TNA gives two weeks ultimatum to Colombo’s ‘devolution’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 August 2011, 21:12 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance in a press statement Thursday has said that it gives two weeks ultimatum to Rajapaksa government to come out with ‘devolution’ details on the structure of governance, the division of subjects and functions between centre and the devolved units and on fiscal and financial powers, to decide on carrying forward any future dialogue. As no response has been forthcoming for several months from Colombo’s side, no meaningful or purposeful discussion could be had on the discussion papers tendered by the TNA, said the statement released from the office of TNA’s nominated parliamentarian, Mr. MA Sumanthiran.
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Colombo transfers Admin functions of East Tamil areas to Sinhala districts

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 August 2011, 11:21 GMT]
Sri Lanka government has been implementing a scheme to transfer administrative functions of Tamil districts in Eastern Province to the adjoining Sinhalese districts. As a first step the government has transferred the financial administration of Batticaloa District Coconut Development Board to Polonnaruwa located in the North Central Province. The government should immediately stop this transfer, said Mr.P. Selvarasa, Batticaloa District Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian.
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Vavuniyaa prisoners end hunger strike

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 July 2011, 00:18 GMT]
Following the visit to Vavuniyaa prison by Mannaar Bishop, Rayappu Joseph, and giving assurances that the Bishop will work for prisoners release, the Tamil inmates who have been conducting a fast-to-death campaign for the past eight days, agreed to end the campaign Monday evening, sources in Vavuniyaa said. Three prisoners with deteriorating health were admitted to the Vavuniyaa hospital.
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Political prisoner admitted to Vavuniyaa hospital

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 July 2011, 08:48 GMT]
One of the 42 Tamil political prisoners, 40-year-old Kattaiyan Logeswaran, currently on fasting unto death campaign in Vavuniyaa prison demanding their release was admitted to the Vavuniyaa general hospital Sunday as his condition was reported to be critical.
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Tamil political prisoners stage hunger strike in Vavuniyaa prison

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 July 2011, 19:52 GMT]
Forty Tamil political prisoners detained in the Vavuniyaa prison Saturday started a fast unto death demanding immediate release from prison. The number of prisoners on hunger strike has risen to 44 including the 4 who began their fast a week ago. The prisoners have been demanding that the government should take immediate measures to expedite their cases against them now pending in law courts for several years without inquiry. The condition of the four prisoners who started their fast a week ago is reported to be in critical state, civil sources in Vavuniyaa said.
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Former LTTE member reported missing in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 July 2011, 19:24 GMT]
A former LTTE member, who was detained by the Sri Lanka Army for more than one year after the Vanni war and released 9 months ago, has been reported missing in Colombo since 08 July. The missing person, 36-year-old Nanthakumar Navaratnaraja from Koddadi in Jaffna, had come to Colombo to travel abroad. On July 08, he went out from the hotel where he was staying at around 4:30 p.m. and has since been reported missing, his father said in the complaint to the police and human rights groups.
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14-year-old boy taken for anti-UN demonstration reported missing

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 July 2011, 22:45 GMT]
A 14-year-old student of Yarltan College in Kaarainakar, Jaffna, Thiruchelvan Kajeethan, who was enticed by the EPDP and taken to Colombo to participate in the anti-UN panel report demonstration that took place on May Day, is so far missing. The parents of the grade-6 student, disappointed in getting a reply from the EPDP have approached TNA parliamentarians in Jaffna to find out what had happened to the boy. In recent times, there are many instances of school children, below the age of sixteen, missing in the country of Eezham Tamils.
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Legal action against Colombo for torture imminent: TAG

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 July 2011, 01:13 GMT]
Tamil prisoners who have managed to reach the West, by either bribing their way out, or released due to lack of evidence after being incarcerated and tortured inside Sri Lanka's Boosa, Magazine and Welikade prisons, have been providing details of torture suffered under Sri Lanka's intelligence wing of the military. Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group, said Sunday that a project documenting torture and white-van abductions, supported by a list of nearly 30 affidavits, video depositions, and graphical footage of the abduction-torture sequence adopted in Colombo and in Vavuniyaa, Trincomalee internment camps, are near completion and that a Europe-based legal action is imminent.
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Sexual violence against Eezham Tamils carried out with genocidal intentions

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 June 2011, 14:25 GMT]
Sexual violence committed against Eezham Tamils by the occupying Sri Lanka Army in Vanni is on the increase in the recent months, reliable civil sources told TamilNet. Personnel in military vehicles and auto rickshaws parked under the trees away from the roadside in Ki'linochchi commit sexual violence to girls forcefully brought from the resettled villages and sometimes even to girls passing by on the road, by grabbing them into the vehicles. The wails of the victims are commonly heard, but people are unable to do anything about it, the civil sources further said. The violence is systematically committed with genocidal mentality and soon by replacing the civil administration of Ki'linochchi entirely by the Sinhalese, all protests will be silenced, the sources added.
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SL Army earns by smuggling LTTE iron

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 June 2011, 02:32 GMT]
Five lorry loads of scrap iron, coming from the machinery and shell-manufacturing units of the LTTE now abandoned in Vanni, were confiscated by police in Vavuniyaa when they were being smuggled to the south. The scrap iron trade is carried out with direct involvement of the officers of the occupying SL Army in Vanni and Jaffna who earn from the trade by deals with Muslim traders, informed sources said. Meanwhile, around 50 lorry-load of scrap metal left Jaffna on Thursday with full support of the SL Army.
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Sivajilingam, Sri Kantha decide to join TNA, restructure TELO

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 June 2011, 14:46 GMT]
Former Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians as well as Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) leaders Mr. Sivajilingam and Mr. Sri Kantha have decided to dissolve their newly formed party Tamil National Liberation Alliance (TNLA) and to re-join TELO and TNA, with a view of strengthening TNA and restructuring TELO to meet the demands of the times. They took the decision after a group of former TELO members in the diaspora taking the initiative to speak between them and the TELO president cum TNA parliamentarian Mr Selvam Adaikalanathan. The decision revealed in a press meet in Jaffna on Saturday will be officially announced in the 20th Annual Conference of TELO convened to take place in Vavuniyaa on Sunday. TELO is one of the constituent parties of the TNA. Mr. Selvam Adaikkalanathan confirmed the reunity that is taking place in TELO.
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Colombo to declare permanent ‘Sacred HSZ’ at Maathakal

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 June 2011, 10:01 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka plans to keep Thiruvadinilai area of Maathakal, the northwest tip of the Jaffna Peninsula, as a permanent ‘High Security Zone’ by building a naval base there, but camouflaging it as a ‘Sacred Place’ of the Sinhala-Buddhists, news sources from Jaffna said. The location is one of the two closest spots of communication between the island of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. While Thalai Mannaar in Mannaar district is the closest to Rameasvaram, Maathakal in Jaffna Peninsula is the closest to Koadikkarai (Point Calimere) in Tamil Nadu. Colombo’s archaeologists claim Thiruvadinilai as the landing place of Sinhala-Buddhism to the island in 3rd century BC, and are building modern Buddhist establishments there. A gazette notification of Colombo is soon expected to declare the area a ‘Sacred Place’ to facilitate permanent confiscation of lands belonging to Tamils.
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Buddhist Stupa, Sinhala colony in the making in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 June 2011, 12:27 GMT]
Following a Buddhist stupa complex and Sinhala colony planned in 3000 acres of land in Trincomalee city, depriving Eezham Tamils the territoriality of their country, a similar venture in Mullaiththeevu town is being undertaken by the military governor of genocidal Sri Lanka in the north, Maj. Gen. Chandrasri. The stupa complex is planned in a locality where the LTTE earlier had its memorials for combatants laid down their life in fighting for the liberation of Eezham Tamils. Apart from allotting a huge sum from the funds of Colombo’s administration for the north, The SL governor is intimidating NGOs and civil society institutions functioning in the Tamil country to ‘donate’ unspecified amounts of money in ‘unaccounted ways’ for this project of structural genocide schemed by Colombo.
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UK routeing ex-LTTE ‘reintegration’ through SL Army raises controversy in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 June 2011, 22:06 GMT]
Announcing a donation of 5,00,000 pound sterling (90 million SL rupees), and entirely accompanied by the occupying Sri Lanka Army, the British Deputy High Commissioner in Colombo, Mark Gooding, visited a detention camp run for ‘reintegration’ of ex-LTTE combatants by the SL military at the High Security Zone part of Thellippazhai in Valikaamam North, Jaffna, on Monday. The British government policy of accepting a genocidal military accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity as competent authority for the ‘reintegration’ of the ex-LTTE combatants, and involving the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) of questionable local credibility in the process, raises controversy in Jaffna.
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People in cloth sheds, Buddhist stupas built in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 May 2011, 06:12 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka’s ‘reconciliation’ in Vanni, abetted by its international partners is building huge Buddhist stupas there, while keeping Eezham Tamil natives in cloth tents. If building Buddhist establishments and new Sinhala-military townships in Vanni is the job of the state and re-building houses for the war-ravaged people and providing them with ‘milk and bread’ are the jobs of others and the diaspora, what is wrong in Eezham Tamils and their diaspora demanding the world for their country to be handed over to them for the true development of its people and to ensure ‘milk and bread’ really reach them, asks a Tamil politician in Jaffna, particularly addressing India and two other South Asian countries Pakistan and Bangladesh that will be attending a Chinese sponsored coaching programme of Colombo by the end of this month on how to conduct genocide with international abetment.
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Aftenposten-Wikileaks shows shallow understanding of US diplomats

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 May 2011, 19:18 GMT]
Classified cables of US diplomats sent between February 2009 and January 2010, made available by Wikileaks and released in the Norwegian media Aftenposten earlier this month, show how shallow and wanting the understanding of the US diplomats in dealing with the decades-old and still continuing national question and genocide in the island of Sri Lanka, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo. The primary responsibility of the diaspora, rather than being ‘guided’ by such diplomacy, is the edification of the neo-Orientalist thinking in the Western capitals, especially in Washington, London and Paris for the replacement of this kind of diplomacy, he further writes, citing what the public opinion has achieved in Tamil Nadu and pointing to where the public opinion has to be directed to in the world by the diaspora.
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Tamil prisoners in Vavuniyaa launch protest

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 May 2011, 21:26 GMT]
More than 200 prisoners and detainees, imprisoned in Vavuniyaa, have launched a fasting protest from Friday demanding the prison officers to transfer back four fellow inmates recently relocated to Anuradhapura prison. The protesting prisoners also demand to end physical harms against them and to stop harassing their relatives who come to visit them. A fasting inmate, 29-year-old Akilan, was wounded and admitted to Vavuniyaa hospital Saturday when the prison officers allegedly prompted a gang of prisoners to launch an attack on those who were fasting, according to the protesting Tamil prisoners.
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Sri Lanka ‘welcomes’ foreigners in corrupt Tamil to get ‘visa’ to north

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 May 2011, 00:01 GMT]
Despite all claims of unity and ‘reconciliation’ by state and some establishments in complicity with the state, in actual practice the state concedes division of nations and one nation in the island keeping the other for genocide and colonisation, said political circles in Jaffna, citing Colombo implementing a visa like system for travellers from outside visiting the north. It is a ‘must’ for all foreign travellers to get prior clearance from the SL ministry of defence to visit territories north of Vavuniyaa in the island, says SL defence ministry website in corrupt Tamil. While countries like Singapore and Malaysia, where Tamils are not an ancient nation, come out with official documents in flawless Tamil, genocidal Sri Lanka for decades is determined to murder Tamil, commented a diaspora visitor on seeing the language of the official announcement.
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Robert Blake visits Ki'linochchi, learns the plight of Vanni civilians

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 May 2011, 18:08 GMT]
Robert O. Blake, the US assistant secretary of state for the South and Central Asian affairs visited Vanni for the first time on Tuesday and learned the plight of Tamil civilians, affected by the genocidal war waged by the Sri Lankan state in 2009 and continue to suffer in the hands of the SL military. The occupying SL military didn't allow journalists to witness the event, which was scheduled as monitoring the ‘development’ activities supported by the USAID, the lead development agency of the US government. However, civilians who had the opportunity to raise their plight with Mr. Blake, who came to witness the programmes for unemployed youth and the farmers, said they got an opportunity to raise their concerns and got a chance to respond to the questions from the visiting US diplomat.
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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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