UN faces political pressure from powers that withhold casualty figures: Jude Lal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 September 2013, 23:21 GMT]
While the UN Security Council is the most decisive political organ, why did the US chose to move the UN Human Rights Commission and that too avoiding any reference to UN's own Expert Panel report, questions Dr. Jude Lal Fernando, one of the organizers of the Peoples' Tribunal on Sri Lanka held in Dublin in 2010, explaining the ‘tension’ found within the UN human rights and humanitarian system. Observing two reactions by the UN system, he also details how the casualty figures were intentionally withheld by major powers during war to let the SL State to complete its genocidal onslaught. Even now, the powers sitting on the issue at the UN are exerting political pressure on the system to control and to ‘interpret’ the vast pool of evidence that is against the SL State as well as themselves, Dr Fernando said in a video interview to TamilNet on Saturday.
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‘Military presence in North-East worrying’: Navi Pillay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 August 2013, 21:09 GMT]
“I was concerned to hear about the degree to which the military appears to be putting down roots and becoming involved in what should be civilian activities, for instance education, agriculture and even tourism,” Ms Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at a press conference in Colombo on Saturday. Speaking at the conclusion of her visit to the island, Ms Pillay said that that the military presence in the North-East seemed “much greater than is needed for strictly military or reconstruction purposes,” also referring to the vulnerability of women to sexual abuse. While sympathizing with the spirit of the address of Ms Pillay, who has been at the receiving end of vulgar verbal abuse from Sinhala nationalists, Tamil activists in the island expressed regret that she was still conferring legitimacy to the GoSL’s genocidal blueprint called LLRC.
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Norwegian ambassador in Colombo bares agenda in Oslo

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 August 2013, 00:58 GMT]
Norway, once hoodwinked the nation of Eezham Tamils with an ‘internal self-determination’ formula in the Oslo Declaration, now bares its deceptive face by talking about ‘development’ of Tamils with diaspora ‘partnership’ within a ‘Sri Lankan minority’ formula and the PC model. While the Norwegian ambassador in Colombo Ms Grete Løchen was baring the agenda in Oslo on Monday, the Tamil participants looped in were not only confirmed revisionists, habitual upholders of the Sri Lankan State and tangent-polity activists, but were also the representatives of the NCET, Tamil Women Organisation, a TCC outfit and the TECH-Norway. If the agenda can’t be perceived with its nuances and rejected outright at the face of Norway, the diaspora will prove only its impotence, commented Tamils for alternative politics in the island.
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‘You may whisper in my ear’, Pillay told Mullai people

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 August 2013, 02:55 GMT]
UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navi Pillay, who met a section of the uprooted people of Champoor in Trincomalee on Wednesday, told them that she was aware of their plight. On Tuesday, Ms Pillay, who visited Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal in Mullaith-theevu sympathized with the victims struggling to resettle amidst the prevailing SL military occupation and the ongoing structural genocide. Noticing fear in the people in speaking out in the presence of the surrounding SL military personnel clad in civil, she told them that they may whisper in her ear. Her direct contact with the victims in Vanni and Trincomalee comes after criticism on the conduct of the UN officials, who in Jaffna on Tuesday had opted to take her away through the backdoor following ‘advice’ by the SL authorities, preventing her meeting with around one thousand parents and victims of the missing people at the Jaffna Public Library.
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SL forces chase out Tamils waiting to see Navi Pillay in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 August 2013, 00:47 GMT]
Sri Lankan military intelligence and SL policemen brutally attacked and chased out a group of 30 families and relatives of missing persons, who had gathered near Paranthan junction in Ki’linochchi district on Tuesday to express their message to the visiting UN Human Rights Commissioner Ms Navanetham Pillay. The families had come as they were told that Navi Pillay would be traveling through A9 on a visit to Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal from Jaffna. Commenting on the nature of the public response to Ms Pillai’s visit to the North, observers said that had Ban Ki Moon come, people wouldn’t have cared or even if they had gathered they wouldn’t have shed tears but would have responded differently.
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Fundamentals diluted behind the scene in Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 August 2013, 19:09 GMT]
An elitist group of Tamil lawyers and law academics who have become entrenched in the Colombo-centric system, are collaborating with a section of the foreign Establishments in making Tamil demands ‘non-descript’. Removing the notion of Nation, they talk about self-determination that is not self-determination. In their terminology, ‘Nation’ becomes ‘people’ or ‘nationality’; ‘traditional homeland’ becomes ‘historical habitation’; and ‘Tamil homeland’ becomes ‘contiguous and preponderantly Tamil Speaking Northern and Eastern Provinces’. In an anti-thesis to Tamil Sovereignty Cognition approach based on historical sovereignty, earned sovereignty and remedial sovereignty, they talk about ‘shared sovereignty’, writes an informed Tamil activist in Colombo.
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Conceiving and designing strategy for ‘Struggle and Development’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 August 2013, 20:08 GMT]
Tamil activists have to reject outright any suggestion of ‘partnership’ with genocidal Colombo in the international ‘development’ agendas. They should insist and wage a struggle for a direct deal, writes an academic in Jaffna cautioning against a current move of the Establishments in linking development with the PC-LLRC process, aimed at the annihilation of the identity and territoriality of the nation of Eezham Tamils. Development doesn’t come without justice. Every generation has to be provided with the struggle of its own times, as a righteous struggle only brings in true social progress and development. Genocide-facing Tamils have to conceive and design strategies of their own for a paradigm of “Struggle and Development,” he further said.
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Vanni teachers ‘ordered’ to back Rajapaksa candidate

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 August 2013, 23:47 GMT]
Pre-school teachers who come under the so-called Civil Defence Force have been instructed by three UPFA operatives named Ilangko, Sutharsan and Inthiran, who were ex-LTTE members, now operated by the SL military, to woo voters for UPFA candidate Geethanjali Nakulesvaran, news sources in Ki'linochchi told TamilNet on Saturday.
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SL State divides communities in East: Batticaloa MP

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 August 2013, 19:29 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government is doing the opposite to what it wants portrayed to the outside world with the beautiful term ‘reconciliation’, declared Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian from Batticaloa, Mr P. Selvarasa, Friday, at the agricultural development meeting held at the Batticaloa District Secretariat. Allowing the SL State officials to collaborate with the Buddhist prelate of Mangalarama vihara while there is a court order against the illegal settlement in Paddip-pazhai division and literally banning the Tamils at Navakkiri in Vellaa-ve’li division from accessing their tank to engage in their livelihood of fresh water fishing, is nothing else than setting one community against the other, he said citing the latest reports.
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SL military aims to mar Ananthi meeting Navi Pillay

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 August 2013, 23:43 GMT]
Sri Lankan military intelligence in Jaffna on Wednesday staged a ‘protest’ against Ms Ananthi Sasitharan, the representative of thousands of Eezham Tamil women, who are demanding the Sri Lankan State to reveal the whereabouts of their husbands who were filtered away from the civilians in the final hours of the Vanni war by the SL military that had announced ‘general amnesty’ through the loudspeakers. Sinhala workers, intelligence operatives and some ex-LTTE members brought from elsewhere, were holding placards written in broken Tamil against Ananthi Sasitharan in front of the Jaffna Bus Stand. In the meantime, informed sources in Colombo said that the SL State was seeking to ‘influence’ certain foreign missions in Colombo to avoid UN Human Commissioner for Human Rights Navanetham Pillay meeting Ananthi, who is also contesting in the Provincial Council election on behalf of the TNA.
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Diplomacy could work only when mass mobilisation is ground reality: Guruparan

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 August 2013, 21:09 GMT]
Do we have an environment to talk about Tamil nation and its right to self-determination? Do we have to ask for internal self-determination? Should we go step-by-step in achieving the goals? Do we have the right to call for a referendum? Could we insist on a transitional administration? Are they all realistic in our situation: asking these questions at the Kumar Ponnambalam Memorial Lecture to a fully packed audience in Jaffna on Sunday, Jaffna University Law Lecturer Kumaravadivel Guruparan said that we cannot wage a struggle by seeing what is in the international law, as international law is purposefully ambiguous leaving space for further discourses, and as what needed more than the international law are the mass mobilisation and the backing of powerful friends.
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Cheanaik-ka'ndam, Thava'naik-ka'ndam

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 August 2013, 01:54 GMT]
The paddy field under slash-and-burn cultivation
The paddy field that is cultivated under seasonal lease
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Desecration of Saiva temples goes unabated in Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 August 2013, 14:53 GMT]
Two Saiva temples at Tharmapuram in Ki’linochchi district were burgled for the eighth time last Sunday, news sources in Ki’linochchi said. All the statues of Pi’l’laiyar koayil and Ampaa’l koayil, located between Tharmapuram and Neththali-aa’ru were destroyed and valuable jewelleries attached to the statues have been removed.
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Archaeological Report on Maanthai comes after 29 years

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 August 2013, 22:36 GMT]
Archaeological report on the excavations at the ancient port city of Maanthai (Thirukeatheesvaram) in the Mannaar district of the country of Eezham Tamils, conducted between the years 1980 and 1984 and co-directed by John Carswell then from the University of Chicago, has finally seen the light of publication this June. Edited by John Carswell, Siran Deraniyagala and Alan Graham, and copyrighted to the Archaeological Department of Sri Lanka, the publication supported by Ceramica-Stiftung Basel has been released by the publishers Linden Soft Verlag, Aichwald in Germany. Professor Carswell, now turning 83, has succeeded in presenting the material he had excavated, which would have otherwise been lost forever with the kind of State in the island.
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Kariyal-vayal

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 August 2013, 00:36 GMT]
The paddy field where crops failed
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SL military bans devotional song at ancient Saiva temple in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 August 2013, 23:44 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army in the East has banned Saiva devotional songs authored by popular poet Puthuvai Ratnathurai, whose whereabouts are still not known after the occupying Sri Lankan military had him into custody during the final hours of the Vanni war in May 2009. The SL military personnel have warned the temple administration of the historic Siva temple Thaan-thoan'ri-eesvarar at Kokkaddichchoalai not to play the popular devotional song "Piddukku ma'n chumantha perumaanaar” on the temple loud-speakers or on at any occasion. Together with the popular song on Kokkaddich-choalai, TamilNet also releases a few other songs for the wider Tamil audience throughout the world.
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Mannaar

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 August 2013, 00:52 GMT]
The raised place (of sand)
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US to increase military ties with Burma despite escalating Buddhist extremism

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 August 2013, 16:20 GMT]
“The United States will boost military ties with Burma later this month to encourage greater professionalism and more civilian oversight over the Southeast Asian country’s armed forces,” news portal The Irrawaddy said on Friday, citing the Myanmar Times. This engagement happens despite a steadily growing Buddhist extremism in the country and the state-supported persecution of ethnic Kachins and the Rohingya Muslims. US ambassador Derek Mitchell has said that through the military engagement, the US was not planning to sell arms but only to focus on humanitarian issues. US officials have also called for amendments to the military-written constitution of Burma, Irrawaddy reported. Critics however look at these steps as a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to bring Burma into the US ambit, while ignoring the structural problems in the country.
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Wigneswaran seeks mandate for ‘IC-facilitated’ Northern Provincial Council

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 July 2013, 01:12 GMT]
People's participation in the polls to Northern Provincial Council will be significant to the implementation of the 13th Amendment. Since Colombo has agreed to conduct the election merely because of international pressure, people have to be prepared to resist any sabotage. The elected PC will help to end the governor’s rule and interferences in civil administration, said Tamil National Alliance's Chief Minister candidate for Northern Province and retired Justice C.V. Wigneswaran on Monday in Jaffna, after fielding TNA's list of candidates for Northern PC elections. Meanwhile, Colombo President Mahinda Rajapaksa implied ‘understanding’ with the candidature of Wigneswaran, when he said on Tuesday that he would be willing to meet Wigneswaran to discuss land and police powers to provinces.
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‘13th Amendment, PC system cannot provide political solution to Tamils’: TNPF

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 July 2013, 13:14 GMT]
Reiterating their position that “the recognition of the distinct sovereignty of the Eelam Tamil Nation and our right to self-determination is non-negotiable,” the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) in a statement released on Saturday asserted that the 13th Amendment and the Provincial Councils system, rejected by the Eezham Tamil nation way back in 1987, “can never play any part of a process to reach a political solution today.” The statement released on the 30th anniversary of Black July, further said “if there is a firm resolve of the Eelam Tamil Diaspora to be true to this righteous cause at all occasions and venues, we in the homeland believe that it can ultimately serve to reinvigorate the Tamils in the homeland to mobilize and democratically counter the machinations of the Genocidal intent of the Sinhala Buddhist state.”
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