Dr Malathy’s ‘A Fleeting Moment’ to be released in Tamil

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 July 2013, 22:23 GMT]
Tamil Nadu based publication house Vidiyal Pathippakam will be releasing the Tamil version of Dr. N. Malathy’s book ‘A fleeting moment in my country’ by the end of this month. The book in Tamil, titled “Enathu naaddil oru thu'li nearam: viduthalaip pulika'lin nadaimu'rai arasin i'ruthi naanku varudangka'l” will be ready for sale on 30 July, and will be on display at the Erode Book fair by the first week of August.
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US Navy, Sinhala military engage in joint training operations in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 July 2013, 05:28 GMT]
American Navy SEALS and the Sri Lankan military are currently conducting joint training operations at the Sinhala military occupied Trincomalee. The Annual Joined Combined Exchange Training (JCET) between the US Naval Special Warfare Community and the Sri Lankan military named ‘Flash Style’, which commenced on 2 July at the naval dockyard in Trincomalee, is scheduled to conclude on 19 July. Joint training exercises with the same name had been conducted earlier in 2000, before the commencement of the internationally abetted war on the de-facto state of the LTTE. Given this prolonged cooperation between the US armed forces and the genocide-accused Sinhala military, one is forced to arrive at the conclusion that the Pentagon’s policy approves of the genocidal policy of the Sri Lankan state, a Tamil analyst commented.
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Diaspora youth release Policy Document to chart course of struggle post-Mu’l’livaaykkaal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 July 2013, 22:20 GMT]
Second-generation diaspora youth activists came together to release a Policy Document to chart the course of the Eezham Tamils’ struggle, assessing political developments post- May 2009. After interactive sessions held from July 6-7 at an event titled ‘Seeking Perception sans Conditioning: Charting the Course of Struggle in Assessment of Post-Mullivaaikkaal’, eight activists from Europe, Australia and Canada asserted the need for holding the recognition of a sovereign nationhood of the Eezham Tamils as basis for a principled minimal demand of the Eezham Tamil nation, grounding it in the School of Thought of the Eezham Tamils’ struggle. Calling for a critical engagement with the International Community, the youth activists declared that Tamil organizations must be held accountable to the democratic will of the people, urging the formation of a robust Tamil civil society in the diaspora.
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‘Abuse of Tamil women part and parcel of intended genocide’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 July 2013, 11:02 GMT]
The abuse of Eezham Tamil women committed by the Sri Lankan state apparatus should not be seen as individual human rights violations but as a part and parcel of an intended genocide of a protracted nature, write Dr. N. Malathy, key member of NESoHR and author of ‘A Fleeting Moment in my Country’ and RM Karthick, research scholar at University of Essex, UK. In an article published on Indian journal Sanhati’s 6th issue for 2013, the authors, criticizing international organizations for their failure to properly deal with the issue of genocidal rape by Sri Lankan forces, also call on the Tamil community to have a change of social approach towards rape survivors, noting how violence against Tamil women is deeply intertwined with communal identity.
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Sri Lanka diplomat's twitter tirade jeopardizes British PM's CHOGM visit

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 July 2013, 02:14 GMT]
Sri Lanka's self-proclaimed "new school diplomat" and consul-general in Sydney, Bandula Jayasekara's twitter attacks against the Channel-4 film maker and British national, Callum Macrae, may cause potentially embarrassing diplomatic fallouts in the UK ahead of the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to be held in November this year, political sources in Australia said. Mr Jayasekara has labeled Macrae as an "LTTE terrorist from London," and has threatened that he will block Macrae getting a visa to attend the CHOGM in Colombo. Macrae is currently touring Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Canada to screen the film, No Fire Zone: The Killing fields of Sri Lanka, which tells the story of the last 138 days of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009.
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Sinhala colony, military, Buddhist complex crop up at Jaffna city entrance

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 July 2013, 14:04 GMT]
Naavat-kuzhi is a place just 5km east of Jaffna city where the two highways A9 and A32, the only existing land arteries that lead into Jaffna from the south and the western coast meet. First the Sinhala military occupied the junction with camps at both the branching highways. Then a Sinhala colony cropped up in the last two years with permanent concrete houses complete with all facilities at the most potential stretch of land there. Now, foundation is laid for the construction of a Buddhist stupa at this place along the highway to gleefully greet everyone entering into Jaffna city through land. Officers of the genocidal Sinhala military occupying Jaffna attended the foundation-laying ceremony, conducted recently by the Naaka Vihaara Buddhist prelate in Jaffna.
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American feminist writer contrasts gender politics of LTTE and GoSL

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 July 2013, 23:51 GMT]
“The Sri Lankan government has used rape against Tamil men and women suspected of being members of the LTTE [...] but the Tamil Tigers have seemingly not used it in retaliation,” writes American feminist writer Michele Lent Hirsch. In an article that is general commentary on the use of rape by both state and non-state actors in war published on Women Under Siege on Tuesday, the author compares and contrasts the gender politics of the LTTE with other actors in conflicts, and concludes that “if rape is not inevitable in war, it follows that we have all the more reason to hold the perpetrating groups responsible.” Commenting on this, a Tamil feminist activist from Vanni remarked that it is not only important to condemn rape in war in general, it is also important to recognize the nature of the sexual violence used in specific cases and to deal justice to survivors accordingly.
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Sinhala leftist criticizing government repression overlooks Tamils’ struggle

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 July 2013, 23:26 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government’s real concern at the moment is “the threat of widespread social unrest and an uprising by workers, youth and poor”, writes Sinhala leftist K. Ratnayake in article published on the Trotskyite World Socialist Web Site on Monday. Referring largely to Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s “Sri Lanka’s National Security Concerns” lecture at the Kotelawala Defence University in early June, the author claims that “The defence minister’s reference to a renewed “terrorist” threat is aimed at whipping up anti-Tamil communalism to divide the emerging struggles of the working class.” However, an alternative politics Eezham Tamil activist from Jaffna questions whether Mr. Ratnayake, who overlooks the Tamils’ struggle for sovereignty resisting genocidal occupation of their homeland by the GoSL, is consciously or unconsciously defending the state structure that he claims to criticize.
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Ban on water supply threatens agriculture of Eezham Tamils in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 June 2013, 22:34 GMT]
By banning water supply to agriculture and paper mills and supplying water to tourist houses, the Colombo government is putting lives of many Eezham Tamils in stake in Batticaloa. The Sri Lankan Finance Ministry, which comes directly under SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is also the finance minister in Colombo, has imposed on ban on supply of water from Vaakaneari lake to the agricultural farms, agriculturalists from the area complain.
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Hypocrisy at best: US policy towards Syria and Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 June 2013, 13:44 GMT]
US media reported on Wednesday that the CIA has begun shipping of arms to Syrian rebels to counter Bashar al-Assad’s forces. This move comes in spite of strong opposition from UNSC member Russia and warnings by a UN expert that increase in flow of weapons into Syria would only escalate the conflict. Likewise, American diplomat Susan Rice termed UNSC’s inaction on Syria a “stain” on the body. The hypocrisy of assisting Sri Lanka in its genocidal war on the Tamil nation while crying foul over al-Assad’s operations apart, the US through its actions on Syria makes it clear once again that the UNHRC, UNSC are of least concern should the US decide to intervene in a conflict. Given this nature of US foreign policy, till how long then will the Tamil Geneva pundits continue to believe in the impotent resolutions on Sri Lanka in the UNHRC, questions a political analyst in Colombo.
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Girl student sexually assaulted in Batticaloa near SLA, STF camps

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 June 2013, 01:36 GMT]
Tamil women from the East continue to be vulnerable to sexual assaults allegedly at the hands of Sinhala men even as another incident of sexual assault on a 17-year-old student was reported in Batticaloa district on Thursday last week.
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Gotabhaya names TamilNet a ‘security threat’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 June 2013, 00:04 GMT]
While listing ‘national’ security threats faced by genocidal Sri Lanka, its Defence Secretary and presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa included the name of TamilNet and said that it is controlled by the Tamil Coordinating Committee, led by Nediyavan, which in turn has control over most of the assets of the LTTE’s international organisation. Gotabhaya who said it on 13 June, while addressing the Kotelawela Defence University, also said that now all the various intelligence services of his State are brought under one Chief of National Intelligence, who reports directly to him (as Defence Secretary). What Gotabhaya said on TamilNet either shows the ignorance of his intelligence or his intention to distort TamilNet’s image. TamilNet challenges him on the truth of his statement.
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Jaffna University teachers boycott SL-UGC ‘academic reconciliation’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 June 2013, 06:05 GMT]
Jaffna University Teachers’ Association boycotted a ‘national’ level conference on the “Role of Higher Education in Reconciliation” hosted in Jaffna last week by genocidal Sri Lanka’s University Grants Commission. Even though Colombo media reports said that the conference was a joint venture of the SL-UGC and the University of Jaffna, it neither took place in the Jaffna University premises nor was it participated by the academics of the university. Fearing the prevailing mood at the university, the conference was held almost as a closed-door affair at a hotel in Jaffna. Only the VC and the administration that were obliged to go represented the Jaffna University. Among the 25 speakers brought by the SL-UGC, the star speakers to “set the tone and tempo of the conference,” were ‘Terrorism Professor’ Rohan Gunaratna and Law Professor C.G. Weeramantry.
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TNA MP alleges 'planned sinhalicisation' of punaanai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 June 2013, 12:11 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance MP C Yogeswaran on Sunday demanded that immediate steps be taken to stop the aggressive and meticulously planned sinhalicisation of Punaanai East, situated 52 km northwest of Batticaloa city. During the times of the LTTE, the presence of the Tiger forces from Kudumpimalai in the South to Vaakarai in the North had thwarted the earlier attempts of sinhalicisation. In the absence of LTTE, sinhalicisation is now rapidly taking place along the Batticaloa and Polonnaruwa border, where Punaanai is situated. Besides occupation by Sinhala families, Punaanai has also witnessed various instances of Sinhalicisation such as demolition of Saiva temples in the guise of archeological excavations and the deity in the sanctum sanctorum of a Pi'l'laiyaar temple missing.
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BJP, RSS, Shiv Sena answerable to Dasgupta policy-line

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 June 2013, 06:33 GMT]
Whatever is the journalistic halo behind Swapan Dasgupta, his recent writings and utterances on the struggle of the genocide-facing nation of Eezham Tamils could have been ignored as coming from just another of the dubious ilk that writes for agendas, had he not been a member of the Rajapaksa-sponsored BJP-RSS-Shiv Sena delegation that went to Colombo and Jaffna. Now as he openly bares the line of thinking in the camp, the BJP-RSS-Shiv Sena lot aspiring for power in India, may have to answer to the world of Tamils and to the humanity in general whether it is aspiring to become worse than that of the present Establishments in New Delhi, Washington and Beijing, commented an activist of alternative politics in Jaffna, urging mainstream polity and public in Tamil Nadu to be prepared with the needed.
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Colombo schemes permanent occupation of two Tamil villages in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 June 2013, 20:26 GMT]
Sinhala officials attached to Sri Lanka's Department of Forest Conservation, which comes under the SL Ministry of Environment and Renewable Energy, have surveyed this weekend two traditional Tamil villages in the Thirukkoayil DS division of Ampaa'rai district, in a move to plant trees in the lands that belong to uprooted Eezham Tamils, who have not been allowed to resettle in the villages of Thangkavealaayuthapuram and Kagnchi-kudichchaa'ru, news sources in Thirukkoayil told TamilNet Sunday. The Sinhala officials of the Eastern Provincial Council also back the move, the sources further said.
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Tamil "Mandate" Refugees, left homeless, languish in foreign camps

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 June 2013, 15:21 GMT]
Hundreds of Tamil refugees, including several hundreds who have been declared as "Mandate" refugees by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in compliance with the UNHCR Charter and associated statutes, are languishing in camps in East Asian countries, and recently in Dubai, while Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and the U.S., which have traditionally admitted mandate and convention refugees, are denying resettlement to many of these refugees. Australia, which is one of the contracting countries with UNHCR, is even keeping in detention, citing security threat, Tamil boat refugees who have been granted asylum.
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NESoHR revives reporting, highlights collective rights

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 June 2013, 20:30 GMT]
“Tamil Eelam today is a crucible of ‘excess of power’ - Lankan President with unchecked executive power, the very heavy presence of his military in Tamil Eelam and the Prevention of Terrorism Act still in place almost four years after the defeat of the LTTE,” says the latest Human Rights report issued by the North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR). “The leading human rights groups are hoping to deal with this situation of ‘excess of power’ only through appeals to individual rights. Indeed their mandates restrict them from dealing with it in any other way,” the NESoHR, which was formed during the internationally mediated peace process as the Human Rights body of the Tamil Nation, said on Friday, reviving its reporting on human rights in the country of Eezham Tamils and launching an international wing for dissemination of its reports.
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Paa'nama model envisaged to Sinhalicise Ukanthai in East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 June 2013, 18:21 GMT]
The SL government move to construct a Buddhist temple adjacent to the Saiva-Vedda, Murukan temple at the Ukanthai hill sanctuary is now abandoned after heavy protests by Tamils in Ampaa’rai district of Eastern Province, but Sinhalicisation of the place continues unabated following the model of another Tamil village Paa’nama, 16 km south of Ukanthai that is now dominated by Sinhalese, news sources in the East said. In front of the Ukanthai Murukan temple, in the one and a half acres of land claimed for the Buddhist temple, hundreds of Sinhala fishermen from the South are camped now. The Buddhist temple claim is based on this camp settlement and the one who spearheads the move is the incumbent of the Paa’nama Buddhist Vihara, who was born a Tamil and converted to become a Buddhist monk, news sources further said.
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Gajendrakumar exposes New Delhi’s deception behind 13th Amendment

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 June 2013, 06:33 GMT]
New Delhi that had wanted the LTTE to commit on federal solution as condition to bring in ceasefire, started arrogantly imposing the unitary 13 Amendment once the war ended in genocide, Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam exposes, bringing out the roles played by new Delhi’s National Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan, and the former Foreign Secretary and the present NSA, Shivshankar Menon. When some of the TNA members attempted to explain that the 13th Amendment couldn’t be the way to find a political solution to the national question, Mr Narayanan responded in an angry tone stating that India knew what was good for Tamils much better than the Tamils themselves. The Indian delegation categorically told us that the 13th Amendment was the solution, Mr Gajendrakumar said.
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