ICG acknowledges crisis but turns out cock-eyed on solutions

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 March 2012, 10:40 GMT]
The International Crisis Group in its latest reports acknowledges militarisation and Sinhalicisation of Tamil land as currently the burning crisis in the island of Sri Lanka. It is implicit admission of structural genocide faced by the nation of Eezham Tamils. Both the Sinhala militarisation and colonisation increase the risk of a return to violence, the reports caution. But the ICG doesn’t want to see the historical impossibility of any righteous solution becoming successful in the island without secession. Reducing the nation of Eezham Tamils as ‘minorities’ and focussing the crisis of only the North, intriguingly leaving out the East, the ICG is cock-eyed in perceiving that elections to the northern provincial council under the rotten unitary constitution and control through foreign ‘development’ funds could bring in solutions, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhala colonisation of coastal Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 March 2012, 15:08 GMT]
SL President's son and Hambantota district parliamentarian Namal Rajapaksa has stepped up Sinhala occupation of coastal villages of Mullaiththeevu and Ma'nal Aa'ru (Weli Oya) districts of Vanni mainland this week, civil sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet. Hundreds of Sinhala fishermen were brought from South on Wednesday morning in 20 lorries with their boats and fishing equipments to Chemmalai, a coastal village of Mullaiththeevu district. Local Tamil fishermen who objected the move were assaulted by the occupying Sri Lanka Army and chased away. The SL military officials told Tamils that the fishermen from South had obtained 8-month pass to settle in Chemmalai for fishing. In the meantime Tamil families that resettled in Kokku'laay after 23 years have come under assault by SL military and Sinhalese settlers.
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Solheim told to leave Norway government

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 March 2012, 02:21 GMT]
The Norwegian Minister for International Development and Environment, Mr Erik Solheim, who also handles the country’s peace facilitations in different parts of the world, has been asked to leave the government by the leadership of his Socialist Left (SV) Party in the coalition, according to media reports on Wednesday. He has been told to give way for younger talents from his party. The immediate reaction of the minister was strong disagreement with the decision of his party, but he refrained from commenting on his exit before an official announcement by his party. Mr Solheim is widely seen as Norway’s main player in the failed peace process in the island of Sri Lanka.
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Cannot expect solutions from NGOs tied to western bureaucracies: Kurdish Activist

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 20:54 GMT]
Stating that oppressed nations must enforce their own agendas and not rely on NGOs like ICG for solutions, Kurdish activist in UK, Mehmet Aksoy, argued that such NGOs were entrenched in bureaucracies, at a seminar on ‘State Repression and the Struggle for Self-determination: Strategies for Resistance’ organized by Campaign against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) on Sunday. The meeting at the University of London Union, London was held in association with diaspora organizations of Kurds, Balochs, Eezham Tamils, Basques, and Sindhis. The Eezham Tamil activists spoke about how the double standards in dealing with the Tamils deployed by the western governments gave a green signal for the GoSL to carry out its genocidal offensive in May 2009.
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De-miners locate remains of cluster bomb in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 20:32 GMT]
A container allegedly deployed by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) to carry cluster bomblets has been recovered recently by the de-miners of the humanitarian de-mining agency Halo Trust near a house at Thiruvaiuyaa'ru, 3 km east of Ki'linochchi town, media sources told TamilNet on Wednesday providing a photo displaying the container placed at the office of the Halo Trust. The markings on the case have been masked by painting, allegedly by the SLAF before the bombardment, a practice observed following the exposure of SLAF deploying banned weapons in 2009. Despite the systematic destruction of crucial evidences of war-crimes and genocide in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils following May 2009 by the Sri Lankan military, humanitarian de-miners have obtained parts of cluster bombs that were heavily used by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) during the war, the sources further said.
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Sri Lanka orientates education to conform structural genocide

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 March 2012, 18:59 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s ‘terrorism’ professor Rohan Gunaratna was the foremost of the six “prominent professionals in the education field” cited by Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute in Colombo, as lecturing in a ‘National Conference on the Role of Education in Reconciliation’ hosted by the institute last Tuesday. The professor, lecturing on the “immense success” of Sri Lanka ‘rehabilitating’ ex-LTTE combatants despite their ‘past engagement in the killings in the North and East and outside,’ stressed on the need of schools becoming “multi-ethnic” in the island, shedding ethnic and religious segregations. This means, there can be no more schools for Tamils, like that they can’t have a territory for them, and Tamil and Muslim children will eventually be ‘minorities’ subjugated in the Sinhala-Buddhist schools of the island, commented an educationalist in Jaffna.
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Centre for Peace and Reconciliation attacked in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 March 2012, 10:30 GMT]
Four armed personnel, allegedly from the occupying Sri Lankan military's Intelligence, on Saturday attacked Tamil civilians who had gathered at the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation (CPR) at Grousseault Road in Jaffna City to receive free legal assistance in their effort to locate their kith and kin whose whereabouts are not known following the undeclared arrests, abductions during the mass incarceration and white-van abductions in Jaffna peninsula and Vanni. The CPR, which is run by the Church, regularly conducts free legal aid for victims of human rights violations. The attackers beat the victims and threw dirt on them forcing them to flee the Centre. Meanwhle, SL military intelligence operatives were questioning the whereabouts of a priest of the CPR alleging that he had gone to attend the Human Rights Council sessions taking place in Geneva.
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Jayalalithaa blasts New Delhi supporting US-bailout of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2012, 19:45 GMT]
Coming hard on Indian Prime Minister’s announcement in the parliament on Monday forenoon that India is inclined to vote in favour of the US-resolution at Geneva UNHRC, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa on Monday evening described the stand as evasive and useless as it is not answering an earlier TN Assembly resolution calling for international investigation on the war crimes and genocide. According to Jayalalithaa, both New Delhi and the DMK chief Karunanidhi once again enact a drama similar to the one in the last days of the Vanni war in hoodwinking Tamils. Leaving aside seeking a commitment from Sri Lanka to report to the UNHRC on progress, the US-tabled resolution at Geneva leaves everything in the hands of Sri Lanka and harps on only implementing Sri Lanka’s own LLRC recommendations.
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Begin next stage of struggle by burning Sri Lankan constitution: May 17 Movement

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2012, 06:04 GMT]
When the International Community and India, approaching from their point of view, think of only bringing in a regime change in Colombo, buttressing failed democracy of the State and imposing farcical solutions to the Eezham Tamil question, Tamils all over the world, despite their differences, should use the situation to internationally place their demands loud and clear in unison, in ways acceptable to the world. This only will give us the morale to bring forward our struggle in future, if the powers once again fail us. Our demands could be nothing but calling for independent international investigation and asking for UN-conducted referendum on Tamil Eelam. Symbolically answering the powers upholding the State of failed democracy, the Sri Lankan constitution should be burnt all over the world, said Mr Thirumurugan Gandhi of May 17 Movement of Tamil Nadu.
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Chinese-helped new SL Naval base comes up in Vanni, targeting Palk Bay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2012, 09:45 GMT]
Sri Lanka occupying the country of Eezham Tamils opened a new naval base in the western coast of Vanni at Naachchik-kudaa facing the Palk Bay in a commanding position to target movements from the Tamil Nadu coast of India. Construction of the new naval base received Chinese help. SL navy commander Somathilake Tissanayake inaugurated the base on Monday. Meanwhile, journalists who have gone for the annual church fete at the uninhabited islet Kachcha-theevu in the Palk Bay has noticed a permanently built SL naval base there. The construction material of this base and a newly coming up jetty there were found with Chinese markings. Two SL naval ships are always stationed near Kachcha-theevu. The attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen deploying Sinhala gangs from the south are operated by SLN in Kachcha-theevu.
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Ram journalism faces criticism in JNU for pro-Sri Lanka bias, endorsing genocide

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 March 2012, 06:04 GMT]
Activists of Delhi Tamil Students’ Union, Democratic Students Union, Students for Resistance and other common students raised slogans against N. Ram accusing him of being a ‘media fascist’ and ‘a stooge of Rajapaksa’ at a public meeting in JNU after his reply to a question on The Hindu’s role in whitewashing the Sri Lankan state genocide of the Eezham Tamils, wherein he had extensively blamed the LTTE. The meeting on ‘Paid news and media ethics’ was organized at JNU on Wednesday by the Student’s Federation of India, which is the students wing of the CPI(M). The fact that N.Ram and The Hindu have unethically manipulated news to cover up the war crimes of Colombo makes them complicit in the genocide committed on the Eezham Tamils, a Tamil Nadu research scholar in JNU told TamilNet.
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Without international investigation accused will become judge: CPI

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 22:25 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu Assistant Secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI), Mr C. Mahendran in an interview to Junior Vikatan this week, rejected a statement by the Marxist Communist Party (CPM) central committee member and parliamentarian, TK Rangarajan saying that there is no need for an international investigation on Sri Lanka. Mr Rangarajan’s statement has found opposition even inside his party. Commenting, Mahendran said, he was surprised and he didn’t understand that in what sense Rangarajan had made the statement. Rangarajan should realise that expecting Sri Lanka to conduct the investigations is like appointing the murderer as the judge to deliver justice, Mahendran said.
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LLRC-based resolution extremely disappointing: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2012, 11:37 GMT]
The US-tabled resolution at UNHRC, based on the fundamentally flawed LLRC recommendations, is extremely disappointing and counter-productive, said Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, leader of Tamil National People's Front (TNPF), in a press meet held at the party office in Jaffna on Saturday. The resolution envisages an accused in the violation of international humanitarian law to become the investigator of the crime. If the LLRC findings are going to be the ‘starting point’ for any future prospects, chances of progress are difficult. Rather than keeping the expectations of the grieved party at the bare minimum, the resolution should begin with the UNSG panel report. What need investigation are the genocide of 60 years culminating into the war and the on-going structural genocide. Justice could come only from independent international investigation, he said.
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SLA re-confiscates land ‘declared’ resettled in Jaffna HSZ

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 March 2012, 11:56 GMT]
The Sinhala state occupying the country of Eezham Tamils will never observe any of the ‘reconciliation’ hoodwink it simulates to the outside world. This becomes explicitly evident with the Sri Lanka military re-occupying villages ‘declared’ for resettlement in the Valikaamam High Security Zone, to create an extensive and fenced militarized region along the northern coast of Jaffna, news sources in Jaffna exposed. Several traditional villages of Jaffna in the fertile red-soil belt will be lost forever in the creation of an extensive Sinhala military region in the most strategic and economically important part of the country of Eezham Tamils, and civil officials in Jaffna are gagged to open their mouths on the blatant grab that takes place after showcasing resettlement to the world, news sources further said.
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US-resolution binds Tamils to less than the 13th Amendment

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 March 2012, 07:01 GMT]
A draft resolution that appears in media reports as has been tabled by the USA at Geneva UNHCR, while specifying the ‘constructive’ LLRC recommendations that has to be implemented, talks of only de-militarizing the North but not the East and confines the model of political solution to undefined devolution of powers to the provinces and not to the North-East homeland of Eezham Tamils. While internationally binding Tamils to further dilution of the already inadequate provisions of the Indo-Lanka Agreement, the US-resolution giving international endorsement to LLRC-implementation bails out Sri Lankan state and its regime from international investigations of the genocidal crimes and from the need of any constitutional restructure of the unitary state.
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Tamil Nadu Catholic Church reminds umbilical cord relations at Kachchatheevu fete

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 March 2012, 08:42 GMT]
Amidst intense presence of the occupying Sinhala military at Kachcha-theevu during the annual fete of St. Antony on Sunday, the Ramnad diocese of Tamil Nadu Catholic Church that jointly conducts the prayers along with the Jaffna diocese, reminded the umbilical cord relations of the people on either side of the Palk Bay. The theme of this year’s joint prayer by Tamil Nadu and Jaffna Catholic Church was war-torn Eezham Tamils reuniting with their relatives. The commanders of the occupying military were shocked when Fr. Michael of Ramnad, delivering the sermon, deeply felt for the mass killings of Eezham Tamils and death of humanism in the island, and said that the sons of the soil should be released, they should be honoured and they should lead their lives as heroes (Maaveerar).
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Sumanthiran, Sritharan contradict reasoning Geneva absentia

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 March 2012, 00:22 GMT]
In a meeting held by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in Jaffna on Monday, explaining to the public why the TNA opted out canvassing in Geneva, TNA’s Vanni parliamentarian Sritharan and nominated parliamentarian Sumanthiran came out with contrasting reasons. As the TNA has publicly rejected the LLRC recommendations, is there any point in going to Geneva where the resolution is harping on implementation of the recommendations; won’t it be strengthening the resolution, asked Sritharan. But, Sumanthiran implied that the resolution comes after TNA conferring with the US State Department four months back and that it won’t be diplomatically beneficial to the sponsors of the move if the TNA is present in Geneva.
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Colombo harasses Tamil politicians, civil officials

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 March 2012, 11:21 GMT]
Sri Lankan ‘Criminal Investigation Department’ in Colombo has stepped up harassments on Tamil politicians and civil officials summoning them for investigation meetings in Colombo. A politician and a medical officer have been recently ‘invited’ to appear in Colombo without providing any information on why they were being ‘investigated’. Colombo government has again started to systematically harass the active sections Eezham Tamils, seeking to dis-empower them by de-motivating and demoralising such activists.
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US demand on Sri Lanka is not enough: UNSG Panel of Experts

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 March 2012, 19:08 GMT]
Recalling the 2009 blunder by UN Human Rights Council of praising Sri Lanka for its bloody finish to the civil war and stating that the war in its final days had cost as many as 40,000 deaths, the three UN Secretary General's Expert Panel Members, Marzuki Darusman, Steven Ratner and Yasmin Sooka, on Friday said “it is time for the council to correct its embarrassing decision from 2009.” While crediting US for its efforts, the experts of UN panel said: “Yet such a demand is not enough.” Given Sri Lanka's unwillingness to take concrete steps, the best way to get to the truth is for the council to “create an independent investigative body to determine the facts and identify those responsible, as we recommended in our report,” the trio said in an Op-Ed article published in the New York Times.
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US, Sri Lanka squabble whether hang or slaughter Eezham Tamil Nation

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 March 2012, 23:32 GMT]
The LLRC recommendation of the majoritarian and genocidal state of Sri Lanka is clear on the point that ethnic territories cannot exist in the island, and ‘trilingual’ society (ostensibly paving way for total Sinhalcisation) should be achieved by 2020. While Sri Lanka in Geneva sessions wants implementation of its agenda left completely to itself, the US-backed resolution seeks international endorsement to the LLRC recommendations and international commitment from Sri Lanka in the implementation and phases. In an exclusive interview to Ceylon Today on Thursday, the US ambassador in Colombo, Patricia Butanis praising the LLRC for coming out with “some excellent recommendations,” argued why then the qualms in publicly committing to implementation. The squabble is just on whether publicly hang or secretly slaughter the Tamil nation, commented an Eezham Tamil politician.
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