Jagath Dias faces arrest in Europe

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 September 2011, 13:20 GMT]
Swiss Federal Prosecutor has announced the initiation of a formal criminal investigation against Jagath Dias, in case of his return to the country, according to European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) Thursday. The ECCHR also said that the allegations of crimes under international law during the war in the island of Sri Lanka are already under preliminary investigation in Germany.
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US cables show how international silence enabled Sri Lanka’s genocide

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 September 2011, 03:55 GMT]
In March 2009 Sri Lanka had come to the attention of the UN’s Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide, Francis Deng, but despite his disquiet he did not take further steps as Sri Lanka had assured him the United States and India supported its military campaign, according to a leaked US cable. The account of the meeting on March 16, 2009 between Mr. Deng and the US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, as well as other US cables, shows how international inaction and silence, rather than ignorance, made it possible for Sri Lanka to continue and escalate its mass killings of Tamil civilians.
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Australian Senator calls for suspension of Sri Lanka from CHOGM

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 September 2011, 01:38 GMT]
In a roundtable discussion led by Australia's Green Party Senator from New South Wales, Lee Rhiannon, the party passed a resolution calling upon the Australian government to suspend Sri Lanka from the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) to be held in Perth next month and to Sri Lanka to be suspended from the Councils of the Commonwealth because it is resisting setting up a tribunal to investigate war crimes.. The Green Party accused Sri Lanka for refusing to hold an independent international investigation into the alleged war crimes committed during the final stages of the civil war in 2009 and for breaching the commitment to the Commonwealth's values and principles.
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Weiss's "The Cage" adds to Colombo's war-crime woes

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 September 2011, 20:17 GMT]
Canada's National Post, and Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, two major dailies, carried articles on Gordon Weiss's book on Sri Lanka war, exposing further the world-wide interest in alleged war-crimes in Sri Lanka following the submission of the war-crimes report by Ban Ki Moon to the UN's Human Rights Council for debate last week. "The book's version of what happened is hardly far-fetched. Mr. Weiss argues that a lot of civilians needlessly lost their lives during the final months of fighting and that the government bears its share of responsibility," National Post said in the article titled "Sri Lanka's Dirty Secret."
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“We deployed DPU teams inside safe zone”: Rajapaksa confided to US envoy in May 2009

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 September 2011, 21:43 GMT]
During the final days of the genocidal war in Vanni when the international community was repeatedly urging Colombo to cease attacks on the ‘safe zone’, the SL President and Commander-in-Chief of the SL armed forces Mahinda Rajapaksa admitted to a top US envoy that his military had deployed Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) missions, also known as Deep Penetration Units (DPU) inside the so-called safe-zone to “organize people to breach the LTTE earth bunds.” Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa has ‘confidentially’ shared this military secret to Charge d'Affaires of the US embassy James R. Moore, while holding a meeting with Co-Chair Ambassadors in Colombo, barely two week before Colombo massacred thousands of civilians and claimed military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
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SLA harasses uprooted Tamils from Champoor in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 September 2011, 17:45 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army soldiers have been harassing uprooted people from Champoor villages in Trincomalee, who are sheltered in temporary camps of the Moothoor East division of the district. In recent days, groups of occupying SLA soldiers who visit the so-called welfare centres of the Champoor uprooted living in Mallikaith-theevu, Ma'natcheanai, Kaddaipa'richchaan and Ki'liveddi, have been questioning the ‘background’ and the ‘past’ of the civilians under LTTE-administration before 2006. Recently, the SL governor of the East, Rear Admiral (retd) Mohan Wijewickrema, had warned the uprooted Champoor people sheltered in the camps that they risk losing their ‘refugee’ status if they continue to refuse moving into alternate lands provided by Colombo. Champoor has been seized from the people for Indian assisted coal power plant, which is a scheme of Colombo's structural genocide on Eezham Tamils.
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Mu'l'likku'lam villagers left to languish, resettlement denied

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 September 2011, 16:47 GMT]
Amid claims by the Sri Lankan government that all displaced persons in Mannaar district have been resettled in their own villages, uprooted residents of Mu'l'likku'lam in Musali DS division of the district, who were evicted from their homes in 2007, are still refused entry to their village by the Sri Lanka Navy, which has changed their village into a military cantonment. The uprooted Tamils of Mu'l'likku'lam agitated on Tuesday demanding resettlement. More than 300 families of uprooted villagers, most of whom are fishermen and daily wage earners, have been living without proper housing and their children have been deprived of schooling, said Rev. Fr. Rasanayagam, the parish priest of the area.
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Blake's bona fides to deliver Tamil justice questioned

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 September 2011, 09:12 GMT]
Robert Blake, U.S. assistant secretary of State for South Asia, and former Ambassador to Sri Lanka and India, is widely known to be the architect of the U.S. policy on Sri Lanka which has resulted in Sri Lanka's massacre at Mu'l'livaaykkaal where more than 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed. Key activists in the Tamil diaspora are increasingly convinced that Tamils are unlikely to obtain justice and accountability under Blake's tenure where Blake is forced to face challenges to provide sustenance to his Sri Lanka policy - a policy which requires accommodating Rajapakse rule amid soaring rights violations, continuing structural genocide of Tamils and an authoritarian governance where war victims are further subjected to State sanctioned military violence.
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21st anniversary of Chaththurukko'ndaan massacre remembered

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 September 2011, 16:29 GMT]
Local residents of Chaththurukko'ndaan village in the Batticaloa district held the 21st anniversary remembrance of the 184 Tamil civilians massacred by soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army at the village on 9th September 1990, civil sources said. 184 Tamil civilians including infants, children, women and men were pulled out of their homes and were bludgeoned to death or extra-judicially executed by SLA soldiers from the Chaththurukko'ndaan 'Boys Town' army camp. Five of the dead were infants under year one, 42 children under years 10, 09 pregnant mothers and 28 adults over 68 years of age. 38 were from Chaththurukko'ndaan village, 37 from Panichchaiyadi, 62 from Pi'l'laiyaaradi and 47 from Kokkuvil.
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Batticaloa civil authority pressures relatives to declare missing persons dead

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 September 2011, 12:16 GMT]
Civil authority in Batticaloa district has been forcing kith and kin of persons missing after arrest or abduction to obtain death certificates stating that the missing victims are dead, according to the relatives. With the end of the war intelligence wing of the Sri Lanka Army, paramilitary groups of Karuna and Pilliayan had abducted and disappeared several Tamil civilians in Batticaloa district. Batticaloa District Secretariat has been now begun issuing death certificates to the abducted persons with the declaration by the aggrieved parties that the missing were dead.
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Tamil student abducted near SLA camp in Batticaloa, escapes

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 September 2011, 12:07 GMT]
Ajanthan, a 11-year old Tamil student was abducted by an unidentified group of six persons came in bicycles while he was riding a bicycle to attend evening class in Kallady Vivekananda Girls Maha Vidiyalayam in Batticaloa town Thursday around 5.30 p.m., sources in Batticaloa said. The abduction took place near the camps of Sri Lanka Navy and Sri Lanka Army are located and where civilian movement has been prohibited. But the student escaped from the abductors the following day while being held in a casuarinas jungle along sea coast.
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Sri Lanka Grease Devils scapegoat mental patients

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 September 2011, 05:37 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s occupying military in Jaffna that has now become Sri Lanka Grease Devils commits a despicably inhuman crime by forcibly bringing in mental patients warded in Thellippazhai mental hospital to take part in its ‘grease devil’ attacks, residents in Vasaavi’laan said. In one such ‘mission,’ the ‘grease devil’ attackers who went to the nearby Kuddiyappulam locality of Vasaavi’laan village created a situation of getting caught by the public, but ran away after purposefully leaving behind a 24-year-old Tamil mental patient, Mr. Jeyakanthan in the hands of the public. Enquiries by the residents revealed that Mr. Jeyakumar who had been warded in the mental hospital was brought in by the occupying military. The two grease devils that came with him ran away.
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India needs foundational policy change if past is catalogue of failures

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 September 2011, 05:46 GMT]
“The need of the hour is for India to undertake a thorough reappraisal of its Sri Lanka policy and make the necessary changes so that it is in consonance with the traditions of Nehru-Indira Gandhi years. The international community will be watching how India will react to the situation in the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly when the matter [Sri Lanka’s war crimes] comes up for discussion, writes V. Suryanarayan and Ashik Bonofer in Tuesday’s paper of SAAG. The paper catalogues Nehru-Indira Gandhi era interventions in protecting Tamils from pogroms, criticises India’s failure in protecting Tamil civilians in 2009 and argues for a policy change. Tamil politicians commented that the change should be foundational if piecemeal interventions proved a catalogue of failures and the writers treating a nation, as “Tamil minority groups in Sri Lanka” won’t help such a change.
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Batticaloa residents perturbed over new interrogations - TNA MP

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 September 2011, 16:56 GMT]
Batticaloa district parliamentarian of Tamil National Alliance, P. Ariyanenthiran told media Tuesday that he had received complaints from many families across the district that the occupying Sri Lanka Army had begun harassing the families of ex-LTTE members. The civilians are highly perturbed due to the ongoing interrogation of former LTTE members, the MP told media.
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SL military uses ‘media persons’ to film protesters in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 September 2011, 21:34 GMT]
Two Tamil-speaking Muslim media persons in Batticaloa, one in the position of district media coordinator and the other a ‘freelance journalist’, have been busy during the past weeks in Batticaloa taking video and photos of civilians protesting against SL military operated ‘grease-devils’. Based on their video recordings, the SL intelligence personnel operating from the SLA camps in Batticaloa, identify the protesters from different villages and hand them over to the so-called Terrorist Investigation Department officers who had come from Colombo to Batticaloa.
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Tamil Nadu Assembly, Madras High Court, make precedent in Indian democracy

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 19:34 GMT]
In an extraordinary development in Indian constitutional history, the Tamil Nadu State Assembly on Tuesday unanimously and strongly resolved that the President of India, respecting the sentiments of the people and political parties of Tamil Nadu, should reconsider the clemency appeals of the three Tamils fixed for execution and convert their death sentences into life imprisonment. In the meantime, acting on a legal move by Vaiko and N. Chandrasekaran, The Madras High Court on Tuesday stayed the executions for 8 weeks giving time for the government to file counter affidavit. The President of India earlier rejected the clemency appeals of Perarivalan of Tamil Nadu and two Eezham Tamils, Murugan and Shanthan condemned to death in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, and their hangings were fixed to September 09.
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Tamil Nadu tensed over execution of death sentences

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 06:41 GMT]
The people of Tamil Nadu and Tamils all over the world are agitated over the Indian government decision to execute death sentences to three Tamils after keeping them in prison for more than 20 years. Perarivalan of Tamil Nadu, and Eezham Tamils Murugan and Shanthan arrested in 1991 on charges of involvement in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi were sentenced to death in 1998. Their clemency petition was rejected last month and the hangings are fixed to September 9. The politics behind the case is 30 years of India-involved war in the island of Sri Lanka that turned into genocide of Eezham Tamils. While the Indian foreign minister in the parliament last week sought to respond to the war crimes investigations without endangering India’s relations with Sri Lanka, the hangings are sure to endanger New Delhi’s relations with Tamils, political observers said.
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Wikileaks: Captive Tamil doctors "coached" to recant casualty figures

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 August 2011, 03:41 GMT]
Two WikiLeaks cables from U.S. Embassy in Colombo, released to the public last week said that four Tamil doctors who worked with the injured civilians during the last months of the war, and who recanted the casualty figures at a Sri Lanka Government organized press conference, had told the US Embassy officials that "they were heavily coached for the press conference [by Colombo], given specific lines to say, and even practiced with several members of the local media beforehand. They said they had not lied when giving their original statements during the war."
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BTF reps visited India over Sri Lanka war crimes probe

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 August 2011, 13:36 GMT]
Representatives of the British Tamil Forum (BTF) travelled recently to India to raise awareness of the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka, and to build support for an independent international investigation into the mass killings of Tamil civilians in the closing months of the island’s war, the organisation said in a statement this weekend. Taking up an invitation extended to the BTF by India’s main opposition Bhathiya Janatha Party (BJP) during a meeting in London, a delegation travelled to Delhi and several Indian states, including Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, to meet several key political leaders and senior political advisors, as well as representatives of human rights organisations, religious and media organisations, the statement said.
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Tamil Nadu Congress MP agrees with Gotabhaya

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 04:22 GMT]
There is no need for any more solution as the 13th Amendment is already there, said Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in giving an interview to Headlines Today this month. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Thursday, Tamil Nadu Congress parliamentarian Dr EM Sudharshana Natchiappan agreed with Gotabhaya. “In the latest booklet released by their [Sri Lanka] Defence Ministry a humanitarian analysis is given. In that also they have accepted the Thirteenth Amendment. Why I am stressing on the Thirteenth Amendment again and again is because there is a new thinking in the policy makers that they have to go beyond the Thirteenth Amendment. This is the policy followed by all the parties including BJP after Rajiv Gandhi. What he had laid as a foreign policy for Sri Lanka is to have the Thirteenth Amendment implemented in toto, so that there is peaceful settlement,” Natchiappan said.
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