Gotabaya dissolves SL Parliament, fixes elections to coincide with Easter attack anniversary

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 March 2020, 23:46 GMT]
SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has dissolved the SL Parliament using the executive powers vested with him to do so, six months earlier than its expiry, on midnight Monday. Fixing 25 April as the date for the new elections, Mr Gotabaya has issued an extra-ordinary Gazette notification specifying 12 - 19 March as the nomination period for 22 electoral districts in the island. Rajapaksa siblings aim at consolidating their power through securing a two-thirds majority in the 225 seat House to strengthen their autocracy as well as the collective autocracy, which is the unitary state of the Sinhala South against the occupied country of Eezham Tamils in the North-East.
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Tamils need to add Macron’s France to geopolitical watchlist on genocide-abetting regional powers

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 February 2020, 22:18 GMT]
The Republic of France, one of the five nuclear-weapon states distinguished by the non-proliferation treaty, is asserting itself as a sovereign regional power in the Indo-Pacific with a dedicated strategy. With a robust military presence and 93% of its exclusive economic zone located in the Indo-Pacific, France has started to compete and cooperate with the US. A comparatively weak global power, vying for regional influence, complicates the already complex matrix in the region, especially when it seeks to woo rogue, autocratic and genocidal state actors. The stateless nations and people facing suppression from the occupying state actors are already at the receiving end due to lopsided geopolitics curtailing their collective rights and international justice. Wrong symptoms were showing up in the recent message coming from French President Emmanuel Macron to SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
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Pompeo blacklists pro-China Shavendra giving Gotabaya second chance to toe US line

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 February 2020, 19:44 GMT]
It was Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who led the genocidal onslaught on Eezham Tamils in 2009, giving instructions to the then Major General Shavendra Silva to bomb the hospitals as well as to carry out the brutal white-flag killings. Gotabaya was a US citizen and SL Defence Secretary at that time. Instead of holding the greatest war criminal and genocidaire, liable under US Congress’s War Crimes Act, accountable for the crimes, the Trump administration has opted for a different approach with strategic interests in mind. The US State Department is enticing him offering carrots while pointing its stick selectively against his pro-China Army Commander Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva. On Friday, US Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo designated Silva under Section 7031(c) of US Department of States Appropriations Act, passing a severe message to Gotabaya not to delay toeing the US line.
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‘Sinhala Neighbourhood First’ approach unfolds in New Delhi

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 February 2020, 22:20 GMT]
SL Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa was not reciprocating Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “confidence” that Colombo would “realize the expectations of the Tamil people for equality, justice, peace, and respect within a united Sri Lanka.” Both the leaders held a joint media presence in New Delhi on Saturday. Mr Modi said that it would be “necessary to carry forward the process of reconciliation with the implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka.” Mr Rajapaksa, who read out a statement after Modi’s speech, was not making any reference to “united” or “13th Amendment”. The same pattern was also witnessed during SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s visit to India in November 2019. It is evident that Mr Modi was making concessions to Colombo in return for its compliance to the maritime security concerns of New Delhi, political observers in Jaffna said.
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US-India ‘think-tankers’ advise New Delhi to put Tamil concerns on the backburner

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 January 2020, 21:34 GMT]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra has been successful in culminating a two-year-long “silent background work” to rebuild relations with Rajapaksa siblings, observes Constantino Xavier, a research fellow at Brookings India in New Delhi. In an interview to Rediff, the Portuguese academic, who specialises foreign policy and defence in South Asia says, however, India was risking that Mr Gotabaya could repeat the game Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Olie played with India during the last three years. Mr Oli “gave in to all of Indian protocol demands and political optics, visited Delhi first, proclaimed India first, then waited for India to forget about him, and went on to do more business with China,” the US-India think-tanker told Rediff.com on Thursday.
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Gotabaya seeks US investment in big development of IT, high-tech

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 January 2020, 22:51 GMT]
Alice G Wells, the US principal deputy assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs, who met SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Tuesday delivered a letter from US President Donald Trump to Mr Rajapaksa. At the meeting, Mr Rajapaksa was hinting on a possible renegotiation of the terms of the proposed Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact. He told the visiting diplomat that the MCC agreement would be evaluated considering the views of the public. The Daily Mirror reported that Gotabaya “invited the US to invest in technology-based industries since Sri Lanka is also ready to develop its IT-based sectors.” The Daily News in its report said that Sri Lanka was planning to develop the “IT and other technology-related industries in a big way” with US support.
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Putting Russian abetment of Tamil genocide in proper context

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 January 2020, 23:55 GMT]
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has given an email-interview to Colombo-based Daily News before his visit to the island on Monday. The long-serving Russian FM was stressing a set of principles such as “indivisible security” and “non-interference in the internal affairs” of the states in the Indian Ocean. Mr Lavrov also mentioned “peaceful settlement of disputes and non-use of force or the threat of force”. As far as the Eezham Tamils are concerned, they will never forget the use of lethal weapons deployed by genocidal Sri Lanka’s military. Much of those were supplied by Russia, particularly the OFAB-500 cluster bombs deployed by the SL Air Force and the thermobaric infantry weapons such as RPO-A Shmels used by the SL Army against Eezham Tamils.
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Gotabaya deploys PTA against protesting families of missing persons

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 January 2020, 22:53 GMT]
The coordinator of the continuous protest in Vavuniyaa Jeyavanitha Kasippillai is again facing harassment from the ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division of the SL Police which is compelling her to appear for an investigation under the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The cabinet of Gotabaya Rajapaksa has recently refused to withdraw the PTA. The latest harassment comes as the attempts by Douglas Devananda, an ex-paramilitary collaborator of Rajapaksa regime, miserably failed to end the continuous protests in the North and East. The families of Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying Sinhala military have spent more than 1,055 days in continuous protests in the North and East.
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Gotabaya backtracks on Colombo’s assurances to New Delhi: Sumanthiran

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 January 2020, 23:31 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran has said that SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was regressing from the assurances made by his predecessors, including his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, to New Delhi on three occasions about the full implementation of the 13th Amendment. When India intervened in 1987, Colombo turned towards the “right direction” and started to “acknowledge the diversity of its peoples,” by amending the Constitution, the TNA parliamentarian said. The equal status between the peoples in the island is not dependent on their respective numerical strength. “This principle must be acknowledged if our democracy is to survive and indeed flourish, and not regress into naked majoritarianism. Regretfully, in his address to Parliament on 3rd January 2020 the President has articulated such a regressive position,” he said.
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Families of missing Tamils in Vanni turn their protest against EPDP

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2019, 17:41 GMT]
The families of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying Sinhala military in the genocidal war up to 2009 have turned the focus of their protest against SL Minister Douglas Devananda, who has been a close ally of the Rajapaksa regime. Mr Devananda's EPDP was a former Tamil paramilitary group, operated by the occupying Sinhala military. The families have been irked by the attempts by Devananda to dilute their continues protests that have passed one thousand days this month.
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Sinhalese have right of return to North, says lawyer from South rejecting Tamil rights

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 December 2019, 22:03 GMT]
The North is “just as much the historical habitation of the Sinhalese as it is of the Tamils”. And, the Tamils “do not have a right to sovereignty and self-determination adverse to the rights of the Sinhalese and other groups in the island,” writes Attorney-at-Law Dharshan Weerasekara, a Sinhalese, in an article ‘clarifying’ a judgement delivered by the SL Supreme Court in 2014. The denial of Tamil homeland and Tamils right of self-determination comes as the cabinet led by SL Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa also refused to allow the Tamil version of the SL ‘national anthem’ at the forthcoming ‘independence day’ celebrations on 04 February 2020. “Sinhalese have moral and historical rights in the North and East of the country, and this would include the right of return,” the Sinhala lawyer claimed in his response.
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Russian FM to visit Colombo before proceeding to New Delhi

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 December 2019, 23:28 GMT]
After conducting joint naval training with Iran and China in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman in December 2019, Russia is dispatching its Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to Colombo on 14 January 2020. He will proceed to New Delhi on the following day. In the meantime, China, Russia and Iran are conducting a four-day naval drill between Friday and Monday. The trilateral training is the first of its kind and comes amidst escalating tensions between the US and Iran since 2018. China is sending a guided-missile destroyer, Xining, to the drill, stated China's Defence Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian in a statement on Thursday.
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Jaffna villagers agitate against exploitative sand traders from South

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 December 2019, 22:47 GMT]
In what was described as the first-initiated protest against the SL authorities in Jaffna after Gotabaya Rajapaksa assuming office as the SL President in the South, the Tamil residents from Valikaamam East blocked the A9 Highway for more than one hour at Puthukkaadu Junction on Saturday. The protesters were agitating against the exploitative sand mining escalating without any control in Jaffna. They demanded the SL Police to block the southern sand traders who were dispatching their tipper vehicles to transport the excavated sands from Jaffna. The SL Police had to promise the protesters of setting up a new point to control the sand transport to end the protest.
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People mobilise in resolute to mark Tamil Eelam Heroes Day amidst Rajapaksas return

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 November 2019, 23:32 GMT]
The people of occupied Tamil Eelam in the North and East of the island, who face an uncertain future due to the return of Rajapaksa siblings as the rulers from the South, have mobilised to mark Tamil Eelam Heroes Day with unwavering resolute also this year. There were reports of occupying SL military and the police at Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal in Mullaith-theevu in North and at Champoor in Trincomalee in the East, issuing threats to the volunteers. However, various grassroots organisations along with Tamil national political leaders and parties have engaged in Sramadanam work clearing and decorating the grounds and vicinities of the Heroes cemeteries, which the occupying Sinhala military had razed to the grounds during the previous regime of Rajapaksas.
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US, Indian think-tanks call for deepening of Indo-Pacific ties ahead of 2+2 meetings

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 November 2019, 22:58 GMT]
China's strategic infrastructure financing, including of Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka, Gwadar Port in Pakistan, and Kyaukpyu in Myanmar as well as its economic cooperation, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and investments in Nepal, Myanmar, Maldives and Sri Lanka are among the tools Beijing is using to shape geopolitics in the Indian Ocean region, argue two of the collaborating think tanks at Washington DC and New Delhi, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Delhi Policy Group (DPG). Enlarging US interest in the Indian Ocean Region, US recognising India's role in the region and the deepening of US-India strategic conversations and planning are the action-points proposed by both the think-tanks.
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US ambassador-turned-consultant hints at capitalising on ‘shared interests’ with Gotabaya

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 November 2019, 23:04 GMT]
“The key question for the United States is now whether the two countries [Sri Lanka and the US] can reset their dialogue on the Indo-Pacific and regional peace and capitalize on the interests they share,” says Ambassador Teresita Schaffer, a retired career member of the U.S. Foreign Service and a former U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka (1992-1995). In an interview conducted for the blog of the Council on Foreign Relations, by Alyssa Ayres, one of her colleague at the Washington DC based consulting firm, McLarty Associates, Shaffer mentions one of the ‘interests’ shared by the US as “preventing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam from resuming their campaign”.
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Gotabhaya's campaigners supply money and alcohol to young voters in Vanni

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 November 2019, 18:16 GMT]
The campaigners of SL Presidential candidate Gotabhaya Rajapaksa were locking the uprooted Tamil youth from Keappaa-pulavu in Mullaiththeevu supplying 3,000 to 5,000 rupees per person and five Ceylon Arrack (alcoholic drink) bottles per person if they were prepared to attend the propaganda meeting on Sunday. Sinhala youth were also brought from Ma'nal-aa'ru (Weli-Oya) to Mullaith-theevu town with the same offer.
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SL Police extorts money from Kaaththaankudi Muslim traders

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 November 2019, 19:45 GMT]
Sinhala police officers posing as Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) investigators from a special unit in Colombo engage in widespread extortion of money from the Muslim business owners in Kaaththaan-kudi. The extortion has increased in recent days, and the business owners are reluctant to lodge complaints at the police station in Kaaththaan-kudi even though Tamil-speaking Muslim police officers are manning the station.
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SL Police detains Tamil trustees of Saiva temple in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 November 2019, 21:03 GMT]
The Archaeological Department of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka has moved the SL Police to act against the chairman and the secretary of the board of trustees of Kaaddu-vinayakar temple at Maa'likai in Oamanthai, Vavuniyaa after they started to clear the bushes of their village deity. Recently, the resettled Tamils of the village got together in a Shramadana campaign at the war-destroyed ancient temple in the former no-man zone.
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“Gota, go home,” mothers in Jaffna protest against the architect of white-van abductions

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 October 2019, 23:02 GMT]
The kith and kin of Eezham Tamils subjected to enforced disappearances at the hands of the occupying Sinhala military during the regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa staged a protest in Jaffna on Monday, when his sibling, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa contesting the forthcoming SL Presidential elections came to woo the Tamil voters in the North on Monday. The mothers gathered in front of Col Kiddu Park at Nalloor staging their symbolic protest against the former SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. The world community must call for international criminal investigations against the crimes committed by Mr Gotabhaya, the mothers said. They were also denouncing internal and hybrid forms of the inquiry approved by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva as futile.
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