Opposition leader should address sovereignty concerns of Tamils: Former Land Commissioner

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 November 2015, 21:16 GMT]
The United States of America, locked in a geopolitical competition with China in the Indian Ocean Region, is primarily concerned with its own interests. All the stakeholders are mainly concerned of their stakes with regards to the geo strategic location of this island in the Indian Ocean. This was also the case during the times of the World Wars. Now, the USA wants to be in control after ousting the Chinese. India was also interested in the same. The same way, Tamils should also be concerned of their primary interests, said Karthirgamathamby Kurunathan, a retired land commissioner, urging the Tamil polity not to allow the Sinhala politicians to buy time and space through the manoeuvrings in the United Nations. The Tamil polity should be sharp in countering the age-old dragging techniques, he told TamilNet. The opposition leader should address the sovereignty concerns of Tamils, he said.
Full story >>

Veteran photojournalist passes away at 82 after bicyle accident

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 November 2015, 23:41 GMT]
82-year-old photojournalist Sankarakampan Kathiravelu passed away on Thursday at Jaffna Hospital after he accidentally fell into a well when his bicycle crashed on a by-lane located near the newspaper office of Thinakkural in Jaffna. Mr S. Kathirvelu, coming from Up-country Tamil origin, has been one of the key photojournalists of Jaffna, who remained committed in his service for more than three decades. “His last wish was that Tamil journalists in the diaspora and the homeland should jointly work to strengthen the journalists to remain committed in their work to document the systemic crimes against the nation of Eezham Tamils,” senior journalists paying tribute to him told TamilNet.
Full story >>

Hunger strike exposed non-seriousness of US Resolution: Prof Ramasamy

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 November 2015, 09:10 GMT]
Since the prisoners’ plight has not been seriously addressed, many are wondering how the present Sri Lankan government would be able to address and punish those responsible for crimes against humanity, said Deputy Chief Minister of Penang state in Malaysia, Professor P. Ramasamy, in an article to TamilNet on Wednesday, announcing the intentions of a forthcoming international forum being organised on Saturday in Penang. “It is indeed ironic, that President Sirisena who promised truth, justice and reconciliation for Tamils, has failed to address the serious human rights plight of Tamils in the country,” he said. The conference comes at a time the prisoners in the island have placed the furtherance of their cause at the hands of the global Tamils and the Northern Provincial Council. The forum will be officiated by Chief Minister of Penang Lim Guan Eng.
Full story >>

Hunger strikers: ‘USA, co-sponsors of consensus-resolution responsible for our fate’

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 November 2015, 14:10 GMT]
The political prisoners and prisoners of war, waging hunger strike inside the Sri Lankan prisons for the 10th day told TamilNet Monday morning that the United States, which authored the consensus resolution with the genocidal State of Sri Lanka and the sponsor-States that passed the resolution at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last month, should now ensure the release of the political prisoners languishing in the jails of occupying Sri Lanka through making the SL President declare them as political prisoners entitled to general amnesty. The prisoners of war and political prisoners demanded the officials at the diplomatic missions in Colombo to visit and witness their plight in person.
Full story >>

Tamil genocide continues, Sirisena shows no desire for change, says Grant

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 November 2015, 22:04 GMT]
Australian journalist and an advocate for Tamils rights, Trevor Grant, who has also written widely on the Sri Lankan State's genocide against Eezham Tamils and on the complicity of the Western governments in the genocide, in an interview with TamilNet this week opined that the Sirisena government's policies on critical Tamil issues are substantively not different from those of the predecessor Rajapakse government. Commenting on the recent prisoner issue where Tamil prisoners in several jails have resumed hunger strike after Sirisena failed to release the prisoners on Nov 7th as promised, Grant said that "if there was a genuine desire for change [in Srisena government], all prisoners would have been released within days of the election result in January." Grant added that Tamil Naadu has the capacity to turn India as a force supporting the cause of Eelam Tamils.
Full story >>

Hartal brings North to standstill, no signs of Colombo releasing Tamil POWs

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 November 2015, 15:58 GMT]
The entire Northern province was brought to a standstill on Friday in what was described as a successful boycott as the occupying Colombo and its military were unable to use force or muffle the protest for the first time after 9 years since 2006. The dawn to dusk shutdown, demanding immediate release of all prisoners of war and political prisoners involved in the Tamil war of independence, has sent a strong message to the SL State and to the global community, journalists in Jaffna said. However, informed sources close to Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran were pessimistic in their interpretation of the reports of a possible announcement coming from the SL President Maithiripala Sirisena on the coming Monday. “We are yet to see a principled decision from the side of the Sri Lankan president,” an NPC source told TamilNet.
Full story >>

Condition of hunger-striking POWs, political prisoners worsens

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 November 2015, 16:28 GMT]
At least 31 Prisoners of War and political prisoners are either forcefully admitted to prison hospitals or their health has seriously declined as their fast-unto-death campaign reached the 5th day on Thursday at New Magazine prison in Welikade, Bogambara prision in Kandy and in Anuradhapura prison, former parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran told journalists in Jaffna today. There are Tamils from all the districts, up-country, Muslims and even Sinhalese who are alleged or accused for their involvement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) among the prisoners who are on hunger-strike, informed legal sources in Colombo told TamilNet. A wide-scale shut-down is to take place in the country of Eezham Tamils on Friday demanding release of the POWs and the political prisoners currently jailed in the prisons of genocidal Sri Lanka.
Full story >>

Family of imprisoned Muslim joins Tamils demanding release of political prisoners

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 November 2015, 16:37 GMT]
The wife and a daughter of a 41-year-old Tamil Muslim political prisoner, who is languishing in the Sri Lankan prison in the South since January 2009 after being alleged of assisting the LTTE, joined the Tamil mothers on Tuesday morning at Mannaar where they staged a protest demanding the Sri Lankan President Maithiripala Sirisena to release their kith and kin, who are on a fast-unto-death campaign. Along with Ms Segu Mohadeen Noorjahan, Tamil mothers walked from St. Sebastian Church in the city of Mannaar towards the District Secretariat appealing for the release of their family members. “If this is the plight of the declared-prisoners in jail, what is going to be the response on the missing Prisoners of War and others believed to be in secret prisons,” the mothers asked the journalists covering the protest.
Full story >>

Tamil POWs, political prisoners announce fast unto death

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 November 2015, 23:44 GMT]
Rejecting the offer by the SL State to release them on bail, Tamil prisoners of war and political prisoners on Friday announced that they are going to begin a fast-unto-death protest in the prisons starting from 08 November on Sunday. Giving a last chance to the president, prime minister, attorney general and justice minister of the SL State to conduct negotiations with Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, the Tamil prisoners who are going to commence the hunger-strike said they are determined to wage the struggle. Upon their demise, the SL Prsident Maithiripala Sirisena should come in person to receive their dead bodies and hand them over to the medical faculty of the University of Jaffna and that their organs should be donated or used for medical research, the Tamil prisoners said. “We are determined like Thileepan”, a POW told TamilNet.
Full story >>

Veteran Tamil scholar Professor Veluppillai passes away

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 November 2015, 20:49 GMT]
Veteran Eezham Tamil scholar, Professor Alvappillai Veluppillai, who has internationally contributed over several decades to serious academic work in Tamil language, epigraphy, Dravidian linguistics and religion, passed away on Sunday night in San Francisco in the USA. He was 79. Born in Puloali South of Vadamaraadchi, Jaffna, in 1936, he was Professor of Tamil at the University of Jaffna as well as the University of Peradeniya. He also served at the Institute of Dravidian Linguistics in Trivandrum, Kerala University, the International Tamil Research Centre at Chennai, Uppsala University of Sweden and at the Virginia and Arizona Universities of the USA.
Full story >>

Independent media watchdogs urged to visit Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 November 2015, 21:17 GMT]
International media watch dogs, not funded by State actors or Corporates, are urged to visit Northern and Eastern Provinces in the island and record the failure of domestic investigation mechanisms of the present regime in Colombo in bringing justice to the killings, enforced disappearances and harassments that prevailed and continue to prevail against independent journalists in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. Those who ordered the assassinations of leading reporters and those who took part in the executions are still being operated by the occupying SL military in Jaffna and other places, independent Tamil journalists who are not exposed to funded agendas in the North and East told TamilNet.
Full story >>

ITAK leaders stand exposed as powers deceive Tamils with hypocritical investigations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 October 2015, 21:48 GMT]
Refusing to look at the affairs of the nation of Eezham Tamils through their homeland in the North-East and being bent on approaching the Eezham Tamils through Colombo-centric geopolitical designs, the West and the UN mechanisms have nakedly exposed themselves even before the ink went dry on the OISL report and the ‘US-Sri Lanka’ co-sponsored resolution in the UN Human Rights Council. In the meantime, the leaders of Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK) stand exposed for their lack of statesmanship and for the failure of not clarifying TNA's position regarding the deceptive path of ‘domestic’ investigations. The ITAK leaders have also failed the nation of Eezham Tamils by not demanding the release the Tamil political prisoners, who have been rotting in the jails of genocidal Sri Lanka for years.
Full story >>

Wild elephant rampage on resettled villagers continues unabated in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 October 2015, 16:37 GMT]
The systematic ignorance by genocidal Sri Lanka to arrest the menace caused by wild elephants that go on rampage killing and maiming resettled Tamils in former LTTE-administered areas in Paduvaankarai region of Batticaloa, is an intentional tactic to chase Tamils permanently away from their native villages and colonise Paduvaankarai with Sinhalese, Tamil civil officials in Batticaloa District Secretariat told TamilNet on Friday. In the meantime, Yogarasa Ganesh the chairman of Rural Development Society (RDS) in Katchatkodi, a village situated in Paddippazhai division of Paduvaankarai region, confirmed that there has been no action despite repeated appeals through GS, DS officers and the provincial councillors. The SL authorities were giving better protection to Sinhala settlers in the nearby villages, the RDS chairman said when contacted by TamilNet.
Full story >>

OHCHR fails to provide OISL report in Tamil

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 October 2015, 17:40 GMT]
More than a month has passed since the report of the OHCHR Investigation on ‘Sri Lanka’ (OISL) was initially released on 16 September after it had been postponed for 6 months. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which claims to be victim-centered in its approaches, is yet to issue the report in Tamil language to be understandable to the victims themselves, journalists in Jaffna told TamilNet on Tuesday. The OHCHR is yet to respond to questions from the journalists on the availability of the OISL report in Tamil.
Full story >>

Tamil civil groups under pressure to dilute their investigation demand

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 October 2015, 23:37 GMT]
A section of so-called human rights activists from South are exerting pressure on civil groups in North-East, including the Citizens' Committees, women groups, missing persons groups to take part in a deceptive move being organised in Colombo by Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera with the aim of projecting their participation as giving consent to Colombo's domestic investigations. The majority of the participants are from South. Ms Nimalka Fernando, a Sinhala Christian and the president of the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), has joined Mr Samaraweera in protecting the interests of the new regime in Colombo, a citizens' committee leader in North told TamilNet on Monday. The Tamil civil groups met on Saturday in Jaffna to discuss how to face the move, which is scheduled on 29 October in Colombo.
Full story >>

Two more human skeletons exhumed from Kumaratunga's killings fields in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 October 2015, 20:29 GMT]
The organization representing the families of forced disappeared in Jaffna has demanded on Friday credible and independent forensic analysis to be conducted without further delay on recently exhumed skeletons from Mu'l'li at Ariyaalai East, located near the genocidal killing fields of Chemma'ni. Skeletons of two females, one of them believed to be a schoolgirl allegedly raped and killed by the occupying SL military, have been recently exhumed after sand scoopers discovered the remains. The SL military had vacated from Mu'l'li two years ago after keeping the area as a ‘High Security Zone’ since 1996. Around 800 Tamil youth were forcefully disappeared between 1996 and 1999 in Jaffna peninsula under Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga's (CBK) rule.
Full story >>

‘Tamils in Norway should take hint from question posed by former peace monitor’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 October 2015, 23:56 GMT]
The judicial model being advocated by the Sri Lankan State following the UNHRC Resolution in Geneva is set to cause headache for Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as soon as Colombo summons the former Norwegian peace envoys as witnesses in what is being interpreted largely as a domestic mechanism with international ‘assistance’, writes Christian Ranheim, a Norwegian Human Rights and Law Consultant, who was a former member of the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) that monitored the implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement between Colombo government and the LTTE. In a blog article on Thursday Mr Ranheim has hinted that Oslo's participation in a ‘Sri Lankan’ domestic court would be a matter of debate, if the judicial process in Colombo is not seen as a legitimate one.
Full story >>

Tamil political prisoners complain about increased harassment at SL prisons

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 October 2015, 22:18 GMT]
The intelligence operatives of the Sri Lankan military and the prison officers are threatening the Tamil political prisoners against their attempts to file Fundamental Rights (FR) petitions challenging their continued imprisonment, the families visiting the prisoners from Batticaloa told TamilNet this week. When the families are visiting the prisoners, two intelligence operatives were accompanying the imprisoned Tamils. In the meantime, rights activists from Batticaloa, providing free legal assistance to the prisoners in Colombo Magazine prison and at Anurdhapura prison, complain that the prisoners were unable to communicate with them about filing FR petitions.
Full story >>

David in 2012: Diaspora duty-bound in advancing independent polity of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 October 2015, 23:32 GMT]
The late Gandhiyam David, when interviewed in Tamil Nadu in 2012 for TamilNet, categorically stated that an independent state for the Tamils was the only viable solution. The USA was playing “double game” behind the back of Eezham Tamils. India took a decisive role in Colombo's war against Tamils. It was Pirapaharan who defended Eezham Tamils through the army he had built up independently, he said. After decades, Colombo had realised the crucial political backing it needed from New Delhi to militarily destroy the Tamil movement and India played a key role during the Mu'l'livaaykkaal massacre, before and after that. It was only recently they are trying to get out and the Chinese are getting into their boots to transform the island into a base for Chinese politics, he said stressing that Tamils need independent people-centric mobilisation to preserve their existence as Eezham Tamils.
Full story >>

Ex-LTTE Women's Political Head Thamilini dies of cancer at 43

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 October 2015, 18:37 GMT]
Sivakamy Sivasubramaniyam alias Thamilni, who was formerly the head of LTTE's Women Political Wing, has passed away on Sunday at Maharagama cancer hospital after battling cancer for some months, news sources in Colombo said. Coming from an Up-Country Tamil family settled in Paranthan in Vanni, Ms Thamilini served in the LTTE for almost 18 years and had earned the trust of the LTTE leader V. Pirapaharan for her political work. Thamilini was one of the foremost political leaders of the LTTE, who had proved that women were not second to men in contributing to the liberation of the nation of Eezham Tamils.
Full story >>