Eezham fishermen seize trawlers with 100 Indian fishermen in the seas off Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 February 2011, 11:56 GMT]
18 fishing trawlers operated by more than 112 fishermen from Naakappaddinam of Tamil Nadu state of India, destroying the livelihood of Eezham fishermen by bottom-trawling, have been seized by the local fishermen in the seas off Point Pedro Tuesday afternoon. The trawlers are being towed to Munai in Point Pedro by the fishermen, a fishing society representative told TamilNet. The latest development comes following repeated complaints by the local fishermen over a long period of time about the fishing trawlers destroying the fishing tools and the resources in the sea. The fishermen representatives further said around 100 Tamil Nadu fishermen were in their custody and they were being looked after well.
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I'rakka'ndi

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 February 2011, 07:04 GMT]
The descending sector
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Police arrest resettled ex-LTTE cadres in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 February 2011, 00:29 GMT]
Tamil youths who are reported to have left the LTTE and returned to normal life after marriage are being arrested by the Sri Lanka Police in the Batticaloa district. Such arrests are said to be on the increase in Paduvaangkarai region. Tamil residents are not coming forward to make complaints to higher authorities due to fear and reprisals, civil sources said.
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Sinhalese encroach ancestoral lands owned by Tamils in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 February 2011, 02:40 GMT]
A group of Sinhalese settlers from the 36th colony, with Sri Lankan Police protection, has encroached into more than thirty acres of land belonging to twenty Tamil families located in 35th colony, south of Batticaloa district and north of Ampaa'rai district in the Vellaave'li DS division, civil sources in Batticaloa said. The affected Tamil families have been residing in the lands that were legally handed over to them by the District Land Development (DLD) in and after 1956. The families possess the land deeds affirming ownership of the affected lands which include residential plot, high land and fertile field to grow paddy, civil sources added.
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Don’t fuse truth seeking with criminal justice, reconciliation: Craig Scott

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 February 2011, 08:51 GMT]
In a paper published recently by Osgoode Hall Law School, York University of Canada on The Transnationalization of truth: A Meditation on Sri Lanka and Honduras, Craig Scott, Professor of Law, said “not to fuse truth-seeking processes with either criminal justice or reconciliation processes with special reference to the Sri Lanka context.” Meanwhile, commenting on the concerted efforts of some sitting and former US diplomats to save the Rajapaksa regime and the unitary character of the genocidal state of Sri Lanka, through vague solutions about which they themselves are not clear, and through continued ‘counterinsurgency approaches of ‘terrorising and tiring’ Eezham Tamils, the TamilNet political commentator in Colombo said that ‘pragmatic’ changes should first come from the US in recognizing the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island.
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TAG, SCET's legal brief asserts ICC obligated to probe Kohona on war-crimes

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 February 2011, 04:31 GMT]
Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group, and Swiss Council of Eelam Tamils (SCET) said Sunday that both organizations are to jointly file a legal brief requesting the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, Netherlands, to initiate war crimes investigations leading to the issuance of an article 58 warrant of arrest of dual Australian-Sri lanka National Palitha Kohona. The legal complaint charges joint criminal enterprise liability on Kohona over the extra-judicial killings of three LTTE hors de combat surrendering by waving a white-flag to the Sri Lanka Army on or about May 18 2009. Mr Kohona is currently the Ambassador of the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.
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Seek pragmatic changes, not focus entirely on war-crimes accountability, says Donald Camp

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 February 2011, 16:39 GMT]
Former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Camp, in a seminar held at the US think-tank, American Enterprise Institute, said while everyone was appalled at the events during the final stages of war, focusing entirely on accountability and prosecution will not be pragmatic, as the Rajapakse Government will not allow any investigations to take place. Instead, Camp advocates helping Rajapakse to "do the right thing." Camp, without saying how, mentioned "decentralization of powers," "co-ordinating with the UN Panel," and "reducing security presence in Jaffna," as possible actions that Rajapakse should be assisted to take to capitalize on the post war environment.
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IDP families in Vavuniyaa Poonthoddam asked to vacate

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 February 2011, 16:21 GMT]
About three hundred Tamil families displaced in the war between 1997 and 1999 from the districts of Mullaiththeevu, Ki'linochchi and Vavuniyaa, and sheltered in Poonthoddam welfare centre in Vavuniyaa more than decade, have been instructed by the District Government Agent Mrs P.M.S.Charles and the District Planning Director Mr.V.Kirupasuthan in writing to vacate from the centre before February 15 and return to their original villages. The instruction has been served through the District Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Secretariat and Economic Development Ministry, according to the refugees of the Poonthoddam Centre.
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Unidentified gang abducts teenage Tamil girl

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 February 2011, 13:29 GMT]
An unidentified group of persons arrived in a van had abducted a seventeen year-old girl in the close proximity of the Kaluwanchchikudi police station on Thursday, according to a complaint lodged with the police by her relatives. The girl was later rescued and admitted to the Kaluwanchchikudi base hospital.
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Norway arrests ex LTTE member

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 February 2011, 07:44 GMT]
Crime branch of the Norwegian Police has arrested an ex-LTTE member on January 26 at his work place in Norway. The 31-year-old man, living in Norway for more than 3 years, has been charged for three killings in his home country before coming to Norway, which the lawyer representing the prosecutor said could be acts of war or war-like scenario, reported a local newspaper, Bygdebladet, on 29 January. Per Zimmer, the lawyer representing the Norwegian Police told the paper that the situation prevailing now in the island had enabled them [the Norwegian authorities] to undertake investigations on the ground. While questioning whether any agency of the war crimes accused Sri Lanka would be recognized in such investigations, diaspora Tamils wonder what action would be taken against the individuals suspected in the commitment and facilitation of war crimes in the island.
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Jaffna fishermen urge Tamil Nadu fishermen to investigate SL conspiracy

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 February 2011, 07:41 GMT]
There is a pattern in the attack on Tamil Nadu fishermen by SL Navy and in the destruction of fishing nets belonging to Eezham Tamils by some trawlers that seem to be coming from the Indian coast. Whenever the trawlers come very close to the coast of the country of Eezham Tamils to destroy the nets, nothing happens to them. But, on the other hand, the Tamil Nadu trawlers and even country boats are attacked by SL Navy either in mid sea or sometimes well within the Indian waters. Whether any fleet operates in the Palk Bay in the service of the SL Navy has to be thoroughly investigated by the Tamil Nadu fishermen, urged the fishermen of Jaffna, pointing out that the unfolding developments are accompanied by large scale colonisation of the coasts of Jaffna and Vanni by Sinhala fishermen.
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Local elections likely to be postponed

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 February 2011, 23:44 GMT]
Sri Lankan Department of Elections has said it was considering requests made by political parties to postpone the local elections until hundreds of thousands of families displaced due to recent floods are resettled and resume their day to day normal life in their villages and towns.
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Colombo exploits Buddhism to consecrate genocide

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 February 2011, 22:49 GMT]
The political and military connotations with which a sapling of the Bo tree at Anuradhapura was paraded in Jaffna on Wednesday, before presenting it to Bodh Gaya in India to mark the 2600th year of the attainment of Buddhahood, alienated Eezham Tamils of the land, smacked of consecration of the genocide against them and involved India as a party, commented a Jaffna university academic. A modern ‘inscription’ erected at Maathakal, Jaffna, to mark the occasion read in corrupt Tamil, that the sapling was brought to Dambapanni (a wrong identification) for peace and to create goodwill among the ‘Buddhists’ of the island, before presenting it to Bodh Gaya in Damba-diva [India], under the guidance of president Mahinda Rajapaksa, of ‘Universal Acclaim,’ Lord of the Three ‘Sinhala’ Countries [the island], who routed out 30 years of ‘terrorism’ and united the island.
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Maalu-vaadi,
Paravan-vaadi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 February 2011, 20:43 GMT]
The fishing camp
The camp of the Paravar (maritime) community
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Mahaaweli Sinhala farmers to be settled in Vavuniyaa, Polonnaruwa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 February 2011, 09:20 GMT]
100,000 families under the Mahaaweli scheme don’t have enough land. Steps will be taken to provide them with land in the Vavuniyaa and Polonnaruwa districts, said D. M. C. Dissanayake of Sri Lanka’s Director General of the Mahaweli Authority, according to The Island, Tuesday. The north has become a dumping ground of Sinhalese unwanted in the south so that the double purpose of getting rid of them as well as terrorising and subjugating or chasing away the Tamils from their country could be achieved, says resettlement officials in the north.
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Genocidal Colombo unleashes new war on unarmed Tamils

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 February 2011, 07:49 GMT]
Sri Lanka is now waging a new genocidal war on unarmed and demographically weakened Tamils after converting their country imperceptibly into an open concentration camp. The new war is focussed on the Jaffna Peninsula. Many Tamils believe that by stressing on the negation of their independence, India and USA continue to encourage Colombo, smokescreen the current war by projecting it ‘reconciliation’ cum post-war ‘development’ and thus actually play a party to the war and genocide. All these decades India and USA competitively negotiating the national question by upholding the integrity of a fundamentally flawed state has brought in only untold misery. At least now, why shouldn’t they try in unison, a genuine reconciliation by the option of secession? Further delays will convert the island a bleeding spot of the region for ages, cautions a Jaffna university academic.
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HSZ lands in Jaffna sold to Sinhala businessmen

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 February 2011, 01:56 GMT]
Large stretches of lands in Jaffna Peninsula in the so-called High Security Zones and in other areas where people are not permitted to resettle in the guise of landmines are hurriedly sold to Sinhala businessmen ostensibly to start ‘industrial estates’. 100 acres of land near Ezhuthumadduvaa’l railway station along the A9 Highway has been recently sold to an influential Sinhala businessman. Another Sinhalese attempted buying 80 acres between Ki’laali and Puloappazhai. Occupying military officials are also said to be interested in buying lands. Industrial estates are a smokescreen, but Sinhala colonisation in that stretch to completely seal off the people of Jaffna within their own peninsula is the strategy, political circles in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, in Valikaamam HSZ, a Sinhalese is said to be running a farm at Vasaavi’laan and another indiscriminately quarry limestone near Keerimalai.
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DC Court to serve summons to Rajapakse

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 February 2011, 01:38 GMT]
Attorney for the three Tamil plaintiffs who are suing Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse in the District of Columbia Federal court for monetary damages under US's Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) said in a press release issued Tuesday that he will be requesting the Clerk of the United States District Court to send summons by mail to Rajapakse's residence "Temple Trees" in Colombo 3. Civil procedure rules normally require a properly served defendant 21days to file an answer.
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Mannaar severely affected by overflowing water from Anuradhapura tanks

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 February 2011, 23:32 GMT]
Mannaar district has been facing a severe natural calamity for the first time in its history due to recent rain and flood. Almost all the villages in the district are under water. 7,807 persons from 2,667 families have been displaced from areas that come under Mannaar Urban Council and Naanaaddaan Piratheasa Chapai (PS). People from Arippu and Maanthai have been trapped in their houses as they are marooned in the flood. The Government Agent of Mannaar, N.Vedhanayagam, has declared emergency situation in the district.
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Another former US envoy goes to Chennai to save Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 February 2011, 17:42 GMT]
Former US envoy to Sri Lanka Teresita Schaffer, speaking at a forum on ‘US perspective on security in South Asian region with special emphasis on Nepal and Sri Lanka’ in Chennai on Monday, ruled out American backing for Tamil Eelam, reported Express News Service, Tuesday. The ex envoy was harping on genuine reconciliation, focus on war crimes investigation and shared her apprehension that “If the reconciliation process is allowed to slide, then some new internal conflict may spring up,” but conceded that she had no idea of how to approach. “I don’t have any clear sense on how one can persuade the Sri Lankan leader on reconciliation,” the ex envoy said. Obviously the helplessness comes by refusing to recognize long-existing realities, commented a political observer in Chennai, long familiar with the competitive Indo-US deceit on Eezham Tamils.
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