100,000 displaced, 7 die in second wave of floods, Ampaa'rai worst hit

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 February 2011, 09:01 GMT]
Seven persons have died and over 100,000 civilians are displaced due to second wave of heavy rains in the Eastern, North Central and Central provinces of the island according to District Disaster Management Centre Friday. Four persons have died in Ampaa'rai district alone. While tens of thousands were hit by the disaster, the participation of even Sinhalese was poor at Mahinda Rajapksa government's celebration of Sri Lanka's Independence Day at Vihara Mahadevi Poongaa in the bordering district of Tissmaharagama at Kathirkaamam, sources in Ampaa'rai told TamilNet. People who lost their properties, houses and belongings have been left in the lurch due to failure of the Colombo government to provide any relief to restart their day to day life.
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Hasty Sinhala colonisation wedges north and east at Kokku’laay

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 January 2011, 12:40 GMT]
Within the last three weeks, 240 Sinhala families were hastily settled at Kokku’laay, a narrow strip of land, which is the only link of contiguity between the northern and eastern flanks of the country of Eezham Tamils in the island. This pivotal conspiracy of Colombo to demographically de-link the contiguity of the two Tamil provinces is being implemented by SL colonial governor in the north, Maj. Gen. Chandrasri and by SL ‘Rehabilitation’ minister Rishard Baddiudeen. Colombo lies that it is only ‘resettlement’ of Sinhalese, but except one or two families others are outsiders and the 43 original Tamil families resettled among Sinhalese now live in fear. The demographic wedging takes place at a time when New Delhi, advocating ‘home grown’ solution, is allegedly engaged in pressurizing Tamil politicians to commit to the de-link through their own mouth.
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Kokkaddichchoalai massacre of 65 Tamil civilians remembered

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 January 2011, 12:13 GMT]
The twenty fourth annual remembrance of Kokkaddichchoalai massacre was held Friday in Batticaloa. The Sri Lanka Army, which is almost all Sinhalese, killed 65 Tamil civilians in a prawn farm located about 10 km off west of Batticaloa city on 28 January 1987. The SLA burnt down the farm and huts where Tamil laborers were staying.
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USA opens American Corner in Jaffna, welcomes writers festival in Galle

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 January 2011, 01:22 GMT]
The US ambassador in Colombo Patricia A Butenis on Monday opened American Corner, a US outfit in Jaffna city, to function at the premises of a local NGO, Jaffna Social Action Centre. The Deputy High Commissioner of the Indian High Commission in Jaffna, SL colonial commander in Jaffna, Maj. Gen. Hathurusinghe, the Sri Lanka Government Agent in Jaffna and the mayor participated the diplomatic event that follows the opening of the Deputy High Commission of India in last November. Meanwhile, on the same day the US embassy in Colombo has also welcomed the controversial ‘Literary Festival’ in Galle and has donated money to bring students and teachers to the meet.
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Nobel winner pulls out of Sri Lanka book fair

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 January 2011, 12:44 GMT]
Nobel-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk and fellow writer Kiran Desai have pulled out of Sri Lanka's main literary festival, Pamuk's publisher said on Friday, following appeals made by leading intellectuals that attending the festival gives "legitimacy to the Sri Lankan government’s suppression of free speech," and does not in "any way push for greater freedom of expression inside" Sri Lanka, Emirates news reported. Internationally acclaimed political dissidents Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy were the leading signatories of the appeal.
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Chomsky, Arundhati, lead protest to writers meet in Galle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 23:37 GMT]
“This is not the right time for prominent international writers like you to give legitimacy to the Sri Lankan government’s suppression of free speech by attending a conference that does not in any way push for greater freedom of expression inside that country,” said an appeal made by leading intellectuals, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka and Reporters without Borders, against writers participating the ‘Fifth Galle Literary Festival’ scheduled to take place in the southern city Galle in the island of Sri Lanka, 26 - 30 January 2011. Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy were the leading signatories of the appeal. In the great tradition of solidarity that binds writers together everywhere, the appeal urged them to send a clear message by their actions that until there is a real improvement in the climate for free expression in Sri Lanka, one cannot celebrate writing and the arts in Galle.
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'Pentagon blighting Tamil cause may turn counter-productive to US interests'

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 January 2011, 00:39 GMT]
“The Sri Lankan government does have supporters in the U.S., particularly in military circles. Senior officials told me that their government owed much to a Pentagon official named James Clad, ‘a great friend of Sri Lanka.’ Clad was the Bush Administration’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia, in charge of the Pentagon’s dealings with India and Sri Lanka, until he was replaced by the Obama Administration in January, 2009,” wrote John Lee Anderson in Newyorker.com last week, adding that in order to reform Sri Lanka’s public image, Clad, who recently retired from the Pentagon’s National Defense University, recommended to Gotabaya Rajapaksa that he host a meeting on maritime-security concerns in the Indian Ocean to “get out of its box as a ‘single-issue country’ and reconnect it with an earlier maritime heritage,” Anderson cited Clad, advising Gotabhaya.
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Queen Elizabeth honours three Tamils this year

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 January 2011, 18:52 GMT]
Queen Elizabeth II honoured three Tamils this year at New Year’s awards in New Zealand and in UK. Significantly, The Queen’s Service Medal (QSM) to 77-year-old Eezham Tamil, Mr. Arumugam Thevarajan from New Zealand was in specific recognition for his services to the Tamil community in New Zealand. Another Eezham Tamil who received Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) was Mr. Chelliah Yogamoorthy, an old student of Jaffna Hindu College, who was honoured for his outstanding service to the Department of Transport. Mr. Yogamoorthy is also a trustee of a Tamil school in Birmingham. The MBE honour for Lakshmi Holmstrom, alumna of Madras and Oxford universities, was for her services to literature. She translated a number of Tamil literary masterpieces into English. In 2007, Canadian Tamils also honoured her with an award.
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Kudumpi Malai, Kudimbi Kanda

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 21:41 GMT]
The hill having a summit resembling a traditional hair-knot on the head
The hill having a pointed top
The hill having a crown-like top
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Colombo hurriedly appoints Sinhala civil officials to North

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 January 2011, 06:45 GMT]
Colombo establishment is hurriedly attempting to appoint Sinhala officials in higher posts of the civil administration in the North in recent days, civil sources in Jaffna said. Sinhala officials are being appointed to top level civil services posts of local civil administration, the civil sources further said. Meanwhile, among 135 new recruits to Sri Lanka Administrative Service (SLAS) recently, there is not even one Tamil and there was only one Muslim. SL Secretary to Public Administration gave an explanation that none of the Tamil medium candidates could score enough marks in the examination evaluated by Tamil academics, implying that standard of education among war-torn Tamils became poor. But Colombo has no explanation why it was poor even among Up-Country Tamils, Colombo Tamils and Muslims, in not being able to bring out administrators.
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Oppression is not forever, but resistance is – editorial

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 January 2011, 15:20 GMT]
It is not the possibility of statehood, but the impossibility of living under oppression that sustains protracted struggles for self-determination, the Tamil Guardian newspaper said this week. Referring to the three major initiatives for self-determination at the beginning of 2011 – by South Sudanese, Iraqi Kurds and Palestinians, the paper noted that in all three cases, years of international intervention to produce an amicable settlement amongst the peoples in conflict failed due to the conduct of the state concerned. Similarly, in Sri Lanka today, “the state's murderous policies of violence, humanitarian deprivation, demographic change and economic starvation will sustain, more forcefully than any theoretical exposition, the Tamil demand for self-determination,” the paper said.
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Tamil, Sinhala detainees clash in Vavuniyaa remand prison

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 December 2010, 02:15 GMT]
Two were injured in a clash that erupted between detainees in the Vavuniyaa remand prison Tuesday around 5:30 p.m. when Tamil detainees assaulted a Mannaar-based Christian priest and a long-time humanitarian worker, who was recently held in remand over alleged charges that he had sexually abused Tamil girls displaced due to the Vanni war. Altercation ensued as a group of Sinhala detainees rushed in defense of the priest and started assaulting their Tamil detainees with pointed weapons and blades. The alleged sexual abuse of under-aged girls are said to have taken in a Home for Destitutes run by the priest at Murungkan in Mannaar district, legal sources in Mannaar said.
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'Only China and Pakistan could prod New Delhi'

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 December 2010, 00:58 GMT]
Paying tribute at the memorial for the IPKF that killed more than 6000 Eezham Tamils in the late 1980s, the visiting Defence Secretary of the New Delhi establishment offered training programme for 1400 personnel of the genocidal military of Sri Lanka in the Indian defence academies. Indian Express on Sunday reported that a key outcome of Russian president recently meeting New Delhi’s prime minister was India helping Colombo’s nuclear power generation, to counter Chinese power hold in South Asia. Meanwhile, the thrust of a recent article by India’s former envoy in UK, Kuldip Nayar implies that rather than the merit of the national question of Eezham Tamils attracting Indian attention, only the involvement of China and Pakistan may prod it to do something.
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Subsidized fertilizer denied to Batticaloa farmers

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 December 2010, 12:59 GMT]
Batticaloa district farming societies have complained that fertilizer allocated under the subsidy scheme through more than fourteen Agrarian Services Centers (AGC) has not been distributed to paddy cultivators even after the farmers have paid money in advance. No other AGC has taken money in advance for the distribution of fertilizer under subsidy scheme says farmers’ societies.
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Colombo's Archeology department intrudes into historic Hindu temple in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 December 2010, 19:12 GMT]
Colombo’s Archeology Department officials, who have been frequently intruding into several century old Hindu temple of Thaanthaamalai Sri Murukan in Batticaloa, 10 days ago warned the devotees and the members of the temple management while they were attending a pooja, not to enter the shrine in future for any reason. Thereafter they took management committee members to the Ampaa’rai police station. The temple, revered by Saivaites in the East as ‘Chinna Kathirkaamam’ and the land in the extent of 25 acres that comes under Paddippazhai DS division in Batticaloa district was declared in 13 March 1959 as Saiva Sacred Area according to the decree entered by the Court of Law, temple sources said.
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India continues grooming genocidal military of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 December 2010, 14:36 GMT]
As a goodwill gesture, India is expected to gift some military equipment such as shoulder-fired missiles and radars to Sri Lanka when Indian defence secretary Pradeep Kumar undertakes a two-day visit to Colombo from Monday, PTI reported Friday. The equipment, part of the assistance provided earlier to Sri Lanka to fight Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), is planned to be gifted apparently to demonstrate India's efforts to help build the defence capabilities of Colombo in the backdrop of Chinese attempts to make inroads there, PTI further said. Kumar, who will hold talks with his counterpart Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, is also likely to discuss the future defence requirements of the Sri Lankan armed forces. If the war with the LTTE is over, against whom India is grooming a genocidal military, wonder Eezham Tamils.
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Jewellers stage lightening strike against continued crippling of trade in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 December 2010, 13:24 GMT]
Jewellers in Jaffna Friday closed their businesses against the arrest of three leading businessmen in their industry that took place the same day morning by a team of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Sri Lanka Police from Vavuniyaa. In the melee due to the protest the Sinhala CID men chose to release two jewellers and took one trader into their custody. Jewellers in Jaffna said Vavuniyaa Police, deployed by Colombo government, was serving the hidden agenda of crippling the business activities of the Tamil traders in the peninsula to make way for the Sinhalese to capture it.
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Sinhala encroachment unabated in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 December 2010, 10:36 GMT]
Encroachment of lands belonging to Tamil people goes unabated in several villages in Batticaloa district despite assurances given by M.L.A.M.Hisbullah, a deputy minister for women affairs who also holds the post of chairman of the Batticaloa District Development and Coordinating Committee, and Deputy Minister for Resettlement Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan that they would take immediate action, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP P. Selvarasa charged at the District Development and Coordination (DDC) meeting, sources in Batticaloa Thursday said.
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Mahinda doctrine deprives Tamils of irrigation in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 December 2010, 01:44 GMT]
While the Sri Lankan state with its 'Mahinda doctrine' has revamped the 50-year-old Sinhala colonisation scheme in the Ampaa'rai and Batticaloa under a new name tag, Navodaya, calling it a 'renaissance' programme and spending 1,260 million rupees between 2008 and 2011, one of the potential irrigation source of Tamils in Batticaloa, U'rukaamam tank in Paduvaan-karai, situated 20 km north of Batticaloa city, has been completely ignored. Two third of water in the tank is going waste without any benefit to the farmers under its potential reach. Dr.R.Rushanthan, Deputy Commissioner of Agrarian Development Services has said only thirty percent of those residing in the area manage to live with at least one meal per day.
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Tamil applicants discriminated in civil service: Inter-religious group in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 December 2010, 15:01 GMT]
Only one of 29 new recruits appointed to Tamil-speaking divisional secretariats was a Tamil person from the region, complained Ampaa'rai District Inter-Religious Federation in a statement issued this week warning ethnic discrimination in government appointments in Ampaa'rai. The group warned that appointing Sinhalese to fill the vacancies in government departments and offices in Tamil areas would complicate the already strained relations.
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