Fishermen from South deployed in recent attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 22:34 GMT]
Five Sinhalese fishermen from South engaging in trawler fishing in the seas off Neduntheevu (Delf) in Jaffna arrested last week for attacking fishermen from Tamil Nadu, have been released together with the two Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Oorkaavattu'rai (Kayts) court. The latest episode has revealed the involvement of Sinhalese fishermen engaging in deep sea fishing in the Northern seas behind violent attacks on intruding fishermen from Tamil Nadu, legal sources in Kayts said. The two fishermen from Tamil Nadu narrated the courts how they were attacked by the Sri Lankan fishermen. In the meantime, informed sources in Jaffna said the latest episode was a diversion maneuver to hide the involvement of Sri Lanka Navy operated gangs in the attacks against Indian fishermen.
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‘Galle literary festival, backed by establishments, gives mask of normalcy to genocidal Sri Lanka’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 06:49 GMT]
The Galle Literary Festival, which is scheduled to begin Wednesday is reported to involve diverse participants with the funding from a variety of corporate houses and Western embassies in Colombo. But the prevailing opinion in Eezham Tamil circles is that such occasions and the participation of high profile writers only serve the purpose of providing cultural and ideological legitimacy to the Sri Lankan state and the structural violence it imposes on the Tamil people. While the moral thing to do would be to boycott this literary festival that gives a mask of normalcy to a genocidal state, the least the socially and politically committed writers who are attending the event can do is to recognize that what Eezham Tamil nation has faced and is facing genocide, a Tamil academic in Colombo told TamilNet.
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Sustained Sri Lanka boycott campaign draws attention of GAP, WP

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 January 2012, 05:26 GMT]
"They were holding up signs that read, “Victoria’s Dirty Little Secret” and “Big GAP in ethics” in front of Banana Republic and the Gap, warning shoppers to check labels, lest they buy clothing made in Sri Lanka, where they say human rights violations are continuing and Tamils are being forced off their land by the government," said an article appearing in Washington Post (WP) Thursday on the boycott Sri Lanka campaign a group of Eezham and Tamil Nadu expatriates have been conducting regularly in Washington suburbs for the last two years. The wind was piercing, but under a banner that read "Stop Tamil Genocide" they had their cause to keep them warm, the paper added.
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SLN arrests 13 Tamil Nadu fishermen in Trincomalee sea

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 January 2012, 21:40 GMT]
Sri Lanka Navy Wednesday morning arrested thirteen Tamil Nadu fishermen with their two trawlers in Trincomalee sea, fourteen nautical miles off Pulmoaddai, north of Trincomalee district.
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SL paramilitary in Jaffna monopolises cable TV market at gunpoint

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 January 2012, 06:10 GMT]
Hundreds of private cable operators, who have been supplying cable Television covering the villages of Jaffna for years have been harassed and coerced into working under a paramilitary operated cable operator, MBL Cable Network, in Jaffna. Independent operators who were operating their own dishes and distributing television channels to private consumers were told that their business was illegal and they have to buy the channels and lease the network being established by the paramilitary company that had exclusive ‘government permission’. However, those who were in the competing business and argued that there was no such ‘exclusive permission’ obtained by the MBL continued to operate on their own. But, now they are being threatened. Alexkumar Balasundaram, a cable provider who operates from Kokkuvil with 10-year-experience, says he was threatened Saturday at gunpoint.
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‘Champions of Change’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 January 2012, 15:02 GMT]
Even as the nation of the Scots enjoys limited autonomy in the United Kingdom, its desire for independence coupled with other political and economic developments compels the leader of the Scottish National Party to optimistically assert that Scotland and other similar small independent nation-states will be the champions of change in the near future. On the other hand, as the efficiently functioning de facto state of the Eezham Tamils was crushed by Sri Lanka with support of world powers in May 2009, there is a need to soar above mere war crimes calls and other similar discourses, which only blunt the aims of our political goals. The year 2012 must involve reinvigorated efforts to assert sovereignty of the Eezham Tamils and to set the moral victory of our national liberation struggle as a standard to natural allies, writes TamilNet Economic and Geopolitical Analyst in the Asia Pacific.
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ICG Report on Eezham Tamil women receives flak from diaspora feminist

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 January 2012, 23:49 GMT]
In an article published on Countercurrents, an Indian online journal, Janani Paramsothy, a student in a British University, criticized the ICG report on Eezham Tamil women report for having deliberately ignored the real problem of genocide of Eezham Tamils, in which, sexual violence on Tamil women is an essential component. Ms. Paramsothy, who had been a vocal participant in protests in the UK during the period of Mu’l’livaikaal genocide and after, came down heavily on the ICG for maligning genuine voices in the diaspora addressing the national question and for having produced a distorted picture of the progress of women achieved under the LTTE. “Tamil women- safe under LTTE, raped and pillaged under Sri Lankan forces with no one to support them... For Tamil women to be safe under a Sri Lankan state is simply impossible”, she said.
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Maldives President on SL trip tipped to endorse LLRC report

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 December 2011, 12:54 GMT]
In what appears to be a move to further strengthening diplomatic relationship between Maldives and Sri Lanka, Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed is on an invited trip to the island. While official sources have attributed the trip to other reasons, informed media circles in Colombo told TamilNet that Mr. Nasheed is there to endorse the LLRC report, which whitewashes the Colombo regime from all charges of genocide and war crimes, which was released by Sri Lanka recently. This visit of the leader of the tiny Asian country is a first step to getting the regional power India to officially approve and to market the LLRC report that is already coming under heavy criticisms from many quarters, observers said. The blessings of New Delhi-Washington powers are observed in such shadow wars of diplomacy even as protests in support of the demands of the Eezham Tamils are intensifying in Tamil Nadu.
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Thousands displaced, stranded by floods in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 December 2011, 15:05 GMT]
More than twelve thousand people earlier uprooted during the war and later allowed to resettle but forced to reside in temporary huts as they were not provided with government assistance to construct news houses, are now seeking refuge in temporary transit camps due to flood caused by torrential rain with gale that is continuing since last week in Vanni region in the Northern Province. The civil authorities have come over a new challenge this year as they lack buildings in Vadamaraadchi East and the remaining areas of Vanni to even house the people temporarily.
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Intelligence agencies on man-hunt for genocide witnesses

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 December 2011, 06:39 GMT]
Through fraud, finance and force, the intelligence agencies of Sri Lanka in collusion with their counterparts in ‘friendly’ countries are pursuing and silencing certain crucial witnesses to the genocide that happened in the stages of war leading to Mu’l’livaaykkaal. An upcoming documentary by a British channel is being used as a ruse to draw out such witnesses and target them. To such ends, a selected group of Tamils are operated by such agencies through threats or bribes to act as decoys to win the trust of witnesses and to trap them, reliable sources from India told TamilNet. A number of witnesses, who gave eyewitness accounts have already been arrested and handed over to Colombo through formal deportation from India.
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Building consensus with universal ideology

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 December 2011, 06:02 GMT]
The struggle of Eezham Tamils has to be waged with the strength of unity and consensus in ideology; both in the immediate task of dealing with a three-cornered international struggle in a multipolar world as well as in the long-term universal task of pursuing the Right of Self Determination for nearly a third of the world that is currently denied of it and in the world-wide struggles of the 99 per cent of the peoples in this planet seeking a more equitable world against the one per cent that constitutes today’s globalized Establishments, writes TamilNet Economic and Geopolitical Analyst in the Asia Pacific. The days of alignment with any power are gone in the multipolar world set-up, where the alignments are shifting every now and then though the underlying element among the Globalised Establishments is Cooperation via UN & its agencies, he further writes.
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Indo-US competition deprives justice to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 December 2011, 12:12 GMT]
A historical perusal of the long plight of Eezham Tamils would show that a subtle cold war between India and the USA, played over the national question in the island, and their competition to have the dominant nation of Sinhalese on their side, denied justice to the nation of Eezham Tamils at every stage. After leading the matter into an open genocide and on-going structural genocide, the relationship of Tamils with New Delhi or Washington could never be the same again, unless both come to a consensus of delivering justice to Eezham Tamils. Both the powers now pay for their long injustice, as China’s confident entry into Indian Ocean is directly connected to their failure and loss of credibility in the Eezham war. If Tamils siding with India or the USA is vain without delivery of justice, better to collectively opt non-cooperation against both, writes TamilNet political commentator.
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China announces Indian Ocean naval base in Seychelles

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 December 2011, 01:04 GMT]
China on Monday announced setting up its first naval base abroad at Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.  The former British colony, Seychelles, lies in parallel to the Maldives and the US-British base Diego Garcia in the East, the Somalian coast of Africa in the West, Gulf of Aden/ entrance to the Red Sea in the north, and Indian dominated Mauritius as well as the French colony Reunion in the South. While the Chinese defence ministry announced that its Navy would seek supplies and recuperate facilities through the base, the Seychelles foreign minister said that his country had invited China to set the base to fight against piracy. The base gains significance, as China is about to launch its first aircraft carrier, Hindustan Times said. Tamils are one of the peoples of Seychelles, locally known by the name Malba (from Malabar, a term common to Tamils and Malayalis in colonial vocabulary).
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Maathakal protests Sri Lanka’s Naval base

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 December 2011, 23:22 GMT]
A major coastal village Maathakal in Jaffna staged a protest on Monday against occupying Sri Lanka building an extensive naval base there by confiscating private lands of Eezham Tamils. Maathakal is the closest point of Jaffna to Point Calimere (Koadikkarai) in the Tamil Nadu coast across the Palk Strait. The base is a security threat not only to Eezham Tamils but also to Tamil Nadu as well as to India, but New Delhi and Colombo seem to think Tamils on either side of the Palk Strait as ‘common enemies’, commented a geopolitical analyst in Jaffna. In recent times, occupying SL is silently expanding its naval bases in other points of the Palk Bay too, at Kaarainakar, Kayts, Ma’ndaitheevu, Delft and Oora’ni by confiscating private lands. Meanwhile Sri Lanka that has no claim over Bay of Bengal without the country of Eezham Tamils it occupies, is entertained in Indian dominated BIMSTEC.
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Wider public participation marks Heroes Day in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 December 2011, 11:34 GMT]
It became clear on the eve of Heroes Day, Sunday, that ruling circles in India join hands with genocidal Colombo in denying Tamils the right to remember their fallen freedom fighters. Yet the day was observed with a marked positive difference in Tamil Nadu this time. Public and grassroot initiatives replaced political party organized mass gatherings, and there was wider and spontaneous participation of a social cross-section: from workers and farmers to communities in business, education and professions. “If Tamils have contributed anything memorable to human civilization in their contemporary history that was the paradigm-setting stand taken by the Eezham Tamil heroes, defying injustice of all the world Establishments,” commented an 85-year-old Marxist who spent a life time for the communist movement in the diaspora and in the home country, ever since he was 16.
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‘Tamil Sovereignty Cognition Declaration a conceptual reference point’

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 November 2011, 18:59 GMT]
The Tamil Sovereignty Cognition declaration released this year on Heroes Day would serve as a ‘conceptual reference point’ in ensuring that Tamil sovereignty is never compromised, writes RM Karthick, research scholar at a British university, in an article published in Countercurrents, an Indian on-line journal. “It is naivety to expect anything democratic from a unitary state of Sri Lanka,” he argues drawing parallels between the observations by the military analyst and senior editor late Mr. Sivaram Dharmeratnam with the Declaration and the video messages released by the second generation activists on Sunday. “The declaration conceptually challenges the ‘monopoly of truth’ that Lanka and its friends claim to wield in defending their unitary state, through its concise elucidation of the three types of sovereignties that the Tamils can lay claim to namely historical, earned and remedial.”
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Heroes Day Torch was lit in University of Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 November 2011, 14:44 GMT]
Amidst partnership suppression of Sri Lanka and India against Tamils remembering the heroes who laid down their lives for the cause of Tamil Eelam, the customary Heroes Day Torch was lit in the University of Jaffna this time, exactly at 6:05 PM on Sunday. Unidentified people went to the top terrace of the five-storeyed students hostel of the university and lit the torch, the beams of which were seen in a wide area in the Jaffna city. Most people in Jaffna were seen serenely observing the day in their houses. The scenario very much resembled the ways how the day was observed by the people during the oppressive and terrorising times of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in the late 1980s, remembered the older generation.
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Tamil activists assert sovereignty, declare for plebiscite

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 November 2011, 11:09 GMT]
Leading Tamil activists of the younger generation in Tamil Nadu, Canada, USA and Switzerland, came out with a declaration on Sunday for an international decision to conduct and monitor a plebiscite among the people of North and East descent in the island, in the diaspora and among the refugees in India and elsewhere, in order to decide on the creation of an independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam. The activists asserted sovereignty of Eezham Tamils on three counts: historical, earned and remedial. They also declared that international players should stop insisting on united Sri Lanka and drop pretensions of ‘domestic solutions’. Further declarations upheld symbols and expressions of the struggle, urged recognition of all those who laid down their lives for the liberation cause and called upon coordinated global action by democratic forces.
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People of Maldives cut off face of ‘Sri Lanka Lion’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 November 2011, 23:47 GMT]
People in the Addu Atoll of Maldives on Friday early hours cut off the face of the Lion statue installed by Sri Lanka last week in the Maradhoo island of the Addu Atoll, to mark Sri Lanka’s participation in the 17th SAARC Summit held in Addu between 10-11 November. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s monument in the Hithadhoo island of Addu Atoll was also set on fire on last Monday. The Islamic Ministry of Maldives on Thursday ordered the relevant government authorities to remove the irreligious SAARC monuments, which it said, breach the nation’s law and religion, reported Maldivian media Haveeru on Friday. In the 1990s SL President Premadasa built a clock tower in Male, with a dome resembling a Buddhist stupa. It was modified later due to public protest.
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China proxies get India's closest coast in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 November 2011, 04:41 GMT]
The closest coastline to Tamil Nadu in Jaffna, a 15 km stretch from Thiruvadi Nilai to KKS has been given to a Malaysian corporate of Chinese connections to install windmills and solar panels to produce electricity and 'sell' it to the people of Jaffna, replacing the coastal people and the proud palmyra palms now stand there. In October 2011, the Malaysian corporate, KLS Energy entered into an agreement with China Machinery and Engineering Corporation to 'develop' wind/solar hybrid power project in Jaffna. The agreement was part of Malaysian Prime Minister's US$ 10 billion economic cooperation initiative with China. In an ingenious plan to steal the entire northern coast of Jaffna for the SL military, corporates and ventures of imperialism, genocidal Colombo not only seals off Eezham Tamils from Tamil Nadu, but also effectively checks Indian ambitions there with proxy Chinese projects.
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