SL Archaeology Department resumes disputed ‘chaitya’ project in Kanniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 July 2019, 18:12 GMT]
Openly violating the promise extended to Mano Ganesan, the SL Minister of Hindu Religious Affairs and National Integration on 10th June 2019, the occupying Colombo's Archaeology Department has resumed the controversial dismantling of the base construction of the old Saiva temple of Pi'l'laiyaar at the heritage site of Eezham Tamils in Kanniyaa, Trincomalee three days ago. The SL Archaelogy officers engaged in the dismantling claimed that SL Minister Mano Ganesan had agreed to such reconstruction when the Saiva Priest of Then-Kayilai Aatheenam, Thavath-Thiru Akaththiyar Adika'laar, visited the disputed site on Thursday. The officials were violating the promise extended by themselves and the monks that they would not proceed with the disputed dismantling/construction work at the site.
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Occupying Colombo's justice system ridicules Tamil mother fighting to get her lands released

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 July 2019, 21:17 GMT]
TNA parliamentarians-cum-lawyers such as President’s Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran have failed politically and legally to challenge the SL Defence Ministry deploying the argument of ‘national security’ as a pretext to seize the lands of Tamil landowners. The SL Court of Appeal (CoA) in Colombo, delivering a recent determination has gone to the extent of claiming that “these are matters in relation to National Security, which need not and should not be discussed and probed openly”. The Sinhala judge, Mahinda Samayawardhena, was also ridiculing the petitioner, 71-year-old Tamil mother of seven Mrs Maheswary Thambirajah by stating that “[p]lanting coconuts cannot be more important than national security.” The 54 acres of lands in question at Aasaip-pi'l'lai-eattam in Ezhuthu-madduvaa'l in Thenmaraadchi Jaffna is the locality where the occupying SL Army's 52 Division Headquarters is situated.
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Toxic cancer medicines transported from South for improper disposal in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 July 2019, 22:59 GMT]
Unused and outdated cancer treatment medicines, which are extremely toxic to humans and animals, are being transported from Anuradhapura Cancer Hospital and disposed through an average medical waste incinerator at Thellip-pazhai Cancer Hospital, informed medical sources in Jaffna told TamilNet this week. The equipment is not made to handle such a large quantity of cytotoxic drugs at necessary high temperature. The disposal tool at use doesn't meet the required standards for burning the poisonous human-made chemicals that turn into dioxins, which could cause many new types of cancers to the resettling Eezham Tamils in Valikaamam North, the informed health-workers warned. Several truckloads of outdated cancer medicines have been disposed throughout the last three years, they said.
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SL military, Sinhala monk exploit poverty among Tamils in East for religious conversion

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 July 2019, 23:12 GMT]
A Sinhala Buddhist monk, Ven Katugastota Mahindalankara thero, stationed at Mayilang-karaichchi village in Vaazhaich-cheanai, 31 km north of Batticaloa city, has been operating a Theravada Buddhist Dhamma School targeting conversion of poverty-stricken Tamil children into Buddhism since 2014. The Sunday school, named ‘Mahindalangkara Dhamma School’ is functioning at the Buddhist temple called Sri Bodhirajaramaya (also named Sri Mahindarama Viharaya). The monk has also arranged a Sinhala lady teacher, L Sisiliya, to teach Sinhala language to the Tamil children in Mayilang-karaichchi for some years. For the last one month she is also teaching Sinhala at her residence, Tamil rural society activists told TamilNet adding that the Sinhala Buddhist vihara establishment was systematically attracting the poverty-stricken Tamil children at a village where all other facilities remained neglected.
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Fishing by intruding colonists hampers livelihood of Tamils in Batticaloa North

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 July 2019, 21:17 GMT]
Sinhala colonists from the Trincomalee district are intruding into the territorial waters of Eezham Tamils in Vaakarai located to the north of Batticaloa (Koara'laip-pattu North division). The occupying Sinhala navy and the SL fisheries authorities are backing the illegal deployment of purse seines by the Sinhala fishermen. In the meantime, the SL military is harassing the Tamil fishers who engage in fishing using legally allowed methods, the Head of Vaakarai Fishers Society T. Baskaran told TamilNet. The SL military is also backing the former TMVP paramilitary (Pi'l'laiyaan faction) personnel to engage in the exploitative fishing activities, he further said.
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SL military in Jaffna hurriedly constructs Buddhist vihara in ‘HSZ’ lands in KKS

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 July 2019, 23:33 GMT]
The occupying military of genocidal Sri Lanka is silently and hurriedly erecting a Buddhist vihara at Thaiyiddi in Kaangkeasan-thu'rai (KKS) in Jaffna. The construction is taking place inside the military-held former High-Security Zone area which has not been released back to the people. Tamil civic member Shageevan Shanmugalingam from Valikaamam North (Thellip-pazhai) Divisional Council told TamilNet on Monday that he was turned back by the SL military when he went there to see the construction. In the meantime, journalists have managed to photograph the structure from a distance, exposing the project. New Delhi talking about the ‘development’ of the KKS port and upgrading the Palaali airport without ensuring de-militarisation, is paving the way for socio-economic and cultural Sinhalicisation of the coastal stretch of Eezham Tamils in Valikaamam North, Tamil activists in Jaffna said.
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SLA officer attempts to seize coastal lands as intruding fisher in Vaakarai

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 June 2019, 19:23 GMT]
A Sinhala Army officer stationed in Vaakarai is claiming lands to set up fishing ‘Paadu’ (an area of coastal sea-bed falling within the scope of a draw-net at 10 feet long) at the Tamil village of Maavadai-oadai in Vaakarai (Koara'laip-pattu North division) in the northern part of the Batticaloa district. The intruding Sinhala Army officer, attached to 233 Brigade of the SLA, is known as Major Kumara. He was clearing the land, which initially belonged to a Tamil land-owner, N. Packiyarasa. The area falls within the so-called safety buffer zone of 200 meters from the coast as the SL State enforced a ban after the 2004 tsunami. Tension prevailed in the village when the Sinhala officer, in military uniform, started to clear the 2.5 acres of lands using a bulldozer. The occupying Sinhala Army was backing him.
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Anti-Muslim harassment escalates in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 June 2019, 23:51 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala Navy and Army along with the SL Police are harassing the Tamil-speaking Muslims in two hotspots in Mannaar district as never before, and the trend is worsening every day without anyone to voice for the rights of the affected innocent people. The predominantly Sinhala soldiers, particularly the SL Navy personnel at Thaaraa-puram in Mannaar island and those stationed in the mainland in Musali division, are humiliating the residents of more than 20 colonies. These settlements were put up by the controversial politician, Rishard Bathiudeen, who was serving the successive regimes in Colombo while creating a voter base for himself with the funding he facilitated from the Arabic world. The former SL Minister's opportunistic political behaviour has not only backfired against him but also against the Muslim residents of Thaaraa-Puram, which is his native village in Mannaar.
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Pompeo cancels Colombo visit, concentrates on US-India relations in New Delhi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 June 2019, 18:41 GMT]
The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has cancelled his visit to Colombo which was scheduled for Thursday. The US Embassy in Colombo was citing “scheduling issues” for the annulment. However, Mr Pompeo dropping his short visit had “more to do with rising local sentiments against a proposed American military base” on the island reported The Economic Times on Tuesday. The US Secretary of State was focusing more on the longer-term strategic partnership and on ironing out the trade disputes between the USA and India on Wednesday. Pompeo was scheduled to visit New Delhi and Colombo, before meeting US President Donald Trump at the G20 Summit in Japan and accompanying him to South Korea after that. While India is a major defence partner, the US has been seeking defence partnership with ‘Sri Lanka’ and three other countries, the Maldives, Bangladesh, and Nepal, in South Asia.
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Ploy of monks and bigotry of politicians critical to TNA's Quisling politics

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 June 2019, 17:05 GMT]
A section of Tamil politicians, who claim that they are opposed to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) on principles grounds regarding Tamil rights, have fallen right into the sophisticated trap laid by the extremist Sinhala Buddhist establishment in the district of Ampaa'rai. The Tamil politicians, who were attending the hunger-strike in which the role of Ven Ranmuthugala Sangharathana Thero had become the ‘foremost’ attention-drawer, were contributing to severing the ties between the Tamils and Muslims in the future. By making their presence at the platform promoted by the Bodu Bala Sena General Secretary Gnanasara Thero, JHU Parliamentarian monk Athuraliye Rathana Thero and Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna, they were betraying the legitimate cause, including their objective criticism of the Quisling hierarchy of the TNA.
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Time for Canadian Eezham Tamils to chart next course of diaspora action

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 June 2019, 23:39 GMT]
The political parties in Canada have unanimously called upon the UN to “establish an international independent investigation into the allegations of genocide against Tamils committed in Sri Lanka including the last phase of the armed conflict in 2009” along with two other demands to Colombo. A resolution was unanimously adopted extending condolences to all of the victims of violence while demanding the SL government to deliver justice to the Easter Sunday attacks, including protection of all religious places of worship and to fulfil its obligations made in Geneva within a clearly specified timeframe. Welcoming the move, the Tamil activists in the island urged the Canadian Tamil diaspora to concentrate on educating their host country on the unworkability of transitional justice in the island without international investigations on the genocide taking precedence over the other two demands.
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Mano Ganesan misleads on Kanniyaa heritage dispute: Trincomalee Councillor

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 June 2019, 18:48 GMT]
SL Minister of Hindu Religious Affairs and ‘National’ Integration, Mr Mano Ganesan, was appreciated by Tamils in Trincomalee for confronting the Sinhala Buddhist monks regarding the ancient Tamil heritage of Kanniyaa during his recent trip attending the District Coordinating Committee meeting, on Monday. However, the monks were unmoved. They categorically told Mr Ganesan and the TNA Parliamentarian C. Yogeswaran that it was the Sinhala Buddhist Establishment and no one else in the island – not even the Executive President or the Prime Minister– who had the power to determine the fate of the heritage affairs of Kanniyaa. The minister could very well proceed taking up the issue with Maithiripala Sirisena or Ranil Wickramasinghe in Colombo, but it would not change the ground reality, was the message, says Piratheasa Chapai (PS) councillor Chandirarajah Vipooshan, who was at the meeting.
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SL military targets Tamil grassroots activists in Mullaiththeevu, GS officer receives death threat

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 June 2019, 22:45 GMT]
The occupying Colombo’s Army in Mullaiththeevu has issued death threat to an Eezham Tamil Village Officer (GS), K. Bede Jeyaharan on 06 May, a couple of days before SL President Maithiripala Sirisena visited Mullaiththeevu promoting Sinhala colonisation of the region. The GS officer said he was able to recognise the offenders as SLA soldiers, although they were wearing tinted glasses and were covering their faces with black clothes. The incident took place at Va'n'naag-ku'lam where the SLA soldiers, conducting a cordon and search operation, stopped the GS who was on his way to give tuition at a private education centre. As the masked soldiers turned him away from reaching the institution, a captain rank SLA officer arrived at the site and issued the death threat, the GS has complained to the SL Human Rights Commission office in Vavuniyaa.
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Occupying Colombo schemes Sinhala Buddhist settlement in Chemmalai-East, Vanni

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 June 2019, 21:30 GMT]
The controversial erection of the giant Buddha statue at Neeraaviyadi in Chemmalai-East of Mullaiththeevu district is to be further expanded into a Buddhist enclave encapsulating 33,376 hectares of land area to the southeast of Naayaa'ru lagoon, reveals a poster put up by Ven Kolamba Medhalankara Thero, the ‘chief incumbent’ of the so-called Gurukanda Purana Rajamaha Vihara at the disputed heritage site. The monk is groomed by the occupying Sinhala Army's 593 Brigade, which is having its headquarter-base at Naayaa'aru. Scheming a large hermitage under the name of Gurukanda Purana Raja Maha Vihara (Gurukanda PRMV), the SL Archaeology Department, the SL Ministry of Buddha Sasana and the SL Ministry of Mahaweli ‘Development and Environment’ are backing the scheme, informed sources in Mullaiththeevu said.
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Kokku'laay-centric united action needed to counter Colombo wedging North-East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 June 2019, 20:36 GMT]
The resettled Tamil residents of the strategic Thennai-maravadi village bordering the Northern and Eastern Provinces in the Trincomalee district are facing Sinhala colonisation and Sinhala Buddhicisation of Tamil heritage sites on two fronts, at Pa'nikka-vayal to its west and at Kanthasaami-malai, which extends eastwards into Kokku'laay lagoon. The Sinhala colonisation and the Buddhicisation of Tamil heritage site of Kanthasaami-malai are being accelerated under the Emergency Regulations and the situation prevailing after the Easter Sunday attacks that have triggered the extremist monks to escalate their chauvinistic schemes in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The two-pronged attack, which is being stepped up in the recent days, is part of a larger design of permanently wedging the territorial contiguity of the Tamil homeland along the narrow border between the North and the East.
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Tamils, Muslims need strategic alliance to protect heritage rights in North-East

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 June 2019, 17:16 GMT]
The Tamil Saiva Priest of Then-Kayilai Aatheenam, Thavath-Thiru Akaththiyar Adika’ laar, has urged legal activists to find ways to contain the hostile acts of the Sinhala Buddhist monk from the Velgam Vihara, who has dismantled the foundation of Hindu Pi’l’ laiyaar temple at the heritage site of Kanniyaa hot springs in Trincomalee. The Saiva priest said it was not merely a religious dispute, but rather a cause of preserving the heritage rights. The best option, in his opinion, was to address the issue through the courts. In the meantime, TNA Leader R. Sampanthan was taking up the burning question with the SL President and the Prime Minister. However, both the legal avenue and the political appeals made with collaborative orientation only have minimal impact in the unitary system of genocidal Sri Lanka, especially under the Emergency Regulations, commented legal activists in Trincomalee.
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Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalism ultimate trump card in unitary ‘Sri Lanka’: Suresh

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 June 2019, 19:18 GMT]
The successive SL governments continue to behave hostile towards the Tamil people through ‘celebrating’ victory in the month of May. Furthermore, the SL State and its military sustain the Sinhala Buddhist fundamentalism unabatedly erecting Buddhist temples in the North and the East. The same trend is also witnessed in the way the Islamophobia is deployed in the electoral politics of the South, particularly after the Easter Sunday attacks, commented Tamil politician Suresh Premachandran in a video interview to TamilNet this week. The SL Army’s 11-day ‘Walk of Warriors’ launched from Medawachchiya to Colombo coinciding with the May’ victory celebration’ seems to be a display of warning to the Muslim people as well as being propaganda targeting the Sinhala people with the message that the military force is their ultimate protection, the former Tamil militant turned politician observed.
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Prejudiced Archaeology Dept escalates ethnic tensions in Trincomalee: Civic Councillor

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 June 2019, 23:18 GMT]
Chandirarajah Vipooshan, a member of Trincomalee Town and Gravats Predesiya Saba, says that the overtly prejudiced behaviour of the SL Archaeology Department which selectively promotes the interests of the Sinhala Buddhists has escalated ethnic tensions between the Tamils and the Sinhalese in Trincomalee district. The civic member said it was the SL Archaeology Department, which was instigating construction projects of the monks to accelerate the Sinhala Buddhisication in Thennai-maravadi and in Kanniya. The monks were from different temples. It is the Archaeology Department that coordinates the activities timing the situation prevailing the in the island, he said.
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IC failing to impose mediated solution, ultimately responsible for escalating Sinhala chauvinism

[TamilNet, Friday, 31 May 2019, 22:11 GMT]
Even though one feared the outbreak of an anti-Muslim pogrom immediately after the Easter attacks, silence prevailed for two weeks. Then the mob violence targeted the properties of Muslim traders. It was not an act of immediate responsive impulse, but an engineered move instigated by an organised force. Despite their differences in the scale, there are certain similarities between the 1983 Black July anti-Tamil pogrom and the post-2009 anti-Muslim pogroms, says Batticaloa-based human rights activist Kathir Barathythasan. During the war, the International Community (IC) was acting as a mediator. But, it was also abetting the SL State, causing massive civilian deaths. The IC, now wants the anti-terror legislation to fit its global designs ignoring the drastic internal consequences. The IC must, therefore, be convinced to deliver a negotiated settlement to the national question, he said.
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SL Archaeology Dept steps up controversial construction work in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 May 2019, 17:37 GMT]
The SL Archaeology Department, which had stopped the controversial construction of a building at the hill-top of Kanthasaami-malai in the strategically located ancient village of Thennai-maravadi at the provincial border between the North and East, has all of a sudden accelerated the building project hurriedly completing the building, violating the ban imposed by the Divisional Secretariat. Eezham Tamil residents, their Rural Development Society (RDS) and the trustee board of the 400-year-old Saiva Kanthasaami-temple, have complained on Monday and Wednesday this week. Thennai-maravadi was the seat of a Tamil Vanni chieftaincy until the Dutch times in the mid 17th century. The interior hamlet is situated in the narrow strategic corridor linking the Northern and Eastern provinces, 70 km north of Trincomalee city.
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