Learning lessons from political discourses of past

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 January 2015, 23:36 GMT]
The last advice of the late Professor A.J. Wilson, a highly respected academic who had the closest connections with the hierarchy of the government echelons from time to time, and who was an optimist genuinely believing the possibility of Tamils and Sinhalese co-existing, was that the Tamil academics and professionals should not let themselves to be lured by promises, sweet talk, and false vanity liberally dispensed by their Sinhala counterparts and Sinhala leaders. According to him this is what that had spoiled Sir P. Ramanathan, G. G. Ponnambalam, M. Thiruchelvam and to a certain extent Thanthai Selva (SJV Chelvanayagam) and A. Amirthalingam. Writing in 2003 on the positions and policies in Tamil politics in the past, Mr. V.T. Thamilmaran was comparing the discourses of two political intellectuals, A.J. Wilson and the other being the doyen of ITAK, V. Navaratnam.
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Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam passes away

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 November 2014, 10:24 GMT]
Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam, an Eezham Tamil academic who held the rare distinction of being the professor of English in a reputed university of a native English-speaking country, Canada, passed away in Montreal on Sunday. He was Professor of English at the University of Toronto. Recently he has been awarded the highest literary recognition of the country, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. A function was held at Montreal related to the award. After attending the function, and while on his way to dinner that followed the function, he suffered a massive heart attack. He was 62. Professor Kanaganayakam’s father, Professor Chelvanayagam was a distinguished Tamil scholar at the University of Peradeniya in the 1960s. Kanaganayakam was Lecturer in English at the University of Jaffna in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
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Professor V. Sivasamy passes away

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 November 2014, 23:29 GMT]
Professor V. Sivasamy, retired professor of Sanskrit of the University of Jaffna and was teaching until recently at the university, passed away in Jaffna on Saturday at the age of 81. As a multifaceted scholar in Sanskrit, Tamil, History, Archaeology, Epigraphy, Hindu Civilization and Fine Arts, and as a profound writer in Tamil and English, he was a silent legend in shaping the contemporary academic history of Eezham Tamils. He taught at the University of Jaffna right from its inception in 1974 to the day his physical abilities permitted him to do the job, as the university was always in need of his rare accomplishments. Thousands of students were benefited by his selfless and committed academic services and guidance. His demise marks the end of a legacy.
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Padi-wela

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 October 2014, 17:01 GMT]
The paddy fields cultivated for wages, or the paddy fields the produce of which is paid as wages to assigned persons

The stepped paddy fields
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Tamil woman under SL military training dies in Jaffna, cause of death concealed

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 August 2014, 15:51 GMT]
A 26-year-old Tamil woman from Mullaiththeevu, who was conscripted by the occupying SL military was admitted to Jaffna Teaching Hospital this week and died at the hospital on Thursday after a mysterious vaginal illness. The victim, Ajantha Prasath, a mother of a 6-year-old girl was from Chelvapuram in Oddu-chuddaan in Vanni. The lone poverty-stricken mother, living with her parents, was deceived with a ‘job offer’ by the SL military three months ago on 22nd May, was under military training at Palaali base. Ajantha died of ‘vaginal cancer’ according to the controversial director of the Jaffna Teaching Hospital, Mrs Bavany Pasupathirajah, who attended a ‘press conference’ organised by the so-called Civil Military Coordination Office on Saturday. The dead body was burnt at Ponnakar burial grounds on Friday. The family was told on Saturday that their daughter passed away due to cancer.
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Media groups protest against SL military’s shadow war on Eezham Tamil journalists

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 July 2014, 14:14 GMT]
Following the SL military sabotage against Tamil journalists, who were on their way to attend a workshop held in Colombo on Friday, 25 July, and against the continued threat and harassment of the involved Eezham Tamil journalists, Tamil journalists in the five districts of Northern Province came together at a protest organised by the Jaffna Press Club in Jaffna city on Thursday. Media organisations based in South also took part in the protest in Jaffna expressing their solidarity with the Eezham Tamil journalists, who are being threatened and harassed by the occupying military of the genocidal Sri Lankan State.
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‘Proliferation of micronarratives assists the logic of counterinsurgency’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 June 2014, 23:48 GMT]
In the context of the Tamil Eelam liberation struggle, when a “micronarrative” discourse about gender, caste, region or other “special interest groups” claims autonomous status, “when it divorces itself from the primary contradiction between the Tamil nationalist metanarrative and the Sri Lankan state, it only ends up fracturing a resistance movement against genocide” argues Karthick RM. In an article published on Indian journal Sanhati, providing examples of how such differences were used to fracture the Eezham Tamils liberation struggle in the past and the present, he shows that such “dissidence” only assists the logic of counterinsurgency (COIN). Drawing from classical and contemporary COIN experts and from the writings of psychologists, Mr. Karthick also observes how such micronarratives and a defeatist mentality complement each other.
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Peace Studies philosopher advises Tamils to tell the story with a vision

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 April 2014, 11:37 GMT]
“Let us say you have one million Tamils in the Tamil diaspora. They used to collect money for the LTTE. They collected a lot of money. Let me put it in very plain simple terms: these one million work on the media of the world and make the story better known,” said 84-year old Peace Studies Professor Johan Galtung, in an interview to TamilNet-Palaka'ni last month. Acknowledging that the Eezham Tamils face genocide and structural genocide, identifying the Mahavamsa mentality in the Sinhala-Buddhists as the impediment for solutions, and at the same time blaming the armed struggle of the LTTE as a mistake, Galtung stood by “federation with a high level of autonomy,” which he had advocated and failed during his 34 visits to the island at the time of the peace talks.
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PPT verdict and Eelam Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 31 January 2014, 13:18 GMT]
While the PPT hearings peeled away the layers of oppression the Eelam Tamils had faced due to the prolonged activities of the UK and USA, a “vortex model” that is now put in action with the allure of proximity to power, has created a new kind of thinking among many Eelam Tamils. These Eelam Tamils rationalise their pro-UK-USA position, thinking that Eelam Tamils will not gain justice without the support of these states and thus exposing their complicity will not work in our favour. Such a position is incompatible with the meaning of struggle. Eelam Tamils should develop a better strategy for their struggle than one that requires them to cover up the crimes of those states that were in complicity in the genocide. The PPT verdict should play a central role in that new strategy, writes N. Malathy.
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UNHRC urged against considering PSC route

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 January 2014, 12:33 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s submissions to the UNHRC seek international pressure on the TNA and the UNP to take part in the deliberations of the deceptive Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC). Rajapakse has not implemented even a single recommendation of his own Commissions and Committees so far. On what grounds can the International Community guarantee that a future for the Tamils lies in Sri Lanka, questioned a media release of the Tamil Action Front, New Zealand, on Tuesday. The media release signed by Mr. A. Theva Rajan reminded Tamils and the international community to never subscribe to the continuity of the catalogue of deceits.
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13 Tamils killed by wild elephants deployed by Colombo in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 January 2014, 23:40 GMT]
Wild elephants that have been brought from the jungles in South to jungles close to Tamil villages in Batticaloa have claimed the lives of 13 Tamils in Batticaloa district since December 2012 to December 2013, Eastern Provincial forest officials said. Seven persons have been handicapped in the assaults by the wild elephants. 12 of the slain victims were men. Many of the families of victims have not been provided compensation. 45 houses have been destroyed partly or fully.
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DNA testing, a persistent threat to Colombo on genocide culpability

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 December 2013, 18:08 GMT]
While in the western liberal democracies advanced DNA-based evidence collection has been the staple of modern crime investigations since the advent of DNA testing in 1985, in Sri Lanka DNA testing on Tamil victims have been systematically blocked by Colombo likely as part of the politically sanctioned strategy and forced on the subservient judicial branch to suppress evidence of Sinhala military criminality. While the blocking of Maanthai skeletal findings is the latest in Colombo's involvement in suppressing possible military complicity, the results of the DNA testing of the body of the popular Catholic priest Rev. Fr. Jim Brown, whose mutilated torso was found at Pungkudutheevu sea on 14 March 2007, was also suppressed by Colombo. Colombo media, under direct and indirect threat from Rajapaksas, self-censored the coverage of the Brown story in 2007.
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Civil activists condemn Colombo for detaining Tamil youth under PTA

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 December 2013, 16:12 GMT]
More than 100 civil activists from all walks of life, including religious dignitaries, human rights activists, journalists, writers and academics, both from within and outside the island, have strongly condemned the Government of Sri Lanka for the continuous detention of 7 Tamil youth under the so-called Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) since their arrest during the last week of November following the Tamil Heroes Day observations in Jaffna and Mannaar. The aactivists said that they were concerned as the arrests were unfounded and only served to perpetuate the climate of fear and insecurity of the people of the North.
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SL intelligence squad behind attack on protestors in Trincomalee on HR Day

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 December 2013, 17:16 GMT]
The masked men, who on Tuesday attacked a peaceful demonstration, which was staged by the relatives of missing persons in Trincomalee, belong to a squad operated by the intelligence wing of the occupying SL military, the organisers of the protest said on Wednesday. The members of the squad arrived through the Sinhala market, parked their motorbikes and launched the attack after covering their faces with clothes. More than one hundred peaceful demonstrators, most of them women, carrying the photos of their missing kith and kin, were brutally attacked by the men, who also destroyed the photos and placards on Human Rights Day in the city of Trincomalee while SL Policemen were watching the unfolding violent episode.
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Allow people to give way to their emotions, Wigneswaran warns Colombo on Heroes Day

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 November 2013, 16:01 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Jaffna on Tamil Heroes Day blocked the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) from planting trees at the public venue of Thanthai Chelva's memorial square. However, three provincial ministers, including the NPC Chief Minister CV Wigneswaran and three councillors went ahead planting tree saplings in the premises of the secretariat of the provincial education ministry, which is located in a private land. “This is about our emotions and feelings. If the [SL] government didn't allow us to proceed with this, the outcome would be much more drastic,” the chief minister of NPC warned Colombo.
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Mura-pola, Waraka-mura

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 October 2013, 22:16 GMT]
The sentry post
The Waraka (jack) fruit tree surroundings
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People's mandate projected differently by TNA MPs

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 October 2013, 20:15 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian S. Sritharan from Ki'linochchi delivered an emotional speech in Jaffna on Friday during the oath-taking ceremony of the members of the NPC. The address, also containing satire messages directed at the Chief Minister CV Wigneswaran, reminded the CM and his fellow NPC members on the aspiration of Eezham Tamils and what the real mandate the TNA had promised to its people at the grassroots level during the election campaign, while TNA parliamentary group leader R. Sampanthan and national list parliamentarian MA Sumanthiran were interpreting the mandate according to their manuscript produced without involving the majority of the TNA politicians or the candidates.
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NPC members take oath in Jaffna after honouring fallen Tamil Heroes

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 October 2013, 06:57 GMT]
Twenty members of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) elected to the Northern Provincial Council took oaths in Jaffna after visiting the memorial site of SJV Chelvanayakam and after observing honour to fallen Tamil Heroes (Maaveerar) and the people perished in the war, at Jaffna Veerasingham Hall Friday 9:00 a.m. EPRLF-leader Suresh Premachandran and five of the six EPRLF's elected members, TELO's M.K.Sivajilingam and an elected TELO member, PLOTE leader Tharmalingam Siththarthan and one elected PLOTE member were absent at the event. Ms Ananthi Sasitharan was present marking her independency between the ITAK and the portfolio-seekers. The ceremonial event took place without any celebrations and the members declined to wear traditional garlands at the function.
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Indian FM in Jaffna talks of ‘tri-lingual, united, sovereign, devolved and connected’ Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 October 2013, 17:12 GMT]
Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, who visited Jaffna on Tuesday, ceremonially opened two houses of the controversial ‘50,000 House Project’, by visiting Thanthai Chelvapuram village at Thellippazhai in Valikaamam North, after landing in Palaali, meeting SL military officials and paying tribute to slain Indian soldiers in the war 23 years ago. Mr Khurshid then proceeded to lunch with the war-crimes accused Sri Lankan colonial governor in North and thereafter met the Chief Minister of Northern Provincial Council. Salman Khurshid, addressing the beneficiaries of financial asssistance and the journalists at Tilko hotel was talking of devolved Sri Lanka under the 13 Amendment, for a happy, prosperous and tri-lingual Sri Lanka which is sovereign and united and connected with India.
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TNA should learn from history: Poonkuzhali Nedumaran

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 October 2013, 23:38 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) should learn from history, and from the experience of their predecessors, on what should NOT be done, writes Tamil Nadu political activist Poonkuzhali Nedumaran in a feature sent to TamilNet this week. She cited the history of TNA’s predecessor TULF failing in upholding the responsibility it was vested with by the people in 1977, compromising with District Councils and how that triggered the Tamil youth to lose confidence in parliamentary methods. The NPC election results mean communication of a will than participation in governance. With the Eezham Tamils rejecting the polity and rule of the State in Colombo, the TNA must understand the responsibility vested with them by the people, she further said.
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