War-crime past to scuttle Sri Lankan envoy's Australia post

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 January 2011, 17:05 GMT]
War-crime controversy over Thisara Samarasinghe, the new Sri Lanka high commissioner to Australia, is likely to derail his appointment, Sydney Morning Herald reported Sunday. "Foreign Affairs - which must decide if it will accept the nomination - sees the appointment as ''problematic'' for Australia amid calls for a United Nations investigation into human rights violations in Sri Lanka, Herald said.
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TAG to file civil case against Rajapakse in Texas Federal Court

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 January 2011, 02:37 GMT]
Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group advocating criminal legal action worldwide against Sri Lanka's alleged war-criminals, said in a press release issued today, that TAG's attorney is filing civil action against visiting Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse for damages under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA/TVPA) on behalf of three plaintiffs for the killings of 40,000 civilians in Mullaiththeevu in 2009, killing of 5 Trincomalee students in January 2006, and for the killing of 17 Action contre la faim (ACF) workers in August 2006. As calls to apprehend, investigate and prosecute Mahinda Rajapakse by rights organizations, US Congresspersons and diaspora Tamils have escalated, European Tamil diaspora youth are mobilizing protests in front of US embassies against Rajapakse's visit to the U.S.
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Sri Lanka's commission to conclude "sittings"

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 14:25 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), the mandate of which was deliberately designed to whitewash Sri Lanka's war-crimes, and invitation to three leading premier human rights watchdogs Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and International Crisis Group (ICG) to attend LLRC's sittings was rejected due to LLRC "lacking the ability to advance accountability for war crimes," announced that the LLRC will "conclude its public sittings after the completion of sittings in the Ampara District in mid February" and would then would prepare its "final report that would be submitted to [Sri Lanka's] President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May," local media reported.
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Militarization of policing announced in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 13:33 GMT]
Mounted on bicycles, the SL military in Jaffna will be ‘patrolling’ the streets. They may not enter houses but will be engaged in street checks. They will act in the same way they were functioning during war times. The military cannot be confined to barracks, announced the colonial commander of the occupying SL military, Maj. Gen. Mahinda Hathurusinghe in a meeting held in the district secretariat Saturday. The military has to be in alert as crimes may escalate in the wake of elections expected soon, he envisaged. Political observers in Jaffna said that the premeditated step aims to bring civil administration and civilians in Jaffna completely under the control of the occupying military. Colombo’s plan was mouthed through the Sri Lanka Government Agent (SLGA) Mrs Imelda Sugumar a few weeks ago, when she urged the Army to police Jaffna.
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Terror in Jaffna is only a hair in elephant’s tail: SL prime minister

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 09:20 GMT]
“Crimes are taking place everywhere in the world. […] If you compare the crimes in the whole country to an elephant, what is happening in Jaffna is only a hair of that elephant’s tail,” said Sri Lanka Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne in the SL parliament Thursday, answering accusations brought out by Tamil National Alliance (TNA). Dismissing allegations, and explaining that alleged killings and abductions are suicides and elopements, Leader of the House, Nimal Siripala de Silva charged TNA that it was deliberately trying to draw a grim picture of the situation in Jaffna, to fulfil the vested interests of the Tamil Diaspora, Daily Mirror in Colombo reported Friday.
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Nobel winner pulls out of Sri Lanka book fair

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 January 2011, 12:44 GMT]
Nobel-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk and fellow writer Kiran Desai have pulled out of Sri Lanka's main literary festival, Pamuk's publisher said on Friday, following appeals made by leading intellectuals that attending the festival gives "legitimacy to the Sri Lankan government’s suppression of free speech," and does not in "any way push for greater freedom of expression inside" Sri Lanka, Emirates news reported. Internationally acclaimed political dissidents Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy were the leading signatories of the appeal.
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Rajapakse, a war-criminal in hiding

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 January 2011, 00:47 GMT]
Sri Lanka's President, Mahinda Rajapakse, purportedly on a private visit to the U.S. is likely to remain in hiding with his physical whereabouts kept secret from the public to avoid another embarrassing battle with diaspora Tamils. While, as a matter of jurisprudential fairness, US Ambassador Butenis's acknowledgment that Rajapaksas have committed possible war-crimes in Sri Lanka should trigger a Justice Department investigation, Rajapakse would not have attempted to enter U.S. absent assurance from the State Department that he will not be subjected to any legal procedures. Rajapakse will also be aware that, unlike in the UK, in the US private citizens cannot apply for an arrest warrant.
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Amitabh Bachchan hurt by IIFA awards in Sri Lanka: Times of India

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 January 2011, 09:19 GMT]
Amitabh Bachchan’s recent exclusion from the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) was because he was hurt by the IIFA decision to hold awards last year in Sri Lanka, Times of India said Thursday. Amitabh was the founder-initiator of the IIFA. Without taking Bachchan's opinion, they not only held the event in Sri Lanka but also signed up Salman Khan to host it. These awards were Bachchan's baby, and hence he was terribly hurt, Times of India said. At the height of arrogance, establishments in strategic partnership abuse art and peoples media, but the boomerang will come when the creative world rises against those who were responsible for it, commented a Tamil writer in Colombo, who was also hurt not only by the Indian show but also by the so-called international writers meets in the island held to boost the image of the genocidal regime.
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SL military, southern traders, encourage child labour in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 January 2011, 07:57 GMT]
Children have become scavengers of scrap metal for their livelihood in the war ravaged Vanni and this ‘economic activity’ finds the blessings of occupying military and re-cycling metal traders coming from the south. Damaged and abandoned vehicles, fittings of un-resettled houses and other buildings, and other vestiges of war are targeted for this trade that actively deploys children to collect the metal. Such conditions of child abuse is a direct result of international community conceding a nation ‘conquered’ in a civil war to the genocidal conquerors and its military. None of those who were talking of ‘child soldiers’ earlier come forward to help the situation now, commented an NGO worker in Vanni. He made a particular note of UNICEF inaction.
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Congressman renews call for international investigations into Sri Lanka war crimes

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 January 2011, 04:01 GMT]
Democratic Congressman Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts during a floor speech at the House of Representatives Tuesday, called for an independent investigations into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka at the end of the 25-year old civil war. "I joined 57 of my fellow Members of Congress in urging Secretary Clinton to press for a UN investigations," the Congressman told the House, adding he is renewing his call now."
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Admitting Rajapakse into US criminally similar to allowing-in genocidaire Karadzic, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 January 2011, 02:30 GMT]
Comparing alleged war-criminal and Sri Lanka's current President Rajapakse's reported admission into the United States to the Clinton administration's providing entry visa to genocidaire Radovan Karadzic to enter the U.S in order to attend the Vance-Owen Peace Negotiations in New York City, Professor Francis Boyle, expert in international law at the College of Law, University of Illinois, told TamilNet that Obama administration is obligated to apprehend, investigate and prosecute alleged genocidares for violating Geneva Convention and Genocide convention. Obama administration giving Rajapakse visa to enter US and allowing him free movement is "Machiavellian Realpolitik at its worst," said Boyle.
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Chomsky, Arundhati, lead protest to writers meet in Galle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 23:37 GMT]
“This is not the right time for prominent international writers like you to give legitimacy to the Sri Lankan government’s suppression of free speech by attending a conference that does not in any way push for greater freedom of expression inside that country,” said an appeal made by leading intellectuals, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka and Reporters without Borders, against writers participating the ‘Fifth Galle Literary Festival’ scheduled to take place in the southern city Galle in the island of Sri Lanka, 26 - 30 January 2011. Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy were the leading signatories of the appeal. In the great tradition of solidarity that binds writers together everywhere, the appeal urged them to send a clear message by their actions that until there is a real improvement in the climate for free expression in Sri Lanka, one cannot celebrate writing and the arts in Galle.
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Studies in Tamil-Japanese relationship continues

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 07:19 GMT]
Following decades-long work of the late Prof Susumu Ohno, another Japanese academic, Prof Tsutomo Kampe pursues the study on the relationship between Tamil and Japanese. “There are more than 500 Tamil words in Japanese,” he was cited saying by The Times of India Tuesday. Meanwhile, emeritus Professor of Tamil of the University of Jaffna, A. Sanmugadas and Mrs. Manonmani Sanmugadas who were working along with Ohno since 1983 have recently come out with a resource guide, Tamil-Japanese Relationship, brought out by Institute of Asian Studies in Chennai, commemorating its silver jubilee.
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Tamil, Muslim parties cannot use UNP's symbol in local elections

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 January 2011, 02:00 GMT]
The United National Party, during a working committee meeting held on 17th January, decided to prohibit members from several Muslim and Tamil parties to contest the forthcoming local government elections under the "elephant symbol," political sources in Colombo said. "The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and several Tamil politicians contested the last general election under the UNP banner and a few months later they crossed over to the SLFP-led government,” the UNP said in a statement, explaining the reason for UNP's decision.
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News reports irk Rajapaksa in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 January 2011, 00:05 GMT]
SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa visiting Jaffna and ‘celebrating’ Pongkal on Monday reacted to media reports that pointed out his ‘conspicuous silence’ about an aid he was politically capitalising. Meanwhile, the SL president who is coupling a terror campaign with his campaign for a colonial polity, ‘celebrating’ a Tamil agrarian festival in military occupied Jaffna, spending millions of rupees and intimidating people to attend it, while the agricultural lands of the Tamil country are seriously deluged in the floods making hundreds of thousands homeless, was nauseating to the public, media sources in Jaffna said. But addressing along with Rajapaksa, the SL minister and the ‘host’ of the event, Douglas Devananda declared that “today the polity of collaboration is on its victorious march.”
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'Pentagon blighting Tamil cause may turn counter-productive to US interests'

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 January 2011, 00:39 GMT]
“The Sri Lankan government does have supporters in the U.S., particularly in military circles. Senior officials told me that their government owed much to a Pentagon official named James Clad, ‘a great friend of Sri Lanka.’ Clad was the Bush Administration’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia, in charge of the Pentagon’s dealings with India and Sri Lanka, until he was replaced by the Obama Administration in January, 2009,” wrote John Lee Anderson in Newyorker.com last week, adding that in order to reform Sri Lanka’s public image, Clad, who recently retired from the Pentagon’s National Defense University, recommended to Gotabaya Rajapaksa that he host a meeting on maritime-security concerns in the Indian Ocean to “get out of its box as a ‘single-issue country’ and reconnect it with an earlier maritime heritage,” Anderson cited Clad, advising Gotabhaya.
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Rajapaksa claims credit for British-aided causeway and bridge to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 January 2011, 20:00 GMT]
“The foundation for this causeway and bridge was laid down 7 times since 1940's, but it was only my government that managed to complete the project,” claimed Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in opening a causeway and bridge in the SL military-occupied Tamil country in the island, between Keara-theevu of the Jaffna peninsula and Changkup-piddi in Poonakari of the main island on Sunday. The causeway as used to be called Mahadeva Thaampoathi was first built in British times and the present bridge, doing away with the ferry route in between points of the causeway, has been built by British Steel Corporation, aiding the island. Mr. Rajapaksa made no mention of the British aid at the inauguration and the obscured British officials were found seated only among the audience.
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British Tamil businesses expand networking forum

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 January 2011, 01:14 GMT]
The Tamil Chamber of Commerce (TCC) in Britain held a key gathering Thursday in east London, attended by eighty local Tamil business owners, as well as local bank managers and politicians. The event, the first of a series planned by the TCC across the country, was to raise awareness of the practical benefits of Tamil enterprises working together, a spokesman said. The London Chairman of the Conservative Business Relations organisation, Paul Shea, told the gathering Prime Minister David Cameron had sent his wishes for the initiative’s success. There are five thousand Tamil-owned businesses in Britain, with a combined turnover of over £1 billion and 150,000 employees, the Chamber says.
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UN ambivalent on Advisory Panel's agenda

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 January 2011, 14:16 GMT]
United Nation's Secretary General (UNSG), Ban Ki Moon, told the Inner City Press that the members of the Advisory Panel on Sri Lanka "are now working very seriously on finalizing the dates of visiting Sri Lanka," and responding to a question that the panel cannot investigate anything [on Sri Lanka's war crimes], Ban replied, "[t]hey will be able to...They are now discussing that." ICP's Matthew Lee notes that "[t]his again in contradictory to what the Sri Lankan government has said, and even to what Ban's spokespeople have said. Ban's acting Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq, bypassing Inner City Press' outstanding questions, told BBC's Sinhala service that the Panel might only meet the LLRC outside Sri Lanka."
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Queen Elizabeth honours three Tamils this year

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 January 2011, 18:52 GMT]
Queen Elizabeth II honoured three Tamils this year at New Year’s awards in New Zealand and in UK. Significantly, The Queen’s Service Medal (QSM) to 77-year-old Eezham Tamil, Mr. Arumugam Thevarajan from New Zealand was in specific recognition for his services to the Tamil community in New Zealand. Another Eezham Tamil who received Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) was Mr. Chelliah Yogamoorthy, an old student of Jaffna Hindu College, who was honoured for his outstanding service to the Department of Transport. Mr. Yogamoorthy is also a trustee of a Tamil school in Birmingham. The MBE honour for Lakshmi Holmstrom, alumna of Madras and Oxford universities, was for her services to literature. She translated a number of Tamil literary masterpieces into English. In 2007, Canadian Tamils also honoured her with an award.
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