Sinhala Navy seeks funds to lure uprooted Champoor Tamils

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 June 2015, 23:46 GMT]
The occupying SL Navy is trying to lure a section of the uprooted landowners in Champoor in Moothoor East to sell their residential and fertile lands to SL military. Informed sources told TamilNet Thursday that the SL Navy has demanded the new regime in Colombo to allocate large sums of money for the so-called relocation of its military cantonment in Champoor. The SL Navy is not prepared to shift the military cantonment to a remote location away from the people. The SL Navy was seeking ‘alternative’ lands consisting fertile agricultural and residential lands of the uprooted people, the sources further said. The SL Navy has worked out a new plan to modernize its military cantonment, the sources further said.
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Batticaloa ignored in financial allocations for resettlement: EPC Councillor

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 June 2015, 22:45 GMT]
The SL Government in Colombo and the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) have failed to allocate financial resources to resettle the uprooted people in Batticaloa district, EPC Councillor R. Thurairatnam told media on Wednesday. The uprooted people from seven of fourteen divisions in the district have been struggling without proper assistance while Colombo and the EPC keep ignoring their needs despite repeated appeals, he said.
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Edifying Tamil leadership to face South Africa succeeding Norway in deception

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 June 2015, 00:57 GMT]
The UK-based British Tamil Forum (BTF) and the so-called Global Tamil Forum (GTF), which are locked in a sectarian conflict with each other, have dragged almost all the Eezham Tamil diaspora outfits from the USA, Canada, Australia and several European countries into a two-pronged South Africa based discourse which the new Sri Lankan regime wants to exploit to its advantage to counter the internationalisation of the national question of Eezham Tamils, informed Tamil diaspora activists told TamilNet supplying documentary evidences of the interactions that have taken place in May and June 2015. It is historic duty of the Tamil diaspora to produce an appropriate leadership to advance the Tamil cause without diluting the fundamentals and falling prey to the ultimate culprits, the activists told TamilNet.
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SL Navy deploys Sinhala extremist BBS to keep Tamils away from Champoor

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 June 2015, 22:39 GMT]
On the invitation by the occupying Sri Lanka Navy in Trincomalee, Sinhala Buddhist extremist monks belonging to Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force) have been exerting pressure on the Sri Lankan Police in Moothoor to keep the uprooted Tamils away from their lands in Champoor, informed sources in Trincomalee said. The BBS has also been exerting pressure on the Sri Lankan Gateway Industries (SLGI) to file complaints with the SL Police to maintain the status quo of occupation until the final verdict is issued on the on-going court case.
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Trinco Bishop reminds India, UK on moral obligations, denounces domestic processes

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 May 2015, 23:24 GMT]
“If we are to view the recent history, the judicial system [of Sri Lanka] has been deployed against the interests of Tamils. Be it the State or it's military, the system has been deploying these laws against Tamils, further complicating the difficulties faced by them”, said Rt. Rev. Dr. Kinglsey Swampillai, the Bishop of Trincomalee, in an exclusive interview to TamilNet this week. “Although the Tamils have been waiting for a solution to relieve their plight for a long time, there is still no ray of light in this regard,” he said. Noting that India and the UK have contributed to the complexity of the dynamics enabling the successive SL governments to sustain the oppression on Tamils, the Bishop urged Tamils of reminding these Powers on their moral obligation to mediate between the Tamils and the Sri Lankan government to arrive at a political solution resolving the underlying conflict.
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Oppressed nations shouldn’t take mere existence of geopolitics for granted: Tamil academic

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 May 2015, 23:31 GMT]
“Despite the emergence of a multipolar world, in which international and regional powers will battle each other and intervene in various conflicts in order to enhance their respective geopolitical dominance, oppressed people and Eezham Tamils should be wary,” writes Norway-based Anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan. The patronage given by rivalling geopolitical powers to the genocidal policies of Sri Lanka and Pakistan in South Asia imply that a multipolar world does not by itself serve the interest of oppressed nations, the academic from the second generation diaspora, concludes that the national political mobilization within the oppressed nations themselves and a global solidarity transcending the State borders, would create the necessary de-facto situations to empower the nations without States to achieve their freedom.
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Uprooted Tamils confront SL police in Champoor, Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 May 2015, 08:42 GMT]
Even after TNA Parliamentary Group Leader R. Sampanthan assured the uprooted people of Champoor on Wednesday that they could now start settling down in their lands, except the small plot where two containers of the Sri Lankan Gateway Industries (SLGI) were located, the people who went to their lands, have been blocked by riot control police of the occupying Sri Lankan State Thursday morning. The SL Police ASP from Moothoor was using abusive racial language against the resettling people and was not prepared to talk to Mr R. Sampanthan over the phone. In the meantime, TNA's national list parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran was urging the people not to stand on the road and to stay inside their lands and be patient while he talks to the SL Police Deputy Inspector General, news sources in Trincomalee said.
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Uprooted Champoor Tamils call off hunger-strike

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 May 2015, 16:32 GMT]
The uprooted people of Champoor, who were promised that their lands would be released by the new regime launched a protest on 18 May after the Sri Lanka Gateway Industries (Private) Limited had sought the SL Supreme Court to revoke the decision of the SL President. A temporary ban on resettlement was issued by the SL Supreme Court. However, the uprooted people of Champoor were determined to take forward the struggle with hunger strike and a fast-unto-death. Latest reports from Colombo said the people have now been allowed to resettle in more than 800 acres of lands. However, around 5,000 acres of lands still remain under the SL military occupation in Champooor.
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Mu’l’livaaykkaal Genocide Day marked in occupied Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 May 2015, 06:39 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan State has deployed more than 600 Sinhala riot control policemen Sunday evening at Mu’l’livaaykkaal in Mullaiththeevu, where Eezham Tamils were intentionally corralled in 2009 in a calculated and deliberate attempt to destroy as many Tamils as possible. The Northern Provincial Council, which passed a key resolution in February this year demanding the OISL UN mechanism in Geneva to investigate the claim of genocide, has invited all the Tamil parliamentarians and councillors from the province to attend the remembrance event at Mu’l’livaaykkaal East on Monday. However, students of Jaffna University, the Tamil National Peoples Front, civil society and religious dignitaries are proceeding with collective memorial meetings at several locations in the NorthEast on May 18.
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Politics of memorialisation discussed in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 May 2015, 23:44 GMT]
A Colombo-based Human Rights defender and an NGO researcher promoting ‘Sri Lanka’ reforms were proposing ‘space’ for ‘multiple narratives’ in the memorialisation process for an ‘inclusive’ Sinhala-Muslim-Tamil ‘Sri Lanka’ at a meeting held in Jaffna last Sunday. The activists from the South were advocating the right of memorialisation as part of a reparations of a reconciliation process as if the underlying genocidal conflict in the island had been resolved. The Tamil activists of the TCSF, defending the right of Eezham Tamils to mark their memorialisation as a collective right were also advocating a transformation within the Tamil nation, in order to accommodate space for various narratives within the mainstream Tamil nationalist discourse itself.
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CMPC in Tamil Nadu pays tribute to Eezham Tamil Journalist Sivaram

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 May 2015, 17:19 GMT]
Centre of Media Persons for Change (CMPC), a journalist movement based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, observed 10th year anniversary of the assassination of Eezham Tamil journalist Sivaram Dharmeratnam (Taraki) at a journalists meeting, which was organised on Sunday to mark the World Press Freedom Day and the 5th year of the CMPC movement, media sources in Chennai said. Young journalists from mainstream media groups participated in the event discussing conflict-reporting, self-realization on the role of the journalists in the larger society dominated by a corporate culture, commitment to principled approaches and focus on human rights of the oppressed nations and people.
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SL Governor continues ‘LLRC agenda’ of Sinhalicisation in Northern Province

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 May 2015, 22:12 GMT]
The incumbent Sri Lankan Governor of Northern Province, HMGS Palihakkara, who was one of the eight panellists appointed by former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa to the so-called Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), has instructed the SL Government Agents in the Northern Province to channel more resources to the Sinhala settlements initiated during the Rajapaksa regime in the North, civil sources in Jaffna said. In the meantime, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) provincial councillor K.T. Linganathan, who is from Nedungkea'ni, Vavuniyaa, on Sunday said elected Tamil representatives were being refused access to an accelerated Sinhala colonisation scheme at Kokkachchaan-ku'lam, which has been Sinhalicised into Kalabogaswewa with 5,000 Sinhala settlers. The occupation, initiated during the previous regime, is now being expanded with new housing schemes.
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Swaminathan's secretary admits SL military delaying release of lands

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 May 2015, 23:07 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government, which recently released some pockets of lands in the occupied Valikaamam North, has come up with a ‘new excuse’ for the delay in releasing the lands back to the people at a meeting held at Jaffna District Secretariat on Friday. Ranjini Nadarasapillai, the secretary of UNP's appointed parliamentarian and SL Minister of Resettlement, Reconstruction and Hindu Affairs, D.M. Swaminathan, has admitted that a scheduled announcement of releasing more lands has been delayed, as the SL military commanders were yet to utilise her ministry with the list of new slots, civil officers who attended the meeting told TamilNet. The ITAK Leader and TNA parliamentarian Mavai Senathiraja, who hails from Valikaamam North, was disappointed with the progress.
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Bath-gam-pattuwa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 May 2015, 23:24 GMT]
The division of the rice-producing village or endowment village
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16 Batticaloa Tamils arrested within last 100 days at Colombo airport

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 May 2015, 17:36 GMT]
The Sri Lankan ‘Terrorist’ investigation division has arrested at least 16 Tamil men from Batticaloa district at Katunayake International Airport within the past 100 days of the so-called good governance of the new SL regime in Colombo, Tamil rights activists in Batticaloa said. The arrests have been made under the notorious Emergency Regulations. But, the visiting foreign diplomats like the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, have been blindly appreciating the Sri Lankan government for ‘good governance’ in the island, the activists said. The detentions were isolated events without any relationship to each other, they said.
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Gajendrakumar urges Tamils not to succumb to invisible designs of genocide

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 May 2015, 13:39 GMT]
The Sri Lankan State wants Tamils to leave the island as part of its sophisticated genocidal project. While Sinhala colonisation, taking place in accelerated phase after the end of war, during the last five years, is visible to everyone, the real extent of the genocidal project, which is being schemed through the widespread militarisation, is invisible to many, TNPF leader Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam said in his May Day address at Point Pedro in Jaffna on Friday. All the main pillars of the Tamil Nation are being systematically destroyed. The Tamil people are still forced to leave the island as they are kept under poverty line. The SL State wants them economically deprived of livelihood as it thinks that Tamils, when kept without social and economic empowerment, would not be waging a struggle for political rights, he said.
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New generation of organic intellectuals needed to continue Sivaram’s work

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 May 2015, 12:08 GMT]
“Only a new generation of organic Tamil intellectuals, who have a clear understanding of changing global paradigms and who are able to create paradigm shifts in Tamil political discourse, can preserve and take forward Sivaram’s legacy” writes research scholar RM Karthick. In an article written on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the assassination of ‘Taraki’ Sivaram Dharmeratnam, Mr. Karthick argues that the current Tamil intelligentsia needs to live up to its historical responsibility in exposing the designs of the powers, be it in Oslo, Geneva or Singapore. Criticizing mainstream Tamil intellectuals for their apathy and for failing to keep up with important changes in South Asian geo-politics, he further says that “a nation’s ability to spring back to its feet politically depends on how soon it is able to organize itself intellectually.”
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Sivaram commemorated in Tamil Nadu on 10th anniversary of his assassination

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2015, 10:29 GMT]
The 10th death anniversary of assassination of Senior Editor at TamilNet, an Eezham Tamil intellectual, journalist, political analyst and activist Dharmeratnam Sivaram (Taraki) was marked on Tuesday in Chennai. Sivaram, beside his profound love for his people, was a genuine internationalist who dedicated his life and writing- to quote him in his own words, “…to create a body of knowledge to help oppressed people all over the world help themselves to get out from under oppression; to disseminate this body of knowledge.” A decade after his assassination by the hands of the Sri Lankan state, Eelam and much of the oppressed nations of the world which he espoused solidarity with and desired to aid are still beleaguered and subjected to counter-insurgency perpetuated by their respective oppressor states aided by world powers.
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Constitutionally recognise Tamil homeland to prove bona fides, exiled poet tells Colombo

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2015, 17:40 GMT]
“We [Eezham Tamils] are not [people of two] provinces. We are [the people of] a homeland. This reality is constitutionally not recognised in the Constitution. Would the Sinhala rulers of Sri Lanka ever be prepared to constitutionally recognise the joint North-East as the homeland of Tamils,” questioned exiled Eezham Tamil poet Kasi Anandan on Wednesday, speaking from Chennai, in an Internet-based video address on the occasion of a memorial event held in Batticaloa on the 10th anniversary of the assassinated TamilNet Senior Editor and popular columnist Sivaram Dharmeratnam (Taraki). The current Sinhala rulers [in the island of Sri Lanka] are only talking about ‘Tamils in the North’ whenever they refer to Tamils, Kasi Anandan observed.
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Unabated structural genocide in East reminds Tamils of Dudley's betrayal in 1965

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2015, 19:51 GMT]
Resettled Tamils in Paddith-thidal village in Moothoor divion in Trincomalee, recently made a fresh attempt to engage in agriculture in their lands after the ‘new’ regime came to power in Colombo. However, the latest effort, made with the assistance of the ‘Legal Aid Commission’ has also proved futile, says Velayutham Velmaran, the chairman of Paddith-thidal Sri Vinayaga Agricultural Society in an interview to TamilNet on Monday. A Sinhala-Buddhist extremist monk from Samagipura, which is situated in the bordering Seruwila DS division, has been blocking the resettled Eezham Tamil landowners for several years from engaging in agriculture in their land. The Sinhala colonisers from Seruwila have seized around 1,500 acres of the agricultural lands of Eezham Tamils in the villages of Kangku-veali, Padukaadu and Muthalai-madu , Mr Velmaran said.
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