Sivanesan Memorial Hall declared open in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 February 2015, 18:40 GMT]
A memorial hall has been declared open in Jaffna on Saturday in commemoration of Maamanithar K. Sivanesan, a Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian who was assassinated in a targeted claymore explosion by the Deep Penetration Unit of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) on 06 March 2006 inside LTTE-controlled Vanni. Sivanesan worked tirelessly to improve the conditions of the deprived sections of population among the Eezham Tamils for a long time. He played also a key role in the democratic mobilization of the Tamil masses at the grassroots level.
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Nationhood, Self-Determination non-negotiable: V.T. Thamilmaran in 2003

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 January 2015, 21:01 GMT]
“The nationhood of Tamils and their right to self-determination are non-negotiable. Any political solution that might emerge out of the on-going peace process can't go below these,” opined V.T. Thamilmaran, 12 years ago in January 2003, just a few days after the so-called Oslo Declaration (Dec 2002). The international community, by volunteering to back the Internal Right to Self-Determination based solution, is duty-bound to extend its support for future Tamil struggle, he said in 2003: “It would impose on them a moral duty to extend their support for any further struggle by the Tamils.” Five years after 2009, the IC needs to be reminded again of this moral duty as it failed to protect the nation of Eelam Tamils from a brutal genocide, comment youth activists of the Tamil National Alliance in the North. The IC should now respect Tamils Right to External Self-Determination, they said.
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Learning lessons from political discourses of past

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 January 2015, 23:36 GMT]
The last advice of the late Professor A.J. Wilson, a highly respected academic who had the closest connections with the hierarchy of the government echelons from time to time, and who was an optimist genuinely believing the possibility of Tamils and Sinhalese co-existing, was that the Tamil academics and professionals should not let themselves to be lured by promises, sweet talk, and false vanity liberally dispensed by their Sinhala counterparts and Sinhala leaders. According to him this is what that had spoiled Sir P. Ramanathan, G. G. Ponnambalam, M. Thiruchelvam and to a certain extent Thanthai Selva (SJV Chelvanayagam) and A. Amirthalingam. Writing in 2003 on the positions and policies in Tamil politics in the past, Mr. V.T. Thamilmaran was comparing the discourses of two political intellectuals, A.J. Wilson and the other being the doyen of ITAK, V. Navaratnam.
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Sinhala occupation continues at gunpoint in East despite ‘regime change’ in Colombo

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 January 2015, 19:39 GMT]
A Sinhala squad claiming as ‘forest guard’ raided the huts of Tamil cattle herders in their grazing lands situated in Koa'ra'laippattu-South (Kiraan) division of Batticaloa district Tuesday around 5:00 a.m. The squad assaulted the dairy farmers, burned down their huts, robbed off their belongings at gunpoint and separated the cattle herders from the cattle numbering around 1,000. “Although Maithiripala came to power securing Tamil votes, there is no change on the ground for the Tamil dairy farmers who are undergoing untold hardship caused by the occupying Sinhala settlers, who have encroached into the grazing lands that has been ours for years and years,” Nimalan Chelliah, the president of farm owners association, told TamilNet.
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Singapore Principles of 2013: Tamil polity taken for ride from Oslo to Singapore

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 January 2015, 07:19 GMT]
Right from the Indo-Lanka agreement of 1987 to Oslo Declaration of 2002 and to hitherto unrevealed Singapore Principles of 2013 that brought the Sampanthan polity into a conceptual framework for the recent regime change in Colombo, the external forces seeking to influence the affairs of the island have taken the Eezham Tamils for a ride to confine the Tamil polity into the unitary State of genocidal Sri Lanka without securing any concrete and descriptive guarantee from the Sinhala polity. By its latest move, the ITAK has pushed the Tamils back into the past, Tamil political observers in Jaffna said citing the so-called Singapore Principles from 2013. TamilNet brings out the text of the so-called Singapore Principles for the edification of global Tamils.
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SL military in Batticaloa continues to exploit families returned from Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 January 2015, 22:15 GMT]
The Sri Lankan State and its military intelligence in Batticaloa district continue to harass 1,080 families that survived the genocidal onslaught in Vanni in 2009. The families from Batticaloa returned to their native villages situated in 10 of the 14 Divisional Secretariat divisions in the district. The DS Secretaries in these divisions have also been instructed to refuse assistance to these families by the genocidal military. There is no change in the harassments on the ground despite the ‘changes’ taking place in Colombo, the families said. Even those affected by the recent floods have been neglected in the humanitarian assistance. Women-headed families continue to complain about targeted sexual harassments by the occupying Sinhala military in Batticaloa. Two of the 10 divisions where the families have resettled, Koa'ralaippattu South and Koa'ra'laip-pattu North are worst affected.
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UNP Batticaloa branch wants anti-people elements isolated from politics

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 January 2015, 23:49 GMT]
The District Organiser of the United National Party (UNP) in Batticaloa Mr Arasaretnam Sasitharan said that a resolution has been passed at the UNP Batticaloa District Executive Committee to the effect that anti-people elements and former paramilitary operatives, who were deployed under the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime, should not be absorbed into the UNP or the polity associated with the UNP in the new regime in Colombo. The resolution has named four persons who should be kept away from the politics of Maithiripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickramaisnge if UNP needs to win credibility among the Tamil public in Batticaloa district, Mr Sasitharan further said.
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Resettlement meaningless without guarantee against structural genocide in East

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 January 2015, 23:22 GMT]
Governments may come and go, but the State of Sri Lanka gets strengthened in its genocidal project whether there is war, peace or talk of ‘change’, comment the resettled women of Mu'raa-oadai village, situated 5 km south of Vaazhaich-cheanai town in Batticaloa district. 400 houses have been destroyed. Two temples are damaged. Almost all the resettled families are women-headed households, poorest of the poor. The women of the village say: “It is only when we have permanent security from future genocide, we can breath the air of freedom.” The SL military has vacated last year from the village. But, a Buddhist statue and a ‘sacred’ Bo tree are still threatening the villagers who are haunted by the mere existence of the symbols of structural genocide.
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Ananthy urges Pope to see genocide, get answers from local, international players

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 January 2015, 13:59 GMT]
As Pope Francis is scheduled to visit the island from Tuesday to Thursday, NPC Councillor Ms Ananthy Sasitharan, urged him to grasp the underlying factor of the conflict in the island, i.e. genocide and sought his help in getting answers from the government in Colombo and the international players, including the UN, the Co-chairs and India. “I hope Your Holiness is aware that there is an ideology behind the genocidal process,” she wrote in a letter addressed to the Pope on Saturday. She was citing a key case of Fr Francis Joseph towards the end of the war in perceiving the dimensions and said: “The Catholic Church, having witnesses among the people, has a moral duty to safeguard the people from the protracted crime of genocide.”
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Tamil will expressed only by distancing from racist election: Jude Lal

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 January 2015, 07:13 GMT]
Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithiripala Sirisena cannot be seen as the greater evil and the lesser evil respectively, says Professor Jude Lal of Trinity College, Dublin, in an interview to TamilNet on Wednesday. The democratic rights of the Tamils and the democratic rights of the Sinhalese are not the same as the so-called Sinhala pro-democracy campaign claims, the director of Centre for Post-Conflict Justice at Trinity College argues, underlining the fact that the promise of democracy by the so-called Sinhala pro-democracy campaigners has totally and radically different meanings for the Tamils and the Sinhalese: It means good governance for the Sinhalese and continuation and furtherance of subjugation for the Tamils, he says. The TNA is being used by USA, UK and India to reinforce Sinhala hegemony in the name of democracy, Jude Lal told TamilNet.
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SL military targets TNA members waging Maithiripala propaganda in North

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 January 2015, 22:48 GMT]
SL police arrested five health labourers of Valikaamam North civic council at A'laveddi on Saturday, when they were putting up posters in support of Maithiripala Sirisena. The chairman of Valikaamam North Piratheasa Chapai (PS), S. Sugirthan of TNA had asked them to put up posters, news sources said. The arrested were allowed to go on bail on Sunday. Similarly, three TNA members were arrested earlier in Maanippaay for putting up posters in support of Maithiripala. In the meantime, SL military operatives, who came in a white van were trying to abduct four TNA activists in Ki'linochchi while they were on a Maithiripala propaganda mission. The Tamil youth have managed to escape from the abductors, news sources in Ki'linochchi said.
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9th Anniversary of STF killing of Trincomalee students

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 January 2015, 00:01 GMT]
Dr Kasippillai Manoharan and four other families will be commemorating the nineth anniversary of the murder of their sons extra-judicially executed by the Special Task force (STF) of the Sri Lanka Government on the 2nd January 2006. The high school students, all then nearly 20-years old, were spending an afternoon at a seafront in Trincomalee when the allegedly planned crime took place. Dr Manoharan told TamilNet that the STF officers Kapila Jayasekera and Vas Perera, part of the STF contingent sent to Trincomalee on the orders of the Defence Secretary and President's sibling, Gothabaya Rajapakse, and Udawatte Weerakody, a naval officer, were the key players in the planning and execution of the murders.
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Ex-LTTE members forced to vote for Rajapaksa at postal voting in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 December 2014, 21:17 GMT]
The occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka has forced around 4,000 former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who are under the captivity of the so-called Civil Security Division (CSD) in Vanni, to vote for the incumbent SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa through postal voting, which concluded on Wednesday. In the meantime, a special unit of SL military personnel, led by the officers handpicked by the SL presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has been monitoring the rank and file of the SL military stationed in the North. A section of the Sinhala soldiers, who have been advocating against the re-election of Mahinda Rajapaksa have been subjected to investigations by this special unit, informed sources told TamilNet.
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Tamil people should reject both Mahinda and Maithiripala: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 December 2014, 18:55 GMT]
The global and regional powers locked in a geopolitical gambling have brought a contest between Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithiripala Sirisena. Rajapaksa is backed by China while the West and possibly India back Rajapaksa's former associate Sirisena, said Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the leader of Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) on Thursday. Declared that there is no use for Tamil people by going behind any of the two mainstream candidates of the South in the upcoming Sri Lankan presidential election, the former Tamil parliamentarian, who addressed the press on behalf of the TNPF and the All Ceylon Tamil Congress, urged the Tamil people to refrain from backing any of the two candidates. The TNPF leader blamed the TNA for betraying the Tamil people for the second time as it did by backing Sarath Fonseka in 2010.
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Mannaar magistrate orders remand for 7 suspects in Nakuleswaran case

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 December 2014, 18:41 GMT]
The Mannaar Magistrate Anananthy Kanagaratnam on Wednesday ordered 90 days remand for seven suspects, including the village officer (GS) of Ve'l'laangku'lam, who are under the custody of the Sri Lankan Police in connection with the investigations on the assassination of ex-LTTE member and former Tamil Eelam policeman Nakuleswaran in Ve'l'laang-ku'lam in Mannaar last month. The SL police has been trying to protect the real culprits who gave the orders and weapons to assassinate the Tamil activist, who was struggling for the resettlement of Tamil villagers of Eekam-kudiyiruppu (the settlement of sacrifice), the villagers complain.
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Colombo's investigators, minister protect suspects in Nakuleswaran assassination

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2014, 22:19 GMT]
Sri Lankan ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division (TID) officers, who have detained four suspects in connection with the killing of ex-LTTE member Nakuleswaran in Ve'l'laang-ku'lam in Mannaar last month, are trying to protect the real culprits who gave the orders and weapons to assassinate the Tamil activist, who was struggling for the resettlement of Tamil villagers of Eekam-kudiyiruppu, the villagers complain. In the meantime, the Divisional Secretary of Maanthai West, who has been collaborating with the SL minister Rishad Badurdeen, has been given special protection by the controversial minister following the assassination of Nakuleswaran. The DS has been transferred away from Maanthai West.
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Colombo stages 'excavation' of massgrave in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 December 2014, 23:16 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military on Tuesday brought down a large number of journalists from Colombo and staged an 'excavation' of an alleged burial site in Puthukkudiyiruppu of Mullaiththeevu district in Vanni, describing the site as a place where Tigers had slain prisoners of the SL military persons. As there were no skeletal remains at the alleged site, the TID changed its version and claimed that there were traces of burnt bodies from 2006 at the site.
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Colombo threatens TNA civic members to crossover to UPFA

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 December 2014, 22:39 GMT]
The intelligence and political operatives who operate under the direct command of SL presidential siblings Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the SL defence secretary and Basil Rajapaksa, the economic minister have been trying to woo grassroots Tamil members of the civic bodies in the North and East to the side of the ruling UPFA in the South. US-trained SL military commander in Jaffna, Major General Udaya Perera, who has been transferred to Colombo and promoted to the rank of Director General General Staff at the Office of the Chief of Defence Staff is attempting to woo TNA urban Council chairpersons and deputy chairpersons in North to the side of the UPFA through Colombo-based Tamil operatives, informed sources in Jaffna said.
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Sustaining egalitarian national culture is key to Tamil unity: Tamil academic

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 November 2014, 09:09 GMT]
“The material force and the historical significance of the liberation struggle for [Tamil] Eelam, battled by the LTTE provided a counter-hegemonic source for all oppressed people to organize a sovereign and people-centered and highly effective liberation struggle, to the dismay of international and regional establishments,” writes Norway-based Anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan, in an article on the role of national narratives of liberation and culture for the oppressed. “The destruction of the LTTE was a loss for oppressed people across the world and for people of South Asia in particular,” he writes.
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Heroes Day in London highlights global significance of Tamil struggle

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 November 2014, 18:17 GMT]
Conveying a spirit of struggle taking the Tamil Eelam liberation movement as inspiration, speakers at the Maaveerar Naa'l (Tamil Eelam Heroes Day) event in London highlighted the global significance of the Tamils’ struggle. The powers who collaborated with genocidal Sri Lanka, who take a position of genocide-denial, who deny the nationhood and self-determination of the Eezham Tamils, who banned and still push for the ban of the LTTE – these are the issues that Tamils need to challenge, not just as an ethical responsibility, but also to set a paradigm-setting example for other nations without states, opined Tamil activist Lathan Suntharalingam who spoke at the event. Solidarity speakers at the event also conveyed a similar opinion as regards the nature of the Tamils’ struggle.
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