SL military orders civil officials to supply residential information of Jaffna University students

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 January 2013, 23:06 GMT]
As an overwhelming majority of Jaffna University students, demanding release of the detained student leaders, are still boycotting classes despite SL military intimidation on University administration and the teachers to resume the classes, the officers of the occupying military stationed across Jaffna have instructed the Divisional Secretaries to gather residential details of Jaffna University students through Village (GS) Officers, civil sources in Jaffna said. There are also reports that the SL military was summoning students to nearby military camps and instructing them to attend the classes. Several students in Vadamaraadchi East have been taken to SL military camps and threatened against staying in their homes.
Full story >>

SL military registers details of employees in businesses in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 January 2013, 21:20 GMT]
The military of occupying Sri Lanka has been deployed in registering details of employees in businesses in the Jaffna peninsula. Three to four SL military intelligence personnel accompanied by one SL policeman visit the shops and other businesses to register details of the employees. The SL soldiers are particular in collecting details of former LTTE members employed in the businesses, sources in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, the occupying Sri Lankan military has taken an upper hand over the Sinhala police in dealing with the civil affairs in recent weeks, NGO officials in Jaffna say.
Full story >>

Canadian minister cuts double image in Colombo

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 January 2013, 19:57 GMT]
Beginning a ministerial visit to Colombo since the Vanni War, the Canadian government once again prepares itself for climbing on the geostrategic bandwagon that detracts or deviates from delivering righteous solutions to genocide-afflicted Eezham Tamils, political observers in the island commented. They cited the double image cut by the visiting Canadian Minister portrayed in two separate news releases of the Canadian government: one denying the right to flee to the people subjected to genocide and the other showing concern to ‘human rights’ situation in the island, but both upholding integrity of the genocidal State. A different set of citations of the minister appeared in the SL government news release. The minister also cut a double image when media quoted him referring to “Sri Lankan immigrants” and “Tamil Canadians.”
Full story >>

Colombo ventures to coach New Delhi on ‘Counterinsurgency’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 January 2013, 10:42 GMT]
After spearheading an internationally-coordinated counterinsurgency (COIN) operation against the LTTE which resulted in an internationally abetted genocide of the Eezham Tamils in May 2009, in which India played no small a role, Sri Lanka now claims that it can offer training to Indian and other military forces in COIN operations. The commitment of General Bikram Singh, the Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army, to Sri Lanka’s security and his implicit appreciation of the Sri Lanka model of COIN by his statements at the passing out parade at Sri Lanka Military Academy on 22 December should be a cause of concern for progressive civil society activists in India, for while the ‘Sri Lanka solution’ was possible in its specific case only by a combination of geo-political factors and genocidal intent, it holds out lessons that could threaten democratic traditions in any country.
Full story >>

UN continues to commit knowing blunder on Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 January 2013, 08:14 GMT]
While various publications, including an internal investigation report of the UN, find fault with the way the UN handled the Vanni War that ended in genocide, the UN, the ICRC, the IOM and other international agencies continue to commit the same blunder knowingly, by leaving Eezham Tamils entirely in the hands of Colombo, with no outfits to complain with trust or to independently monitor the on-going genocide, said a senior social activist in the island, citing the cases of the repeated rape and abuse of former LTTE cadres, the sufferings of the Tamil women coerced into SL military, the plight of a doctor who voiced for them, forced relocation of re-settlers and the acts committed on Jaffna University students. These take place at individual level, apart from the larger militarisation, colonisation and Sinhalicisation of the genocidal agenda, he said.
Full story >>

Canada extradites citizens to stand "terrorism" trial in Brooklyn

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 January 2013, 02:29 GMT]
Two naturalized Canadian citizens of Eezham Tamil origin, Suresh Sriskandarajah and Piratheepan Nadarajah, plead not guilty to charges on providing material assistance to the now defunct Liberation Tigers when both were arraigned Thursday last week in the District Court of the Eastern District of New York (EDNY), after a six year battle in Canada fighting extradition, legal sources in New York said. The defendants lost a constitutional challenge in the Canadian Supreme Court when the Court ruled that Canada’s terrorism laws did not infringe on the defendants constitutional rights and that the Canadian Justice Minister's order to surrender the defendants to the United States was legal.
Full story >>

Colombo posters wage war against all shades of Tamil nationalism

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 December 2012, 09:20 GMT]
Citing the posters that appeared in Colombo and in southern parts of the island last week, a notice in Sinhala addressing ‘intelligent students’ of the Jaffna University, invariably accused all shades of Tamil polity in the island and in the diaspora that are not collaborating with the genocidal regime, as working for the division of the ‘country’. The notice also accused Sinhala students and shades of Sinhala Left in the south showing solidarity with the students of the Jaffna University, as unconsciously becoming a “prey to the interests of the LTTE to divide the country.” An English translation of the notice is produced herewith.
Full story >>

Indian police remedy against rape is ‘reconciliation’

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 December 2012, 08:12 GMT]
A 17-year-old Indian girl, gang-raped in November, committed suicide on Wednesday, after the Indian police pressured her to drop the case and accept a cash settlement or ‘marry’ one of her attackers, AFP reported on Thursday citing the victim’s sister, a senior police official and the Indian media NDTV. The girl had been “running from pillar to post to get her case registered,” but officers failed to open a formal inquiry and tried to convince her to withdraw the case, the Inspector General of Punjab Police, P.S. Gill, conceded. What the Indian police had applied in the individual case of the hapless girl is just analogous to the larger political policy of ‘reconciliation’ imposed by the Establishments in New Delhi and Washington on the genocide-affected nation of Eezham Tamils, said an activist in Jaffna standing for the human rights of nations.
Full story >>

Takasu, Tamils' adversary in UN Security Council?

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 December 2012, 00:15 GMT]
Yukio Takasu, the 2009 President of the UN Security Council (UNSC) on the critical month of February, was one of the key UN officials who allegedly prevented Sri Lanka from being dragged into the UNSC for the unfolding mass scale killings in Mu'l'livaaykkaal, public statements made by UN officials during media stakes reveal. While some UN Security Council (UNSC) permanent members may have agreed with Takasu'a views, in a media stake out, Takasu lays out his "own" critical view of the "terrorist LTTE," and the primacy of political and security need to "defeat" the Tigers over imminent large scale civilian casualties. Political observers believe that Japanese cultural views on refugees, asylum seekers may provide clues to Takasu's approach and conduct in the UNSC that led to the disastrous outcome for the Tamil refugees trapped in Sri Lanka's civil war.
Full story >>

Sri Lanka’s TID summons Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 December 2012, 18:51 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) has sent summons to Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) President, Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, asking him to be present at its investigating office in Colombo on Saturday for inquiries. The summon note, entirely in Sinhala language, was served at Gajendrakumar’s residence in Colombo by a TID officer on Thursday afternoon. Mr. Gajendrakumar is currently outside of the island, informed sources told TamilNet. Meanwhile, notices in Sinhala and English, viciously implicating TNPF Secretary and former TNA parliamentarian, Selvaraja Kajendran as one of the key persons behind the ‘pro-LTTE and TNA/ TNPF network’ in the Jaffna University, is being circulated in the south of the island.
Full story >>

The Palestinian long road to statehood insufficient for Tamil Sovereignty

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 December 2012, 06:55 GMT]
Twenty-four long years after the Palestine Liberation Organization renounced violence and voted to create the State of Palestine, United Nations recognition of Palestine remains limited to “non-member, observer” status. Governing an international order premised on the military superiority and economic interests of powerful states, the United Nations has been proved structurally incapable of defending oppressed nations. That the developments in the Palestinian movement should elicit interest from Eezham Tamil activists is the opinion of Tamil political observers who have been following the Palestinian struggle, who further contend that the time the Palestinians had in reaching to the current position is not an asset in the case of the Eezham Tamils who face an internationally ignored structural, protracted genocide in their homeland.
Full story >>

Sri Lanka’s terror abductions, arrests, summons mark Christmas Eve in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 December 2012, 22:43 GMT]
28-year-old Mrs Soundararajan Sivamalar, wife of an LTTE member killed in the war, and presently working at SL government’s Uduvil divisional secretariat, was abducted at midnight at her house recently. Sri Lanka’s Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) now informally acknowledged to the SL Human Rights Commission office in Jaffna that the ‘arrest’ was their act. Complaints of such abductions and ‘arrests’ of around 45 people have been registered in recent days at the SL human rights office in Jaffna, officials acknowledged on Monday. Many more abductions and arrests in the north have gone unregistered as the family members have been sternly warned by the occupying SL forces, not to register complaints at the SL human rights office. Meanwhile, many girl students of the Jaffna University have been ‘summoned’ over telephone by the TID in Vavuniyaa.
Full story >>

SL military intimidates Tamil villagers for revealing information to UN agencies

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 December 2012, 20:56 GMT]
Tension prevails in the Tamil villages of Trincomalee district following intelligence operatives of the occupying Sri Lankan military have threatened the kith and kin of the disappeared persons not to divulge information to the foreign agencies, especially to UN agencies. A team of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) intelligence operatives, who visited Thampalakaamam in the district in a SLA vehicle three days ago, summoned the family members of the abducted and disappeared persons to a meeting and intimidated them not to pass any information to foreign sources about their missing family members.
Full story >>

100,000 remain internally displaced, says UNHCR

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 December 2012, 18:46 GMT]
In a report on the international protection needs of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka, UNHCR identifies several risk profiles including persons suspected of links with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), journalists, human rights activists, witnesses to rights violations, and vulnerable children and women, and notes while "there is an ethnic dimension to their vulnerability," in each of these risk groups, "members of the minority Tamil and, to a lesser extent, Muslim communities are reportedly more often subjected to arbitrary detention, abductions or enforced disappearances." Tamil activists including the New Zealand Tamil Action Front was consistently canvassing for this and there was a response in this regard from the Australian representative of the UNHCR in a regional meeting held at Auckland on 19 November.
Full story >>

Holmes, UN's smokescreen to Mu'l'livaaykkaal killings?

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 December 2012, 02:16 GMT]
Public statements made by UN officials during media stakeouts and briefings, Wikileaks exposures, and the testimony of twelve UN field staff reported earlier in TamilNet provide a blue-print to the strategy adopted by the UN to allow Sri Lanka to defeat the Tigers, and to ignore the mounting numbers of civilian casualties. This feature catalogues the statements from UN's former humanitarian chief, John Holmes, as he attempts to provide diplomatic cover to the slaughter taking place in Mu'l'livaaykkaal, repeatedly relying on Colombo's assurances on not using heavy weapons, and hesitating to provide casualty figures, a conduct comport with the "internal" strategy revealed by the then President of the United Nations Security Council, Yukio Takasu, that gave primacy to the need to eliminate the “terrorist LTTE …which had broken several ceasefire agreements."
Full story >>

Sampanthan countered, TELO calls for complete exit of occupying forces

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 December 2012, 22:36 GMT]
The Sri Lanka military, including its three forces that spearheaded the genocide of Tamils by the Sri Lankan state is viewed by Tamils as a Sinhala military and as an occupation military. The wish of the Tamil people is that such a military should quit completely, said a press release of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), signed by its political head and former TNA parliamentarian, M.K. Shivajilingam, on Monday. TELO is a constituent party in the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). The press release saying that such a statement on the stand of the TELO became a necessity in the context of current debates on the issue in the Tamil political circles, hinted against a recent statement by TNA leader R. Sampanthan that he was not calling for the complete withdrawal of the SL military.
Full story >>

40 ex-LTTE members abducted within one week, IOM, UN blamed for silence

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 December 2012, 18:07 GMT]
Sri Lankan ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Department (TID) squads roaming around in Vanni and Jaffna peninsula have detained more than forty former LTTE members after abducting them from their residences and on the streets within the last one week alone, legal sources in Jaffna told TamilNet on Monday. Former LTTE members are also being summoned to the SLA camps and questioned over their contacts and friends. Relatives, friends and even employers of those who were summoned to the SL military camps live in fear. While every civil and social freedom of the ‘released’ former members of the LTTE is severely deprived by the occupying Sinhala military, the IOM and the UN that ‘certified’ their rehabilitation and release keep silent.
Full story >>

Tamil Nadu protest calls for investigation on 3 UN officials for complicity in Tamil genocide

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 December 2012, 01:47 GMT]
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former UN Chief of Staff Vijay Nambiar and former UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian affairs Sir John Holmes were in complicity in the genocidal onslaught on Eezham Tamils by Sri Lanka in 2009, declared a protest held by political activists and grassroot movements in Tamil Nadu on Sunday. May 17 Movement, the organisers of the protest, citing the recent report of the Internal Review Panel on UN Action in Sri Lanka led by Charles Petrie, accused the ‘axis of the UN trio’ for shielding the Sri Lankan government during the peak of its genocidal onslaught on the Eezham Tamil nation. The demonstrators, who blamed the UN for denying justice to the victims after the genocidal war, also accused the UN for having failed to provide a just political solution to the national question of Eezham Tamils.
Full story >>

ICG silently withdraws mischief on TamilNet

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 December 2012, 16:50 GMT]
The International Crisis Group (ICG) silently removed a mischievous part of a statement on TamilNet that appeared in its latest report on Sri Lanka, No. 239, dated 20 November 2012. TamilNet on 23 November, in a news item “ICG plays mischief with TamilNet,” challenged the ICG to prove its credibility on the concerned part of the statement and said, “If an open apology is not forthcoming from the ICG, TamilNet may have to seek justice from the law of the countries where the ICG is registered.” TamilNet, on Monday, has noted the removal of the part along with its implicating footnotes in the online version of the ICG report.
Full story >>

New Zealand politicians, Peoples Forum mean action on Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 December 2012, 10:13 GMT]
UN internal review report is clear on the failure of the UN. We will not lie low. We will press for full inquiry and suitable action on those who connived at the human disaster–a blot on the civilized world in the 21st century, said New Zealand’s Green Party parliamentarian, Ms Jan Logie, at the Universal Human Rights Day observations organized by Peoples Forum in Auckland. What is happening in Sri Lanka is akin to what is happening in Palestine. On CHOGM, we will do everything possible to see that countries respecting democracy do not attend, the MP further said adding that she would draw the attention of the NZ government through an adjournment motion in the parliament on the new wave of oppression on Tamil university students and youth.
Full story >>