‘Political separation needed to stop genocide in Sri Lanka’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 August 2011, 16:25 GMT]
To his surprise, Graham Williamson of Act Now, UK, realised that Tamils and Sinhalese biologically stem from a common genetic process originating since prehistoric times, when he read the book Peopling of Sri Lanka by Subramaniyam Visahan. The study may help to overcome genocidal conflict. Yet the reality of genetic similarity between the two peoples does not suggest that the two should be treated as one as Sinhala nationalism seeks the extinction of Tamils as a cultural identity, if not a people. The many differences of language, religion and culture suggests a political separation in the same way that the peoples of Europe jealously guard their national identities yet manage, today at least, to cooperate in harmony, he reviewed. Meanwhile, Chennai-based website The Weekend Leader on Saturday documented the extent of cultural genocide committed in the land of Tamils in the island.
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Resettling civilians locate mass graves in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 August 2011, 16:18 GMT]
Uprooted civilians of Vanni, who are recently allowed to resettle in some areas of Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) division of Mullaiththeevu district, have come across hundreds of skeletons of slain civilians in the 2009 war of Tamil genocide. The residents of Kaiveali village of PTK, while putting up temporary huts in their lands and paving way for lanes along the borders of the allowed resettlement area, have come across human graves and skeletons this week, sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet.
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US Court rules Rumsfeld can be sued for torture

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 August 2011, 14:02 GMT]
Federal judge, James S. Gwin, of the District Court of District of Columbia, ruled this week that former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld can be sued personally for damages by a former U.S. military contractor who says he was tortured during a nine-month imprisonment in Iraq. The lawsuit also accused four other US Government officials of a failure to secure the return of plaintiff's property seized upon his detention and of violations of his right to travel. Chicago civil rights law firm, Loevy & Loevy, argued for the plaintiff identified only as John Doe. A War crimes civil suit against Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse by three Tamil plaintiffs sponsored by a US-based advocacy group Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), is also pending in the same District Court but under a different judge Colleen Kollar-Kelly.
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Colombo rejects TNA’s ultimatum on non-existing devolution plan

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 August 2011, 11:54 GMT]
Rejecting outright the demands of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in a typical Sinhala hegemonic manner, the militaristic government of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday said that the demands set out in the TNA’s ultimatum for future talks have reflected the attitude of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
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Gotabhaya’s sexist comments on war victim giving evidence on rape

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 August 2011, 11:07 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s genocidal soldiers making lewd comments on the naked bodies of female victims killed in the war, suggesting that they were killed after rape has been documented in the Channel 4 documentary. While denying the documentation as fake to Headlines Today this week, Sri Lanka’s defence secretary and presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa made a sexist comment on a war victim who was giving evidence to Channel 4. The attitude of Gotabhaya only proves the mind-set with which a defence establishment is being steered in the island, media circles in Chennai commented. Headlines Today released the main comments of Gotabhaya on Thursday. The full interview will be on telecast on Monday.
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TNA gives two weeks ultimatum to Colombo’s ‘devolution’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 August 2011, 21:12 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance in a press statement Thursday has said that it gives two weeks ultimatum to Rajapaksa government to come out with ‘devolution’ details on the structure of governance, the division of subjects and functions between centre and the devolved units and on fiscal and financial powers, to decide on carrying forward any future dialogue. As no response has been forthcoming for several months from Colombo’s side, no meaningful or purposeful discussion could be had on the discussion papers tendered by the TNA, said the statement released from the office of TNA’s nominated parliamentarian, Mr. MA Sumanthiran.
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Rights groups urge Swiss Attorney General to prosecute Dias for war-crimes

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 August 2011, 16:42 GMT]
Society for Threatened People and TRIAL, two advocacy groups based in Europe, requested the Swiss Attorney General today to pursue war crimes charges against Jegath Dias, SriLanka's deputy ambassador to Germany and former major general in Sri Lanka's armed forces. The groups allege that Dias's division was "responsible for massive bombing of civilians and hospitals," an AP report said. This action follows the filing of a complaint against the Federal Republic of Germany with the European Courts of Human Rights (ECHR) for violating the ‘European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, in accepting Dias as a Diplomat, by three Tamil organizations.
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Gotabhaya denies role in white flag surrender killings

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 August 2011, 12:55 GMT]
Rattled and ravaged by the widespread credible war crime allegations, Sri Lankan Presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on Monday denied his role and responsibility over the killing of LTTE’s political wing leaders, Nadesan and Puleedevan while surrendering to the 58 Division troops in the final days of the war in May 2009. In the meantime, a disinformation report released by his ministry has come with a comically low figure of major offences committed by Sri Lanka Army personnel between 2005 and 2010 in the North and East: 8 murders, 4 rapes and 1 sexual abuse. The only year with no major offenses by the SL Army was, according to its own report, none other than the year 2009, the year when SLA ironically adhered to the policy of Gotabhaya's “Zero Civilian Casualty”.
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Hundreds remember Black July in Australia

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 August 2011, 10:45 GMT]
Hundreds of Australian Tamils marched through Central Sydney this weekend to remember victims of Black July and urge support for an independent war crimes probe into the Mu'l'livaaykkaal massacre. Police closed major roads on Saturday as Australians from all walks of life joined members of the Tamil community to commemorate the event.
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Attack on Uthayan editor portrays renewed attacks on Tamils: JDS

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 August 2011, 06:18 GMT]
Holding the political and military leadership of the Rajapaksa regime responsible for the recent pre-planned attack on the news editor of the Janffa-based Uthayan newspaper, the Journalist for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), a media organisation of exiled group of Journalists from the island, has said that the attack has portrayed “the vicious nature of the renewed and accelerated violent attacks on democratic rights of Sri Lanka's Tamil people”.
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Army witnesses recount final orgy of massacre, rape, torture, mutilation

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 July 2011, 02:19 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Army (SLA) officer has given Channel 4 an account of how, following orders from Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the commander of the 58 Division, Brigadier (now Major General) Shavendra Silva gathered his officers in the closing days of the war and ordered them to take no prisoners when capturing the remainder of the enclave in which thousands of Tamils civilians and fighters were surrounded. Brig. Silva received the same orders that Mr. Gotabaya issued to all regiments, the officer who was then serving under Brig. Silva told Channel 4. Meanwhile, another Sri Lankan soldier with the 58 Division has given an eyewitness account of an orgy of mass murder, rape, torture and mutilation in the final days in which tens of thousands of Tamil civilians perished.
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Remembering Sri Lanka’s longer history of mass killing of Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 July 2011, 02:40 GMT]
British Tamils held a candle light vigil Saturday evening opposite the Prime Minister’s official residence, 10 Downing Street, to remember victims of Sri Lanka’s 1983 ‘Black July’ anti-Tamil pogrom. Six days of mob violence, organized by ruling politicians and abetted by Sri Lanka’s security forces, which began on July 23 that year killed over three thousand people, and emptied the capital, Colombo, of Tamils. On Saturday, a thousand British Tamils dressed in black and carrying black flags and Eelam national flags, held a vigil between 6 and 9 pm, with lit candles and banners commemorating the pogrom. For several hours before the vigil began, activists and supporters handed out leaflets in the surrounding Whitehall area. The events were organized by the British Tamil Forum.
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Widespread SLA attacks reported on voters, candidates in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 July 2011, 13:02 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army let loose its soldiers in civil cloths on house-to-house attack in many of the villages in Ki'linochchi district in the early hours of Saturday, causing panic and fear among the voters in Vanni and forcing the voters to stay inside their houses. The armed men in civil, speaking broken Tamil, came in vehicles as early as 3:00 a.m. and attacked the civilians instructing them to stay indoors on the election day. Knowing that it would be difficult to entirely change the mindset of the people of Jaffna, the SLA was ordered to stay inside the barracks in Jaffna. But, the SLA was deployed in Ki'linochchi, threatening both the candidates and voters, with a clear intent to capture the councils by intimidation.
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SL Minister Nanayakara accepts mass killings of civilians in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 July 2011, 22:57 GMT]
A top minister in Mahinda Rajapaksa regime has publicly accepted the mass-scale killing of Tamil civilians during the final months of the war in 2009. SL Minister and the leader of Democratic Left Front (DLF), Vasudeva Nanayakara on Tuesday said that his party accepted the important fact that innocent civilians have been killed during the Vanni war. Amid growing international pressure for an international probe into the credible allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka, Mr. Nanayakara, who was on a propaganda drive seeking the public in Jaffna to support the Rajapaksa alliance in the upcoming civic elections in North, said that Tamils could only exert meaningful pressure on the SL government by supporting his alliance.
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Clinton meets Jayalalithaa in Chennai

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 July 2011, 17:00 GMT]
The United States is “looking at some innovative and creative ideas to break the impasse over the Sri Lankan Tamils issue,” PTI quoted visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telling Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa in Chennai Wednesday. The report did not elaborate. Meanwhile, in a public address Ms. Clinton said that India's example of multicultural democracy should serve as a model for Sri Lanka. Commenting on Clinton's remarks, Eezham Tamil political circles said Indian-modelled political solution will not work in the island when the military is Sinhalese. Centuries of political experience in the island shows that equal status of Tamils and Sinhalese is possible only when they have equal States, the political circles further commented.
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Australia’s cricketers should shun repressive Sri Lanka - TYO

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 July 2011, 01:30 GMT]
Australia’s cricketers should take a principled stand in defence of human rights and justice, and boycott Sri Lankan cricket until the Colombo government heeds international calls for an independent investigation into the mass killings of Tamil civilians in 2009, the Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) urged Monday. “Sport is inseparable from politics. Nothing gives a repressive regime greater legitimacy, and makes light of its brutal conduct, than continuing sporting links,” the TYO said in a statement.
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ICG: Sri Lanka further from reconciliation than ever

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 July 2011, 17:28 GMT]
President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s authoritarian and Sinhalese nationalist post-war policies are undermining prospects for reconciling Sri Lanka’s ethnic communities, weakening democracy for all Sri Lankans and increasing the risk of a return to violent conflict, the International Crisis Group warned Monday, announcing its latest report, ‘Reconciliation in Sri Lanka: Harder than Ever’. “Sri Lanka may be ‘post-war’, but it will never be ‘post-conflict’ until all its people are free to build a credible narrative of its past and to play meaningful roles in their own governance, ” says Alan Keenan, Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst on Sri Lanka.
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Capitol Hill Screening of “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields”

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 July 2011, 02:05 GMT]
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International-USA, the International Crisis Group, and Open Society Foundations in conjunction with the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission are co-hosting the screening of Channel-4's documentary "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields" at the Congressional Auditorium this Friday according to political sources in Washington D.C.
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‘Flying Fox’ draws flak at home after Sri Lanka visit

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 July 2011, 08:10 GMT]
British Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s visit to Sri Lanka over the weekend has drawn the critical attention of the press back home. The Sun and the Daily Mail, two of Britain’s leading tabloid papers carried similar articles Tuesday questioning Dr. Fox’s penchant for foreign visits, and cited military brass as dubbing him the ‘the Flying Fox’, while The Times newspaper reported on criticisms by human rights and Tamil groups that his visit to Colombo undermined international efforts to censure the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa over war crimes in the final months of the island’s war in 2009.
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UK Defence Minister accuses Labour regime for Sri Lanka’s war

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 July 2011, 13:14 GMT]
The visiting British Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox, while delivering the Lakshman Kadirgamar Memorial Lecture in Colombo on Saturday, accused the previous Labour government of UK for neglecting a political process he had worked out in 1997 and thus contributing to war in the island. “The incoming Labour government showed little interest in Sri Lanka or in taking forward the political process we had begun. The agreement subsequently withered on the vine, to my very great sadness, and the cycle of violence brought more misery, more violence and more death,” he said. Dr. Fox, viewed as one of the ‘friends’ the Rajapaksa regime is harping on, pinned his hopes now on the LLRC report expected in November and made only a passing remark on the need of an inclusive political solution.
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