Moongkilaa'ru victims slain by heavy weapons: forensic report

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 March 2014, 07:26 GMT]
A forensic team that inspected the skeletons of the victims from a bunker at Moongkilaa'ru have submitted their report to Mullaiththeevu District Court stating that they have found 11 pieces of shrapnel used in artillery and mortar shells. The 9 victims were slain in Sri Lanka Army fired shells during the mass exodus by the civilians from the so-called ‘No Fire Zone’ which was targeted by the SL military fire during the genocidal onslaught. Hundreds of civilians perished in the shelling along the road and the families and relatives were not able to conduct proper burial. Volunteers who helped to bury the victims say most of the victims buried at the said bunker belonged to a single family from Thiruvaiyaa’ru in Ki’inochchi district.
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Sri Lankan TID releases Fr. Praveen, Ruki Fernando

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 07:51 GMT]
While the Sri Lankan Government delegation in Geneva responded Tuesday evening defending the claims of the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) to the concerns raised by several NGOs against the TID detention of the Human Rights defenders Rev Fr Praveen and Mr Ruki Fernando, both the human rights activists were released a few hours later by the TID due to mounting pressure abroad and in the island. The SL delegation in Geneva came with a ‘point of order’ statement saying that both the activists were linked to someone named K.P Selvanayagam alias Gobi, who had been overseas and was ‘reviving the LTTE’ through ‘regrouping unemployed local youth’. Tamil activist Jeyakumari was in detention for harbouring Gobi, the SL delegation said.
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Journalists in North receive death threats over phone

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 March 2014, 23:49 GMT]
A section of Tamil journalists in North, who have been subjected to investigations and harassment by the Sri Lankan military intelligence in the recent past on Tuesday said they were receiving phone calls with death threats this week. The Sri Lankan military was using a projected image of ‘LTTE regrouping’ to silence the journalists and civil activists, especially during the 25th session of the human rights council in Geneva. In the meantime a top commander of the Sri Lanka Army has told a rights activist in Colombo that the whole Geneva discourse would end as the talk of USA sending ship to evacuate LTTE political leaders while brokering a surrender-deal at the end of Vanni war in 2009.
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Time for International Investigations, says Camp

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 March 2014, 01:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka "looks to be drifting toward authoritarianism. Journalists are terrified and intimidated by arrests and mysterious assaults on those critical of the government....The once-independent judiciary has learned not to challenge the government's edicts. The war-heavy defense establishment carries out many internal security functions, and "white vans" have become synonymous with the disappearance of dissidents who speak out against the government," writes Donald Camp, a retired foreign service officer at the US Department of State, adding, "after five years of stalling by the government [Colombo], it is time for an international investigation to do what Colombo has been unwilling to do."
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SL military deploys terror in Vanni, Priest, NGO activist under TID arrest

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 March 2014, 05:47 GMT]
Human Rights defender Rev. Fr. Praveen, the former director of the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation (CPR), who had been subjected to harassment by the occupying SL military several times before, has been arrested by the occupying Sri Lankan military and Police on Sunday night together with a human rights activist from Colombo, Ruki Fernando, when the two human rights activists were trying to locate information on what had happened to 13-year-old Vipooshika and her mother Jeyakumari at Tharumapuram in Ki’lnochchi. Ruki Fernando is a human rights adivisor with INFORM. In the meantime, a reliable source inside the Sri Lankan police revealed some exclusive details to a media source in Colombo on what happened to the arrested Jeyakumari and her daughter.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka sends message to children and families voicing for their missing

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 March 2014, 15:15 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army arrested a 13-year-old girl and her 48-year-old mother, the only remaining female members of a family that has lost three men in the war, two of them died in the war and the last one missing after he surrendered to the Sri Lanka Army at the end of war in 2009. The two traumatized victims were voicing for the release of the only male, whose whereabouts are not revealed by the SL military. The mother, Jeyakumari Balendren, went to LLRC and to all the protests and became a leading activist in mobilizing the families of the missing in Ki’linochchi district. The daughter Vipooshika became the symbol of young children searching for their loved ones. Now, Colombo has sent the mother to Boosa prison in South and the daughter to so-called ‘Juvenile Correction and Rehabilitation Centre’ in North through its judiciary.
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Ananthi addresses UNHRC in Geneva on continued genocide against Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 14:13 GMT]
Ms Ananthi Sasitharan, the popular TNA councillor of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) on Friday addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council's 25th session taking place in Geneva. She requested the UN system to take “bold steps in understanding the 60-year-long genocide and investigate it through an independent international investigation.” Addressing the UNHRCs General Debate, the 47-year-old mother of three told the Council that the children affected in any war spend a lifetime to recover from the impact. “But, the Eelam Tamil children face a continued war with genocidal intent,” she said urging “concrete actions to safeguard our children from becoming permanent victims to the genocide.”
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Colombo stages 'LTTE regrouping' scene in Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 11:31 GMT]
Deploying hundreds of soldiers after detaining a 48-year-old mother and her 13-year-old daughter on Thursday, the Sri Lankan military has rounded up the village of Tharmapuram in Ki'linochchi, cutting off the contact between the village and the outside world, news sources in Ki'linochchi said. The SL military is attempting to create a scene of ‘LTTE regrouping’ through its intelligence operations to support its propaganda in Geneva, sources close to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in Ki'linochchi said.
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US draft ‘positive’ on many counts in making Tamils ‘learn lesson’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 March 2014, 01:26 GMT]
The US draft tabled at the UNHRC has to be recognized for its positive aspects in disguise that make Tamils learn historic lessons, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The draft opens eyes on the ultimate culprits who actually led Eezham Tamils into Mu’l’livaaykkaal and continue to lead them into accepting structural genocide; on the extent of USA’s confidence in the inherent orientation for subservience and gullibility among Eezham Tamil ‘articulators’; and on the extent of the infiltration the USA has made into various facets of Tamil Nadu – from Brahministic media to ‘original’ Dravidian movements, and from ‘communism’ to various caste politics, the activists in the island said.
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Dormant diaspora rises up against US draft, demands genocide investigation, plebiscite

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 March 2014, 23:33 GMT]
In an unprecedented gathering after May 2009, around 10,000 diaspora Eezham Tamils gathered in Geneva on Monday demanding international investigations on genocide and a UN plebiscite on independent an sovereign Tamil Eelam. Disappointed with the discourse in Geneva and losing their trust in the pro-Establishment lobbyists, the Eezham Tamils have begun to rally behind the network of the grassroots organisations in Europe, that were hitherto silently watching the process. Dr Denis Halliday, the former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, who was one of the judges at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) on Sri Lanka (Bremen Session) addressed the gathering.
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USA ignores requests of Mannaar Bishop on UNHRC Resolution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 14:57 GMT]
Bishop of Mannaar Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph had sent a model resolution to the foreign diplomatic missions, including the Embassy of USA in Colombo, well in advance of the draft resolution by the USA was leaked in Geneva this Monday. The proposal presented by Mannaar Bishop was demanding international investigations on genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prepared by the Tamil Civil Society Forum, the proposal also called upon the “UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council to activate procedures that will lead to a UN sponsored international mechanism to assess the democratic aspirations of the Tamil People, both in the homeland and in the diaspora for a permanent political solution.”
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Britain neglected British Tamil suspiciously died in Sri Lanka's prison

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 March 2014, 23:43 GMT]
The relatives of a 43-year-old British Eelam Tamil, Gopithas Visuvalingam, who died in the Sri Lankan jail under suspicious circumstances on 24 February, blame Colombo for torture of Tamil political prisoners. Mr Gopithas, a British national and father of two, was arrested in Colombo in March 2007 and jailed without any charges till 2012, when he was finally charged and ‘convicted’ for assisting the LTTE. Gopithas had told his aged father, who was visiting him in prison recently that he feared for his life at the hands of operatives, who were under the direct command of the SL presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa before the jail term was over. The family and the relatives of the victim are disappointed with the lack of legal assistance from the British High Commission in Colombo, news sources in Jaffna said.
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PTI twists report on Mannaar killing field

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 February 2014, 23:37 GMT]
Projecting Sri Lankan Government's defensive cover-up statement on the exhumation of human skeletal remains from the killing field of Mannaar at Maanthai without any journalistic scrutiny, the Press Trust of India (PTI) on Wednesday published a news report titled ‘mass grave in former LTTE stronghold’. The report featured an open lie by the Sri Lankan state that the killing field was under LTTE control for 30 years. The mass grave site, situated near Maanthai junction, has been under the control of the occupying Sri Lankan military and was also used as a rear site of the SL military that uprooted the Tamil people from the area. So far, 81 human skeletons have been exhumed from the killing fields. The exhumation is scheduled to continue for the 32nd time on 03 March.
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EU terror ban on LTTE challenged

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 February 2014, 17:51 GMT]
The European Union's ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) hangs in the balance today after a hearing at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg exposed serious flaws in the original evidence used to proscribe the movement in 2006. Judges expressed concern at the European Council's use of an Indian anti-terror law as a suitable precedent for banning the LTTE, saying there was no evidence that the Council checked if terror suspects had access to a fair trial in India. The court was also dismayed by the Council's use of Wikipedia as a credible source for keeping a terrorism ban on the LTTE. Lawyers for the LTTE left the court in a positive mood, expecting a judgement within the next six months.
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India and world needs prod to recognize, act on Tamil genocide

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 February 2014, 15:36 GMT]
Finding fault with the USA and EU for spoiling negotiated solution by banning the LTTE, the former head of SLMM says that North America and Western Europe lack interest in what is happening in the island as it is not in their backyard, and he points to India to now act on its regional matter. He also implied that effective public and media pressure is a prerequisite for any action in the island in the lines of Bosnia. Tamils in the island, in the diaspora, and especially in Tamil Nadu, will be miserable failures if they show any timidity, or find excuse in diplomacy in not telling the world in no uncertain terms the genocide faced by Eezham Tamils, said Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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EU made big mistake in banning LTTE: Henricsson, former head of SLMM

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 February 2014, 07:58 GMT]
It was a big mistake for the EU to ban the LTTE. There was pressure from the USA and the Sri Lankan government, said Major General Ulf Henricsson, who was heading the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) in 2006. “I would say that was a big mistake, because it stopped the possibility to get a peaceful solution and negotiation,” Henricsson told TamilNet in an interview in Sweden on Saturday. Acting on solutions now, compared to Bosnia, he cited lack of interest in the West. He was stressing on the importance of India in acting on the question, but said that India is not interested in getting engaged. China and India and other countries are not interested in having the international community on that territory, he added.
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Tamils in UK protest against British role in EU ban on LTTE

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 February 2014, 23:12 GMT]
Tamil activists in UK gathered at 10 Downing Street, London, on Friday condemning Britain’s lead role in the suppression of independent Tamil political opinion, both before and after Sri Lanka’s genocidal onslaught in 2009. While the UK itself has stated that the LTTE is defunct for the past 5 years, it continues to justify the ban on the Tamil movement, still criminalising all the individuals who were associated with the armed struggle in the past, the protesters said. In the meantime, young Tamil activists who took part in the protest were of the opinion that the fight against the injustice of the past, especially the political struggle against EU ban on the LTTE, an act that enabled the Sri Lankan State to end the peace process in a genocidal onslaught, was a crucial component of the Tamil struggle.
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Veteran filmmaker Balu Mahendra passes away

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 February 2014, 17:24 GMT]
Veteran Tamil Eelam born filmmaker Balendranathan Mahendra, popularly known as Balu Mahendra passed away in Chennai on Thursday. Born in Batticaloa on 20 May 1939, Balu Mahendra was a 1966 batch Diploma holder in Cinematography from the prestigious Pune Film Institute of India. Debuting as a cinematographer in the 1974 Malayalam movie Nellu, for which he won a state award, Balu Mahendra went on to win five national awards and three Filmfare awards subsequently both as a director and a cinematographer, and is widely regarded as a trendsetter in Indian cinema.
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4 members of Sinhala paramilitary squad detained in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 February 2014, 22:47 GMT]
Following information and pressure from the public, four Sinhala members of a paramilitary squad were arrested by SL Police on Wednesday from a ‘safe-house’ at Kokkuvil in Jaffna, news sources in Jaffna said. One of those detained was a former Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) person. Two of the arrested were from Ja-Ela and the remaining two were from Angkoda and Kottawa from the South. Legal action was not taken despite the news of their detention was exposed by the local press, Tamil legal activists said adding that most of the members of a similar squad, known as ‘Avaa’, arrested last year at Thalaiyaa’li in Kokkuvil have now been either released or bailed out. The remaining three persons, including the leader of the squad, are waiting to get bailed out of police detention this week.
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US Senators call for War Crimes investigations in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 February 2014, 23:33 GMT]
Noting that, "Human rights violations continue, and the Sri Lankan government has failed to bring to justice the perpetrators of attacks against journalists, religious and ethnic minorities, and opposition politicians. As the March session of the UNHRC approaches, I believe another UNHRC resolution is warranted,” a senior Democratic Senator Casey, and Republican Senator Richard Burr, in a resolution called "on the United States and the international community to establish an independent international accountability mechanism to evaluate reports of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other human rights violations committed by both sides during and after the war in Sri Lanka."
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