Award winning filmmaker presents documentary on exiled Sinhala, Tamil journalists

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 22:45 GMT]
‘Silenced Voices – Tales of Sri Lankan Journalists in Exile’, a new documentary by Norwegian filmmaker Beate Arnestad, who directed and produced the award winning documentary ‘My Daughter the Terrorist’ in 2007, is to be pre-premiered in Oslo, Norway, on 09 February. The screening of ‘Silenced Voices’, which is about journalists, who contributed to international exposure of the internationally abetted genocidal war without witnesses, will be followed by a debate featuring journalists Bashana Abeywardane, the former chief editor of Hiru weekly, Frances Harrison, the former BBC foreign correspondent to Sri Lanka and Sverre Tom Radøy, a Norwegian journalist. The film features Mr. Bashana Abeywardene, his wife Sharmila Logeswaram, Sonali Wickrematunge and A. Lokeesan, TamilNet wartime correspondent, who was reporting from 2005 to April 2009 from Vanni.
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Kalam risks his image in salvaging New Delhi in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 07:04 GMT]
While India’s former president Abdul Kalam has real work to do in addressing his own Establishment in New Delhi what brought him to genocidal Colombo and its India-partnered colony in the North and East of the island, wonders genocide-affected Eezham Tamils. Mr. Kalam may not be worried about criticism against him, as his interview to The Hindu has shown. But the general public is worried about India’s projected ‘sane’ faces getting more and more discredited, paving way for people distrusting any face that come from India in future, comments an academic in Jaffna. Kalam and India know that the deception will not work with Eezham Tamils but the mission is more aimed at engineering opinion in Tamil Nadu for the ‘Asian Model’ the Indian imperialism is experimenting in partnership with Rajapaksa, the academic further said.
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Colombo-backed gang threatens resettled Tamil families in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 02:59 GMT]
A gang of more than one hundred fifty Sinhalese who were brought to Channaar village in Mannaar district on Sunday by a government minister had threatened resettled Tamil families to leave the village immediately to give room for the majority community. The intimidation of Tamil families who have suffered in the conflict and relatives of the killed LTTE cadres had been engineered by Minister Rischard Bathiudeen and Maanthai West Divisional Secretary with the blessing of the Colombo government, according to reports emerging from the area.
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Krishna visit patterns Indo-Sri Lanka deceit on Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 January 2012, 21:23 GMT]
There was no enthusiasm or expectation in Jaffna on the recent visit by India's Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, media circles said. Civil groups in Jaffna also reflected the same opinion. Just as the visits of MK Narayanan and Shiv Shankar Menon patterned the course of the genocidal war, the visits of the Indian dignitaries in the subsequent phase show a pattern in consolidating the structural genocide of the nation of Eezham Tamils in order to facilitate overlapping interests of India's imperialism and the militarized Sinhala state in the island. Rather than pointlessly expecting India's 'development' help or 'mediation' role, all shades of Tamil polity should firmly demand India to get out, if India's imperialism is incapable of finding any overlapping interest in conceding the right to self determination of the genocide-affected nation of Eezham Tamils, civil circles in Jaffna said.
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Fishermen from South deployed in recent attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 22:34 GMT]
Five Sinhalese fishermen from South engaging in trawler fishing in the seas off Neduntheevu (Delf) in Jaffna arrested last week for attacking fishermen from Tamil Nadu, have been released together with the two Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Oorkaavattu'rai (Kayts) court. The latest episode has revealed the involvement of Sinhalese fishermen engaging in deep sea fishing in the Northern seas behind violent attacks on intruding fishermen from Tamil Nadu, legal sources in Kayts said. The two fishermen from Tamil Nadu narrated the courts how they were attacked by the Sri Lankan fishermen. In the meantime, informed sources in Jaffna said the latest episode was a diversion maneuver to hide the involvement of Sri Lanka Navy operated gangs in the attacks against Indian fishermen.
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‘Structural genocide will be complete in Mullaiththeevu in 2 years if TNA fails to act’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 January 2012, 14:01 GMT]
Uprooted Tamils from the strategic Ma'nalaa'ru region in Vanni, bordering the Mullaiththeevu and Trincomalee districts, have complained that 1,500 acres of their fertile lands northwest of Kokku'laay lagoon, have not been handed over to them. The agricultural lands that belong to the Tamil civilians of Kokku'laay, Kokkuth-thoduvaay and Karainaadduk-kea’ni villages still remain occupied by the Sri Lankan military since December 1984 when the SLA forcibly expelled the Tamils from these villages. TNA parliamentarians Mavai Senathirajah and S. Sritharan visited the uprooted villagers on a fact finding mission on Friday. The occupation of the fertile lands, lying between the Kokku'laay lagoon in the east and Kent and Dollar Farms in the southwest, is one of the major threats of the territorial integrity of the Tamil country.
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Colombo Tamil group fallen into GoSL net?

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 January 2012, 13:33 GMT]
“After the war, with protection of Tamil civilians neutrralized, the Eezham Tamils have become powerless even to conduct their routine day-to-day activities to survive. The occupying Sri Lankan army, the military-led administration of Colombo, and Sri Lankan ministers such as Rishad Bathiutheen, who intervene in the affairs of resettlement, have become the authorities of ‘appeal’ in resettling the Muslims in Jaffna and other places,” says a Colombo-based Tamil academic responding to an appeal that appeared Thursday in the Island paper. The appeal was made by a group of 68 Colombo-based Tamils. The academic describes the move as an attempt to create divisions among the Tamil speaking people and as a move to counter the real civil society in the North and East that has recently spoken up on course correcting the Tamil National Alliance.
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Colombo targets Tamil officials who defy instruction in land alienation in East

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 January 2012, 16:09 GMT]
Tamil divisional secretaries who are in charge of the administration of border Tamil villages in Batticaloa district are transferred out to other areas as they are strict in allocating lands according to law and without yielding to Colombo pressure. Villagers have been holding protests against such transfers. Transfers of divisional secretaries are being carried out targeting officers who are not yielding to the pressure of the structural genocide program of Colombo and not allowing Sinhala colonisation in border Tamil villages.
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ICG Report on Eezham Tamil women receives flak from diaspora feminist

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 January 2012, 23:49 GMT]
In an article published on Countercurrents, an Indian online journal, Janani Paramsothy, a student in a British University, criticized the ICG report on Eezham Tamil women report for having deliberately ignored the real problem of genocide of Eezham Tamils, in which, sexual violence on Tamil women is an essential component. Ms. Paramsothy, who had been a vocal participant in protests in the UK during the period of Mu’l’livaikaal genocide and after, came down heavily on the ICG for maligning genuine voices in the diaspora addressing the national question and for having produced a distorted picture of the progress of women achieved under the LTTE. “Tamil women- safe under LTTE, raped and pillaged under Sri Lankan forces with no one to support them... For Tamil women to be safe under a Sri Lankan state is simply impossible”, she said.
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Extra-judicial execution of Trincomalee students, Sixth anniversary

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 January 2012, 00:05 GMT]
Two Tamil organizations in the U.S. jointly issued a commemorative stamp to mark the 6th anniversary of the extra-judicial execution by Sri Lanka security forces of five Trincomalee high school students on the 2nd January 2006, when the highly accomplished students were spending an afternoon at a seafront in Trincomalee. The stamp, the issuing organizations said, is a mark of respect to the families that are fighting for justice, and to celebrate the indomitable spirit of Dr Manoharan, the father of one of the students, Ragihar, who had made the fight to bring the killers of his son to justice his life's mission. Meanwhile, Amnesty International conducted a "Write-for-Rights" campaign seeking justice for Dr Manoharan's family during the first week of December 2011.
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LLRC Report, an apologia for Sri Lanka Army, says New York Times

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 December 2011, 03:47 GMT]
Noting that "regarding the war’s terrible final weeks, it [the LLRC Report] is largely an apologia for the army," a report appearing in New York Times Saturday says that "while the commission makes sensible recommendations and exposes grave atrocities committed by the Tigers against ordinary people, it also demonstrates that government troops shelled no-fire zones in order to neutralize rebel attacks from within," and adds, "Sri Lankans no longer need to pretend that the army didn’t shell zones where civilians were encouraged to gather, or subscribe to the fantasy that no innocents died when shells landed on or near hospitals."
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SL ‘special agents’ ransack human rights activist's apartment in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 December 2011, 02:25 GMT]
Sri Lankan investigation officers claiming to be from the ‘Special Unit’ on Wednesday evening ransacked an apartment where a Tamil human rights activist from the East was residing in Colombo. The agents clad in civil and uniform entered the room of the human rights activist around 10:00 p.m. and took away documents and files without mentioning the intention of the action and without providing any list of what they have taken from the apartment, informed sources said. The Human Rights activist, who was formerly a progamme officer of a Belgium-based international organisation, was living in the apartment with his Sinhala room mate. The Sinhala friend was taken away by the investigating officers, detained for almost 20 hours and harrassed, informed NGO sources in Colombo told TamilNet Thursday.
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SL military governor builds expensive bungalow, diverts aid to Sinhala colonists

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 December 2011, 12:22 GMT]
The estimated cost of the modern bungalow now under construction in the Old Park for the use of Major General (retired) G.A.Chandrasiri in Jaffna has exceeded 190 million rupees, informed sources in Jaffna told TamilNet. For comparison, the annual expenditure for the education of the Northern Province stands at 250 million rupees. Questioning the need for such an expensive bungalow for the SL military governor in Jaffna, civil officials in Jaffna blamed G.A. Chandrasiri for meddling with the disbursement of aid in the province. G.A.Chandrasiri, has directed that fifteen sewing machines out of 65 that were allocated for distribution among war widows in the five districts of the Northern Province should be distributed to encroached Sinhalese families in Kaithadi-Naavatkuzhi in Jaffna district.
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Tragedy of US policy on Sri Lanka's war crimes

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 December 2011, 00:02 GMT]
The Obama Administration has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to human rights and dignity and rule of law and has largely delivered on its promise -- most notably in the context of the Arab Spring, commented Tamil legal activists in the United States. Tragically, they observed, the US administration has failed dismally in the case of Sri Lanka, with catastrophic consequences (a) to the many tens of thousands of Tamil civilians killed whom the US knowingly failed to protect, under Blake architected policy on Sri Lanka, during and after the war; (b) to the credibility of US commitment to universal human rights, democracy and rule of law, and to justice and national reconciliation in Sri Lanka; and (c) to the integrity of international human rights and humanitarian law.
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‘ICG report fails to cover genocide-intended sexual violence’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 December 2011, 05:42 GMT]
The International Crisis Group report titled ‘Sri Lanka: Women’s Insecurity in the North and East’ that was released on Tuesday touched upon problems faced by the Eezham Tamil women in their homelands at the hands of the occupying Sri Lankan military apparatus. While the report has been welcomed by some for its revelations, Eezham Tamil civil society activists in the homeland, academics and feminists came down heavily on the report for studying the gender problem in isolation without addressing either the national question of the Eezham Tamils or the process of structural genocide, which necessarily includes use of sexual violence, which is being carried out by the Sinhala majoritarian state to crush the Eezham Tamil nation. They also questioned the motives and practical effectiveness of such reports that seek to push the principal contradictions under the carpet.
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Rajapaksa strengthens blueprint of Sinhalicisation in East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 December 2011, 11:52 GMT]
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has re-appointed former Sri Lanka Navy Chief of Staff, Rear Admiral (Rtd) Mohan Wijewickrama as the Governor of Eastern Province for the second term on December 22. Wijewickrama's re-appointment is considered as a move by Mr. Rajapaksa to keep the civil administration of the Eastern Provincial Council under the control of Sri Lankan military. The former SLN officer is being in charge of implementing ‘Mahinda Chindana’ policy and ‘development’ agenda of structural genocide in the areas where Tamil speaking people live in majority.
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Kevu'liyaamadu encroached by Sinhalese, Tamil farmer attacked

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 December 2011, 10:39 GMT]
Sinhalese encroachers, who have occupied the grazing lands of in the border of Batticaloa and Ampaa'rai districts, have attacked and broke the hand of a 40-year-old Tamil farmer who took his cattle for grazing lands allocated for the purpose at Thevu'laala-ku'lam in Paddippazhai DS division in Batticaloa district on December 07. The injured farmer, Thiayagarajah Moothavan, who has been admitted at the Gonakelle hospital in Ampaa'rai general hospital, complained that a ten member gang attacked him when he was taking cattle to grazing land allocated for the Batticaloa dairy farmers. 480 Sinhalese families had encroached high lands and paddy lands owned by Tamil families in Suvaamimalai and Kevu'liyaamadu in Paddipazhai DS division. Meanwhile, Muslim farmers facing competition by the Sinhalese in Ampaa'rai district are also encroaching the lands of Tamils in Batticaloa.
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Rajapaksa exacerbates tension between Tamils, Sinhalese: US Republican

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 December 2011, 12:04 GMT]
Instead of pursuing genuine reconciliation, which is essential for the country's long-term stability, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa continues to exacerbate tensions in his country, particularly those between Tamils and Sinhalese, New York Republican Rep. Michael Grimm told Roll Call Newspaper online Wednesday. “A prime and alarming example of this is the attempts by Rajapaksa's regime to whitewash horrible actions by the government in the final stages of Sri Lanka's civil war, where 10,000 to 40,000 ethnic Tamils were slaughtered by government forces made up almost entirely of ethnic Sinhalese,” said the former FBI agent and U.S. Marine.
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Building consensus with universal ideology

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 December 2011, 06:02 GMT]
The struggle of Eezham Tamils has to be waged with the strength of unity and consensus in ideology; both in the immediate task of dealing with a three-cornered international struggle in a multipolar world as well as in the long-term universal task of pursuing the Right of Self Determination for nearly a third of the world that is currently denied of it and in the world-wide struggles of the 99 per cent of the peoples in this planet seeking a more equitable world against the one per cent that constitutes today’s globalized Establishments, writes TamilNet Economic and Geopolitical Analyst in the Asia Pacific. The days of alignment with any power are gone in the multipolar world set-up, where the alignments are shifting every now and then though the underlying element among the Globalised Establishments is Cooperation via UN & its agencies, he further writes.
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Eezham Tamil Diaspora activists in UK question SL reconciliation motives

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 December 2011, 00:41 GMT]
While structural genocide continues unabated in the homeland of the Eezham Tamils, certain well funded Sri Lankan NGO’s that harp on peace and reconciliation are steadily pursuing a war by other means on the Eezham Tamil Diaspora. Programmes initiated by organizations like the One Text Initiative, which receives generous funding from foreign donors as well as support from the Sri Lankan state, in the name of ‘engaging with the Sri Lankan diaspora’, are attempting to marginalize the Eezham Tamil diaspora polity that is pushing for international investigation into genocide committed by the Sri Lankan state as well as recognition of their political sovereignty. This agenda was evident from a recent meeting in London where such proponents of reconciliation were challenged by Eezham Tamil activists of various shades.
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