretary of State Robert Blake visits Sri Lanka this week, following Indian Foreign Minister Krishna telling the Parliament that what bothered the island for the last three decades was nothing but ‘terrorism’ and the solution confines to material ‘rehabilitation’ of Tamils and political ‘build up’ of the defunct 13th Amendment. Blake spoke to diaspora groups in the US before his visit. The engagement of India and the USA with the island is meaningless if it is not based on the recognition of the truth that the issue in the island is a national question, the war waged there had chronic genocidal intentions on the part of the Sri Lankan State and the military that now occupies the country of Eezham Tamils is in actuality not a State military of international norms but a genocidal Sinhala military, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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BTF reps visited India over Sri Lanka war crimes probe

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 August 2011, 13:36 GMT]
Representatives of the British Tamil Forum (BTF) travelled recently to India to raise awareness of the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, and to build support for an independent international investigation into the mass killings of Tamil civilians in the closing months of the island’s war, the organisation said in a statement this weekend. Taking up an invitation extended to the BTF by India’s main opposition Bhathiya Janatha Party (BJP) during a meeting in London, a delegation travelled to Delhi and several Indian states, including Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, to meet several key political leaders and senior political advisors, as well as representatives of human rights organisations, religious and media organisations, the statement said.
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Delhi protest proclaims Eezham Tamil Right to Self-Determination

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 18:00 GMT]
Rajya Sabha MP Baishnab Charan Parida of Biju Janta Dal, the ruling political party of the State of Orissa, on Friday expressed his party's strong support to Tamil Right to Self-Determination at a rally organized by leftist youths of the Communist Party of India in front of the Indian Parliament. Meanwhile, R. Thirumalai, from Tamil Nadu, state secretary of the All India Students’ Federation (AISF), declared that no one has the moral right to dictate the form of political solution, and that the victims of genocide, the Tamils in the island, should alone decide their political destiny by exercising the absolute right to Self-Determination without any pre-conditions.
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Tamil Nadu Congress MP agrees with Gotabhaya

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 04:22 GMT]
There is no need for any more solution as the 13th Amendment is already there, said Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in giving an interview to Headlines Today this month. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Thursday, Tamil Nadu Congress parliamentarian Dr EM Sudharshana Natchiappan agreed with Gotabhaya. “In the latest booklet released by their [Sri Lanka] Defence Ministry a humanitarian analysis is given. In that also they have accepted the Thirteenth Amendment. Why I am stressing on the Thirteenth Amendment again and again is because there is a new thinking in the policy makers that they have to go beyond the Thirteenth Amendment. This is the policy followed by all the parties including BJP after Rajiv Gandhi. What he had laid as a foreign policy for Sri Lanka is to have the Thirteenth Amendment implemented in toto, so that there is peaceful settlement,” Natchiappan said.
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Krishna beats around the bush in Lok Sabha

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 03:51 GMT]
Finding India’s External Affairs Minister SM Krishna beating around the bush on the question of Eezham Tamils, during discussions in the Lok Sabha on Friday, DMK’s TR Baalu who tabled the topic for discussion raised three specific questions: 1. Whether the Government of India have any relevant information for a time-bound political solution as per the 13th Amendment, and that too in the context of a statement by the [SL] Defence Secretary, who has said, “LTTE has gone, political solution not necessary? 2. Whether the Government of India will come forward to plead before the United Nations Organization for an enquiry by an international agency pertaining to the large-scale human rights violation? 3. Is it not your responsibility to expose the perpetrators before the world as war criminals for having committed human rights violations? But, Krishna had no direct answers.
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India betrayed Tamils at a crucial moment: CPI in parliament

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 August 2011, 18:30 GMT]
Sri Lanka has two nationalities —Sinhala nationality and the Tamil nationality. What happened to the Tamil nationality is one of the worst tragedies in the history of the world. It is not just killing of one person. It was a full-scale war on one particular nationality - Tamil nationality. In two days, 40,000 people were killed. Where else did such a thing happen? “I waged India’s war, this is what Sri Lankan president claims. What does the SL government tell the world? India was the collaborator in the war against SL Tamils. Did you ever deny the SL claim? India ‘betrayed’ the SL Tamils at a crucial moment. Now, India is trying to become a Permanent Member in the UN Security Council. The SL Tamil issue is a test case for India as to whether India can play a role as a Permanent Member in the UN Security Council or not, said Mr D. Raja of the CPI in the Rajya Sabha Thursday.
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HRCSL refuses to register complaints against ‘grease devil’ attacks

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 August 2011, 15:19 GMT]
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) refuses to entertain complaints against the harassment by alleged Sri Lankan armed forces personnel posing as “greased devils” in Batticaloa district. Instead the HRCSL asks the complainants to lodge same with the emergency service unit of the Sri Lanka Police, according to affected persons in the district.
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SLA-assaulted Tamil civilian dies in Puththa'lam hospital

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 August 2011, 15:07 GMT]
A 33-year-old Tamil civilian, suffering from heart ailment died last Sunday at hospital after being assaulted by Sri Lanka Army soldiers in Narakkalli village in Puththa'lam, medical sources told TamilNet. The victim, Mr. P. Sivakumar, was the first one to alert the villagers of suspected ‘grease devils’ believed to be Sinhala soldiers.
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Colombo proposes to lift emergency but continue PTA

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 August 2011, 18:36 GMT]
Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday proposed to lift emergency rule in the island, but said that the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) would continue. Even though Colombo’s supporters and media campaign were showcasing it as a significant development to rehabilitation of ‘democracy’ in the island, this doesn’t make much difference to Tamils, considering the extent of militarisation and Sinhalicisation of state in the island, political observers said. Colombo’s media brief denied that the decision was due to pressure from India or other outside forces. But, analysts said that the move was calculated to save Rajapaksa regime from a number of international situations. On Thursday, Indian Foreign Minister said that India would wait to take a stand on war crimes until the UN report comes to a UN forum. Meanwhile the US Asst Secretary of State plans visiting Colombo next week.
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