NESoHR revives reporting, highlights collective rights

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 June 2013, 20:30 GMT]
“Tamil Eelam today is a crucible of ‘excess of power’ - Lankan President with unchecked executive power, the very heavy presence of his military in Tamil Eelam and the Prevention of Terrorism Act still in place almost four years after the defeat of the LTTE,” says the latest Human Rights report issued by the North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR). “The leading human rights groups are hoping to deal with this situation of ‘excess of power’ only through appeals to individual rights. Indeed their mandates restrict them from dealing with it in any other way,” the NESoHR, which was formed during the internationally mediated peace process as the Human Rights body of the Tamil Nation, said on Friday, reviving its reporting on human rights in the country of Eezham Tamils and launching an international wing for dissemination of its reports.
Full story >>

TNA MPs, EPC councilors hold protest against erection of Buddha statue in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 10:11 GMT]
Batticaloa district parliamentarians of the Tamil National Alliance and the councilors of the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) and members of the public held a demonstration on Wednesday morning against the construction of the statue of Lord Buddha at the entrance to the city in front of the Batticaloa Pi'l'laiyaar Koayil.
Full story >>

DMK chief wants New Delhi to provide Indian citizenship to Eezham Tamil refugees

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 May 2013, 05:19 GMT]
Press Trust of India (PTI) reported Friday that DMK Chief M Karunanidhi has requested New Delhi to provide citizenship to over 100,000 Eezham Tamils living in South Indian state of Tamil Nadu as refugees. Pointing out to the immigration reforms in the U.S., Mr Karunanidhi was quoted as saying, "[s]imilarly, it is also our wish and request to the Centre to come forward and provide citizenship to over one lakh Eezham Tamils living in the country ensuring their permanent safety," the PTI added.
Full story >>

Diaspora Tamils observe Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal Genocide remembrance events

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 May 2013, 17:16 GMT]
Events remembering the internationally-abetted genocide in May 2009 were held in several countries in the West by the Tamil diaspora on Saturday. While over 10,000 Tamils participated in a mass rally in London, the remembrance event in Sydney had an innovative performance of ‘forum theatre’ to encourage the audience to frame their political discourse with conceptual clarity. Speakers at the event in Canada, referring to the Tamil Nadu student uprising, urged the second-generation diaspora youth to organize mass protests challenging the establishments that continue to abet the protracted genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation. Likewise, the events in London and Dusseldorf saw the participation of grassroots Kurdish activists who gave solidarity messages to the Eezham Tamil nation.
Full story >>

International aid complicit in Colombo’s structural genocide of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 May 2013, 21:22 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan State has stepped up Sinhala colonization in the cultivation areas that lie between Nedungkea’ni and Ma’nalaa’ru in Mullaiththeevu district. Thousands of acres of cultivation lands, belonging to resettled Tamil people in Karai-thu’raip-pattu division, lie in the area, where the occupying SL military has been blocking access to the owners of the land to even visit their lands. But at the same time in recent days, hundreds of workers have arrived from the Sinhala South and electricity supplies are being put up to accelerate the extension of Sinhala colonization of the area, Tamil civil officials in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet. The international aid providers not stopping the process are openly in complicity with the structural genocide of Eezham Tamils, the officials further said.
Full story >>

People rise up against SL military seizure of Valikaamam in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 April 2013, 06:57 GMT]
Hundreds of people, braving the hurdles put up by the Sri Lankan military, gathered on Wednesday in front of the District Secretariat in Jaffna, protesting against the systematic seizure of their already SL-military occupied lands in Valikaamam North, transforming the former ‘High Security Zone’ area into a permanent Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ). The successful protest, for the first time saw active participation of law students and activists, news sources in Jaffna said. Despite the deployment of SL military, intelligence operatives and the SL police in blocking peoples’ participation, around 500 people gathered in front of the District Secretariat passing a strong message to not only the occupying military, but also to the powers abetting the continued LLRC-based structural genocide.
Full story >>

TN government requested to protect heritage site of Eezham Tamils in Chithamparam

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 April 2013, 00:05 GMT]
Eezham Tamil circles in the island and in the diaspora, connected to charities established in Chithamparam by their ancestors, request the Tamil Nadu government, especially the Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa, to make legislation to protect the charity enclave at Chithamparam and to promote it as a heritage site of Eezham Tamils, participated by Eezham Tamils in the island and in the diaspora. They cited at the promotion Sri Lanka’s Maha Bodhi Society gets in India, but the dilapidated condition of the Tamil-Saiva heritage site of Eezham Tamils in Tamil Nadu. The Eezham Tamil charities at Chithamparam that record from the times of the Kingdom of Jaffna and that make an enclave around the Gnaanap-pirakaasar Tank are found in almost ruined conditions today.
Full story >>

CHOGM heats up, Rae calls Sri Lanka a "Rogue Member"

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 April 2013, 00:34 GMT]
As the members of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group [CMAG] meeting in London scheduled to be held on April 26 draws close, the CHOGM [Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting] boycott call has increased, with DMK chief M. Karunanidhi sending his emissaries to meet the CMAG envoys to demand shifting of the CHOGM venue out of Sri Lanka, Indian media reported. Meanwhile, Canada's Liberal party leader, Bob Rae, urged Commonwealth states to boycott the meeting if held in Colombo, and said "[t]he Commonwealth is too important to allow its business to be disrupted by a single rogue member’s violation of the association’s beliefs and values."
Full story >>

Queen to skip CHOGM - paper

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2013, 11:34 GMT]
Quoting officials from the Commonwealth Secretariat, Sunday Guardian, an Indian English paper, said that the November scheduled Commonwealth Head of States Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo will "most likely go ahead," several heads of government will boycott "in protest at Sri Lanka's human rights record," and that Queen Elizabeth, is "almost certain to skip the meeting". Former UK Foreign Secretaries Malcolm Rifkind and David Miliband had jointly called the Queen's scheduled attendance at the Colombo CHOGM "grotesque", a sentiment apparently shared by the David Cameron government, the paper said.
Full story >>

‘US resolution annihilates aspiration of Eezham Tamils’: Tamil Nadu writer

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2013, 00:43 GMT]
Criticizing the pro-LLRC US resolution passed at Geneva, Tamil Nadu based writer, activist and poet, Meena Kandasamy argues that “Carrying out the diktats of such a document will only annihilate the genuine aspirations and right to self-determination of the Eelam Tamils” basing her argument on the fact that the LLRC categorically denies the existence of a Tamil homeland in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. Criticizing both the US and India for abetting the genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation, she further states “Justice in this unipolar world revolves around the UN and the imperialist powers that it serves. Even though the Eelam Tamils have historical sovereignty and earned sovereignty, if they believe that separation alone can guarantee them safety, their last recourse to save themselves from complete extermination is to stake a claim to remedial sovereignty before the UN.”
Full story >>

Time to wage next stage of struggle

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 March 2013, 07:13 GMT]
The Eezham Tamil grassroot may have to bring in new leadership that has faith in people’s power; that has the ability to mobilise people’s power; that gets its power from the people and that invites the ‘diplomats’ to come to it rather than going to them. Never forget that non-cooperation is an effective way of democratic struggle, especially in struggles facing imperialism. With confidence coming from the Tamil Nadu upsurge to embark on a new genre of struggle, Eezham Tamils should know converting the solidarity into a joint people’s power rather than detracting it or hijacking it. The Tamil Nadu upsurge cannot be silenced like the defeatists silencing the diaspora uprising. New Delhi and Washington may brush aside the upsurge by adamantly passing an empty resolution. But the effects of the upsurge are already showing and it depends on how the struggle is going to be led further.
Full story >>

Unprecedented demonstration in Tamil Nadu denounces empty resolution at Geneva

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 March 2013, 03:29 GMT]
Several hundreds of thousands people across Tamil Nadu took to streets on Wednesday in a students-led demonstration unprecedented in recent decades in Tamil Nadu, denouncing the US-tabled empty resolution further diluted by New Delhi at Geneva, and demanding international investigations and plebiscite on the question of Eezham Tamils. Peaceful demonstrations took place at every part of Tamil Nadu, including all the major cities. Conservative estimates put the total number of participants, mostly students, at a million. The positions taken by Washington and New Delhi, the leading architects and abetters to the genocidal war in the island, in bringing out a deceptive resolution at Geneva have contributed immensely to the confirmed awareness among the people of Tamil Nadu that Tamil Eelam is the only solution to the genocide-affected Eezham Tamils, political observers in Chennai commented.
Full story >>

Karunanidhi pulls out from New Delhi Establishment

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 March 2013, 13:52 GMT]
DMK chief Mr M Karunanidhi in a press meet in Chennai on Tuesday announced the decision of his party pulling out from the ruling Congress coalition and cabinet at New Delhi. Continuing any further in the Indian Central Government is committing great evil to Tamil people, after the Indian Government has largely diluted the US resolution and didn’t consider the suggestions made by the DMK, and as there is a situation created that is not going to help the Eezham Tamils in any way, Mr. Karunanidhi told media. There could be no ambiguity in opinion that Rajapakse regime committed genocide in Tamil Eelam, Mr Karunanidhi said. Paying heroes’ homage (Veera Va’nakkam) to the Tamil fighters and their families who laid down their lives in the Eezham War, Mr Karunanidhi said they fought for idealistic victory, while people lacking Tamil feeling ridiculed at them.
Full story >>

Karunanidhi indicates quitting GOI if international investigations not taken up

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 March 2013, 13:17 GMT]
If the Government of India is not going to take an effort to modify the US-tabled resolution at Geneva, to have provisions without any ambiguity for an independent international investigation on the genocide that took place in Ilangkai [Sri Lanka], for the identification of the war criminals responsible and for action within a stipulated period of time, there would be no point in the DMK continuing any further in the cabinet of the Government of India, said a press statement of the DMK chief Mr. M. Karunanidhi, released from the DMK Headquarters on Friday.
Full story >>

US resolution burnt in front of US Embassy in London

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 March 2013, 12:26 GMT]
Hundreds of Eezham Tamils gathered in front of the US Embassy in London on Friday evening, burnt the copy of the US resolution tabled at the UNHRC session in Geneva and the copy of the LLRC recommendations of Sri Lanka, based on which the USA has tabled the resolution. All the speakers at the protest welcomed the student uprising in Tamil Nadu opposing the US designs as an inspiration to global Tamils in continuing the struggle of Eezham Tamils. Viewing the US resolution as one that is facilitating the agenda of the genocidal State and regime of Sri Lanka in the annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils, the demonstrators demanded protection and solutions based on identity, territoriality and sovereignty of Eezham Tamils as a nation in the island. The protestors who gathered at a short notice braved rains and detractors pinning hopes on the USA.
Full story >>

BJP cell of Tamil Nadu ex-servicemen apologises to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 March 2013, 02:42 GMT]
“The deepest psychological wound rankling the minds of every veteran in Tamilnadu is the killing of Tamilians during the Indo-Srilankan war of 1987-90 by the Indian Armed Forces,” says the President of the Tamil Nadu BJP Ex-Servicemen’s Cell, Lt Col CR Sundar, in a statement circulated to media this week. Had the war crimes been taken up for investigations at that time itself, the later tragedy befallen on Tamils in the island could have been averted, he told Tamil Nadu correspondent of TamilNet on Tuesday. The need that has arisen for Tamil ex-servicemen to take up party line of politics on the Eezham Tamil issue is a significant development in India, political observers said.
Full story >>

Tamil Nadu protests Rajapaksa's ‘pilgrimage’ to India

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 February 2013, 23:31 GMT]
Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday landed in India, drawing widespread protests in Tamil Nadu against his ‘pilgrimage' trip to India, media reports in India said. While MDMK leader Mr Vaiko courted arrest together with MDMK activists, who marched towards Indian Prime Minister's residence in New Delhi, condemning the Centre and the visiting SL president, in Tamil Nadu, DMK Chief Mr M Karunanidhi was taking part in protests with DMK activists.
Full story >>

Tamils will lose land forever by failing to address US, India in time

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 February 2013, 01:25 GMT]
Any international resolution on the island of Sri Lanka that doesn’t recognize and protect the nation of Eezham Tamils and its territoriality is not only useless to the affected people but also worse than the genocidal war waged against them by the International Community of Establishments. In a coordinated way, a concrete demand has to be globally made by Tamil politicians in the island, activists and public in the diaspora, and by political parties and masses in Tamil Nadu, addressed specifically at Washington and New Delhi to not hoodwink any more by deviating resolutions but to come out with meaningful international action to restore the country of Eezham Tamils to them.
Full story >>

TESO misrepresents Tamil cause by harping on UNHRC resolution

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 January 2013, 16:51 GMT]
By calling for pressure on Colombo to immediately implement the 2012 UNHRC resolution as solution, TESO is misrepresenting the cause as well as plight of Eezham Tamils, and is misleading the world in lines with the agenda of New Delhi and Washington, Tamil activists in the island and in the diaspora commented. The UNHRC resolution harping on the implementation of LLRC recommendations of Colombo is actually ‘international legitimisation’ of the structural genocide and annihilation of the territoriality of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island. This only serves the agenda of New Delhi and Washington that uphold the genocidal Sinhala State in the island for their geopolitical and imperialistic purposes. TESO has to urge the International Community of Establishments to revise the resolution, the activists further said.
Full story >>

DMK chief lists out multifaceted structural genocide beginning from toponyms

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 January 2013, 16:14 GMT]
The DMK chief Mr. M. Karunanidhi, in a letter dated 19 January sent to the Indian Prime Minister, has drawn his attention to Sri Lanka “carrying out an intensive and systematic programme of erasing the Tamil language, culture, religion and diluting the concentration of Tamils in areas where they had historically been predominant.” Beginning from the renaming of Tamil villages, the letter listed out the various facets of the structural genocide committed on Eezham Tamils by the Sinhala State. Citing India’s moral obligation to stop this atrocity immediately, Mr. Karunanidhi requested suitable action.
Full story >>