David in 2012: Diaspora duty-bound in advancing independent polity of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 October 2015, 23:32 GMT]
The late Gandhiyam David, when interviewed in Tamil Nadu in 2012 for TamilNet, categorically stated that an independent state for the Tamils was the only viable solution. The USA was playing “double game” behind the back of Eezham Tamils. India took a decisive role in Colombo's war against Tamils. It was Pirapaharan who defended Eezham Tamils through the army he had built up independently, he said. After decades, Colombo had realised the crucial political backing it needed from New Delhi to militarily destroy the Tamil movement and India played a key role during the Mu'l'livaaykkaal massacre, before and after that. It was only recently they are trying to get out and the Chinese are getting into their boots to transform the island into a base for Chinese politics, he said stressing that Tamils need independent people-centric mobilisation to preserve their existence as Eezham Tamils.
Full story >>

OISL report downplays mass killings, silent on genocide: Law academic

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 October 2015, 23:09 GMT]
An article which appeared on Monday in the Blog of the European Journal of International Law (EJIL: Talk!), comparing the 2011 UN's Panel of Expert's report on Sri Lanka with the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL) 2015 report, points out that the OISL shies away from estimating the scale of deaths and avoids attributing to the [Sri Lanka] government's intent in directing attacks against the civilian [Tamil] population. The article adds that "given this shift of focus away from mass killings of civilians...it is not surprising the OISL is silent on the crime of genocide..." The article is authored by Umesh Perinpanayagam, an Eezham Tamil academic, who works as a researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Full story >>

Ex-LTTE Women's Political Head Thamilini dies of cancer at 43

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 October 2015, 18:37 GMT]
Sivakamy Sivasubramaniyam alias Thamilni, who was formerly the head of LTTE's Women Political Wing, has passed away on Sunday at Maharagama cancer hospital after battling cancer for some months, news sources in Colombo said. Coming from an Up-Country Tamil family settled in Paranthan in Vanni, Ms Thamilini served in the LTTE for almost 18 years and had earned the trust of the LTTE leader V. Pirapaharan for her political work. Thamilini was one of the foremost political leaders of the LTTE, who had proved that women were not second to men in contributing to the liberation of the nation of Eezham Tamils.
Full story >>

Tamil prisoners in North demand Colombo to respond through NPC Chief Minister

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 October 2015, 10:11 GMT]
The deviating section of ITAK parliamentarians within the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), led by R. Sampanthan and M.A. Sumanthiran, have deployed divide and conquer tactics to deceive a section of Tamil political prisoners in the Magazine prison in Colombo to drop their hunger-strike until November 07, Tamil political prisoners in Anuradhapura prison told TamilNet Saturday morning. The political prisoners have severely criticized the move by Mr Sumanthiran and demanded all the parliamentarians of the TNA to collectively address the Sri Lankan President and Prime Minister on securing their release without being treated as criminal offenders. The deceptive move by ITAK politicians comes after a meeting they had with Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, the justice minister of genocidal Sri Lanka, who has been insulting the prisoners by saying there were no Tamil political prisoners in the SL prisons.
Full story >>

Occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka silently grabs more lands in North

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 October 2015, 06:56 GMT]
After securing secret deals with the major powers on the continuation of the occupying Sri Lanka Army as the lascarine force needed to maintain the artificial unity of the island coupled with the external ambitions of global domination, the new regime of the genocidal State in Colombo has encouraged its Gajaba Regiment to permanently seize more lands in the strategic enclave of Poonakari (Pooneryn), which is situated at the entrance to Jaffna Peninsula facing the Palk Bay. Similar occupation is also reported in Ki'laali, the former defence line situated on the other entry route to Jaffna through Vanni mainland. The SL military has been surveying the lands without the public noticing them along the coast of the Jaffna lagoon this week. However, landowners of Kailaayar-thoaddam in Poonakari confronted the SL military on Tuesday.
Full story >>

Veteran Eezham Tamil freedom fighter Gandhiyam David passes away

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 October 2015, 14:06 GMT]
Solomon Arulanandan David, popularly known as Gandhiyam David, who presided the Gandhiyam Movement in Vanni in mid 70s, passed away on Sunday at the age of 91 at Ki'linochchi. He had returned to Ki'linochchi a few months ago from Tamil Nadu, where he was exiled after surviving the genocidal massacre at Welikade prison in 1983 and escaped from Batticaloa prison in the same year. David's contribution in the history of the struggle of Eezham Tamils is that at the inception of the armed struggle he had conceived the importance of a grassroot civil movement to accompany it. He remained steadfast in envisaging an independent Tamil Eelam.
Full story >>

Tamil Nadu, Global Tamils should be organised in addressing US-UN failure: Boyle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 October 2015, 22:40 GMT]
Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in international law, who teaches at University of Illinois, in an interview given to the 3CR radio broadcast in Melbourne Saturday in the "Tamil manifest" program said that he sees the millions of Tamils in Tamil Naadu, its Chief Minister Jayalalitha, a unified Tamil diaspora and the young generation of Tamils as the propelling agents to force the changes necessary to bring justice to the victims of Tamil genocide by taking the Sinhala genocidaires to Court. The horrendous nature of genocide needs an international tribunal to dispense justice, and the United Nations and the U.S have failed in their obligations, Boyle said. Geopolitical compulsions have pulverized U.S. foreign policy to collude with the genocidaires, Boyle told TamilNet.
Full story >>

Sumanthiran acts to weaken Tamil demand for genocide investigation

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 September 2015, 15:51 GMT]
Switzerland-based diaspora legal activist Lathan Suntharalingam on Friday questioned TNA Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran, who was addressing a well-orchestrated meeting at Bern, on how the TNA parliamentarian elected from North was planning to take forward the NPC resolution demanding international investigation on genocide, particularly at the SL Parliament. The response by Mr Sumanthiran was shocking the Tamil psyche, said Thirumurugan Gandhi of May 17 Movement from Tamil Nadu, who was also present at the meeting in Switzerland. At the meeting, Sumanthiran went on record claiming that the NPC resolution was a ‘foolish’ move. He blamed Justice C.V. Wigneswaran for having shut off the door for genocide investigation by passing that resolution against his advice. Sumanthiran was detracting on the genocide question after the instructions by outside agenda-setters, Mr Lathan said.
Full story >>

Obama legacy of progressive moral decay

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 September 2015, 18:47 GMT]
Obama's foreign policy legacy is likely to be, not just that he presided over humanitarian and cultural disasters of epochal proportions, now with flood of refugees from Syria after US engineered instability with Iraqi invasion and later supporting ill-conceived National Opposition, and observing as passive on-lookers at the unfolding "Crime of the century" when Sinhala troops killed more than 80,000 Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka, but that Obama soothed the American people into feeling no responsibilities for the tragedies. Germany, which abstained from colluding with US, Britain, France, Turkey and Gulf states in the aggression against Assad, is now setting the moral leadership to the West, welcoming nearly one million Muslim-Syrians, and planning to integrate them as citizens of its own.
Full story >>

Kanniyaa, Aa'ndan-kanniya/ Aa'ndaan-kea'ni

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 September 2015, 12:01 GMT]
The structure built for the springs

The lord's constructed pond of spring water
Full story >>

TNA secures 16 of 29 SL parliamentary seats in North-East

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 August 2015, 05:50 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has secured 5 seats in the Jaffna electoral district, 4 seats in Vanni, 3 seats in Batticaloa, 1 in Trincomalee, 1 in Ampaa'rai and two seats for nominated parliamentarians according to the latest figures. In Jaffna, S. Sritharan, Mavai Senathirajah, M.A. Sumanthiran, T. Sitharthan and E. Saravanapavan have secured their seats after repeated counting of preferential votes on Tuesday while Suresh Premachandran lost his parliamentary seat. In the meantime, United National Party (UNP) led by Ranil Wickramasinghe is set to form the SL government in the South, despite a tough race with Mahinda Rajapaksa's UPFA. The UNP was leading the electoral districts in the South, particularly where Tamils and Muslims live in considerable numbers. UNP has got 106 seats in the SL parliament followed by the UPFA (95), TNA (16), JVP (06), EPPD (01) and SLMC (01).
Full story >>

SL voting concludes peacefully with 67% participation in North-East

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 August 2015, 15:50 GMT]
At least 67% of the voters in the North-East have taken part in the electoral race for 29 parliamentary seats in the parliament of the genocidal State of Sri Lanka where the Eezham Tamils are deprived of expressing their political aspiration through ballot after 1977 General Elections following the introduction of the so-called 6th Amendment in 1983. According to the initial details, the rate of participation was high at 75% in Trincomalee, which has been subjected to systematic Sinhala colonisation and demographic genocide over a long period of time.
Full story >>

More than 50% cast votes in East by noon, 48% in North

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 August 2015, 10:25 GMT]
55% of the registered voters in Batticaloa district, 52% of the voters from Ampaa'rai district and 50% of the voters in Trincomalee district have cast their votes for 16 seats in the parliamentary elections until noon Monday, news sources in the East said. News sources in Jaffna said the voting percentage was at 48% in the Jaffna electorate by noon.
Full story >>

Voting high in Mannaar where UNP competes with TNA

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 August 2015, 08:00 GMT]
Voting percentage is reported to be around 30% at 10:00 a.m. in the Eastern Province and around 22% in the Jaffna electorate in the Northern province. The people in Mannaar in Vanni electorate have been taking part in the elections with enthusiasm, especially in the Mannaar island where more than 50% of the people have cast their votes before 12:00 a.m. Large sums of money were distributed among the voters by the UNP in Mannaar Sunday night, news sources in Mannaar said.
Full story >>

STF deployed in large numbers in North-East on election day

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 August 2015, 07:03 GMT]
Commandos of Special Task Force (STF), which is a full-fledged military outfit, administratively organised under the SL Police, have been deployed in large numbers in Tamil-speaking Muslim dominated Kaththaan-kudi and Vaazhaich-cheanai towns and the suburbs in Batticaloa as well as at Chaayntha-maruthu in Ampaa'rai district. In North, the STF has been deployed in Vavuniyaa and Mannaar, news sources said. Voting is taking place smoothly in the North-East, news sources said. Initial results are expected around 11:00 p.m. local time.
Full story >>

War-affected Women Development Society leader threatened in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 August 2015, 23:43 GMT]
47-year-old Thavapalan Piriayatharsini, who is the head of Women Development Society at Theaththaa-vaadi, a village situated near Iluppaik-kadavai in Maanthai West division of Mannnaar district, says she and her three daughters have been subjected to death threats by an unknown squad. The family has been subjected to death threats since 11 August. A group of unknown men, who came in a white van entered her house that day and warned ‘rape and death’ if she continued to give social leadership to the villagers. They were particularly angry about Piriyatharsini making demands from political parties. The threatening presence of a white van squad is still continuing, she told TamilNet on Thursday.
Full story >>

Victims of Moothoor massacre must see justice prevail: mother of Kokilavarthani

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 August 2015, 23:40 GMT]
60-year-old Vairamuththu Pushparany, the mother of one of the victims who was assassinated on 04 August 2006 at Moothoor, in Trincomalee, along with 16 of her co-workers at the office of France-based NGO Action Contre la Faim (ACF, Action Against Hunger), is sharing her grief with Tamils on the occasion of 9th year anniversary of one of the brutal massacres in the war. Those who committed the crime are yet to be subjected to proper investigations. All the investigations that took place happened in “their courts with their judges and police,” the mother of 27-year-old Vairamuththu Kokilavarthani, who was a Hygine promotion moderator with the ACF, told TamilNet. Kokilavarthani was the eldest and the only breadwinner of the family at the time of the massacre. The crime should be subjected for an international investigation of genocide, Tamil activists in Trincomalee said.
Full story >>

War-affected Tamils in North resolve to boycott SL Parliamentary Election

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 August 2015, 23:47 GMT]
The representatives of uprooted Eezham Tamils from the former ‘High Security Zone’ in Valikaamam have stated that they are going to boycott the elections. In the meantime, the main organisation representing the kith and kin of the missing persons in North has condemned the North-based political parties and alliances as well as the South-based parties, for subjecting the plight of the war-affected victims to the ‘use and throw’ politics. SL President Maithiripala Sirisena who visited Jaffna a week ago and SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe who visited Jaffna on Friday have failed to deliver anything concrete, the representatives of both the missing persons associations and the uprooted people from Valikaamam told TamilNet on Saturday.
Full story >>

Tamil parties contesting SL General Elections face acid test on national cause

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 July 2015, 13:09 GMT]
The Tamil political parties or alliances who fail to confront in their election manifestos the Article 157A of the Constitution of Sri Lanka, which was brought through the Sixth Amendment in 1983, are doomed to fail the Eezham Tamils in their future struggle, commented Eezham Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island in the wake of UNP releasing its 5­ points manifesto for the ‘United National Front for Good Governance’ in South at the presence of Sinhala Buddhist Maha Sangha on Thursday. As the Southern polity is preparing for the fourth conjuncture of ‘state formation’ in the island through bringing a new Constitution to ‘Sri Lanka’, it is critical for the Tamils to articulate their refusal to accede their sovereignty once again. This time, it is more important than ever to make it perfectly clear to all the stakeholders in the affairs of the island, the activists said.
Full story >>

Chadian parallel: dictator faces trial for war-crimes

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 July 2015, 22:04 GMT]
While Eezham Tamils are searching for international mechanisms to bring those who bear responsibility for the "Crime of the century" of killing more than 80,000 Tamil civilians in Mu'l'livaaykaal in 2009, to justice, human rights activists are elated but reminded that the "march of justice can be slow" in the recent trial of Hissen Habre, a former dictator from Chad, in the courts of Senegal. The trial began on 20th July, for alleged crimes of mass killings, torture, disappearance as part of ethnic cleansing in the 1980s, crimes that have stark parallel to those committed against Tamils in Sri Lanka. US State Department, in their selective approach to dealing with International Crimes, saved former SL President Rajapakse in the US Courts of Law suggesting sovereign immunity, an archaic legal doctrine that allows the US Executive branch to protect even genocidaires from legal action.
Full story >>