Resettled survivors of Vanni onslaught languish in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 December 2013, 17:14 GMT]
95% of the 1080 families of Batticaloa Tamils who survived the 2009 genocidal onslaught in Vanni and resettled back in Batticaloa district have been completely neglected from any help and still languish without basic facilities. When the families displaced from Batticaloa to Vanni in 2004 from different places of the district, Karuna group paramilitary destroyed their houses and their possessions were robbed. When they returned to their district, surviving the genocidal onslaught, Europe-based NGOs and UN agencies provided temporary huts to these families. All support stopped there, and these huts became the ‘markers’ for these families to get isolated from further aid, the families complain. They have also been sidelined from the Indian housing assistance.
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Colombo's motive of using China for forensic examinations on Mannaar mass grave questioned

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 December 2013, 08:42 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's police officials in Mannaar have said that the skeletons recovered at the mass grave at Thirukkeatheesvaram were being dispatched to China for forensic examinations. Responding, legal sources in Mannaar asked the motive of Colombo using China for DNA testing of the skeletons discovered at the mass grave and questioned the fate of similar cases earlier sent to China for ‘forensic examinations’. In 2009, China had allegedly provided Colombo with ‘movable crematory vehicles’ to get rid of the dead bodies of the genocidal victims in Vanni. Tamil activists urged the alternative world to assist the nation of Eezham Tamils to undertake forensic examinations in future in a credible and independent manner.
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Local contacts of visiting Indian journalist exposed to TID interrogators in Colombo

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 December 2013, 21:34 GMT]
In one of the strongest investigations and monitoring conducted so far on a foreign journalist visiting the island, the experienced interrogators of the notorious ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ of Colombo had not only confiscated the electronic and non-electronic possessions from the young journalist from Tamil Nadu, but also monitored and traced all his contacts from the moment he landed at Colombo airport for the second time, informed media sources in Colombo told TamilNet Sunday. In the meantime 22-year-old Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran, when contacted by TamilNet after his deportation to Chennai, said he was subjected to ‘psychological torture’ like condition at the hands of the TID interrogators in Colombo and that the TID had his Tamil book of his first visit translated when they questioned him on his affiliations.
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No Indian houses for uprooted Batticaloa Tamils from Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 December 2013, 22:30 GMT]
Hundreds of Tamil residents, who were uprooted from Vanni in the 2009 genocidal onslaught and resettled in Batticaloa district now, have not been provided permanent houses under the Indian housing project, according to complaints made to the Batticaloa District Citizen Committee.
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CPJ calls for immediate release of Indian journalist

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 December 2013, 20:18 GMT]
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York based media rights group, on Friday called for the immediate release of an Indian journalist and film-maker, Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran who was arrested by the occupying Sri Lankan military and Police in Vanni on Wednesday.
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Sri Lanka’s TID interrogates Indian journalist in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 December 2013, 13:19 GMT]
The journalist from Tamil Nadu, Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran, who was arrested by the occupying SL military and police in Vanni, while he was visiting Ki’linochchi was still under the custody of the ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ as late as Thursday night, informed sources in Colombo said. Earlier, the SL police spokesman in Colombo had stated that the Mr Thamizh Prabhagaran was being handed over to the immigration authorities for deportation. But, Colombo's TID officers were interrogating the Indian journalist on his contact network in the island by going through his article series that has appeared in Junior Vikatan, the sources further said.
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Vadamaraadchi East remembers Tamil tsunami victims

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 December 2013, 16:06 GMT]
Families, relatives and friends of victims who perished in the 2004 tsunami gathered at Uduththu’rai, Ma'natkaadu and Thaazhaiyadi burial grounds on Thursday remembering their loved ones on the 9th anniversary of the devastating catastrophe. The gigantic waves of tsunami claimed the lives of 41,000 people in the island on 26 December 2004 and most of the victims were from eastern and northern coasts of the Tamil homeland. Around 1.5 million people lost their homes in the tsunami. The International Community of Establishments, who failed the victims of tsunami, were not only complicit in Sri Lanka's genocidal onslaught on them in 2009, but they continue to fail the victims of the tsunami and the genocide by allowing the Sri Lankan State to continue the structural genocide on the nation of Eezham Tamils.
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Colombo arrests Indian journalist touring Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 December 2013, 01:48 GMT]
A young journalist from Tamil Nadu, Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran, who was touring in the North was arrested by the occupying Sri Lankan military and the SL police Wednesday noon, while he was talking to the parish priest of St. Antony’s Church in Ponnaavea’li, news sources in Vanni said. The Indian journalist visiting the island on tourist visa was together with Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian S. Sritharan, Northern Provincial Council (NPC) member S. Pasupathipillai and Karaichchi Piratheasa Chapai (PS) member S. Thayaparan during the detention, interrogation and arrest, the news sources further said.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhalicisation of land link between Jaffna and Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 December 2013, 18:25 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military has almost transformed the narrow strip of Chu’ndik-ku’lam sandbar, which links the Jaffna peninsula with Vanni mainland, into a Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ), denying the Tamil fishermen of Vadamaraadchi East and Vadmaraadchi, access to the coastal strip and the seas off Chu’ndikku’lam. While the occupying SL military is carrying out a new kind of Sinhalicisation with settlements for Sinhala fishermen, who endanger the fishing environment, the SL Ministry of Wildlife Resources Conservation has schemed occupation under the so-called extended development of the Chu’ndik-ku’lam Natural Park, bringing 11,149 hectares and a coastal strip of more than 50 square km into the exploitation of Colombo.
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Colombo sabotages DNA testing on skeletal remains from mass graves

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 December 2013, 17:29 GMT]
A new site of a mass grave was located this week in Mannaar, 75 meters from Maanthai junction towards Thirukkeatheesvaram, in an area that has been under the control of the occupying Sri Lanka Army since 1990 to the end of Vanni war. Such discoveries, which get highlighted as news stories, do not get proper investigative follow-up by the media, complain legal activists in Jaffna. Observing the pattern of systematic sabotage by the Colombo-centric Sri Lankan justice system on similar discoveries of mass graves in North in the past, Tamil lawyers say all requests for forensic examinations forwarded to Colombo by the SL courts in North and East get blocked in Colombo.
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Colombo seeks genocidal subordination through military indoctrination of students

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 December 2013, 12:21 GMT]
A Tamil student from Aaraip-pattai (Aaraiyampathi) in Ma’nmunaip-pattu division of Batticaloa district was rushed to the hospital in serious condition on Saturday, when he attempted to commit suicide by self-poisoning just a few hours before he was supposed to travel to the notorious Minneriya camp of the occupying SL military to attend an enforced indoctrination programme for all new students in order to become eligible for university entrance. The SL military is conducting a genocidal subordination in addition to the psychological pressure. There are students who lost their hard earned university admission as they were not able to secure the money needed to spend on meeting the demands of the military indoctrination programme, under the so-called ‘leadership’ indoctrination, the students from East say.
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Villages gone, buildings razed to ground in SL military appropriated Valikamaam North

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 December 2013, 07:53 GMT]
Almost all the buildings that were situated in the 6,400 acres of lands seized by the occupying Sri Lankan military in Valikaamam North in Jaffna have been completely bulldozed by the SL military, according to those who have witnessed the destruction in recent days. The entire area of fertile cultivation and residential lands now looks like single piece of desert land, they said. Except the buildings used by the genocidal military at the ‘forward line’ and the building at the rear, close to the Palaali military base, everything else has been razed to the ground. The SL military is transforming the former High Security Zone into a Sinhala Military Zone to encapsulate the Palaali military complex in Jaffna with a Sinhala military colony of the occupying soldiers from South.
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SL military further stifles civil life in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 December 2013, 16:53 GMT]
Following the instruction from occupying Colombo's Defence Secretary and Sri Lankan Presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a number of 'Terrorist Investigation Department' (TID) cells have started to function inside the Sri Lankan Police stations in the North in recent days. SL intelligence operatives claiming as TID investigators are engaged in muzzling the civilians, relatives of the victims demanding justice, social media activists and journalists. Those who interacted with the US Embassy delegation that visited Jaffna recently, were being invited for interrogations over the phone, news sources in Jaffna said.
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Colombo steps up military deployment under SL Police in Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 December 2013, 23:40 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government is stepping up the deployment of the notorious Special Task Force (STF) commandos in all the districts in the Northern and Eastern provinces, according to latest reports in Colombo media. In August, when UN Human Rights High Commissioner Ms Navi Pillay visited the North and East, the Sri Lankan government announced that it was ‘separating’ the administration of SL Police department from the Defence Ministry and that the police was now coming under the ministry of ‘Law and Order’ according to a recommendation of Rajapaksa’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The STF, trained by the British, is a full-fledged military outfit under the SL Police, which was directly engaged in acts of genocide in the East as well as in Vanni during the war.
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SL military arrests 147 Tamil Nadu fishermen in North

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 December 2013, 23:51 GMT]
At least 147 Tamil Nadu fishermen, who lost their bearing in the rough seas due to stormy weather and reached the shores of the country of Eezam Tamils, have been arrested by the occupying Sri Lanka Navy in the seas off Jaffna and Mullaiththeevu during the past 3 days. In the meantime, two bodies have washed ashore in Maathakal in recent days are yet to identified.
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Mandela and the other Prisoners of War

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 December 2013, 11:56 GMT]
As South Africa prepares for the funeral of iconic anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, who passed away at the age of 95 on Thursday, leaders of the world have paid their tributes to the man who was incarcerated as a political prisoner under the apartheid regime for 27 years. Powerful countries in the West, including the USA and UK, which had once denounced Mandela as a ‘terrorist’, are now in the forefront paying homage. However, these establishments still continue to support countries that practice illegal detention and brutal treatment of prisoners-of-war (PoW). Noting this hypocrisy, a British-Kurdish activist, drawing a comparison between Mandela and PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan who has been kept in solitary confinement in a Turkish prison for 13 years, questions how one political leader is considered a “freedom fighter” and the other a “terrorist”.
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Victims coerced to produce false affidavits on controversial birth control in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 December 2013, 23:49 GMT]
Colombo has instructed Tamil health officials in Ki’linochchi district to obtain ‘affidavits’ from women who were subjected to a controversial coercive population control in three coastal villages of the district. The women are being approached to sign a document stating that they received subdermal implants on their own request for contraceptive protection. The latest move has come as the women, who were coerced to receive a long-term hormonal birth control implant inserted under the skin of their upper arm, have been complaining of side effects such as blood pressure, weight gain, irregular periods as well as traumatic stress after 2 months of the birth control experiment by the SL State. On 30 November, a 26-year-old woman, who was one of more than 50 victims subjected to contraceptive control, died at Jaffna hospital after a mysterious infection.
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PPT names panel of judges to hear genocide case against Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 December 2013, 23:51 GMT]
The Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT) in Rome has announced the names of 11 judges, who would be hearing the long-awaited case on the accusation of genocide against Eezham Tamils to be heard by an independent panel. “Like in the first session, a respected panel of judges consisting of experts in Genocide studies, former UN-officials, experts in international law and renowned peace and human rights activists will hear the evidence that is presented and make a determination,” a press statement signed by Mr Gianni Tognoni, the secretary general of the PPT, stated. The first session held in January 2010, known as the Dublin Tribunal, was the first independent international undertaking that recognised the need to look into the case of genocide in the island of Sri Lanka. The second session is to take place between December 07 -10, 2013 in Bremen, Germany.
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Heroes Day in homeland, Diaspora, Tamil Nadu gains more significance than previous years

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 November 2013, 16:22 GMT]
The Indian prejudice and the global injustice, committed on the nation of Eezham Tamils by the various powers, enabled the Sri Lankan State to wage its genocidal war on Eezham Tamils to its end. But, the Tamil Heroes together with their steadfast people, who had no support from any State party in the world, achieved a superior moral victory. This is a unique case in modern human civilisation. This year, the remembrance of Tamil Heroes gained far more significance than the previous years after 2009, as Eezham Tamils in their homeland defied the ‘gag order’ by the occupying SL military, Diaspora Tamils marked the day without giving room for divisions engineered by the intelligence outfits of the Establishments and in Tamil Nadu, the Tamil national grassroots and political movements marked both LTTE leader Pirapaharan's birthday on 26 November and Maaveerar Day on 27 November.
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Heroes Day remembrance by public gains significance in North

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 November 2013, 18:31 GMT]
Almost all sections of Eezham Tamils in North on Wednesday remembered the Tamil Heroes Day in North amidst heavy deployment of the armed soldiers of the occupying Sri Lankan military. This year, the public observing remembrance in Jaffna, Vanni, Mannaar and Mullaiththeevu gains importance above all the events in the country of Eezham Tamils. University lectures, students across all the schools and grassroots political activists observed the Day paying tribute inside their houses amidst the gagged condition and attacks launched by the SL military operatives. While the Sri Lankan soldiers, anticipating a lightning event in the University premises were deployed in large numbers there, the students and the public lit the main flame of remembrance at the roof of one of the tallest buildings in the Jaffna Teaching Hospital at 6:00 p.m.
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