Teacher transfers racially motivated, accuses Ampaa'rai civil society

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 April 2011, 02:09 GMT]
Ampaa'rai District Tamil, Muslim Social Federation (ADTMSF) in a statement accused Provincial Director of Education Mr.M.T.M. Nizam of of enforcing a racially motivated Teacher Transfer program, sources in the east said. Transfers of Tamil medium teachers remain in force, while transfers of Sinhala medium teachers have been suspended indefinitely, contrary to the earlier instruction issued by the Director of Education.
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'Srebrenica moment'

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 April 2011, 23:37 GMT]
In an article in "The Australian" news paper authored by Gordon Weiss, a former UN spokesperson who accused Sri Lankan Government earlier of killing 10,000 to 40,000 Tamil civilians by discriminate shelling during the final stages of war, Weiss says that with the release [leak] of UN report on Sri Lanka's war crimes, the parallel, with the mass execution of 8000 Muslim boys and men by the Bosnian Serb army and how the horror reached the world from David Rohde, an US reporter, who had hiked through frontlines to reach the outskirts of the empty town, is apt, that Sri Lanka has reached its "Srebrenica Moment,"
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Tamil civilian reported missing in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 April 2011, 23:31 GMT]
A Tamil man, Solaikli Jeyaprasath, 31, a resident of Kotahena in Colombo, has been reported missing since a day after the Tamil-Sinhala New Year festival, according to complaints lodged by his relatives to Muhaththuwaram Police. Jeyaprasath left home in a three-wheeler on April 15th to purchase some goods from a shop in Kotahena and failed to return home, relatives said.
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India must act over Sri Lanka’s war crimes - AIADMK

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 April 2011, 22:29 GMT]
Citing the leaked UN expert panel’s report on Sri Lanka’s war crimes, Tamil Nadu’s main opposition AIADMK party has demanded India take steps to ensure Sri Lanka’s leadership stands international trial. "The UN Panel report is very clear. It lists out the war crimes of the Sri Lankan government," AIADMK leader and former Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa said in a statement Friday reported on by PTI and IANS.
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SL occupation of hospitals, schools harm resettlement in Vanni - TNA MP

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 April 2011, 12:20 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian from Vanni, S. Sritharan, has blamed the occupying Sri Lanka Army in Vanni for continuing to occupy public buildings, including primary hospitals and schools, causing severe hardships to resettling civilians. The accusation by the TNA MP comes following District Development Committee (DDC) meeting held in Jaffna on Tuesday, when Medical Officers brought to the notice of the DDC that if the Poonakari primary hospital, now occupied by the Sri Lanka Army, is handed over to them, they would resume services to the resettled civilians.
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Rajapaksa uses SL military to distribute Indian aid

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 April 2011, 12:12 GMT]
Much controversy arose at the Jaffna District Development Committee (DDC) meeting held on Tuesday over the selection of the beneficiaries for the houses to be built by the Indians and the way the SL authorities were handling the distribution of tractors gifted by India. The SL Presidential Secretariat has instructed the Divisional Secretaries to send ‘recommendations’ through the area Brigade Officers of the SLA. The SL Government Agent, Imelda Sugumar, who denied knowledge of the housing project proposed by the Indian Government, said the SL Presidential Secretariat was handling the distribution of Indian aid.
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Sinhalese being settled in Tamil village in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 April 2011, 11:02 GMT]
Lands in abandoned traditional Tamil village Thennaimaravaadi in Trincomalee district are being allocated three acres each to members of ‘home guards’, now known as Civil defence Force (CVF), dominated by Sinhalese. Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Trincomalee is organizing the transfer of land on the instruction of the SLA headquarters in Colombo without the approval of local civil authority, Tamil sources allege.
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Petitions, complaints, warnings from Sri Lanka ahead of UN war crimes report

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 April 2011, 22:54 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s government has launched a petition campaign against the UN making public an expert panel’s report on war crimes committed during the final months of the island’s war. The campaign, launched Thursday by Sri Lanka’s Minister of Private Transport Services, C. B. Ratnayaka, aims to collect one million signatures. It comes two days after President Mahinda Rajapaksa called for annual May Day rallies to be directed against the UN report. Also on Thursday, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister G.L. Peiris claimed releasing the report will damage the UN, while Mass Media minister Keheliya Rambukwella claimed the experts had written the report in just two weeks. The UN said earlier it will be releasing the much anticipated report on Friday.
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Indian public opinion should take care of Russia meddling with Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 April 2011, 21:51 GMT]
Mahinda Rajapaksa is harping on Russia and China to escape international action on war crimes and to continue the well-planned genocide of Eezham Tamils unabated. Regrettably, Russia sees the current accelerated process of structural genocide and dismemberment of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island as ‘reconciliation’ that should not be disturbed by war crimes investigation. On Monday Russia raised a number of ‘procedural’ objections on UN discussing the panel report. According to Inner City Press Thursday, Colombo’s UN representative Palitha Kohona insisted that there was “no mechanism” to bring the matter to the Security Council and that “We have Friends”. Whether Russia is acting on own or at the behest of somebody else, public opinion in India should take care of Russia, writes a Tamil political activist in Colombo.
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UN experts took bribes from LTTE supporters – SL minister

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 April 2011, 15:05 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s minister for Construction, Engineering Services, Housing and Common Amenities, Wimal Weerawansa, accused the independent experts who authored a UN report on war crimes during the final months of Sri Lanka’s war, of having taken bribes from the Tamil Diaspora. His comments were reported in the state-run Daily News Thursday. Sinhala ultra-nationalist firebrand Weerawansa last July famously staged a fast-unto-death in front of the UN building in Colombo in response to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s appointment of the panel.
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Thalpitiya, Thaaligala, Thaazhaiyadi, Kaththaazhampiddi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 22:51 GMT]
The plain or high ground of palmyra palms
The rocky place of talipot palms
The locality of screw-pines
The high ground of aloe

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BTF requests UN to release Panel report public, urges focus on Tamil Genocide in May

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 14:02 GMT]
The British Tamils Forum (BTF) has called upon global Tamils to come together in breaking the international silence on Tamil genocide while marking the remembrance this year of those who perished in Mu'l'livaaykkaal in May 2009. “Focusing the genocidal onslaught by the Sri Lankan state on Eezham Tamils in Mu'l'livaaykkaal and reiterating the now widely acknowledged demand for international investigations on war crimes and crimes against humanity, we should all target our efforts in convincing the global community on the core theme of the crime of genocide, which is establishing the ‘intent’ on the part of the Sri Lankan state behind a systematic destruction of the Eezham Tamil nation in the island,” Kana Nirmalan, a Human Rights activist of the BTF said when contacted by TamilNet Wednesday, following a media statement the organisation issued urging the UN to make the Panel report public.
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Eastern campus students continue boycott

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 10:18 GMT]
Undergrads of the Eastern University of Sri Lanka (EUSL) did not attend classes Tuesday following the arrest of the President and Secretary of the University Students Union (USU) on Monday night, according to the acting Vice Chancellor Mr.K.Premkumar. The EUSL re-opened Tuesday after the closure following the boycott of classes in protest to the assault on Tamil undergrads by the police that took place on March 29. But the Student Union through a media statement on April 18 wanted its members to continue the boycott till the removal of the police sentry point from varsity premises when the EUSL administration decided to reopen the varsity on April 19.
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‘Saving a state that refuses to be saved’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 02:40 GMT]
A perusal of the leaked UN report would show that the outlook is to ultimately save the Sri Lankan state by providing it with an escape avenue through a minimum penalty of accepting a ‘concurrent’ international mechanism to investigate the war crimes. But the reactions coming from Colombo only show that such an undue consideration on the part of the UN and the IC towards Sri Lanka is futile as state has never been orientated in the island for peaceful unity or for being genocide-free. Perhaps a chance has now been given especially to the Sinhala masses to demonstrate their choice between supporting a criminal regime that tries to save its skin by citing love to a genocidal `mother country´ and recognizing the love of both the Sinhalese and Eezham Tamils towards their mother countries in order to pave way for true reconciliation, writes A. Vijayshankar of Tamil Nadu who is now in Norway.
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Tamil Nadu youth immolates himself for Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 00:52 GMT]
Following the UN report calling for an international commission on the war crimes in the island of Sri Lanka, 25 years-old engineer Mr R. Krishnamoorthy, hailing from Thirunelvely District of Tamil Nadu, immolated himself and died on Monday, demanding that the next state government in Tamil Nadu should see Eezham Tamils get their separate country. Tamil Nadu state government should not sworn in until achieving this status for Eezham Tamils, Mr. Krishnamoorthy wrote in a note before his self-immolation at Sangaran Koyil in the southern district. Paying tributes to him, but at the same time requesting that others should not follow such models of action, MDMK leader Vaiko said Tamil Nadu should fight for the achievement of Tamil Eelam.
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TNA urges GoSL not to miss the opportunity to engage in equality process

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 April 2011, 18:38 GMT]
R. Sampanthan, the parliamentary group leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), in his response to the leaked recommendations of the UN Panel, on Monday said that the TNA urged the Rajapaksa regime not to miss the opportunity to "constructively engage in a process which would result in all the Peoples of Sri Lanka being the beneficiaries of genuine democracy, equality and justice."
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Sri Lanka's conduct of war "serious challenge to International Order"

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 April 2011, 11:14 GMT]
In an interview with Radio Australia, Gordon Weiss, a former UN spokesperson who accused Sri Lankan Government earlier of killing 10,000 to 40,000 Tamil civilians by discriminate shelling during the final stages of war, said that the real impact of the UN-panel's report "really in its absolute clarity that grave crimes were committed and that there must be an international judicial inquiry into it," and adds that he believes these "investigations will lead to a war crimes process."
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UN Panel gives Colombo a lesson on "Theory of Justice"

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 April 2011, 21:12 GMT]
The three-member UN panel rejected Sri Lanka's two-pronged notion of accountability that focussed on the responsibility of past Governments and of the LTTE, saying that the approach "does not envisage a serious examination of the Government’s decisions and conduct in prosecuting the final stages of the war or the aftermath, nor of the violations of law that may have occurred as a result." International standards mandate that any approach to accountability should "place the rights and dignity of the victims of the conflict at the centre," the panel said, and explained to Colombo that "[a]ccountability for serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law is not a matter of choice or policy; it is a duty under domestic and international law."
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100,000 civilians go missing in war’s final months – Channel 4

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 April 2011, 16:32 GMT]
Over 100,000 Tamil civilians remain unaccounted for after Sri Lanka’s onslaught in 2009 into the northern Vanni region, Channel 4 reported Saturday. Government census forms obtained by Channel 4 show 430,000 residents in Vanni in mid 2008. However internal UN documents also obtained by Channel 4 show only 290,000 people coming out of the final enclave overrun by the government’s troops and being put into its militarized internment camps. Only 60% of the original residents have returned, a Channel 4 source who recently visited Vanni also said.
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Panel’s report ‘cannot erase the stain on the UN’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 April 2011, 15:10 GMT]
The damning UN report on Sri Lanka’s mass killings of Tamil civilians in 2009 submitted last week to Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon by a panel he appointed last year, “cannot erase the stain on the UN over its silence” during the bloodletting, The Times newspaper’s writer who first comprehensively reported on the violence said in a comment Friday. Catherine Philp recalling UN officials saying how the Ban’s chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, had ordered UN staff in Colombo to cover up the mass casualties being inflicted on Tamil civilians by Sri Lankan forces in 2009, so as not to “rock the boat” by criticising the Sri Lankan Government during its onslaught.
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