US escalates tensions in South China Sea amidst Corona pandemic, Chinese media blame

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 March 2020, 16:26 GMT]
The US Seventh Fleet has claimed in a Facebook post on Monday that its guided-missile destroyer, USS Barry, launched a live missile during an exercise in the Philippine Sea on Thursday last week. In the meantime, Hong Kong-based newspaper, South China Morning Post (SCMP), which is owned by a Chinese multinational technology company, described the development as an “unusual drill” on Tuesday. The paper said military observers in Beijing believed that it was a “signal to the PLA that American forces can counter advanced threats.” Also, the English version of the paper operated by the Communist Party of China (CPC), Global Times, on Sunday blamed the Trump Administration as increasing efforts to escalate tension in the South China Sea region in an attempt to “shift attention from its failure in containing COVID-19 and the plummeting stock market.”
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India, France carry out joint surveillance mission from Reunion Island

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 March 2020, 22:51 GMT]
New Delhi conducted its first joint naval patrol with France from the Reunion Island last month, the Hindu reported on Saturday. The Indian Navy was deploying a Boeing P-8 Poseidon to carry out surveillance missions with French Navy personnel on board, the report said. According to Zinfos974, a Reunion news website, French Air Force and Navy took part in the five-day-long surveillance mission with three flights of seven hours each. The engagement was a Maritime Domain Awareness operation, and intended to combat “terrorism and maritime piracy,” the website reported on 05 March. The military aircraft returned to India on 03 March. Both the news reports described France as a strategic partner of India.
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Trump Administration politicises MCC assistance: US policy analyst

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 March 2020, 19:34 GMT]
The Millennium Challenge Corporation “issued a blow to its own model by using its programs in Kosovo as a political bargaining chip,” writes Sarah Rose, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Development, a think-tank based in Washington DC. Describing the last week development as an unprecedented move, the CGD analyst writes that the US foreign policy goal of exerting pressure on Kosovo to remove its tariffs on Serbian goods was “decidedly out of sync with the agency’s model.” The MCC, a US government agency intended to independently work to reduce global poverty through economic growth since its inception in 2004, has come under fire as being a strategic tool to advance foreign policy interests also in the Indo-Pacific and a hot topic in Kathmandu and Colombo.
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Bay of Bengal study notes development disparity between North-East and South

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 March 2020, 21:34 GMT]
All the successive regimes in Colombo have focused on improving the economy of the Sinhala South after the onslaught on Eezham Tamils in 2009. The SL State, which deploys ‘development’ coupled with geopolitics to sustain the protracted genocide against the nation of Eezham Tamils, has a particular focus on shipping when compared to other maritime industry sectors such as fisheries, tourism and energy, reveals a study conducted by One Earth Future (OEF), a non-profit foundation based in the USA. “Sri Lanka” stands out as an emerging global hub and a “regional leader” in shipping, the OEF’s Stable Seas program observes in the study published on Monday. Although the report fails to identify SL State’s structural discrimination against the stateless Eezham Tamils, it doesn’t miss to note the disparity on Human Development Index (HDI) between the coastal districts of North-East and the South.
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Gotabaya appoints Silva as head of SL operation centre to prevent corona outbreak

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 March 2020, 22:51 GMT]
SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who commanded the genocidal war on Eezham Tamils in 2009, has appointed his war-crimes alleged genocidal commander Lt Gen Shavendra Silva to “spearhead the National Operation Center for Prevention of COVID- 19 Outbreak,” in the island on Tuesday. In his address to the people on the current status regarding measures against the Coronavirus outbreak, Mr Gotabaya said: “We have faced and won over challenges before. We are ready to face the challenges.” He was making an indirect reference to the 2009 genocidal onslaught against Eezham Tamils as a previous challenge. During the 2004 Tsunami catastrophe, it was the LTTE that received widespread recognition as the force that effectively and quickly responded in helping the people on the ground while the SL military was preoccupied with assessing the possible losses occurred to the LTTE.
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UN Rights Chief must act to refer “Sri Lanka” crimes to ICC

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 March 2020, 22:26 GMT]
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet should act, using powers vested with her, to prompt the UN Security Council to pass a referral to the ICC to investigate the crimes committed against the Tamils between 2002 and 2009 and post-2009, Tamil legal activists based in Jaffna said. The legal activists, who didn’t wish to be named due to the fear of persecution, said the Article 13(b) of the Rome Statute and Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, were the only available means towards an ICC-led criminal process. The Statute’s Article 15, Article 13(a) and (c) were not helpful in the case of Eezham Tamils, they said referring to the recent ICC Pre-Trial Chamber decisions on Myanmar (Rohingya) and Afghanistan situations.
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Phil Miller’s work reveals British role in dividing Tamils and Muslims in East: Dr Malathy

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 March 2020, 18:46 GMT]
The British mercenary outfit Keenie Meenie Services (KMS), made up mostly of ex-SAS personnel, and serving the ‘anglophile’ SL President, the late Richard Junius Jayewardene by secretly training the Sinhala Special Task Force (STF) commandos against the armed struggle of Eezham Tamils back in the 1980s. The STF advised by the KMS on divide-and-rule and use of religion, recruited Tamil-speaking Muslims to commit massacres. All of this was done with full awareness of the British government, which too was worried about the solidarity between the Tamils and the Muslims, writes New Zealand based Dr N.Malathy in her book review on the recent book by UK-based Phil Miller. “Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes,” is making this vital revelation, writes the Tamil diaspora survivor of SL State’s 2009 genocidal onslaught on Eezham Tamils in Vanni.
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Moragoda’s “think tank” justifies Sinhala apprehension to MCC, proposes renegotiations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 March 2020, 23:47 GMT]
The so-called Colombo-Trincomalee Economic Corridor (CTEC) was only a new name given to decades-old agenda of demographic genocide wedging territorial contiguity of the Tamil homeland. Previous Rajapaksa government named it “North Central Metro Region (NCMR)” as envisaged by its “National Physical Planning Department” in April 2010. The selection of districts for the implementation of one of the proposed Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) project on land administration has “ironically led to the perception that MCC was to build an economic corridor between Colombo and Trincomalee and facilitate a land grab by foreigners,” claims a recent writeup originating from Milinda Moragoda’s Pathfinder Foundation. The outfit claims its reading of the MCC proposal justified some of the public concerns [of the Sinhalese].
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SL State-funded Buddhist vihara declared opened in Ki'linochchi campus of Jaffna University

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 March 2020, 19:52 GMT]
Occupying Colombo launched its plan to construct a grand Buddhist vihara inside the Ki'linochchi campus of Jaffna University in 2018. Following the controversial move, the administration of Jaffna University allocated lands for the construction of Christian, Saiva, Islamic and Buddhist temples. However, only the Buddhist temple was awarded large sums of money from the SL State as well as by the extremist Buddhist organisations in the South. The construction launched during the previous regime was accelerated within the last three months. On Saturday, the Buddhist temple, named Sarasavi Viharaya, was declared opened amid a grand ceremony by the Sinhala students as well as the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist groups from the South.
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International Women's Day: Families of missing condemn UN failure to deliver international justice

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 March 2020, 14:33 GMT]
The UN Human Rights Council based discourse has failed to deliver justice to the families of Eezham Tamils, who were subjected to enforced disappearance at the hands of the occupying Sinhala military, particularly during the 2009 genocidal onslaught. The victims have thoroughly rejected the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) as a farce. However, the Geneva-based UN rights institutions continue to uphold the deceptive OMP as a positive achievement, despite repeated appeals from the organisations representing the kith and kin of the persons subjected to enforced disappearances. The Geneva-based system was closing its eyes to the truth, and turning deaf ears to the three-year-long protests, the protesting mothers complained on International Women's Day. Hundreds of people gathered to express solidarity with the protesting mothers at Mullaith-theevu on Sunday.
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Colombo brings back EPDP terror assassins from exile

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 March 2020, 23:42 GMT]
The military intelligence of occupying Colombo has allowed SL Cabinet Minister Douglas Devananda to bring back exiled assassins of his war-time paramilitary outfit EPDP back to the island and into Jaffna in the recent days, informed sources in Colombo said. Some of the EPDP terror operatives deployed by the SL intelligence establishment to commit targeted assassinations and abductions to destabilise the 2002 ceasefire towards the run-up to the genocidal onslaught in 2009 exiled during the previous Rajapaksa regime. These are the ones, now returning to Jaffna, the sources said.
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Gotabaya's ex-commander turned foreign-secretary abets China's genocide of Uyghur Muslims

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 March 2020, 19:11 GMT]
Former SL Navy Commander Admiral (retd) Jayanath Siri Kumara Colombage, who serves SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa as additional secretary on foreign relations has defended China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims at the UN Human Rights Council. The Chinese and Cameroonian missions to the UN in Geneva were sponsoring a symposium as a side-event on Monday. “Every country should deal with terrorism using solutions that fit its conditions the best. The question of what kind of anti-terrorism measures should be taken in Xinjiang should be decided by the Chinese government. No one can tell China what it should do, just as no one can tell Sri Lanka what to do,” Colombage told Global Times on Wednesday. The “Admiral Professor,” a friend of pro-China Shavedra Silva, was talking to the Chinese paper after the symposium along with other “scholars” of his character and calibre from China and Serbia.
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Gotabaya dissolves SL Parliament, fixes elections to coincide with Easter attack anniversary

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 March 2020, 23:46 GMT]
SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has dissolved the SL Parliament using the executive powers vested with him to do so, six months earlier than its expiry, on midnight Monday. Fixing 25 April as the date for the new elections, Mr Gotabaya has issued an extra-ordinary Gazette notification specifying 12 - 19 March as the nomination period for 22 electoral districts in the island. Rajapaksa siblings aim at consolidating their power through securing a two-thirds majority in the 225 seat House to strengthen their autocracy as well as the collective autocracy, which is the unitary state of the Sinhala South against the occupied country of Eezham Tamils in the North-East.
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Colombo adopts Nepal’s approach on US MCC negotiations

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 March 2020, 23:31 GMT]
Unlike Nepal, the SL State is yet to sign the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) agreement with the US. While Nepal is struggling to renegotiate the already signed contract, Colombo is trying to review the approved terms and conditions during the previous regime. SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa would make a move in the direction of signing it after the forthcoming parliamentary elections, is the opinion prevailing among the hardline Sinhala nationalists, who are opposed to US-Indian interventions in the island. In the meantime, a committee appointed to review the proposed MCC Compact has submitted a “supplementary report” to SL Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday. The report has proposed “appropriate corrections” and “suitable amendments” before obtaining “concurrence of the citizens” as well as the “approval of the Parliament.”
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Michelle Bachelet calls Tamils a ‘minority’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 February 2020, 23:23 GMT]
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, who gave an oral update on her annual report on the human rights situation in “Sri Lanka” recognised the fundamental problem in the island as that the state of “Sri Lanka” not addressing impunity for past violations. The SL State has not undertaken the security sector reforms needed to address the “drivers and enablers” of the violations, she said. The UN Rights Chief was also regretting to the SL withdrawal of co-sponsorship to the consensus UNHRC resolutions noted that the new SL government had announced a “very different approach” to the commitments previously made. However, Ms Bachelet referred to the occupied nation of Eezham Tamils with a distinct homeland in the North-East as a “minority” in the island.
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UN continues to commit systemic failure through recognising constitution of genocidal “Sri Lanka”

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 February 2020, 23:34 GMT]
One of the main underlying arguments used by the SL State to withdraw its “co-sponsorship” of the UNHRC Resolution was that the past SL government had co-sponsored it violating the principles and framework of the so-called Constitution of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka. That “Constitution” is fundamentally illegal as far as the occupied nation of Eezham Tamils is concerned. So far, “co-sponsorship” with the genocidal state and “containment” of the genocide-affected nation, was the narrative played out in the UN Human Rights Council. If the entire Geneva-based discourse was meant to be a remedy for what the UN itself has accepted as the systemic failure on its part, it just got “downgraded” into a systemic failure of the UNHRC. The global community has a shared responsibility not to allow the domino effect of the ‘systemic failure’ spiral itself in a vicious circle.
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Visiting Zambian commander requests military training from genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 February 2020, 22:13 GMT]
The Republic of Zambia, a landlocked Southern-Central African country, which is struggling with spiralling debt due to China’s Road and Belt Initiative (BRI) investments, has stepped up bilateral relationships with the SL State since last year during Maithiripala Sirisena’s presidency. Zambian Army Commander Lieutenant General William Sikazwe is on a five-day visit to the island since Friday to strengthen the military training and cooperation ties between the countries. Acting SL Chief of Defence Staff and Army Commander Shavendra Silva met the Zambian commander on Monday and discussed bilateral cooperation and exchange of training programmes with the visiting Zambian commander.
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Islamabad establishes close rapport with Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 February 2020, 23:00 GMT]
Pakistan’s High Commissioner, Muhammad Saad Khattak, a retired Major General, has met SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, extending Pakistan’s “cooperation in defense, trade, people-to-people relations, countering extremism, promoting religious harmony and in any other area Sri Lanka would need,” reported SL State-owned newspaper Daily News on Monday. In the meantime, informed sources in Colombo said SL President has promised to promote South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in favour of Pakistan, through the new Secretary-General of the SAARC, Esala Weerakoon. India wants Colombo to work more closely with BIMSTEC and in a trilateral maritime security programme, also involving the Maldives.
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Wigneswaran reneges on Eezham Tamils’ inalienable Right to Self-Determination

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 February 2020, 22:18 GMT]
Former Northern Province Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran recently launched an electoral political alliance, Tamizh Makkal Koottanii (TMK) as an alternative to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). But, he has ended up reneging on Eezham Tamils’ inalienable Right to Self-Determination, precisely the same way the hijacked hierarchy of the TNA did it after 2009. Washington and New Delhi, which didn’t want to recognise the sovereignty or the right to self-determination of the Eezham Tamils, deceived the TNA leaders to toe the line of ‘devolution of power’ without rejecting the unitary state system or by adopting a ‘non-descript’ constitutional discourse. The initial ‘mantra’ used for that purpose was the deceptive notion of “internal right to self-determination,” which is nothing else than self-denouncement of the right to self-determination. Wigneswaran has just uttered that mantra.
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Gunawardena to announce SL withdrawal of “co-sponsorship” to UN Resolution on Wednesday

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 February 2020, 22:11 GMT]
SL Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena will be heading a delegation to the 43rd Session of the Human Rights Council. The SL FM would formally inform the Council Members on the decision by the Rajapaksas regime to withdraw its co-sponsorship of Resolution 40/1 of March 2019 on Wednesday 26 February, the SL ministry said in a news release issued on Saturday. Meanwhile, JVP, a Sinhala nationalist party in the South, which is also opposed to the UNHRC resolution, said the withdrawal of co-sponsorship would not “make it disappear”. The resolution remained in force even after the US, which co-sponsored it withdrew its membership from the UNHRC itself said JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva addressing a news conference on Friday.
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