“We deployed DPU teams inside safe zone”: Rajapaksa confided to US envoy in May 2009

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 September 2011, 21:43 GMT]
During the final days of the genocidal war in Vanni when the international community was repeatedly urging Colombo to cease attacks on the ‘safe zone’, the SL President and Commander-in-Chief of the SL armed forces Mahinda Rajapaksa admitted to a top US envoy that his military had deployed Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) missions, also known as Deep Penetration Units (DPU) inside the so-called safe-zone to “organize people to breach the LTTE earth bunds.” Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa has ‘confidentially’ shared this military secret to Charge d'Affaires of the US embassy James R. Moore, while holding a meeting with Co-Chair Ambassadors in Colombo, barely two week before Colombo massacred thousands of civilians and claimed military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
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SLA harasses uprooted Tamils from Champoor in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 September 2011, 17:45 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army soldiers have been harassing uprooted people from Champoor villages in Trincomalee, who are sheltered in temporary camps of the Moothoor East division of the district. In recent days, groups of occupying SLA soldiers who visit the so-called welfare centres of the Champoor uprooted living in Mallikaith-theevu, Ma'natcheanai, Kaddaipa'richchaan and Ki'liveddi, have been questioning the ‘background’ and the ‘past’ of the civilians under LTTE-administration before 2006. Recently, the SL governor of the East, Rear Admiral (retd) Mohan Wijewickrema, had warned the uprooted Champoor people sheltered in the camps that they risk losing their ‘refugee’ status if they continue to refuse moving into alternate lands provided by Colombo. Champoor has been seized from the people for Indian assisted coal power plant, which is a scheme of Colombo's structural genocide on Eezham Tamils.
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Post War Politics of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 September 2011, 17:13 GMT]
The conclusion of the 18th session of the UNHRC will reveal whether there is anything left to rely on the International Community of Establishments, writes TamilNet Economic and Geopolitical Analyst in the Asia Pacific. While the Eezham Tamils are the worst affected by the war, they are also at the receiving end of the post war Sri Lankan Politics which is indeed continuation of the war by other means or to put it bluntly the continuation of the Genocide. We should always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst. That preparedness is the Solidarity we develop with our Natural Allies. The Natural Allies will certainly include those in the Sinhala society rising up against the Family Rule provided they recognize the Right of Self Determination of the Tamil Speaking Nation, a recognition (including the right to secede) adopted by the Ceylon Communist Party in 1944, he further said.
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Sri Lanka aims to get more time to complete genocide

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 September 2011, 16:46 GMT]
The primary aim of Sri Lanka in the UN human rights council is to buy some more time to complete its genocide of Eezham Tamils through structural means and militarisation so that the question of war crimes would eventually lose its importance and would become acceptable means of contemporary world polity. The more time is given to a virtually Sinhala military to occupy the country of Eezham Tamils with impunity, the more the world will be contributing to a dangerous paradigm. If the existing State system in the international organisations is going to repeatedly prove its incapability in delivering criminal and political justice, the global Tamils have to be prepared to undertake an international struggle in appropriate ways. 70 million global Tamils cannot be taken for ride by the Sinhala polity just because it has a State and Tamils don’t have a State.
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Blake's bona fides to deliver Tamil justice questioned

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 September 2011, 09:12 GMT]
Robert Blake, U.S. assistant secretary of State for South Asia, and former Ambassador to Sri Lanka and India, is widely known to be the architect of the U.S. policy on Sri Lanka which has resulted in Sri Lanka's massacre at Mu'l'livaaykkaal where more than 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed. Key activists in the Tamil diaspora are increasingly convinced that Tamils are unlikely to obtain justice and accountability under Blake's tenure where Blake is forced to face challenges to provide sustenance to his Sri Lanka policy - a policy which requires accommodating Rajapakse rule amid soaring rights violations, continuing structural genocide of Tamils and an authoritarian governance where war victims are further subjected to State sanctioned military violence.
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Harper to boycott Sri Lanka CHOGM over rights concerns

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 September 2011, 01:07 GMT]
In a meeting with journalists Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, remarked that he will likely not attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), biennial summit meeting of the heads of government from all Commonwealth nations, currently being discussed to be held in Sri Lanka, if he does not "see progress in Sri Lanka in terms of human rights and some of the issues [that were raised]." Harper added that Sri Lanka needs to make progress in terms of political reconciliation, democratic values and accountability, and that Canada supports "the calls of United Nations Secretary General’s representative for an independent investigation."
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SL embassy in US canvasses Congress staff

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 September 2011, 11:12 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Ambassador and embassy staff held a ‘reception’ for top US Congressional staff members in Washington on Friday to brief them on ‘post-conflict development’ in the island and to discuss US policy towards Sri Lanka, a press release of the embassy said. Showing a brief film on Sri Lanka’s reconciliation, redevelopment and economic development efforts, amidst Sri Lankan dance and food, ambassador and SL president Rajapaks’s close pal, Jaliya Wikramasuriya told the chiefs of staffs of the key departments including the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “we want you to have the information to tell others the correct story of Sri Lanka, and not necessarily the one you read in the media.”
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SL 'grease devils’ in Jaffna target uprooted Vanni families

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 September 2011, 06:52 GMT]
While news reports from the East earlier this week said that the Sri Lanka Army in Batticaloa has been harassing the families of former LTTE members, including those who had left the movement 20 years ago, reports from different areas in the Jaffna peninsula indicate that the SL military operated ‘grease devils’ and ‘abduction units’ in the peninsula have been increasingly targeting uprooted families from Vanni, who have settled themselves in the Jaffna peninsula after the Vanni war. Amidst the tension and chaos created by ‘grease devils’, reports of children being abducted are on the increase, civil activists in the peninsula said.
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Batticaloa residents urge international action on already admitted crimes against humanity

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 September 2011, 18:22 GMT]
The kith and kin of 174 Tamil youths, who were arrested and dragged away by the occupying Sri Lanka Army 21 years ago in two separate incidents at Vanthaa'rumoolai and later massacred en masse, observed Monday memorial prayers at the Saiva temple at the Eastern University premises and at the Vishnu temple of Vanthaa'rumoolai. According to the findings of the SL Presidential Commission appointed by the then government to conduct inquiry into several massacres of Tamils that had taken place in East, Sri Lanka Army was responsible for the abduction of 174 Tamil youths.
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Batticaloa residents perturbed over new interrogations - TNA MP

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 September 2011, 16:56 GMT]
Batticaloa district parliamentarian of Tamil National Alliance, P. Ariyanenthiran told media Tuesday that he had received complaints from many families across the district that the occupying Sri Lanka Army had begun harassing the families of ex-LTTE members. The civilians are highly perturbed due to the ongoing interrogation of former LTTE members, the MP told media.
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Genocide in Sri Lanka targets Tamil women, affects fertility: TNA MP

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 September 2011, 06:17 GMT]
While talking on the past and on-going genocide of Eezham Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian for Vanni, S. Sritharan on Sunday said in a meeting in London that Tamil women are particularly targeted now and the fertility of Tamils is systematically jeopardized. He cited the examples of ‘grease devil’ attacks on women and the plight of young widows in child-producing age group. Eezham Tamils are increasingly convinced today that a united Sri Lanka would not work, he said. Later, when a question was asked why the TNA had not raised the issues of genocide and right to self-determination in the recent meet convened by a Congress MP at New Delhi, the deputy leader of TNA Maavai Senadhiraja answered that their unawareness of the agenda of the organizers and the desire not to exhibit disunity among the invited groups had been the reasons.
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SL military uses ‘media persons’ to film protesters in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 September 2011, 21:34 GMT]
Two Tamil-speaking Muslim media persons in Batticaloa, one in the position of district media coordinator and the other a ‘freelance journalist’, have been busy during the past weeks in Batticaloa taking video and photos of civilians protesting against SL military operated ‘grease-devils’. Based on their video recordings, the SL intelligence personnel operating from the SLA camps in Batticaloa, identify the protesters from different villages and hand them over to the so-called Terrorist Investigation Department officers who had come from Colombo to Batticaloa.
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Sri Lankan CID interrogates former LTTE members in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 September 2011, 21:13 GMT]
A team of Criminal Investigation Unit of the SL Police Terrorist Division arrived in Batticaloa from Colombo Friday and interrogated several former cadres of the LTTE who worked for the movement ten to fifteen years ago. The Sri Lankan CID officers collected information about the former Tiger members taking their fingerprints and photographing them. The investigators in SL Police uniform took the former LTTE members to the Sri Lanka Army camp in Ka'luvaangchikkudi in CTB buses for interrogation, fingerprinting and photographing. At the army camp, one officer was in police uniform and others were in civil but all claimed that they were from the CID in Colombo. In the meantime, the Officer-in-Charge of the Ka'luvaagnchik-kudi Police told media that he was not aware of such interrogation of former LTTE members.
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The Hindu misquotes TamilNet

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 September 2011, 03:20 GMT]
A feature by J. Balaji in The Hindu on Thursday misquoted TamilNet reporting a statement of the Sikh political party Dal Khalsa as that of TamilNet’s argument. “When India asks Pakistan to commute the death sentence of Sarabjit Singh, a convict in the Lahore jail, to life sentence on “humanitarian grounds,” why should it be keen on hanging the three Tamils convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, asks Tamilnet, a website known for its pro-LTTE views,” the feature appeared in The Hindu said. TamilNet on 12 August reported the argument as stated by Dal Khalsa’s general secretary Dr. Manjinder Singh and spokesperson Kanwar Pal singh. The feature was titled ”Sikhs condemn New Delhi’s stand against nations in India.”
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Grease devils, occupying forces, intensify terror in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 September 2011, 23:00 GMT]
The ‘grease devil’ terror, staged by Sri Lanka’s occupying forces in the country of Eezham Tamils in a systematic way, clearly shows signs of a master-minded genocide emboldened by international inaction, said political and civil activists in Jaffna, commenting on terror unleashed on Wednesday and Thursday in the Jaffna University locality and in the Kurunakar suburb of Jaffna city. The events followed the model of the attack on residents of the Naavaan-thu’rai suburb of Jaffna a few days ago. “You cannot protect your women form us, is the psychological challenge posed by the ‘grease devil’ terror to provoke Tamils and then to attack them like they attack dogs to establish the point that militarisation and genocide have to be submissively accepted, because the occupying forces are sure that the powers that ignore genocide are on their side,” commented a politician in Jaffna.
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Colombo brings in new legislation to replace Emergency Regulations

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 September 2011, 14:22 GMT]
Having hoodwinked the international community by announcing an imminent withdrawal of the three decade-long Emergency Regulations, Colombo has decided to introduce new set of laws with immediate effect to replace the draconian law that gives sweeping powers to SL Police and military forces to arrest and detain people without any charges indefinitely. Sri Lanka’s Justice Minister Rauf Hakeem has said that the new set of laws will be in place with the expiry of similar provisions under the island’s controversial emergency laws, which Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa proposed to lift by the end of August. Badly hoodwinked by the mere propaganda exercise by the genocidal Rajapaksa regime many members of the powerful international community, including the United States quickly hailed as “significant step” the move to do away with the emergency regulations.
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Tamil Nadu tensed over execution of death sentences

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 06:41 GMT]
The people of Tamil Nadu and Tamils all over the world are agitated over the Indian government decision to execute death sentences to three Tamils after keeping them in prison for more than 20 years. Perarivalan of Tamil Nadu, and Eezham Tamils Murugan and Shanthan arrested in 1991 on charges of involvement in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi were sentenced to death in 1998. Their clemency petition was rejected last month and the hangings are fixed to September 9. The politics behind the case is 30 years of India-involved war in the island of Sri Lanka that turned into genocide of Eezham Tamils. While the Indian foreign minister in the parliament last week sought to respond to the war crimes investigations without endangering India’s relations with Sri Lanka, the hangings are sure to endanger New Delhi’s relations with Tamils, political observers said.
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Tamil Nadu Congress MP agrees with Gotabhaya

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 04:22 GMT]
There is no need for any more solution as the 13th Amendment is already there, said Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in giving an interview to Headlines Today this month. Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Thursday, Tamil Nadu Congress parliamentarian Dr EM Sudharshana Natchiappan agreed with Gotabhaya. “In the latest booklet released by their [Sri Lanka] Defence Ministry a humanitarian analysis is given. In that also they have accepted the Thirteenth Amendment. Why I am stressing on the Thirteenth Amendment again and again is because there is a new thinking in the policy makers that they have to go beyond the Thirteenth Amendment. This is the policy followed by all the parties including BJP after Rajiv Gandhi. What he had laid as a foreign policy for Sri Lanka is to have the Thirteenth Amendment implemented in toto, so that there is peaceful settlement,” Natchiappan said.
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Krishna beats around the bush in Lok Sabha

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 August 2011, 03:51 GMT]
Finding India’s External Affairs Minister SM Krishna beating around the bush on the question of Eezham Tamils, during discussions in the Lok Sabha on Friday, DMK’s TR Baalu who tabled the topic for discussion raised three specific questions: 1. Whether the Government of India have any relevant information for a time-bound political solution as per the 13th Amendment, and that too in the context of a statement by the [SL] Defence Secretary, who has said, “LTTE has gone, political solution not necessary? 2. Whether the Government of India will come forward to plead before the United Nations Organization for an enquiry by an international agency pertaining to the large-scale human rights violation? 3. Is it not your responsibility to expose the perpetrators before the world as war criminals for having committed human rights violations? But, Krishna had no direct answers.
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India betrayed Tamils at a crucial moment: CPI in parliament

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 August 2011, 18:30 GMT]
Sri Lanka has two nationalities —Sinhala nationality and the Tamil nationality. What happened to the Tamil nationality is one of the worst tragedies in the history of the world. It is not just killing of one person. It was a full-scale war on one particular nationality - Tamil nationality. In two days, 40,000 people were killed. Where else did such a thing happen? “I waged India’s war, this is what Sri Lankan president claims. What does the SL government tell the world? India was the collaborator in the war against SL Tamils. Did you ever deny the SL claim? India ‘betrayed’ the SL Tamils at a crucial moment. Now, India is trying to become a Permanent Member in the UN Security Council. The SL Tamil issue is a test case for India as to whether India can play a role as a Permanent Member in the UN Security Council or not, said Mr D. Raja of the CPI in the Rajya Sabha Thursday.
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