Tamil Nadu, Global Tamils should be organised in addressing US-UN failure: Boyle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 October 2015, 22:40 GMT]
Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in international law, who teaches at University of Illinois, in an interview given to the 3CR radio broadcast in Melbourne Saturday in the "Tamil manifest" program said that he sees the millions of Tamils in Tamil Naadu, its Chief Minister Jayalalitha, a unified Tamil diaspora and the young generation of Tamils as the propelling agents to force the changes necessary to bring justice to the victims of Tamil genocide by taking the Sinhala genocidaires to Court. The horrendous nature of genocide needs an international tribunal to dispense justice, and the United Nations and the U.S have failed in their obligations, Boyle said. Geopolitical compulsions have pulverized U.S. foreign policy to collude with the genocidaires, Boyle told TamilNet.
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Media, NGOs provide SL cover for Genocide

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 October 2015, 23:32 GMT]
While the UN's Petrie report and the accompanying now-exposed-redacted parts, reveal the maneuvering within the UN diplomats to soften the human rights implications of the mass killings carried out by its member state Sri Lanka, and the open support of the US-UN-India group to Sri Lanka in the UNHRC meetings to provide enough political space and time to prolongate the "investigation time," obviating the need for an international criminal investigations of alleged international crimes, the news media including Reuters and AFP, and NGOs including Amnesty International (AI), and Human Rights Watch (HRW), routinely adopt neutral and pro-Rights language and fail to highlight the UN, US, India triumvirate's efforts to allow Sri Lanka to whitewash the genocidal acts, Tamil activists said.
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U.S, U.N diplomatic shenanigans allow Sri Lanka Genocide cover

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 October 2015, 23:42 GMT]
The United Nations, U.S., and India, the international players complicit in first failing to prevent, and then covering the Sri Lanka's 2009 Genocide of Tamils, have provided the proverbial succor, "more time and political space" to Sri Lanka to investigate itself, allowing the genocidal state to avoid culpability for the crimes. While the "inability and unwillingness" of Sri Lanka for conducting credible investigations for criminal conduct of the island's key politicians and the military has been historically proven, the US has been instrumental in supporting and shaping UN resolutions in buying Sri Lanka time to skirt around the critical obligations for a credible criminal investigations. Six years have passed and UNHRC resolutions are continuing to provide more "time and political space" to Sri Lanka.
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Resolution sponsors, voters, UNHRC become accessories to SL genocide: Boyle

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 October 2015, 20:49 GMT]
Accusing that the sponsor states of the UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka, the States that voted for the Resolution, and the UN Human Rights Council itself have “all become Accessories after the Fact to Sri Lanka’s Genocide, Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes against the Eelam Tamils,” Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in international law and a professor at the College of Law, University of Illinois, said that the “Resolution calls for nothing more than the Genocidal Sri Lanka to set up a Domestic “Judicial” Mechanism dressed up with a transparent fig-leaf of international participation in order to cover-up and do damage control and damage limitation for the GOSL Genocide against the Eelam Tamils,” adding that “[h]istory teaches that this GOSL Domestic Mechanism will fail,” and “Genocide against Eelam Tamils will recur.”
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Dubious "Sovereignty" defence

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 September 2015, 19:36 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka's leading politicians and diplomats, past and present, have used sovereignty as a defense against international "intervention" in conducting investigations of international crimes: war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. While sovereignty, defined as "supreme authority within a territory" underpins the political authority bestowed to modern nation states and provides status for the state to be member of the world comity of nations, this authority is not absolute. As a signatory to United Nations charter, article 6 and 7, ‘Sri Lanka’ has accepted to compromise on its sovereignty, related to matters of international security and commission of international crimes.
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Reforms will not happen, genocide will continue, warns Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 September 2015, 00:21 GMT]
Asserting that war crimes and crimes against humanity “on discriminatory grounds” can constitute genocide, Professor Boyle, an expert in International Law and who teaches at the University of Illinois, commenting on the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights overview report on Sri Lanka made public Wednesday, said, that "a Truth and Reconciliation Process does not work within the context of genocide," and that instead of a hybrid court recommended by the OISL there is a "need for an International Criminal Tribunal for Sri Lanka or else referral by the United Nations Security Council to the International Criminal Court." Boyle also warned that reforms by GOSL will not happen and that "[t]he Sinhala genocide against the Tamils will simply and predictably continue."
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Chief Minister Wigneswaran rejects domestic investigation in new NPC resolution

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 September 2015, 06:23 GMT]
Questioning the legal possibilities of conducting a credible investigation within the domestic sphere of the Sri Lankan Constitution and pointing out other hurdles within the SL State system, C.V. Wigneswaran, the Chief Minister of Northern Provincial Council (NPC) on Tuesday passed a resolution rejecting the domestic process being proposed by the USA and other powers. In ithe new resolution, the NPC has once again demanded a credible international investigation mechanism. Mr Wigneswaran, the NPC chief minister, who was a former Supreme Court Judge of Sri Lanka, citied previous examples of domestic failures including the earlier commissions that had international participation. Explaining the nature of crimes and legal circumstances prevailing in the island, the suggestion of domestic mechanism would be a ‘travesty of justice’ the CM proclaimed in the resolution.
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Competition mounts in engineering genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 August 2015, 16:07 GMT]
South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa was on a secret mission to Colombo last weekend. Mr. Tony Blair, who was the British Prime Minister during the genocidal onslaught of Eezham Tamils was in the island on a two weeks tour since 11 August. US Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Biswal and another US official are in Colombo. The section of Sinhala Buddhist elements in the mission or payroll of protecting Rajapaksa, who openly took a China line earlier this year, connected the dots to depict IC conspiracy, by linking Ramaphosa to the ICG and to a CIA mission. In response, the South African Government on Tuesday announced that Mr Ramaphosa was no longer connected to the ICG. The hectic visits and the recent Indian media scurry in claiming hold on affairs as well as 'guidance' for domestic investigation, signal only mounting competition in stabilizing the genocidal State with new local partners.
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Chadian parallel: dictator faces trial for war-crimes

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 July 2015, 22:04 GMT]
While Eezham Tamils are searching for international mechanisms to bring those who bear responsibility for the "Crime of the century" of killing more than 80,000 Tamil civilians in Mu'l'livaaykaal in 2009, to justice, human rights activists are elated but reminded that the "march of justice can be slow" in the recent trial of Hissen Habre, a former dictator from Chad, in the courts of Senegal. The trial began on 20th July, for alleged crimes of mass killings, torture, disappearance as part of ethnic cleansing in the 1980s, crimes that have stark parallel to those committed against Tamils in Sri Lanka. US State Department, in their selective approach to dealing with International Crimes, saved former SL President Rajapakse in the US Courts of Law suggesting sovereign immunity, an archaic legal doctrine that allows the US Executive branch to protect even genocidaires from legal action.
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New mantra of ‘hybrid courts’ in the game of geo-politics

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 May 2015, 10:57 GMT]
The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) was condemning the new regime of Sri Lanka for appointing Major General Jagath Dias, the war-time commander of the abusive 57 division of the SL Military as the new Army Chief of Staff. At the same time, the HRW was urging the new regime in Colombo to “put into place an effective accountability mechanism with a significant international component.” The Tamil people should note the terminology being adopted in the global orchestration in narrowing down the ‘pressure’ on Sri Lanka into a domestic process, Tamil activists for alternative politics in Jaffna cautioned on Sunday. Tamils should pay particular attention to how the HRW and other rights outfits are trying to justify a ‘domestic‘ process while the USA and China are competing with each other in building strategic partnerships in the Indian Ocean Region, the activists further 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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Ex-LTTE members cannot be investigated: Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 April 2015, 22:37 GMT]
The Sri Lankan State and the members of the international community, who were complicit in the genocide of Eezham Tamils in the name of waging a war against ‘terrorism’ cannot demand any further investigation on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after subjecting the members of the movement to cold-blooded summary executions at the hands of the Sri Lankan State and its military, Mr Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam has said. After the end of war, the SL State punished even those who had left the movement several years ago by subjecting them for the so-called rehabilitation in imprisonment. Even those who had left the LTTE several years ago were subjected to military interrogations and punishment by the State, which claims itself as the victor of the war, he said.
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Investigating ‘root cause’ of injustice to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 January 2015, 23:25 GMT]
The All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPG) in the UK and the British Tamil Forum (BTF), jointly host an annual dinner on 29th January, this time with the theme “Tamil People’s Right to Democracy and Justice in Sri Lanka.” The highlights of the dinner hosts’ requests to British government are: Justice for the war crimes and crimes against humanity (including the ‘intent of genocide’); Political solution to address the root cause to the conflict and that the UK government should put pressure on the Sri Lankan regime. What actually needed is an international investigation on the root cause of Britain forging and enforcing a single State of genocidal dimensions in the island and Washington and New Delhi following the footsteps, resulting the genocide and on-going genocide, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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Singapore Principles of 2013: Tamil polity taken for ride from Oslo to Singapore

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 January 2015, 07:19 GMT]
Right from the Indo-Lanka agreement of 1987 to Oslo Declaration of 2002 and to hitherto unrevealed Singapore Principles of 2013 that brought the Sampanthan polity into a conceptual framework for the recent regime change in Colombo, the external forces seeking to influence the affairs of the island have taken the Eezham Tamils for a ride to confine the Tamil polity into the unitary State of genocidal Sri Lanka without securing any concrete and descriptive guarantee from the Sinhala polity. By its latest move, the ITAK has pushed the Tamils back into the past, Tamil political observers in Jaffna said citing the so-called Singapore Principles from 2013. TamilNet brings out the text of the so-called Singapore Principles for the edification of global Tamils.
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Tamil Nadu researcher testifies to OISL on Indian complicity in genocide

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 November 2014, 23:43 GMT]
“While several actors including US, UK, China, UN involved in different ways in the conflict in Sri Lanka which led to genocide of Eelam Tamils, the actor most severely and the most consistently perplexed in the Sri Lankan war has been India,” says University of Bergen Research Fellow, Vijayshankar Asokan in a submission he sent on “Indian complicity in the genocide of Eezham Tamils” to OHCHR investigation on Sri Lanka. A native of Tamil Nadu and studying in Norway since 2008, Mr. Vijayshankar in his submission was extensively citing Mr. Ku. Ramakrishnan, General Secretary of Periyar Dravidar Kazhakam, Mr. Erik Solheim, the failed peace facilitator and various reports as well as statements.
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Mannaar Bishop rejects GoSL’s Presidential commission on missing persons

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 August 2014, 18:21 GMT]
Rejecting an offer to make presentations before the GoSL’s Presidential commission on missing persons, Mannaar Bishop Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph said “Over the years many commissions such as yours have been set up and there is absolutely no shred of evidence that they have tackled impunity. Most, if not all of these commissions have provided only to be eye washers for the then Governments in power.” In a letter sent on Sunday addressed to the Chairman and Commissioners of this setup, he further expressed his concern that “the recent expansion of your mandate and the appointment of international experts to oversee the work of the commission without any clear terms of reference has been deliberately done to undermine the work of the UN OHCHR's inquiry into Sri Lanka which commenced recently.”
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Tamil civil society urges Pope to call for de-militarisation of Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 July 2014, 15:33 GMT]
The Tamil Civil Society Forum has handed over an appeal to Pope Francis on Sunday through Vatican's diplomatic representative to the island, urging the Pope to openly call upon Colmbo Government to stop militarising and colonizing Tamil lands, to restore the troop presence in the North and East to pre-war levels, end violence against women, honestly address the problems of the disappeared and the abducted including Rev. Fathers T. N. Jim Brown and G. A. Frances Joseph, accelerate the process by which surrendered detainees and all those who are in in communicado detention are released and allow people to remember the dead. The TCSF has also forewarned His Holiness Pope of the possibility that the Government of Sri Lanka may utilize this visit to serve its political purposes and has urged the Pope to visit Mu'l'liavaaykkaal and Madu Church during his visit to the island.
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‘Sri Lanka Army not a counterinsurgency force’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 July 2014, 21:53 GMT]
Observing that the Sri Lanka army “cannot be separated from the wider political culture of entrenched Sinhala nationalism and militarism in which it exists” and the LTTE “was not a typical insurgency and is better considered as a de facto quasi-state with institutions covering taxation, policing, judiciary and public services”, it is unwise to consider the SLA as a counterinsurgency force, argues Rob Pinney, researcher at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. In a paper published on Small Wars Journal on 23 June, the Mr. Pinney further concludes that “failure to address the political grievances of the Tamil population is likely to imperil the prospect of a durable peace.” A Tamil analyst, however, alludes to genocidal nature of the unitary Sinhala state as the prime reason of its “failure” to provide a political solution.
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Australia PM Abbott praises genocidal Sri Lanka as "society at peace"

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 July 2014, 23:17 GMT]
Even as apprehensions are rising regarding reports that the Australian government has handed over 153 Tamil refugees to the Sri Lanka Navy, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has praised Sri Lanka, the island where a structural, protracted genocide is happening against the Eezham Tamil nation, as a "society at peace". Speaking to 3AW on Thursday, Abbott had further said that "there has been a lot of progress when it comes to human rights and the rule of law in Sri Lanka.'' However, the Tamil Refugee Council has said that at least 11 of the fleeing refugees had been tortured by the GoSL forces earlier. The Australian government, which had no concerns for the thousands of Eezham Tamils who were slaughtered in 2009 and ignored the plight of more than 146,000 Eezham Tamils reported missing, is determined to return the 153 refugees despite widespread criticism against the move.
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Former ICG chief denies structural genocide of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 May 2014, 23:43 GMT]
The current situation in Sri Lanka is not structural genocide and the Tamil diaspora was “pushing too hard” with this terminology, claimed ICG's former President Gareth Evans at a workshop on crises, at the University of Essex, UK on Saturday. Continuing his response to a question raised from the audience on the total failure of the R2P in the island, Gareth Evans was of the opinion that the GoSL “was not behaving well” and that continued “international pressure” was required to make the government more accountable. However, when questioned by TamilNet on the applicability of the third pillar of the R2P to protect the nation of Eezham Tamils in the future from the on-going structural genocide, he was of the opinion that though it is possible that the situation might deteriorate it was “premature to be talking about Responsibility to Protect right now.”
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