TESO, AIADMK could create history with tacit action on fundamentals

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 July 2012, 23:54 GMT]
The island transformed from colonial Ceylon into genocidal Sri Lanka has in the process witnessed two wars of brutal conquest in the last two hundred years, both of which were ultimately imperialist. The conquest of Kandy in 1815 by British imperialism bringing in the unitary state and the conquest of Vanni in 2009 by a strategic partnership of the US and Indian imperialism are not two different phenomena, if the aftermaths of the wars are compared and comprehended. The larger question arises for the peoples of the region, elsewhere, and especially for the people of Tamil Nadu in this context is whether they are going to succumb one after the other as in the past, or are going to create history for humanity by learning from history. The TESO meet will only turn into a crafty device if its convenors and participants don’t direct it to answer the fundamentals.
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Gotabhaya schemes ‘Guantanamo Bay’ in Galle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 July 2012, 21:19 GMT]
Sri Lankan Defence Secretary and SL presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has instructed the SL police to transfer all Tamil political prisoners from the ‘declared’ prisons in the North and East to the notorious Boosa detention camp in the Galle town of the Southern Province, informed sources in Colombo said. The instruction has been given at a meeting convened by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on 17 July. The Tamil Prisoners of War and political prisoners are going to be further isolated from the outside world. The families of ex-Tiger members and those held under alleged association with the LTTE have expressed fear on the deteriorating security situation of their family members in the custody of the occupying Sri Lankan forces.
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Tamil politicians urge global action in releasing POWs, political prisoners

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 July 2012, 13:52 GMT]
Addressing a press conference in Vavuniyaa on Tuesday, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) called for immediate release of all political prisoners who are held without any charges in the Sri Lankan prisons. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, representing the Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) said that the International Community, especially the countries that backed the internal LLRC mechanism of Colombo in the resolution passed at the UN Human Rights Council's Sessions in Geneva earlier this year, are primarily responsible for the fate of the Tamil Prisoners of War and political prisoners. Those who attended the funeral of Nimalarooban, braving the threats posed by the Sri Lankan military and intelligence operatives, told TamilNet that the victim had sustained fatal injuries on his head.
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SL minister Badurdeen competes with SLA on appropriating lands in Vanni amid protests

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 July 2012, 21:59 GMT]
While more than 2,000 war-affected families are struggling without lands in Karaithu'raip-pattu division of Mullaiththeevu district, Sri Lankan minister of Trade, Rishard Badurdeen, has planned to appropriate 1,500 acres of forest land along Mu'l'liyava'lai - Nedungkea'ni Road promising the lands to his supporters from elsewhere in the island, sources at Karaithu'raippattu divisional secretariat told TamilNet. Even the occupying SLA had opposed the move, but the SL minister has exerted pressure from the top to implement his plan, the sources further said. In the meantime, protests against the SL minister, who is blamed for violent attack on the court complex in Mannaar is being stepped up by the lawyers, who have also protested against the attack on the residence of Point Pedro District Judge on Wednesday.
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SL military harasses, confiscates ICRC clearance of ex-LTTE members in Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 July 2012, 18:48 GMT]
A psy-ops squad, operated by SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has started to ‘interrogate’ and harass former fighters and members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who have been released after the detention and so-called rehabilitation programme. Claiming that they belong to a ‘special CID unit’ from Colombo, the psy-ops squad from Colombo has been picking up former LTTE members and those who have earlier served in in the civil bodies under the LTTE administration, taking them to public places such as schools and harassing them psychologically as well as meting out physical torture on to them. Further, as part of the harassment programme, the military squad has confiscated the release papers issued to the ‘rehabilitated’ LTTE cadres by the ICRC and the International Organisation of Migration (IOM).
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Australian socialist calls for support to Tamils’ right to self-determination

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 July 2012, 07:47 GMT]
“Tamils should have the right to choose whether they wish to be part of a united Sri Lanka, to break away and form an independent Tamil state in their traditional homelands in the north and east of the island, or to have some intermediate form such as federalism or autonomy,” writes Chris Slee, a member of the Melbourne branch of the Socialist Alliance, in an article published on Green Left Weekly, Sunday. Noting that the support given to Sri Lanka by world powers, especially the US, in allowing the May 2009 massacre to happen and criticizing the misunderstanding of the “progressive” Latin American countries of the Tamils’ struggle, the author calls on Australians to “demand that the Australian government support the proposal for a UN-supervised referendum. We should also demand that it end all ties with the Sri Lankan army and the other repressive forces of the Sri Lankan state.”
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Eezham Tamil youth in Germany resolve to uphold Tamil sovereignty

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 July 2012, 11:21 GMT]
Condemning the attempts by establishments to compel Eezham Tamils to accept the genocidal development model of Colombo in the Tamil homeland, second generation Eezham Tamil youth in Germany resolved “to raise awareness and educate Tamils and non-Tamils about the ongoing-internationally abetted-genocide of the Tamil nation” and to educate the IC about the legitimacy of the Tamil struggle for sovereignty at the ‘Tamil Eelam Sovereignty conference’ organized by TYO-Germany at Landau, on Sunday. Speaking to TamilNet, Vibisanan Rajasingam of the TYO said that it was important for the second generation youth in the diaspora to understand the need for a sovereign state of Tamil Eelam as the only solution to check the genocide of the Eelam Tamils, referring to the three types of sovereignty of the Eelam Tamils as mentioned in the Tamil sovereignty cognition declaration.
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TNA should reject PC model, field independents in East elections: TNPF

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 July 2012, 22:15 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) should demonstrate to the world the Tamil rejection of the Provincial Council model of the 13th Amendment by not participating in the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) elections, but the TNA could field a front of independent candidates to meet the political challenge of the times. The candidate list already prepared could go as an independent list with a specific political message on the cause to the people, said Gajendrakumar Ponnampalam of the Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF), presiding over a press conference in Jaffna on Saturday. The TNPF promised support to the TNA in any such move. In the meantime, former TNA parliamentarian and TELO leader M.K Sivajilingam urged the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the TNA to field candidates jointly. It is time for the East to have a Muslim chief minister, who is also elected by Tamils, he told TamilNet.
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SL Minister operates armed gang causing ethnic tension in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 July 2012, 12:01 GMT]
A Muslim gang, carrying guns, stormed the fishing village of Koanthaip-piddi in Mannaar Town division on Friday and destroyed 23 fishing huts and two fiberglass boats with axes, causing ethnic tension between Tami Catholics and Muslims. Rishard Badurdeen, a politician from Mannaar, who has become SL minister of Industry & Commerce in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s cabinet after defecting the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), is alleged of inciting ethnic violence in Mannaar attempting to woo Muslim voters in favour of Rajapaksa's ruling SLFP.
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Indian media seeing SL military misses pronouncing genocide

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 July 2012, 07:22 GMT]
A correspondent of the Mumbai-based Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), visiting the country of Eezham Tamils occupied by Sinhala military, sees there the Palu tree identified in Sinhala, but not the Paalai tree of Tamil literary fame. The example may be trifle but illustrative in showing how the lenses through which the Indian media sees or try to project the question of Eezham Tamils misses genocide in reducing the issue into mere militarisation, commented Eezham Tamil activists in the island responding to a feature in July 14 issue of EPW. Criticising the SL militarisation but at the same time artfully avoiding the heart of the matter, the genocide, the article said, “The message for the moment at least is clear: reconcile, by keeping your head down, give way to the army, be patient and hope for the best. In other words - do pretty much what you did to survive the reign of the LTTE."
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Indian civil groups condemn killing of adivasis in Chattisgarh

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 July 2012, 17:35 GMT]
The killing of 19 adivasis in an ‘anti-Maoist operation’ by CRPF commandos on June 28 in the Bijapur district of the Indian state of Chattisgarh has evoked condemnation from civil society groups, student unions and political activists in India. While many of the locals of that district and politicians of Chaatisgarh, including from the Congress party, have alleged that many or all of those killed are not Maoists, the CRPF which was leading this operation has ‘defended’ itself claiming that Maoists have been using villagers as human shields. India, which had abetted Colombo's genocidal war on the Eezham Tamils, is now lifting the ‘human shields’ argument that Sri Lanka and the powers that supported it used against the LTTE and applying it to quell armed struggles in its heartland, observers in Chennai told TamilNet.
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Tamil reported missing found in coma after Vavuniyaa prison raid

[TamilNet, Sunday, 08 July 2012, 23:37 GMT]
28-year-old Tamil man, Dilrukshan Muthurasa from Iluppaikkadavai, in Maanthai West of Mannaar district in Vanni, was one of the prisoners in Vavuniyaa prison, which was raided by the Sri Lankan Special Task Force commandos on 29 June. Dilrukshan, seriously attacked and allegedly subjected to torture at Vavuniyaa and Anuradhapura prisons, is currently in coma and is fighting for his life at Mahara prison. His mother, Reeza Muthurasa, who didn't know about the whereabouts of her son, has identified him after visiting her son at Mahara hospital, following press reports. According to Ms Reeza, her son, who had gone on employment in Middle East in 2006 had returned just before the war intensified in Vanni and was caught by the SL Navy when he tried to escape the war zone in a boat in 2009.
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Public land becoming military land is strategy of ICE in the island

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 July 2012, 23:48 GMT]
Converting all public lands or community lands of Eezham Tamils into Sinhala military lands, in the guise of ‘legally’ asserting them as ‘State Land’ of Sri Lanka is the strategy now promoted by the International Community of Establishments (ICE), partnered in the context by India and the USA that are in war with the nation of Eezham Tamils in proving a new order based on State terrorism and genocide, said political observers in Jaffna commenting on the accelerated land and sea appropriations taking place in the country of Eezham Tamils, ‘conquered’ in a genocidal war designed by the said culprits. As genuine Eezham Tamil nationalism would not agree to the grab, the culprits employ the genocidal Sinhala military to do the job, protect it from international indictment and that is why they deny any genocide taking place in the island, the activists further said.
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SLA soldiers alleged of killing father of three in Thenmaraadchi

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 July 2012, 15:34 GMT]
Occupying Sinhala soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army, on Wednesday, allegedly beat a recently resettled 47-year-old man, Kandiah Jeyarajah, near A9 highway at Ezhuthumadduvaa'l in Thenmaraadchi, Jaffna. The victim succumbed to his injuries while being rushed to Chaavakachcheari hospital, residents in Ezhuthumadduvaazh village told TamilNet Thursday. The wife of the slain victim also confirmed the allegation that the SLA soldiers were involved in the slaying of her husband, who had got into a quarrel with his brother. The SLA soldiers, stationed at the junction had intervened in the private quarrel and when Mr Jeyarajah began to resist, he was severely beaten by the soldiers.
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‘IC turns deaf ear to struggling Eezham Tamil Prisoners of War’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 July 2012, 09:05 GMT]
The international community of establishments and their agenda-driven outfits continue to turn deaf-ear to the plight of the Eezham Tamil Prisoners of War (POWs), failing to accord the necessary international legal status to Eezham Tamil POWs, who have become the ‘pawns of genocide’, activists in the island blamed following the reports on Wednesday that a 28-year-old Tamil prisoner, Ganesan Nimalarooban from Nelukku'lam in Vavuniyaa, had succumbed to his injuries at Mahara prison in South. All the 122 prisoners who were inside the raided prison cell in Vavuniyaa last Friday were taken to Anuradhapura prison, where Sinhala prison guards and criminal inmates tortured them for more than 10 hours. 22 of these Eezham Tamil POWs were later transferred to Mahara prison and Nimalarooban, hailng from a poverty-stricken family in the suburb of Vavuniyaa, was one of them.
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Canada should have prosecuted officer of war-crimes complicit SL Navy: TAG

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 July 2012, 13:41 GMT]
In what can turn out to be a move of political significance, one of Sri Lankan Navy’s top officer’s refugee claim has been rejected by federal officials in Canada, owing to a finding by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) that the officer, Nadarajah Kuruparan, had been complicit in crimes against humanity and that there was systematic human rights abuses committed against the Tamils in the island by institutions he served in. However, referring to the salient points of this outcome, Rajeev Sreetharan from TAG told TamilNet “Deporting, as opposed to prosecuting Nadarajah Kuruparan for his direct participation in coordinated maritime armed attacks and logistical support to the Sri Lankan Armed Forces' genocidal siege of the Tamil civilian population cornered in Mu'l'livaaykkaal, is incompatible with letter and spirit of what the Geneva Conventions compel.”
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SL forces fatally attack protesting Tamil Prisoners of War in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 June 2012, 23:46 GMT]
The forces of genocidal Sinhala State in Sri Lanka fatally attacked Eezham Tamil prisoners of war kept in the prison at Vavuniyaa on Friday. Heads and limbs broken, more than 15 of the prisoners are admitted in Anuradhapura hospital after removing them from Vavuniyaa. The condition of some of them are said to be serious. The prisoners were protesting for the last few days over the torture and disappearance of a prison mate Mr. Saravanabhavan who was taken to Anuradhapura by the SL forces. Finding their peaceful fasting campaign responded with oppression, the enraged prisoners captured three of the prison officials and were demanding the return of Saravanabhavan for their release. In a well-planned operation on Friday, SL forces that entered into the prison, first deployed tear gas shells, plastic bullets and water canon, before brutally attacking the prisoners causing fatal injuries.
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Colombo schemes military enclave in Maanthai, grabs 1,500 acres of land

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 June 2012, 23:47 GMT]
Grabbing 1,500 acres of land at Channaar Velimaruthamadu in Maanthai West of Mannaar district, the Sri Lankan military is hurriedly putting up a large cantonment with houses for military personnel from the South, according to news sources in Mannaar. The area selected for this purpose is a fertile land in the high ground near a tank where Tamil-speaking people were earlier engaged in agriculture and the jungle area has been used for slash-and-burn cultivation. Heavy machineries are deployed to clear and put up the structures for the military colony, at a strategic location, to control the A-32 Mannaar - Poonakari highway and the fishing harbour of Vidaththal-theevu which has traditionally been used by the Eezham Tamils to communicate with Tamil Nadu.
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SL Minister Devananda threatens civil protest in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 June 2012, 05:20 GMT]
Speaking in line with the SL courts in Jaffna on Monday, EPDP paramilitary leader Douglas Devananda, who is a minister in Mahinda Rajapaksa's cabinet, threatened protesting volunteer teachers from Vanni, declaring that if he uttered the word ‘postpone’ to the SL authorities, their appointments would be put on hold forever. Seating besides Maj. Gen. (retd) GA Chandrasiri, the colonial military governor of North, Mr Devananda, in a discriminating tone, said that the SL president doesn't like those who protest. The volunteer teachers, who have served for more than 12 years without SL government salary in Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu districts, have been promised permanent employment each time they were staging protests, but find them discriminated on every occasion. On Monday, they were protesting outside the provincial education ministry situated in Nalloor, Jaffna.
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‘Reconciliation in unitary Sri Lanka a cover for genocide, assimilation’

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 June 2012, 06:43 GMT]
After threatening the Eezham Tamils with annihilation with the genocidal massacre at Mu’l’livaaykkaal, unitary Sri Lanka’s idea of reconciliation and the best solution it can offer is assimilation “where the Eelam Tamils will lose all sense of identity and become ‘authentic Sri Lankans’ i.e. mimics of the Sinhalese,” writes RM Karthick, in an article published on JDSLanka . But even as the Sri Lanka implements its model of ‘reconciliation’ through land grabs, Sinhalisation and Buddhicisation, world establishments are compelling the Eezham Tamils in the homeland and diaspora to reconcile with this ‘change of ground realities’. Likewise, the concept of ‘restorative justice’, taken from South Africa being proposed by such establishments in a wrong context to the Eezham Tamils who bear the brunt of genocide will only facilitate eventual assimilation into unitary Sri Lanka.
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