Autopsy: Jaffna University students, slain by SL Police in 2016, not shot from behind

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 August 2018, 17:07 GMT]
Civil rights activists based in Colombo have recently released post-mortem reports of two Jaffna University Tamil students, whom the SL Police in Jaffna shot and killed in October 2016 at Kokkuvil. The autopsy confirms earlier media reports of gunshot fire going through the chest of the motorbike driver, and the other student sitting behind succumbing to injuries caused by the crash immediately after the firing. The reports also disprove the allegations made by the SL Police that they had fired at the students only after they failed to stop. They were not shot from behind. It seems like they were shot from the front or from their right side by a policeman who aimed at them with his automatic rifle, probably after being tipped off from another check post in advance, commented fellow students at the University of Jaffna.
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Kalaignar Karunanidhi passes away at 94

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 August 2018, 16:58 GMT]
Former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu State and the Chief of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Muthuvel Karunanidhi, popularly known as ‘Kalaignar’, has passed away at the age of 94 in Chennai, TamilNadu, on Tuesday. Apart from his acumen in adjusting policy to the prevailing circumstances and persistent role in dialectically shaping the politics of Tamil Nadu, Kalaignar was also a veteran writer, playwright, scriptwriter, poet and an orator contributing to Tamil literature and cinema. His demise marks the end of a political era, represented along with the late former chief minister personalities such as C.N. Annadurai (Anna), M.G.Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa, all of whom originated from the secular Dravidian movement, which emerged as a counter-hegemonic force in Tamil Nadu politics in the early 20th century.
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Colombo wants to seize lands of Muslims near Mannaar Fort

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 August 2018, 21:41 GMT]
The occupying Colombo has now started to claim ownership to the lands of Tamil-speaking Muslim residents, who have been resettled in Koanthaip-piddi area, where the Dutch Fort of Manaar is situated. SL Archaeology Department and SL Wildlife Department have started to harass the Muslims after seizing the lands of Eezham Tamils under the so-called claims of protecting heritage and conservation. SL Cabinet Minister Rishad Bathiudeen and SL Deputy Minister for Rehabilitation & Resettlement K. Kader Masthan are equally powerless as the Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran in safeguarding the land rights of the people against the occupation from the conservation agencies of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka, Tamil-speaking political observers in Mannaar said.
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NPC Minister responds to SLA Commander, British Archaeologist on Jaffna Fort controversies

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 August 2018, 21:45 GMT]
The recent statement made by Lt Gen Mahesh Senanayake, the SL military chief, who claimed the SL military as the rightful owner of the Jaffna Fort, was invalid, illogical and a fabricated one, said Education Minister of Northern Provincial Council Sarveswaran Kandiah, in an exclusive interview to TamilNet this weekend. “There is no rule stating that all the fortresses [in the island] should belong to the [SL] military,” Dr Sarveswaran said. Senanayake should mind his own business by confining himself to the leadership of the elected leaders in a democracy and by refraining from intervening in the civil affairs in the North-East, the NPC minister said. He was also responding to British Archaeologist Professor Robin Coningham's proposition of ‘visitor experience’ and ‘tourism’ shaping the so-called post-conflict future of Jaffna through advancing tangible and intangible heritage.
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Occupying Colombo's persistent psyops banishes ex-LTTE members into a social outcast in East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 August 2018, 17:53 GMT]
Former LTTE members in the district of Batticaloa are facing increased harassments from the military intelligence of the occupying genocidal state of Sri Lanka, the grassroots rights activist told TamilNet on Saturday. The former LTTE members who were attached to the formations, which were close to the LTTE leader, members of the Sea Tigers or those who served the intelligence wing of the LTTE, are particularly exposed to the systematic harassments, the sources said providing particulars of those affected.
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Tamil fishers continue to siege DFAR office in Mullaith-theevu amidst threats from SL Police

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 August 2018, 15:29 GMT]
Hundreds of Eezham Tamil fishers laid siege to the district office of the SL Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DFAR) in Mullaith-theevu on Thursday as the SL Assistant Director at the office has failed to take action against the destructive fishing and poaching by the fishers coming from other districts, and particularly those who come from outside the North-East. The protest, which started off with a march of demonstration, gained momentum as the protesters broke the fences of the district DFAR office, entered its premises and laid siege to the building. On Friday, the SL Police was preparing to file cases against the participants accusing them of causing destruction to public property, informed sources in Mullaith-theevu said. However, the protesters continue to keep the DFAR office besieged.
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Jaffna Fort belongs to SL military, proclaims Commander of genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 August 2018, 10:55 GMT]
“When you say it is a fortress, it is military,” proclaimed Lt Gen Mahesh Senanayake, the commander of the occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka, who made a special appearance to make his point at the Fort of Jaffna on Wednesday. Currently, only 11 SLA personnel are stationed inside the premises, and that too under the cover of giving protection to the archaeological excavation site. However, Mahesh Senanayake dubbed the latest move to re-militarize the Jaffna Fort as a ‘battalion change’. The controversy comes as the British archaeologists and their funders abroad as well as the government of the Netherlands doing colonial-heritage reconstruction and geopolitics-driven archaeology at the Jaffna Fort in collaboration with the unitary State at a heightened paradigm of the cultural, developmental, educational, heritage and structural genocide against the nation of Eezham Tamils.
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Protesting grassroots Tamil activists targeted in Jaffna, Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 August 2018, 18:12 GMT]
Unknown attackers, who are believed to be the operatives of the occupying SL military or the intruding Sinhala fishers in Vadamaraadchi East, Jaffna, have burnt down another boat of a Tamil fisherman activist in the early hours on Monday. Arulappu Nimal, a father of two, lost his boat at Thaa'laiyadi. This is the second incident within the last ten days in which the attackers have targeted the vessels that belong to Tamil fishers who staged a self-mobilised action against the Sinhala sea cucumber poachers in Vadamaraadchi East. In the meantime, the SL Police has acted against a leading Tamil woman activist in Keappaa-pulavu, Mullaiththeevu, allegedly on the instructions from the occupying SL military.
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Intruding engine boats destroy ecosystem of Kokku'laay lagoon

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 July 2018, 20:21 GMT]
Native Eezham Tamil fishermen in Kokku'laay complain that their fishing ecosystem will be destroyed within the next two years if the fisheries authorities of the occupying unitary state of Sri Lanka continue to allow the intruding fishermen from other districts to deploy boats fitted with engines. The intruders use diesel,l petrol and kerosene and have no concerns of the ecosystem as it is not their environment, says Tamil fisherman representative M. Mariyathas, who is a survivor of genocidal onslaught on Vanni in 2009.
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Coningham discovers Jaffna as premillennial maritime trade centre, but at which price?

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 July 2018, 23:28 GMT]
“If you think of the history of Jaffna Fort within [the timespan of] a day, the colonial period only starts at [the final] three minutes to midnight. All of the rest of that period is a history of before colonial contact. It is a history, which identifies that Jaffna Fort is engaged in Indian Ocean Trade. [...] Most significantly, we have evidence that Jaffna was core within the Indo-Roman trade. So, [within] 200 BC and 200 AD, we have Jaffna at the centre of the Indian Ocean trade,” stated the British Archaeologist Professor Robin Coningham at a workshop cum press conference held at the University of Jaffna on Saturday. However, he was also reiterating the nature of the attached politics and the paradigm behind, which was nothing else than heritage-genocide as far as the Eezham Tamils are concerned, commented political activists in Jaffna.
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Maithiripala ‘coordinates’ relentless land grab at massive-scale in North-East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 July 2018, 22:49 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Forest Conservation Department and Wildlife Conservation Department have grabbed tens of thousands of acres of lands in the eight districts of North-East. These departments, coming under the unitary state system based in Colombo, are refusing to hand over even a few hundred of acres of these lands to the Divisional Secretariats and other mechanisms, which are also controlled by the same unitary system. A meeting convened by the SL Presidential Secretariat on Friday ended up strengthening further the position of the SL Forest and Wild-Life departments, Tamil officials who attended the meeting said. The Ministry of ‘Mahaweli Development’ and Environment, to which SL President Maithiripala Sirisena is the responsible minister, plays a central role in determining the extent of lands that could be released back, the officials told TamilNet on Saturday.
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TELO councillor of NPC questions ‘achievements’ of TNA hierarchy

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 July 2018, 18:34 GMT]
35 years have elapsed since pogrom of Black July, which was waged against the Eezham Tamils with the sponsorship of the UNP regime at that time. The incumbent SL Prime Minister, Ranil Wickramasinghe of the UNP, was a cabinet minister at that time when his fellow cabinet ministers were actively backing the pogrom. The late J.R. Jayawardene, who was the president at that time, came with the infamous declaration ‘war for war, peace for peace’ and escalated the pogrom. This month, Ranil Wickramasinghe has been visiting Jaffna to deceive the Tamil people with so-called development, says NPC Councillor Vinthan Kanagaratnam of the TELO. He called it a shame that the TNA parliamentarians were collaborating with the UNP-SLFP government even after failing to win anything tangible from them.
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Traces of torture surface, 5 children among slaughtered victims in Mannaar killing fields

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 July 2018, 21:54 GMT]
The human skeletons recovered so far until Wednesday at the premises of Cooperative Wholesale Establishment in Mannaar indicate that five among the dozens of victims were children below the age of six, based on their milk teeth. As the skeletons were found very close to adults in a cluster, the majority of the children could have belonged to a single or couple of the victim families, those who witnessed the excavations told TamilNet on Thursday. Further, the cut injuries sustained by the victims seem to have been caused by metallic objects with sharp edges, they also said. The latest findings come in addition to the earlier witnessed gunshot-like holes in the skulls.
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Tamil man murdered in Polonnaruwa, Sinhala farmers exploit poverty-stricken Tamils

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 July 2018, 19:24 GMT]
A Sinhala farmer at Welikanda of the Polonnaruwa district in the North Central Province has allegedly beaten to death a Tamil houseworker, who hailed from Vaazhaich-cheanai of Batticaloa district in the Eastern Province. The Sinhala authorities in Polonnaruwa have managed to suppress the news of the brutal incident from the focus of the Tamil politicians, the journalists and the rights activists for almost three months. This week, the Mathivathy, the wife of the 35-year-old victim, Pathmanathan Muruguppillai, revealed the details to Tamil rights activists in Batticaloa. Pathmanathan was a father of three. After the time of the LTTE, the poverty-stricken sections of Tamils in Batticaloa are being treated much worse than second-class citizens as there is nobody to defend their interests, the rights activists who are looking into the case since Tuesday, told TamilNet on Wednesday.
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Remembering 35th Black July with Tamil resolve

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 July 2018, 07:51 GMT]
This week, Eezham Tamils in the homeland and the Tamil Diaspora mark the 35th anniversary of the collective trauma of the ‘Black July’, the SL state-sponsored genocidal pogrom that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Tamil residents in the south of the island in 1983. The key lesson learned throughout the years of the pogroms, massacres, genocidal war and finally the post-war structural genocide, which is aimed at dismantling the existence of Eezham Tamils as a nation, is a hard reality. The genocide originating from the Mahawansa mind-set always gets its way, not because of the strength of the Sinhala nation, but mainly because the external State actors sustaining the Colombo-centric approach, is that lesson. Thus, the collaborationists and the negotiators among the Eezham Tamils were always doomed to failure, Tamil political observers in Jaffna commented.
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Boat of Eezham Tamil activist set on fire in Vadamaraadchi East

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 July 2018, 19:20 GMT]
Unknown attackers have set fire to the fishing boat belonging to a Tamil fisherman, Mr Sujeepan Sebamalai, who played a key role in mobilising against the southern poachers last month, on 20th June. The latest attack has taken place on Saturday night at Mu'l'liyaan in Kaddaik-kaadu in Vadamaraadchi East of the Jaffna district. The boat was fitted with an outboard engine and fishing tools at the time of the destruction, the sources in Kaddaik-kaadu said on Monday.
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Role of powers with colonial legacy, abetting contemporary Sinhalicisation, requires scrutiny

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 July 2018, 20:33 GMT]
The National Housing Development Authority (NHDA), which comes under the occupying unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka, is silently transferring 5 acres of lands to the notorious British-trained ‘Special Task Force’ (STF) to expand its commando post into a permanent camp to defend the controversial Sinhala colony at the strategic entrance to Jaffna at Naavat-kuzhi. The colonisation scheme, initiated during the rule of Rajapaksa brothers, received state-patronisation after the regime change backed by the West. The colony is planned to control the arteries of the city and to Sinhalicise Jaffna city itself. The trend is also evidenced in the latest move by the occupying Colombo to station its troops at the Jaffna Fort, which is ‘developed’ with the blessings, funding and research coming from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
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British archaeologists, Indian contractors abet Colombo's concealment of mass graves in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 July 2018, 21:44 GMT]
Human skeletons, including that of children, believed to belong to the massacred Eezham Tamils during the times of genocidal war, have been discovered at two separate locations in the city of Jaffna between 15th and 20th of July. At the Jaffna Fort, bones of a child along with a golden ring engraved with the initials ‘SA’ has been recovered. Following this discovery, the officials of Colombo's Archaeological Department have sent Tamil excavators home while allowing the Sinhala and the British excavators to proceed with the work. On Friday, another alleged mass grave discovered at Naayanmaar-kaddu in Ka'l'liyang-kaadu in Jaffna seems to be an extension of the Chemma'ni killing fields from the times of Chandrika Kumaratunga's genocidal rule of Jaffna in the mid-1990s.
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New Delhi fails to update Jaffna on Palaali airport plans

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 July 2018, 22:09 GMT]
SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe has repeatedly been claiming that Colombo was proceeding with its plans to renovate the runway at Palaali in Jaffna with Indian assistance allowing flight services from South India to Jaffna. There were also reports that New Delhi was reviewing a plan for “regional airport” as before the times of war. In the meantime, the occupying military of Colombo, which has been deploying Palaali runway as its airbase since 1977, is rushing ahead with planting coconut and palmyra saplings in the lands seized from the uprooted Tamils in five GS divisions. The SL authorities have taken the lands citing a war-time Gazette notification from 07 August 1987. However, the office of the Consulate General of India (CGI) in Jaffna, has no information from New Delhi regarding India's plans on the airport, informed sources at the Northern Provincial Council said.
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Skulls with bullet-like holes excavated in Mannaar mass grave, women and children among victims

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 July 2018, 23:22 GMT]
Human skeletons of massacred people including children and women embracing each other have emerged in the 37 day-long excavations of the brutal massacre site discovered at the entrance to the Tamil-speaking city of Mannaar island, which has been under the control of the Sinhala military. There was no doubt the slain victims were subjected to a brutal massacre, said an excavator on condition of anonymity. The excavators have discovered gunshot holes in the skulls. A young person's skeleton was found along with the skeleton of an embracing adult, visibly exposing the brutality of the massacre. So far, the unearthed skeletal remains give a head count of 29. However, the extent of the killing field is still expanding, possibly reaching out of the premises.
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