Wigneswaran warns of bleak future for Tamils, urges planning for next step

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 August 2019, 20:23 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena appointing Shavendra Silva as the SLA commander is the logical outcome of the Sinhala thinking that remains unchanged. “Secondly, he may also be thinking that if Gotabhaya Rajapaksa were to come in as the president next, Shavendra Silva would be an ideal lieutenant to him, because they have worked together in the past,” commented former Chief Minister of North Justice C.V. Wigneswaran. The Sinhala political leaders would not grant any political rights to the Tamils in the future because, in their position there had been no genocide, no war crimes and they maintaint that those killed were all ‘terrorists’. “We may expect a very difficult time ahead. Tamils, both internationally and locally, must start thinking as to what should be our next step in the event of such people becoming very violent against our people,” the former chief minister told TamilNet.
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SL Archaeology Department resumes plans to construct controversial ‘chaitya’ at Koonith-theevu

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 August 2019, 13:25 GMT]
The Acting Assistant Director of SL Archaeology Department WHA Sumanadasa, who is in charge of the regional office in Trincomalee, is pushing ahead with the plan of constructing a controversial ‘Buddhist chaitya’ at Maththa’la-malai hill-top in Choodaik-kudaa at Koonith-theevu, located to the south of Trincomalee. While all the attention is focused on Kanniyaa, Mr Sumanadasa has started to plan the reconstruction through various field trips to the disputed hill-top as well as to the lighthouse area, the trustees of the Saivaist “Kun’raththoor Maththa’la-malai Thiru-murukan temple” told TamilNet this week.
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2006 genocidal massacre at Chengchoalai campus marked in Vanni, Jaffna amidst PTA-threats

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 August 2019, 23:31 GMT]
Amidst PTA-threats coming from the occupying Sinhala Army, military intelligence and the SL Police against inscribing the names and photos of the school-girls, who perished in a targeted aerial massacre by the SL Air Force in 2006, the parents of the students commemorated the victims of the attack by putting up temporary paper photos on the arch. An emotional remembrance event took place at Va'l'li-punam in Mullaiththeevu district with the participation of TNA politicians. Vanni Cross and Chegnchoalai Remembrance Organisation organised the event jointly. In the meantime, Jaffna University Student Union (JUSU) also staged a remembrance event within the premises of the Jaffna University on Wednesday.
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Tamil awareness urged on geopolitics-driven genocidal ‘development’ in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 August 2019, 17:45 GMT]
The occupying Colombo has met stiff resistance from the people of Mannaar against its ‘development’ plan, which paves the way for industrialisation with a looming danger of Sinhala colonisation changing the demographic pattern of the Mannaar Island. The ‘transformation’ has been schemed to take place within 12 years before 2030. Colombo’s Urban Development Authority (UDA), an almost all-Sinhala ‘regulatory body’ had conceived the overarching plan in 2016. The SL Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development had been tasked to accomplish the construction of a controversial project of Fishery Harbour at Peasaalai as part of Northern Province Sustainable Fisheries Development Project (NPSFDP) with project funding from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2020. The Tamil Catholic residents in Peasaalai have been opposing the controversial harbour project.
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PTA-threats against constructing memorial arch for student victims of 2006 aerial massacre

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 August 2019, 20:32 GMT]
The occupying SL Army and its Intelligence have warned the workers, who were engaged in setting up a memorial road arch in Mullaith-theevu on Sunday. The arch was being constructed in memory of 51 school-girls and four staff members, whom the SL Air Force had brutally killed in a targeted aerial massacre at Chengchoalai compound on 14 August 2006 at Va'l'li-punam in Mullaiththeevu. The SL military personnel who came to the site on Sunday and instructed the workers to cease all the work threatened to detain them under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). In the meantime, the SL Police, which took the workers to the station told them that there should be no photographs of the school children, who were slain in the aerial massacre carried out by the SL Air Force. The workers were engaged in completing the construction before the 13th Commemoration on Wednesday.
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Threatened female activist suffers injuries in suspicious ‘accident’ in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 August 2019, 23:47 GMT]
A leading activist of missing persons in Batticaloa district, Mrs Amalanayaki Amalraj, was struck by a suspicious motorbike rider around 4:30 PM on Sunday. Mrs Amalraj, seated back on a motorcycle which her daughter was riding, spotted a speeding motorbike with three persons passing them, then slowing down. As her daughter reduced the speed, the other speeding bike hit them from behind and rapidly vanished away. A group of villagers who witnessed the accident chased the speeding motorcycle and managed to catch the driver. The two others seated in the motorbike have managed to escape. The rider was identified as a close relative of one of the most dreaded Tamil paramilitary operative of the SL military in the past. Mrs Amalraj was also harassed by the SL Police when she was on her way to meet the UN Special Rapporteur on Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association last month.
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SL Army puts up military post, Buddhist chanting dominates Kanniyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 August 2019, 23:55 GMT]
The Sinhala Buddhist monks are playing the sound of Pirith through loudspeakers at the disputed heritage site of Kanniyaa Hot Wells round the clock. At the same time, occupying Sinhala Army soldiers of 221 Brigade have started to put up new military posts between the road arch and the Hot Wells. The Tamil visitors feel that the loud Pirith chanting was highly disturbing their visit to the place of geological heritage with Saivaist religious significance. SL Army and Sinhala officials attempted to block the Tamil journalists from taking photos and video. The SL Army and the officials who claimed to be the representatives of the Archaeology department tried to prevent the visiting Tamil journalists from taking pictures or videos of the locality. However, the ‘Archaeology’ officials withdrew from the site after the journalists demanded them to document their identity papers on Saturday.
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Deception of so-called reconciliation at display in Kanniyaa: Tamil councillor

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 July 2019, 23:39 GMT]
Around twenty monks and one hundred Sinhala Buddhists gathered at the dismantled base construction of the Saivaist Pi'l'laiyaar temple in Kanniyaa and chanted Pirith while Tamil devotees were conducting annual Hindu ritual of Aadi Amaavaasai for their ancestors on Wednesday. The Pirith prayer is a new exercise, which was intended to demonstrate their so-called stake of the imaginative ‘chaitya’, which they claim as existed at the locality, commented Divisional Council (PS) representative Chandirarajah Vipooshan. After witnessing the latest development, Mr Vipooshan said a few Tamil individuals and the controversial outfit known as Rava'na-senai were getting deceived by the Sinhala Buddhists and that they were only abetting Sinhala Buddhicisation of the heritage site of Eezham Tamils.
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Questions raised over ‘double-edged conduct’ of ITAK on Kanniyaa affairs

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 July 2019, 19:08 GMT]
Just a day after TNA (ITAK) Parliamentarian and President’s Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran made a sudden legal move of securing interim orders from the courts in favour of Tamil concerns regarding the heritage site of Kanniyaa, Mr Kugathasan, a coordinator of the party in the district, has caused controversy by meeting the extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk at Velgam Vihara on Tuesday. The coordinator of the so-called mega-development of Trincomalee, which has been conceived by an extremist Sinhala nationalist politician, Patali Champika Ranawake, was meeting the monk with a pro-Sinhala group of Tamils aligned with the JVP along with the controversial outfit calling itself “Raava'na Senai”. The latest move has raised several questions, says Vipooshan Chandirarajah, who is an elected Councillor of Trincomalee Town and Gravets Divisional Council (PS).
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Mother dies after searching for missing son for 11 years

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 July 2019, 22:54 GMT]
A 74-year-old mother of a Tamil male subjected to enforced disappearance eleven years ago in Mannaar has passed away after suffering a heart attack in Mullaiththeevu on Wednesday. The representatives of the district organisation of the families of persons subjected to enforced disappearances said that the mother, Thresamma Sebamalai, was an active member in their continuous protest during the past 869 days. She was trying to trace the whereabouts of her son for the past 11 years. Mrs Sebamalai was living at Ira'naip-paalai in Puthuk-kudiyiruppu.
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Students, TNPF mark 36th Black July Remembrance in Jaffna, Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 July 2019, 23:38 GMT]
The student community of the University of Jaffna and Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) offices in the North and the East marked the 36th anniversary of the collective trauma of the ‘Black July’, the SL state-sponsored genocidal pogrom that claimed the lives of more than 3,000 Tamil residents in the south of the island in 1983. Tamil-speaking Muslim students also took part in the remembrance event organised by the students in Jaffna.
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Assembling freedom of visiting UN expert put under acid-test in North-East

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 July 2019, 23:52 GMT]
The representatives of the families of persons subjected to enforced disappearance at the hands of the SL military have complained to the visiting United Nations Special Rapporteur on Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association that their freedom of organisation is almost non-existent in the occupied Tamil homeland. Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, the UN special rapporteur, met the representatives of district-level organisations of the kith and kin of the missing persons as well as the rights activists and journalists in Jaffna and Trincomalee this weekend. The activists who attended the meetings with the visiting UN rapporteur in Trincomalee said that the SL Police and the intelligence wing of the SL military were harassing them both before and during the closed-room sessions on Sunday. The CID personnel were also closely watching the people accessing the meeting venue.
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SL Police shoots and kills young Tamil motorcyclist at Chuthu-malai in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 July 2019, 23:54 GMT]
The SL police has shot and killed a 23-year-old Tamil man who was riding a motorbike on Maanippaay - I'nuvil Road in Jaffna around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday. Another youth, injured in the incident, has managed to escape with fellow motorcyclists. The police was quick to claim that the man belonged to a criminal sword gang and that they had fired as the group of six in three bikes didn't adhere to the instructions to stop. However, the residents suspect the SL police was manipulating evidence by planting a sword at the site of the incident, especially before allowing the media to photograph the scene. The youth group had come from Kodikaamam in Thenmaraadchi 40 km away from Maanippaay. It is unlikely that the group had such a large sword visibly during their long trip across several police posts, the journalists who inspected the site and talked to the residents said.
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Vedanta sections in North-East divided over backing Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 July 2019, 12:36 GMT]
Apart from the secular Eezham Tamil activists, including the Saivites and the Catholics, some sections of Vedanta Hindus have braved their North Indian inclination and condemned the escalating heritage genocide against the Tamils in the North-East. The North Indian Vedanta line wants to sustain the anti-Tamil nexus between the Hindutva and Theravada Buddhism. It is also orientated against Tamil-Muslim unity. However, Swami Chidakashananda of Chinmaya Mission Jaffna, who took part in the mobilisation heeding to the call made by the Saivaist Then-Kayilai Aatheenam at Kanniyaa was addressing media at the Jaffna Press Club on Wednesday. He said the accelerating Sinhala-Buddhicisation of Tamil heritage sites in the North-East must be stopped through exerting international pressure on the SL State.
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Suppression of Kanniyaa protest, yet another lesson for Tamils: Trinco councillor

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 July 2019, 14:15 GMT]
The discrimination meted out to the peaceful protesters at Kanniyaa in Trincomalee on Tuesday was yet another lesson for Tamils, says elected Piratheasa Chapai (PS) Councillor Vipooshan Chandirarajah, who was reflecting upon the level of SL injustice he witnessed during the occasion. The way the SL State's security and justice system chose to deal with the rally has exposed the inherent militarised nature of the state apparatus. The system advances the chauvinistic Sinhala-Buddhist agenda as its foremost interest. The deployment of more than five hundred Army and Police personnel with riot control and STF commandos was uncalled for at a peaceful protest, he said. Five busloads of Sinahal goons had been brought into the venue in advance, and how could they be allowed to enter Kanniyaa heritage site while a restriction was in force limiting tourism to the ‘archaeological’ place, he asked.
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Sinhala goons confront protesters at Kanniyaa, priest, landowner subjected to “hot water assault”

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 July 2019, 11:31 GMT]
The occupying SL Army and the police were blocking more than five hundred peaceful protesters on Anuradhapura Road 1 km away from Kanniyaa Hot Wells on Tuesday when the Eezham Tamil grassroots activists mobilised to express peaceful resistance to the SL State-sponsored act of heritage genocide. At the same time, the SL Police had allowed tens of Sinhala goons to enter the temple site in advance to be prepared to assault Tamils if anyone managed to reach the venue. Heated arguments ensued between the Sinhala police and the Tamil protesters. Finally, unable to withstand the protesters, the SL Police allowed two representatives to proceed to Kanniyaa Hot Wells. Saivaist priest Akaththiyar Adika'laar and Mrs Ganesh Kokilaramany, the landowner and trustee of the temple, accompanied the police. On their way, Sinhala street sellers who had mobilised at the entrance poured hot water at them.
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Eezham Tamils set to mobilise against heritage genocide in Kanniyaa, Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 July 2019, 19:03 GMT]
Following the call from the Saiva priest of Thenkayilai Aadheenam at Kanniyaa, Trincomalee, the grassroots of the Eezham Tamils are mobilising for a unified protest against the heritage genocide at Kanniyaa Hot Wells. Former Chief Minister of Northern Province Justice CV Wigneswaran expressing his solidarity named the joint activity against Tamils at Kanniyaa as an “open act of genocide”. The pattern of the cultural and heritage destruction as well as the landgrab by the various SL Departments has become a widespread phenomenon especially after the Easter Sunday attacks, he said in a statement issued in Tamil on Monday. In the meantime, the District Organiser of the Tamil National People's Front in Trincomalee Dr Ra Shrignaneswaran urged the UN agencies such as the UNICEF and UNESCO as well as the foreign governments that fund the SL State not to back the heritage genocide.
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Colombo wants to grab lands once again for power plants in Champoor

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 July 2019, 23:49 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala-Buddhist unitary state in Colombo has once again schemed to acquire the agricultural and residential lands of the Eezham Tamils in Champoor in Trincomalee for the construction of two power plants. The project seems to have been outsourced to a Japanese firm this time. The Tamil people were protesting against the controversial project as the SL authorities came to survey the locality last week. Former Provincial Land Commissioner to East, Kathrigamathamby Kurunathan, who made a trip to help the Tamil landowners earlier this week, condemned the latest acquisition of lands as a fundamental violation of the human rights of the resettling Tamils. Furthermore, the land expert characterised the project as detrimental to the environment, which has already been compromised by the five cement plants already constructed in the eastern port city.
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Trustee vows to take up legal fight for restoration of Kanniyaa temple

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 July 2019, 07:29 GMT]
The Sinhala SL Government Agent (District Secretary) of Trincomalee District, NAA Pushpakumara, has been liaising with the SL Presidential Secretariat in Colombo and facilitating the SL Archaeology Department to resume the deconstruction of the base structure of Pi'l'laiyaar temple at the disputed heritage site of Kanniyaa Hot Wells. Mrs Ganesh Kokilaramany, who is the land-owner and the principal trustee of Pi'l'laiyaar temple, went to file a complaint with the SL Police. However, the Police showed four documents to her in an attempt to justify the resumption of the controversial work by the SL Archaeology Department. SL Presidential Secretariat has given go for the construction of the disputed Buddhist ‘chaitya’ by dismantling the construction of 200-year-old Hindu Pi'l'laiyaar temple at the private lands that belong to Mrs Kokilaramany.
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SL Archaeology Department resumes disputed ‘chaitya’ project in Kanniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 July 2019, 18:12 GMT]
Openly violating the promise extended to Mano Ganesan, the SL Minister of Hindu Religious Affairs and National Integration on 10th June 2019, the occupying Colombo's Archaeology Department has resumed the controversial dismantling of the base construction of the old Saiva temple of Pi'l'laiyaar at the heritage site of Eezham Tamils in Kanniyaa, Trincomalee three days ago. The SL Archaelogy officers engaged in the dismantling claimed that SL Minister Mano Ganesan had agreed to such reconstruction when the Saiva Priest of Then-Kayilai Aatheenam, Thavath-Thiru Akaththiyar Adika'laar, visited the disputed site on Thursday. The officials were violating the promise extended by themselves and the monks that they would not proceed with the disputed dismantling/construction work at the site.
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