Australian of the Year demands release of refugees

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 January 2010, 16:28 GMT]
Mental health expert Patrick McGorry has slammed the Australian Government’s policies of mandatory detention of asylum seekers on offshore facilities, labelling the centres "factories for producing mental illness" and urging Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to free refugees, including hundreds of Tamils, currently being detained there.
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99.2 percent voters consent Tamil Eelam in Holland

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 January 2010, 04:57 GMT]
In the referendum held in Holland on Sunday on the formation of independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka, 2,750 voters participated and 99.2 percent of them aspired for it. 2,728 said yes, 9 voted no and 13 votes were invalid. The poll organised by an independent group of the diaspora in the Netherlands was conducted in 15 centres across the country under the supervision of non-Tamil election officials.
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“Vote to empower parliament” - Jaffna University Student Union

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 January 2010, 02:53 GMT]
“We extend our full support to change the presidential system of governance by voting in the presidential election,“ Jaffna University Student Union (JUSU) said in a press report released Sunday titled ‘Let’s vote to empower parliament’, sources in Jaffna said. “We do not have any hope in either of the principal candidates in this election but taking the past experience into consideration and on realizing the value of the lives lost, we lend our full support to bring in a change in the government,” the report further said.
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Referendum conducted in exemplary way in Switzerland

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 January 2010, 02:53 GMT]
99.49 percent of 16,441 Eezham Tamil voters who participated in the referendum in Switzerland Saturday and Sunday mandated the formation of an independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. The referendum was organised by a coalition of 2nd generation Eezham Tamils in Switzerland and the task of conducting the ballot process was undertaken by an independent election commission that was headed by M. Pagani, ex-Mayor of the city of Biel and participated by journalists, politicians and members of Young Socialist Party (JUSO) of Switzerland. Well-covered by the Swiss media, Pia Holenstein, a member of the federal parliament, described the process as something neatly organised and is exemplary.
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Overwhelming turnout of voters in Germany, 99% mandate Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 January 2010, 23:00 GMT]
99.2 percent of voters said yes to Tamil Eelam in an impressive turn out of more than 90% of eligible Eezham Tamil voters for the referendum in Germany on Sunday. International Human Rights Association in Bremen conducted the referendum on the question of forming an independent and sovereign state of Tamil Eelam in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. 23,089 voters participated in the poll in 110 centres across the country and 22,904 of them said yes. 136 voters said no and 49 votes were invalid.
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Voting Mahinda or Fonseka is submission to Colombo-centric system

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 January 2010, 18:10 GMT]
Eezham Tamils need not bother much about the outcome of the presidential elections. Whether Mahinda or Fonseka matters the same, says a senior journalist in Jaffna. Only the war criminals, their international abetters and the geopolitical competitors have to worry about the elections and it is their problem. Tamils have to concentrate in organizing their own polity and in demonstrating it. But if they abstain from voting there are people waiting to stuff the boxes. If Tamils want to register opinion and see neither of the main candidates get 50 percent they should cast the first vote to a third person and of all the candidates the moral obligation of Tamils is to vote for Dr. Vikramabahu Karunaratne. Looking upon the Colombo-centric system is the curse of Tamils for ages and instead of destabilising it, any participatory politics amounts to only submission to the system, he further said.
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“Tamils’ votes indispensable to send Mahinda home” - Sampanthan

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 January 2010, 03:55 GMT]
“The votes of Tamils are of great value in this presidential election,” Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader, R. Sampanthan said Saturday in a big election campaign meeting held Saturday around 3:00 p.m in Nalloor Chaddanaathar Koayil area, in which nearly four thousand people from various parts of the peninsula participated, sources in Jaffna said. “After considering various pressing issues including the resettlement of Vanni people in their places we decided to offer our support to Sarath Fonseka,” he said. “He agreed to consider our demands favourably while Mahinda was not prepared to give in on any of them and therefore we decided to support Sarath Fonseka in this presidential election,” Sampanthan further said.
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'Conquerors feed language to the conquered'

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 January 2010, 01:45 GMT]
The signboard in the illustration, displayed outside of a newly started food joint along the A9 Highway in the Tamil heartland of Vanni is self-explanatory. This should open the eyes of those who still don’t want to see Sri Lanka and Tamil Eelam are two countries of two different nations, the former colonising the latter after conquest, commented a Tamil academic in Jaffna. With the opening of the highway after the war, nuclei of new townships are planned along the highway with military establishments, Sinhala trade and Buddhist temples. Already they have become new halting places for the buses operated by the government. This ‘development’ plan is to eventually push the native population to the hinterland and to demographic oblivion, cautions a senior Tamil civil servant now engaged in development work.
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Stiff sentences for pair convicted in New York arms deal

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 January 2010, 12:51 GMT]
Eastern District Court of New York Friday sentenced two Sri Lankan Tamils, Sathajhan Sarachandran and Nadarasa Yogarasa, to 26 years and 14 years in prison respectively, in connection with their attempt to purchase weapons for Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam which is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in the U.S.A. Defendants were Caught in an FBI undercover sting operation attempting to purchase surface-to-air missiles, missile launchers, and hundreds of AK-47 automatic rifles, the press release said. Material support to to any organization designated as an FTO is illegal in the U.S.
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Exiled journalists condemn state media abuse in presidential election campaign

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 January 2010, 11:38 GMT]
Journalists for Democracy (JDS), a Germany-based media advocacy group consisting of members exiled from Sri Lanka on Saturday warned that the withdrawal of the competent authority appointed to monitor state media during the pre-election period was a clear indication of the inability of the nominally democratic institutions to restrain the ruling party practice of using every weapon in its arsenal to bring down democracy in Sri Lanka. With only a couple of days to go, JDS is afraid that the multitude of unfavourable developments, including the inability of institutions set up to guarantee fairness to citizens in Sri Lanka, will lead to an election where democracy and free expression will become an inevitable casualties.
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Tamil female undergrad arrested in Peradeniya University, now held in Boosa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 January 2010, 02:56 GMT]
Rasiah Dwaraka, the Tamil female undergrad of the Arts Faculty of the Peradeniya University arrested by the CID officials while she was in the lecture hall attending class in November last year is found held in Boosa detention camp, according to Upul Premaratne, Convener of the Inter University Students Federation (IUSF). She was earlier a resident of Kilinochchi.
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Malabar, Maabar

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 January 2010, 02:16 GMT]
The hillside,
The crossing place
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HRW calls for international investigations into war crimes

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 January 2010, 04:57 GMT]
Noting that the "verbal acrobatics" of Sri Lankan officials in an attempt to "dismiss the shocking mobile phone video...showing Sri Lanka soldiers summarily executing naked and bound [Tamil] captives" evokes memories of Orwell's 1984, Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch's emergencies director and an expert in humanitarian crises, in the Thursday edition of Guardian, warns that Sri Lankan officials cannot hide the reality of what happened during this brutal conflict and its continuing impact on Sri Lankan society, and that Sri Lanka's aggressive denial of its crimes only results in escalation of lost credibililty. HRW urges Ban Ki-moon to establish "an independent international investigation to establish the truth of what happened in Sri Lanka, an essential step toward accountability for the serious crimes committed there."
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Muslim presidential candidate supports TNA, SLMC decision

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 January 2010, 04:50 GMT]
M. S. Iliyas, former Jaffna parliamentarian and one of the presidential candidates, said that he welcomed Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) decision to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa by supporting Sarath Fonseka in the presidential election, in a press meet held Thursday in Jaffna Veerasingham Hall. Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims and various political parties of the country have decided to bring in a change of government despite their differences, he added.
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Tamils of Switzerland, Germany, Holland vote on independence this weekend

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 January 2010, 04:04 GMT]
Eezham Tamil diaspora in Switzerland goes for referendum on independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam this Saturday and Sunday. A similar ballot will take place in Germany and Holland on Sunday. The democratic exercise on the eve of the presidential elections in Sri Lanka gains significance as it demonstrates the mainstream diaspora is unaffected by the highly publicised political prospects of the elections of ‘united Sri Lanka,’ Tamil observers in Europe said. The enthusiasm seen in the younger generation of the diaspora is particularly a challenge to politics of deviation harping on strengthening Colombo-centric system to find solutions to the crisis, they further said.
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Rajapaksa, Fonseka fail in articulating political proposals: Friday Forum

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 January 2010, 14:01 GMT]
Friday Forum, a Colombo-based gathering which includes religious dignitaries, senior academics and others on Wednesday expressed concern that the two main presidential candidates Mahinda Rajapaksa and General (retd) Sarath Fonseka have failed to address the crucial issue of peace. "The failure to address this issue of great historical and national importance does not bode well for the future of our country. We may be condemned to the scourge of community tensions and a divided society for many more years to come unless sincere and meaningful political guarantees are made at this moment," the statement signed by Jayantha Dhanapala said.
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SL state media turned into propaganda outlets for Rajapaksa: RSF

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 January 2010, 13:49 GMT]
Reporters Without Borders, on Thursday said it had established that 98.5 per cent of the news and current affairs air-time on Sri Lankan state-owned TV stations Rupavahini and ITN on 18 and 19 January was given over to the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his supporters. “The TV propaganda is deafening and the figures we are releasing today are worthy of the Burmese or North Korean regimes," the press freedom organisation said. Control of the state media has become crucial to the election campaign. The Commissioner of Elections has issued several reminders about the rules requiring balanced coverage and tried to introduce a Competent Authority to monitor the TV stations, but the president’s office resisted. The Sri Lankan supreme court’s ruling has also been ignored, the RSF said.
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Death threats to MP Kajendren, Jaffna University community

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 January 2010, 00:48 GMT]
A group calling itself ‘Tamil Protection Alliance to Save the Country’ issued Tuesday and Wednesday handbills threatening with death to Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Selvarajah Kajendran and the Jaffna University community. The group which allegedly operates on the directions of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Intelligence Unit and a Tamil paramilitary-cum-political party last year issued similar death threats to 13 persons including representatives of Jaffna University Student Union (JUSU), faculty deans and lecturers and one of them had been shot and seriously injured.
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Colombo court releases 16 Tamil youths

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 January 2010, 18:15 GMT]
Sixteen Tamil youths were released Wednesday by the Colombo Additional Magistrate Mr. Mohamed Mackie on a no objection application made by Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) of the Sri Lanka Police. The court ordered another eighteen Tamil youths to be sent for rehabilitation at Welikanda camp.
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Mahinda inciting racial hatred between Sinhalese and Tamils - Suresh Premachandran

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 January 2010, 14:01 GMT]
“President Mahinda Rajapakse, on learning Tamil National Alliance (TNA) intention of supporting his rival Sarath Fonseka in the presidential election, is actively engaged in whipping up racial animosity between the Sinhalese and the Tamils,” Suresh Premachandran, TNA parliamentarian said in a press briefing held Tuesday in his Jaffna office. “Mahinda, Minister Douglas Devananda and other government supporters are deceiving the Tamils with their false promises,” he further said.
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