Tamil parties contesting SL General Elections face acid test on national cause

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 July 2015, 13:09 GMT]
The Tamil political parties or alliances who fail to confront in their election manifestos the Article 157A of the Constitution of Sri Lanka, which was brought through the Sixth Amendment in 1983, are doomed to fail the Eezham Tamils in their future struggle, commented Eezham Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island in the wake of UNP releasing its 5­ points manifesto for the ‘United National Front for Good Governance’ in South at the presence of Sinhala Buddhist Maha Sangha on Thursday. As the Southern polity is preparing for the fourth conjuncture of ‘state formation’ in the island through bringing a new Constitution to ‘Sri Lanka’, it is critical for the Tamils to articulate their refusal to accede their sovereignty once again. This time, it is more important than ever to make it perfectly clear to all the stakeholders in the affairs of the island, the activists said.
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Godawaana-goda, Waan-a'luwaawa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 July 2015, 22:53 GMT]
The village at the watercourse between the edge of the fields and highland; or the village on the side of the high-level spill

The barrage or lock of the spill water/ canal
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Sinhala policemen harass Tamil families in Kokkuththoduvaay, Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 July 2015, 15:12 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Sinhala policemen, operating from Karunadduk-kea'ni police station in the strategic coastal strip, from Kokkuththoduvaay to Kokku'laay, which links the Northern and Eastern provinces, have been terrorising the resettled Eezham Tamil families in recent days, news sources in Karai-thu'raip-pattu division of Mullaiththeevu district told TamilNet on Thursday. Under the pretext of searching for illegal brewers, Sinhala policemen without uniforms enter the houses of Tamil fishermen during the nights when the men have left their houses for fishing. The SL policemen have framed a young Tamil fisherman with false charges on Tuesday.
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Book on Eezham Tamil educationalist reproduced in Canada

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 July 2015, 16:49 GMT]
The Toronto-based Saiva Siddhanta Manram in Canada has reproduced a valuable old publication on a unique Eezham Tamil educationalist, Aru'naasala Upaaththiyaayar, born 150 years ago at Kaarai-theevu (Kaarainakar), an island off Jaffna Peninsula. The reprint, which will be released on Saturday at Scarborough Civic Centre, is of much historical importance to today’s younger generation of Eezham Tamils as well as to academics studying the affairs of the island of Ilangkai/ Lanka, to understand the discourse of the struggle for self-respect waged by the nation of Eezham Tamils in the times of British colonialism. The teacher devoted his entire life in challenging and edifying the then British and American ‘educational imperialism,’ which demanded that one has to become a Christian in order to become a teacher in any of the government recognised schools.
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Colombo's military red tape prevails over civil rule in occupied Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 2015, 22:36 GMT]
The Defence Secretary of the occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka, B.M.U.D. Basnayake this week demonstrated to the secretaries of SL Minister D.M. Swaminiathan in Jaffna that it was the SL military commanders in Jaffna, Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu, who were the ultimate decision makers on matters related to releasing back military-occupied lands to the civilians in the Northern province. The SL Defence Secretary, appointed by SL President Maithiripala Sirisena, was on his first visit to North on Saturday and Sunday. In the meantime, EPDP leader Douglas Devananda has gone on record stating that the pockets of lands released so far by Maithiripala regime were those already prepared for release by former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
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Buddhist military monks behind structural genocide: Tamils in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 July 2015, 23:39 GMT]
Sinhala settlers brought down from South into Ampaa’rai under the Gal Oya scheme carried out the first ever large-scale massacre against Eezham Tamils in June 1956 when Ceylon was a British Dominion. The fundamentals for the future genocide were laid under the British rule since 1833. Invading Buddhist monks and the occupying SL military played the crucial role in the genocide project in Ampaa'rai district in the Eastern Province. The first monk entered the place Buddangala, situated 8 km away from Ampaa'rai town in 1964 with the agenda of Sinhalicisation and Buddhicisation of the Tamil villages. After the SL military seized the full control of the Eastern province from the LTTE, Major General (retd) Ananda Weerasekara, a former war criminal and associate of extremist Sihala Urumya, has been spearheading the Sinhalicisation of Ampaa'rai as ‘Buddhangala Ananda Thero’.
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Tamil civil society calls for fundamentals-oriented participation in election

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 July 2015, 13:18 GMT]
Coming out with a statement on Friday, the Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) in the island has called upon Tamil politicians running for Colombo’s parliamentary elections to come out with an open and fundamental policy-oriented programme, keeping in mind the catalogue of deceptions in the past. The forum also called for the formation of Tamil National Council of civil societies, transcending political parties. Commenting, Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island said that if Tamils could succeed in orientating the voting to prove the demand for international investigation of genocide and prove at least in a small way their will for a shift in the polity to openly address the struggle against imperialist deceptions, that will perhaps make the only point in participating the elections in the given circumstances.
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Ha'lu-apullana-wæwa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 July 2015, 13:17 GMT]
The tank where washermen beat (wash) clothes; or the tank where clothes are beaten (for washing)
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Geopolitics of the Hegemons and Genocide of the oppressed

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 July 2015, 11:56 GMT]
“The Eezham Tamils occupying the strategic coasts in North-East Sri Lanka facing the Bay of Bengal, the Baloch occupying the coasts where the Persian Gulf meets the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, the Kachins occupying the strategic regions of Burma and the Rohinygas situated near the Isthmus of Kra have all been victims of the geopolitical dynamics involved in the collusion between competing world establishments and Asian nation-states. Such a future scenario warrants alternative measures to overcome the political injustice of imperialistic geopolitics,” writes Norway-based Eezham Tamil anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan. Eezham Tamils, being the victims of an internationally orchestrated structural genocide, should take the lead in edifying the oppressed nations of the world in building an alternative global political network, writes the second-generation Diaspora academic.
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Srebrenica, Mu'l'livaaykkaal: genocide's political dimension

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 July 2015, 00:04 GMT]
In Srebrenica, two decades ago, Serbian forces massacred 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and young adults, widely recognized as the worst genocide in Europe after World War II. While UN never formally recognized the genocide, UN statements and member states [read US, UK] have done so, and had recognized their failure to protect Srebrenica Muslims. In contrast, the nearly 80,000 civilan Tamils massacred in Mu'l'livaaykaal in 2009, in plain eye-view of advanced satellites, UN openly suppressed evidence, and the US, despite State Department's reports to the contrary, remained stoically silent, likely to avoid complicity in failing to prevent the beastial massacres. Wednesday's veto of Russia on UN security council resolution on Srebrenica drew condemnation from the US, in another demonstration of US's selective approach to geopolitical game of genocide.
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OISL should not absolve Colombo from genocidal crimes: survivor of Mirusuvil massacre

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2015, 13:52 GMT]
The United Nations should not commit – once more – a crime against humanity in the case of Eezham Tamils by absolving the Sri Lankan State from the ultimate crime of genocide through facilitating escape routes to Colombo through the OHCHR at Geneva and the Office of the General-Secretary of the United Nations at New York, Ponnuthurai Maheswaran, who is the sole survivor and prime witness of Mirusuvil massacre case, told TamilNet this week in Jaffna. Mr Maheswaran had narrowly escaped from his killers on 19 December 2000 at the age of 21 at Mirusuvil where he witnessed 8 of his close relatives being tortured and killed by a killer squad of the occupying Sri Lanka Army. Although he had identified several soldiers directly involved in the massacre in the identification parades, all of them, except one, have been absolved of the crime by Colombo's justice system.
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Agaare

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2015, 07:30 GMT]
The depression where water collects
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Eezham Tamils Learning lessons from Srebrenica

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2015, 06:28 GMT]
Eezham Tamils, especially their politicians and activists, should learn the lesson from Srebrenica that an international investigation on ‘Sri Lanka’ doesn’t merely mean investigating the island at an international level, but investigating the international elements that led to the plight of the island. New researches clearly reveal that the USA and UK knew about the genocide at Srebrenica well ahead of it, but decided to allow it because of a premeditated policy decision. Unchecked, they did it again to Eezham Tamils 14 years later, and the difference is that they still do nothing about the occupying genocidal military, continued genocide, structural genocide and annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils, may be because of another premeditated, original policy, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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SL State sustains genocidal grip on Eezham Tamils citing ‘LTTE affiliation’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 July 2015, 21:43 GMT]
The Sinhala police system of occupying Colombo has once again demonstrated that it could subject any Eezham Tamil civilian to detention under ‘terrorism’ charges under the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and the Emergency Regulations. The latest case is a Tamil civilian from A'laveddi in Jaffna who lived for some time at Mallaavi in Vanni after the mass exodus of Eezham Tamils from Jaffna peninsula in 1995. Anyone having a family member or close relative with LTTE connection in the past is a potential threat in the eyes of the Sri Lankan military and police. The ‘LTTE affiliation’ has become a ‘valid military objective’, which is necessary to pursue the genocidal project.
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Ex-militant Tamil mother attempts suicide due to poverty, discrimination

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 July 2015, 19:37 GMT]
An ex-LTTE female member and a mother of three children, Premalatha, was admitted to Batticaloa hospital on Saturday after a suicide attempt, news sources in Vaazhaich-cheanai told TamilNet. The discrimination and targeted isolation of former LTTE members from Batticaloa, especially those who survived the genocidal onslaught at Mu'l'livaaykkaal and resettled in Batticaloa after so-called military rehabilitation and prolonged incarceration, has not improved even after 6 years have elapsed and the regime in Colombo got a ‘facelift’ enacted by Washington and New Delhi.
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Colombo enacts farcical show in Mirusuvil massacre case

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 July 2015, 17:21 GMT]
As part of a concerted showdown in its campaign to transform the Geneva-based OISL investigation discourse into a domestic investigation, the Sri Lankan legal system was recently deployed to ‘demonstrate’ its ‘capacity‘ to 'investigate' what would be described by the human rights defenders as a ‘mass atrocity’ crime. The case, in which one non-commissioned officer of the Sri Lankan Army, Staff Sergeant Sunil Rathnayake, was sentenced to capital punishment, was in fact a genocidal crime in which several Sinhala soldiers, including a captain rank officer having command responsibility, took part. The main surviving witness in the case, who narrowly escaped the brutal massacre, had identified in 2001 the culprits, who belonged to the notorious ‘Deep Penetration Unit’, which was trained by Colombo to commit genocidal acts.
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Tamil activists in North-East question UN's hidden move on ‘domestic mechanism’

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2015, 20:19 GMT]
“[W]e take note with serious concern the recent announcement by the UN Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka that the UN has already decided to fund a domestic mechanism,” said 15 Tamil organisations from North-East in a letter forwarded through the Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Friday. The organizations have put forward two pertinent questions to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: A) How could the UN system decide on supporting a domestic mechanism in abstraction when there has been no proposal or consultation about one? B) Does this announcement not pre-empt the recommendations of the OISL report and any possible follow up action by the UN Human Rights Council and other UN bodies?
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US Tamils should rise to the occasion of power games in southern South Asia

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2015, 00:30 GMT]
In a significant move, the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FeTNA), predominantly representing US Tamils from Tamil Nadu, has invited the NPC-Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran, as a guest of honour to its Tamil Convention-2015, which will be held on Friday and Saturday at San Jose in California. The US Tamils should grasp the global and regional dynamics of the precarious power games and military scenario currently unfolding in southern South Asia, and should rise to the occasion in edifying Washington and New Delhi against keeping Tamils always at the receiving end, just because they don’t have a State, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics. Justice Wigneswaran should instil that understanding among Tamils of North America, the activists further said.
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SL Police alleged of ‘protecting’ killers of Batticaloa social activist Mathisayan

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2015, 23:48 GMT]
The police of occupying Sri Lanka, receiving instructions from Colombo, has suppressed details on the progress of the investigations on the killing of 43-year-old Eezham Tamil Social Service Officer (SSO) Mathisayan Sachchithanantham. The killing, which shocked the civil activists in Batticaloa, took place a month ago on 26 May 2015. Informed sources in Batticaloa told TamilNet on Wednesday that one person, having ‘high level’ connections was initially arrested from Thikkoadai and two others were later arrested on the information provided by the person arrested first. Although the entire village was aware of these arrests, the SL police has so far provided no information on the progress of the case to the concerned public, the sources further said.
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Naathasvaram maestro receives heartfelt funeral at Chaavakachcheari

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 June 2015, 02:56 GMT]
Dr Murugappa Panchapikesan, a renowned Eezham Tamil expert in Naathasvaram, who passed away on Friday in Colombo at the age of 91, received a heartfelt funeral at his native village of Changkaththaanai in Chaavakach-cheari in Jaffna on Monday. Eezham Tamil academics, artists, civil and cultural activists turned out in large numbers to pay their last respects to the artist, who was held in high esteem for his contribution to the music using Naathasvaram, which is the most widely used wind instrument in weddings and auspicious rituals of cultural and religious significance among the Tamils.
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