SL investigators harass senior journalist in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 October 2014, 12:34 GMT]
Senior Journalist and media activist Thayaraparan Ratnam in Jaffna has been subjected to interrogation style investigations by a 'Special Criminal Investigation Division' in Kaangkeasanthu'rai (KKS) on Wednesday, media circles in Jaffna said. Mr Thayaparan has been subjected to continous harassment by Sri Lankan Defence Ministry operated 'investigation' units, Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) and the CID, the sources said adding that the harassments started after the journalists and media activists started to attend media workshops held in Colombo and other places. However, the timing of the harassment against Tamil journalists has a different motive, civil activists in Jaffna told TamilNet.
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1,200 Sinhala families encroached into Batticaloa-Ampaa’rai border

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 September 2014, 21:36 GMT]
Since 2011, more than 1,200 Sinhala families have been brought into the Batticaloa district within the bordering areas of Ampaa’rai district, say Tamil National Alliance (TNA) politicians who have taken a fact-finding mission to Mayilantha-madu and Periya-maathava’nai on Friday. Thousands of acres of grazing lands allocated for farmers from Batticaloa have been seized by the occupying Sri Lankan military and its so-called ‘homeguards’ paramilitary. The Sinhala colonists are doing agriculture in the occupied lands.
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Colombo to seize more lands for militarisation of North

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 September 2014, 22:43 GMT]
1,300 acres of lands are to be surveyed and seized by the SL military in Jaffna peninsula in the coming days, informed sources told TamilNet on Saturday. The lands belonging to Tamil people are to be seized in Maathakal, Achchuveali, Chavakachcheari, Nu’naavil and Thikkam. The SL military has already harassed the fishermen at Cheanthaan-ku’lam in Maathakal to vacate from their jetty and relocate their fishing tools as the land was to be surveyed, gazetted and seized for military expansion. On Friday, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) politicians, civic council members and Valikaamam North uprooted people’s organisation protested against an attempt to survey the lands in Maathakal. In the meantime, hundreds of acres of lands are being seized without any procedures in the Vanni mainland, Tamil activists in Mullaiththeevu said.
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Funeral of veteran activist Manickasothy held in Uduvil, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 September 2014, 19:14 GMT]
Hundreds of Eezham Tamils paid their last respects to veteran Eezham Tamil activist Abimannasingham Manickasothy on Wednesday at Uduvil in Jaffna. Mr Manickasothy passed away Monday night in a vehicle accident on his way to Jaffna from Colombo. Mr Manickasothy, who stood with his people throughout the Tamil struggle, has been articulating the political aspiration of Eezham Tamils in all available platforms. He has been a firm defender of Eezham Tamils right to self-determination for more than 30 years.
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Sapu-gas-kanda, Hapu-wala

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 September 2014, 19:46 GMT]
The hill of Michelia champaca trees

The forest of Michelia champaca trees
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Bringing OISL to NorthEast is IC responsibility: Tamil politicians

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 September 2014, 23:18 GMT]
Tamil politicians who met the British Deputy High Commissioner Lara Levis, who was on a trip to North and East, urged the diplomat to pass a message to her government and the international community to exert maximum pressure on Colombo to allow the Geneva-based OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL) to visit the homeland of Eelam Tamils in the North and East of the island. “The Deputy High Commissioner, who listened to our complaints on the human rights violations of the Tamil people, was silent. We urged her to impress upon her government and the international community to enable the OISL to visit the island,” TNA parliamentarian P Selvarasa from Batticaloa said.
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Powers may have double talk but those who struggle should not

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 September 2014, 16:32 GMT]
"I am convinced that if Ukraine solved its domestic problems without the use of armed forces, without the bloodshed there over the past month, without the use of heavy artillery... this tragedy would not have happened," said Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu to visiting Malaysian defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein on Wednesday, while discussing MH 17 investigation. Whether Russia would speak in the same line and would advise its BRICS partners, especially New Delhi, to take the line in the investigation on the crimes of Sri Lanka and in the decades long militarised genocide against Eezham Tamils is what world humanity wishes to know, said Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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SL judiciary blocks massacre victims remembrance in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 September 2014, 22:54 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan Police in Batticaloa on Tuesday blocked the 24th annual remembrance event of the victims of the brutal massacre of Chaththuruk-ko’ndaan massacre carried out by the Sri Lanka Army in 1990. Batticaloa District Magistrate Mr NMM Abdulla issued an injunction order prohibiting the remembrance event at the memorial site accepting the SL police version, legal sources in Batticaloa said.
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Aruvi-aa'ru, Kætagal-aara

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 September 2014, 15:08 GMT]
The river coming from the hills or the river at its estuary

The pebble-stone river
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SL military, police block protesters in North on International Day of Disappeared

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 August 2014, 06:52 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan Military and Police on Saturday blocked the kith and kin of disappeared persons who were on a protest rally in Vavuniyaa organised by the citizens committees from the five districts in the North. The peaceful march, which started with a public meeting at Vavuniyaa Urban Council building, was blocked by the riot control police from proceeding towards the office of the Government Agent.
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Political fundamentals cannot be surrendered to military requisites of imperialism

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 August 2014, 15:33 GMT]
Five years of actual ground experience of Eezham Tamils since the Vanni War ending in genocide, is nothing but the thorough and accelerated militarisation of their land by the Sinhala military, carried out with active patronage coming from New Delhi, Washington and Beijing. Militarisation of this nature, that too by a historically proven genocidal State and by its military, is perhaps the most important reason, why the military-less nation of Eezham Tamils can’t expect any political solution working within a united island and that they should seek independence. Eezham Tamil individuals and forums in the diaspora hijacked by imperialisms of militaristic interest should think twice before telling that Tamils have given up the claim for their country.
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STF deployed to muzzle protests against environmental genocide in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 August 2014, 07:01 GMT]
Hundreds of commandos from the occupying Special Task Force (STF), a full-fledged military outfit under the SL Police that has committed genocidal massacres against Eezham Tamils in the East, have been deployed in Vadamaraadchi East in Jaffna to muzzle renewed protests from Tamil villagers against the environment-destroying sand-scooping that is being carried out by Colombo-backed EPDP paramilitary's Maheswary Foundation and Gotabhaya-operated ‘Neythal’ outfit. On Thursday, a 25-year-old pregnant woman was killed on the spot when a speeding vehicle belonging to Maheswary Foundation hit her on Saraswathy Lane at Navakkiri in Valikaamam East.
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Modi gave lesson to TNA on ‘collaborative politics’ says Devananda

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 August 2014, 23:11 GMT]
“I hope that the Tamil National Alliance leaders who recently went to meet the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would listen to his advice, which is the same as our longstanding position on the resolution to the conflict, that one should start collaborating with the Sri Lankan Government on Northern Provincial Council,” said EPDP leader Douglas Devananda, who is also a minister in Rajapaksa regime. He was addressing the audience at the re-opening ceremony of Achchuveali Industrial Estate in Jaffna on Wednesday. The industrial estate has been rehabilitated with Indian assistance. SL Presidential sibling and the ‘Economic Development’ Minister Basil Rajapaksa, High Commissioner of India Y.K. Sinha and the Chief Minister of Northern Province C.V. Wigneswaran were among the delegates who attended three ceremonial events connected to projects that have received Indian assistance.
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TNPF leader speaks on independent, concerted, Tamil foreign policy

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 August 2014, 02:32 GMT]
Realising that our struggle has long been used by powers in their engagements with the island, we as a nation must work towards a concerted foreign policy, although we don’t have State, said Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) leader Mr. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam in an interview to TamilNet on Saturday. In meeting the challenge of achieving this, we should incorporate Tamil Nadu in creating a power centre in a geopolitical sense and the dynamics will change very quickly. Compared to the Congress, the BJP is little bit more blunt and more strident in containing the nationalist nature of the struggle. This is the carrot to the Sri Lankan State and the TNA is a co-partner. The TNPF leader argued for a breakthrough by addressing the situation in three ways.
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13-A hoodwink continues under BJP New Delhi

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 August 2014, 22:41 GMT]
The 27 year-old treacherous deceit of the New Delhi Establishment, committed on the nation of Eezham Tamils in the name of implementing the 13 Amendment of the unitary constitution of genocidal Sri Lanka, continues under Narendra Modi’s regime, with an ultimate aim of completing the genocide and structural genocide in the island, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island, responding to the outcome of TNA-Modi meeting that took place in New Delhi on Saturaday. What is privately and separately said to Rajapaksa or TNA doesn’t count at all. What actually takes place on the ground tells what is in the agenda, the activists further said.
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Peoples of India should see real danger coming from Swamy polity

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 August 2014, 15:33 GMT]
The genre of Subramanian Swamies, ostracized by mainstream Tamils and politically orphaned in Tamil Nadu, try to settle score with their own people by making their local bias and paranoia to influence all-India policy, unjustly affecting the immediately neighbouring nation of Eezham Tamils. This is the real danger for entire India in the long run. Peoples of India, especially the peoples of North India should realise the impending danger coming from this genre of individuals, who threaten India’s national interests by causing disintegration in the South and by marring India’s image in the eyes of world humanity, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhalicisation of Kagnchi-kudichchaa’ru in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 August 2014, 23:22 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan State, which seized the control of the ancient Tamil villages of Kagnchi-kudichchaa’ru and Thangka-vealaayutha-puram in Thirukkoayil division in Ampaa’rai district from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after the end of war in East in 2007, is now scheming a Sinhala settlement in the two villages, Eezham Tamil villagers told TamilNet on Wednesday. A Buddhist monk, accompanied by two Karuna Group paramilitary operatives visited the villages three days ago vowing to put up a Buddhist temple within a month between the two villages, they further said.
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Educationalist, veteran civil activist Varatharajan passes away

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 August 2014, 20:32 GMT]
Sinnathurai Varatharajan, a popular teacher of economics, who stood with his people throughout his life, has passed away in Jaffna on Monday due to cancer-related complications at the age of 63. With his extensive knowledge on the economic potentials in the Tamil homeland, both in the North and East, Mr Varatharajan paid a particular attention to the demographic genocide being committed against the Eezham Tamils in the North and East. Apart from serving his people as an educationalist, Mr Varatharajan stepped in as a grassroots civil activist whenever his people faced a challenging time under outside occupations. Eezham Tamils are a distinct nation with their own sovereignty in the unified North and East of the island was his political stand and he advocated a confederal model as the minimum acceptable solution.
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Majority Tamil Councillors from North, East request OHCHR to investigate genocide

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 August 2014, 07:36 GMT]
“Tamil people strongly believe that they have been, and continue to be subjected to Genocide by Sri Lanka […] Systematic Sinhalese settlements and demographic changes with the intent to destroy the Tamil Nation are taking place. We request the OHCHR investigative team to look into the pattern of all the atrocities against the Tamil people, and to determine if Genocide has taken place,” states a joint letter by the majority of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) and Tamil opposition councillors form the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC). 28 elected Eezham Tamil councillors from the 38-member Northern Provincial Council (NPC) and 5 of 11 opposition Tamil National Alliance members from the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) have sent the letter to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navaneetham Pillay on Monday.
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Indian housing scheme in Trincomalee ignores uprooted Champoor Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 August 2014, 14:08 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Trincomalee has blocked the representatives of uprooted Eezham Tamils from Champoor from presenting their appeal in person to the Indian High Commissioner Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha, who visited Moothoor East last Friday to lay the foundation stone for the housing scheme for the war affected people from the three villages of Koonith-theevu, Navaratnapuram and Choodaik-kudaa. The uprooted Tamils, still living in four so-called welfare camps at Paddith-thidal, Ma’nat-cheanai, Ki’liveddi and Kaddai-pa’richchaan, who were blocked from the handing over their appeal have sent a letter to the Indian High Commissioner detailing their suffering for the past 9 years.
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