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.
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Tamil Nadu student upsurge gains momentum overcoming manipulations

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2013, 06:03 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu student protests against the pro-LLRC US resolution being tabled at Geneva has intensified in all major towns and cities even despite attempts by certain sections of the Indian media and certain political elements to twist the purpose of the protest, Thanjavur based sources told TamilNet. A protest involving over 5000 students took place on Wednesday at Thanjavur, a city of great historical and cultural importance to Tamils. Speaking to TamilNet, the sources said that while the student protests across Tamil Nadu were all about rejecting the US resolution as it did not meet any of the just expectations of the Eezham Tamils, some sections of the media and political circles were trying to give a false image that the students were urging India to support this hollow resolution.
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Kurdish leadership accuses imperialist powers for Eezham Tamil tragedy

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 March 2013, 19:14 GMT]
In a solidarity message to the Eezham Tamils’ liberation struggle sent to TamilNet, the Executive Council of the Koma Civaken Kurdistan (KCK), condemned “the massacre and humanitarian tragedy that were executed by the occupying army of Sri Lanka with the support of imperialist powers”, accusing the UN and the world powers of their complicity in this mass atrocity on the Eezham Tamils. The KCK, or the Union of Communities in Kurdistan, an organization founded by the leader of the Kurdish liberation struggle Abdullah Ocalan, drawing parallels with the internationally-abetted oppression of the Kurdish nation and the Eezham Tamil nation, further emphasised the need for a continued solidarity and exchange of ideas between the two national liberation struggles.
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UNHRC, CHOGM, Regime Change: people’s power has no substitute

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 March 2013, 07:26 GMT]
A drama has been carefully executed by all in the game ultimately guilty of crimes and detract the question of Eezham Tamils: first by giving hope and by deploying agents among Tamils that something serious in ‘procedure’ is going to take place, so that any righteous Tamil mobilisation in the island and in the diaspora could be diffused; then by pointing to New Delhi competing in the crime so that the political parties fixed and the gullible in Tamil Nadu would be facilitators, and finally by tabling a mischievous resolution so that whether it is passed or not passed it would favour the genocidal State and regime in Sri Lanka, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo, welcoming the youth uprising in Tamil Nadu and adding that there is no substitute to people’s power in altering the machinations.
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Protest in Australia rejects LLRC-based US resolution, demands Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 March 2013, 05:32 GMT]
Hundreds of Tamils and several non-Tamil protesters gathered at Canberra, Australia in front of the Parliament House, denouncing a LLRC based political solution as a farce and demanding the creation of Tamil Eelam. The Eezham Tamil protesters, who conveyed their admiration for and solidarity with the students’ upsurge in Tamil Nadu, were also of the opinion that the impact of the Tamil Nadu protests had reached Australia, a representative of the Campaign for Tamil Justice told TamilNet. The demonstrators marched to the embassies of the US, India, UK and the EU and submitted their demands to the respective embassies. Speaking to TamilNet, Trevor Grant, former chief sports writer at the Age opined that the proposed US resolution at Geneva would only encourage “the Rajapaksa regime to continue its carefully-planned genocide of Tamils.”
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Tamil Nadu students burn US draft resolution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 March 2013, 00:28 GMT]
Protest started by the Loyola College students in Chennai against an empty US resolution on Sri Lanka at Geneva and the Tamil Nadu State Government action against the protest, have triggered spontaneous statewide student uprising that is not depending on any political party, news sources in Tamil Nadu said. Students of instituions such as the Annamalai University in Chithamparam and St. Xavier’s College, an autonomous university institution at Paa’laiyang-koaddai in Thirunelveali, have burnt the copies of the US draft resolution tabled at Geneva for discussion on Friday, saying that the draft only bails out the genocide-accused Sri Lankan State. Meanwhile, student protests took place in every part of Tamil Nadu and All Colleges Students Federation for the Liberation of Tamil Eelam has come out with a 9-point demand.
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Student protests across Tamil Nadu intensify against US resolution

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 March 2013, 20:41 GMT]
While the students of Loyola have been coerced to end their hunger-strike after their arrest in early hours of Monday, their three day fast has sparked off protests across Tamil Nadu. Students from colleges and universities in Chennai, Chidambaram, Chengalpet, Coimbatore, Kumbakonam, Trichy, Tanjore and Tirunelveli have begun mass protests condemning the pro-LLRC US resolution and urging for a referendum among the Eezham Tamils for a sovereign Tamil Eelam as the only just political solution. Grassroots mobilization that is not affiliated to any political party but based on correct concepts is credited to the success of these protests, sources from Tamil Nadu told TamilNet.
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Fasting Loyola students arrested by police, protests to continue

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 March 2013, 06:18 GMT]
In a sudden operation conducted around midnight, the Tamil Nadu police swooped on the eight Loyola College students who were on an indefinite hunger-strike against the pro-LLRC US resolution and have forcibly removed them from the venue of their protest at Koyambedu, Chennai, on Monday. The students, who had begun their fast on Friday, have been taken to the Royapettah General Hospital. Also, around 200 supporters of the students were detained in a community hall near the protest venue. While this move is seen as a draconian curbing of rising sentiments among Tamil Nadu students against those who extend legitimacy to the genocidal Sri Lankan state, sources in Chennai also told TamilNet that the eight students were firm that even if they were arrested they would not give up their protest.
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Academics criticize R2P, emphasize inapplicability to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 March 2013, 20:12 GMT]
Even as certain groups of the establishments are suggesting the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine to the Eezham Tamils, the concept has come under severe criticism by academics who attended the “Conference on Tamil People’s Rights” at Geneva on 02 March. While British academic Dr. Andy Higginbottom argued that R2P was “a humanitarian face to further US interests”, Ireland based Sinhala academic Dr. Jude Lal Fernando stated that “At a time when the powers are giving economic diplomatic and military support to the Sri Lankan state, talking about R2P is nonsensical”, in their opinions conveyed to TamilNet. Dr. Fernando also stressed the need for “the application of remedial sovereignty by means of an UN referendum conducted by powers who were not involved in the genocide.”
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Tamil women in UK begin campaign to highlight genocidal sexual abuse by Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 March 2013, 09:04 GMT]
Seeking to inform the British public on the sexual abuse perpetrated on Tamil women by the Sri Lankan state forces, Tamil women activists in the UK began a campaign on International Women’s Day, from the Boudica statue in Westminster, London, which is an important cultural symbol in British history. “The systematic sexual violence against Tamil women by the Sri Lankan state is not cases of individual human rights violations but part of an intended genocide to break the Eezham Tamil nation. This is a structural problem in unitary Sri Lanka and the International Community should recognize that only in an independent Tamil Eelam, Tamil women can aspire for a life with dignity and safety,” Bairavi Ratnabal, second generation Eezham Tamil youth activist told TamilNet.
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Colombo attempts to resurrect bogey of suicide terror

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 March 2013, 02:35 GMT]
Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN, and the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State University co-sponsored "a dialogue" Friday on suicide bombers in New York, and how the Government of Sri Lanka eliminated the menace and successfully prosecuted the war on terror, sources attending the event told TamilNet. The belated attempt to rekindle the "suicide terror" factor, four years after the Mu'l'livaaykaal massacre and the death of LTTE leadership, was a desperate diversionary measure to shift the increasing focus from Sri Lanka's human rights violations and alleged complicity in mass atrocities, Tamil circles commented.
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Chennai college students on indefinite hunger-strike condemn US resolution

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 March 2013, 18:24 GMT]
Eight students of Loyola College, Chennai, who have begun an indefinite hunger-strike on Friday calling for a UN referendum among the Eezham Tamils, have also condemned the pro-LLRC US resolution to be tabled at Geneva, accusing it of bailing out genocidal Sri Lanka. Speaking to TamilNet, Mr. Britto, one of the protesting students, outlining the demands of the hunger-strike, said that the current US resolution was a farce that would completely cover-up the genocide of the Eezham Tamils and strengthen the hands of the perpetrators. The protestors also told TamilNet if their hunger-strike was not paid heed to by the Central Government, they would undertake a Civil Disobedience campaign throughout Tamil Nadu to boycott paying taxes to the Indian state that is endorsing the genocide of their brethren.
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Indian Muslim party demands justice for genocide of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 March 2013, 01:03 GMT]
The Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), a pan-Indian Muslim political party, protested on Thursday outside the UN office at Delhi demanding justice for the genocide-affected nation of the Eezham Tamils. Stating that there was a “gradual genocide” of the Eezham Tamil nation going on in the occupied homeland of the Eezham Tamils, the protestors placed four principal demands to the UN and India, namely to pass a resolution against the Sri Lankan state recognizing its crime of genocide, to punish the perpetrators of gross human rights violations, to ensure the trial of Sri Lankan war criminals in the International Criminal Court and to punish the perpetrators of sexual violence against Tamil women.
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US UNHRC inaction not inconsistent with saving Rajapakse in US Courts, says TAG

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 March 2013, 01:03 GMT]
The resolution tabled in the Geneva UNHCR sessions by the USA in concert with India, which sidesteps forcing an independent international investigation into the Mu'l'livaaykaal killings, and misleads the Eezham Tamils into a mirage that international community will seek accountability, appears entirely consistent with the intervention of the U.S. State Department in the legal actions pursued by Tamil plaintiffs against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse, legal sources in Washington said. U.S. is acting as a proxy to Rajapakses in filing legal briefs and replacing Patton Boggs as "the attorneys" for Rajapakse.
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‘US resolution will not give Tamils justice’: Vaiko

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 07:22 GMT]
Stating that only an internationally monitored referendum among Eezham Tamils for an independent state of Tamil Eelam and an independent international investigation into genocidal war crimes of Sri Lanka would provide justice, MDMK leader Vaiko, in a statement on Wednesday asserted that the upcoming US resolution at Geneva falls drastically short of providing any justice to the genocide-affected nation of the Eezham Tamils. In the statement Mr. Vaiko also criticized political parties in India for holding up the US resolution as an appropriate step forward. Separately, protests against Sri Lanka have been intensifying across Tamil Nadu.
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Colombo reaches ‘understanding’ with USA, claims Sinhala daily

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 07:09 GMT]
Sinhala daily Divaina, which is a sister news paper of The Island, published by Upali Newspapers in Colombo, has stated in a recent news report citing ‘reliable’ sources that Colombo had reached a mutual understanding with Washington on the implementation of LLRC and monitoring its implementation through a Rajapaksa-appointed Commission of Colombo. According to the paper, the USA had promised to Colombo that it would refrain from imposing sanctions on Sri Lanka through UN Security Council until 2016. Last week, the External Affairs Minister of the New Delhi Establishment in the Indian parliament ‘encouraged’ the USA and Sri Lanka “to directly engage on the draft resolution and aim for a mutually acceptable outcome.”
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Worsening human rights woes drive political skulduggery

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 March 2013, 00:56 GMT]
While Tamils unitedly view the Mu'l'livaaykaal killings as an international crime of genocidal proportions committed by the State, Colombo, sensing the tightening of the rights noose around its neck at the UNHCR and beyond, is resorting to political skulduggery, even while Tamils look suspiciously at the international actors, particularly India and the U.S. Both India and the U.S., even while armed with credible evidence of Rajapaksas' complicity in the genocidal crimes, continue to allow Colombo space and time to act on "improving" the rights climate, while Colombo continues its cultural genocide, and aggressively erases any remaining evidence of mass atrocities.
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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.
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Thousands rallying in Geneva question TNA MPs on compromise

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 March 2013, 23:34 GMT]
Thousands of Eezham Tamils from across Europe, who took part in a rally at Geneva on Monday demanded a UN sponsored referendum for a sovereign Tamil Eelam. In the meantime, sections of protestors, who confluenced in Geneva, approached the hotel where TNA politicians, who had come to attend a conference, were residing. Parliamentarians Maavai Seanthirajah and Ariyanethran were encircled by the people who questioned them on the compromising polity forgetting fundamentals adopted by the TNA leadership. According to informed circles, TNA leader Mr Sampanthan in London last week has claimed that the US government use to extend invitations for talks only to him and to Mr Sumanthiran.
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Daily Mirror fabricates news: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 March 2013, 00:01 GMT]
“It is sometimes possible for journalists to misunderstand what is being said, and as a result misquote. But in this case, the major part of the said news item is entirely fabricated,” says Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam responding to Colombo-based English media Daily Mirror reporting his speech at the Press Club in Jaffna on Monday. While he had cited the report of Ms. Navi Pillai in appreciation for evidencing the grave violations committed against Tamils in the last one year, the Daily Mirror titled its news report on Wednesday as “Pillai responsible, says Ponnambalam,” Gajendrakumar said. Following protests by Gajendrakumar, Daily Mirror carried another report on Thursday, titled “Ponnambalam clarifies.” This was even more disappointing and completely inadequate, Gajendrakumar told TamilNet.
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