Muslim prisoner alleged of LTTE gets back-to-back life sentence in genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 May 2019, 09:09 GMT]
Anuradhapura’ Special High Court’ of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka has served three jail terms, 20 years each, to be followed one after the other for the first three indictments and a life sentence for the remaining 29 charges to a Tamil-speaking Muslim political prisoner on Tuesday last week. The accused, 45-year-old Abdul Hameed Umar Hattaaph, was the second accused in the case regarding the assassination of a notorious Sinhala military commander, Major General (retd) Janaka Perera in October 2008. Umar Hattaaph had pleaded not guilty. He has been languishing in SL prisons for the past ten years. There was no lawyer prepared to defend him. Umar Hattaap is a father of three and hails from Neariya-ku’lam, Maangku’lam, Vavuniyaa.
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Tamil Genocide Remembrance marked in Melbourne opposing Australia's deportations

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 May 2019, 17:25 GMT]
Australian Tamil diaspora marking the tenth Tamil Genocide Remembrance was supported by the Australian, Filipino and aboriginal progressive and internationalist solidarity activists, who took part in the vigil and delivered messages of support to the remembrance event. The protesters gathered in the city on 15 May, and the Tamils marked the commemoration event on 18 May. “What happened to Eelam Tamils was not just war crimes - it was genocide,” said one placard carried by the solidarity activists while a banner stated: “Keep away from bloodstained Sri Lankan military”. “Don’t deport to danger. Let them stay” was their message. The son of a war-dead LTTE commander addressed the participants of the commemoration event on 18 May, sharing his experiences of the genocidal onslaught as a 12-year-old boy at Mu’l’ li-vaaykkaal in 2009.
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Ex NPC councillor vows to mark genocide remembrance at 21 places before 18 May

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 May 2019, 22:26 GMT]
Former Northern Provincial Council (NPC) member and ex-TNA parliamentarian M.K. Shivajilingam has vowed to mark Tamil Genocide Week from 12th to 17 May at 21 places across the eight districts in the North and East before taking part in the tenth year marking of 2009 Tamil Genocide Day on 18 May at Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal. “We have chosen 21 places where the SL military was committing genocidal acts. It is like the 21-gun salute, the highest respect paid to those who sacrificed their lives,” Mr Shivajlingam, a political leader of TELO said. After inaugurating the first event at Kappaladi along the coast near Mu'l'livaaykkal on Sunday, he blamed the SL State for detaining the student leaders in Jaffna and for harassing himself describing the moves as aiming to suppress the 10th Tamil genocide remembrance on 18 May.
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Western diplomats must act to free Jaffna University student leaders: Political Analyst

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 May 2019, 18:04 GMT]
The West needs to be reminded that the Tamil Christians were at the receiving end of the Easter Sunday most probably because the hierarchy of the Tamil National Alliance and the Tamil leaders, in general, had been explicitly leaning towards it after the end of the genocidal war in 2009. The unitary state in Colombo has now clamped down on the Tamil student leaders of the Jaffna University by deploying the Emergency Regulations totally out of proportions in a heavily politicised and chauvinistic manner using the situation after the Easter Sunday attacks, said Jaffna-based Senior Lawyer and Political Analyst S.A. Jothilingam on Thursday. His comments to TamilNet come a day after the Magistrates’ Court in Jaffna was unable to act on the release of the students as their release required explicit action by the SL Attorney General under the Emergency provisions.
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Arts Faculty student leader urges principled action from Jaffna lawyers

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 May 2019, 13:45 GMT]
The president of the Student Union of the Art Faculty at the University of Jaffna, Mr Rajaratnam Krishanth, has urged the lawyers, particularly the head of the bar association in Jaffna Ms Shantha Abimannasingham P.C., who is also the notary public Council Member of the Council of the University, to take up the wrong PTA detention of Jaffna University Student Union. The matter should also be taken up with the U.S. Embassy and other diplomatic missions in Colombo, he said. The action for releasing the JUSU leaders must be a broader one, he said. The students were awaiting the legal outcome on May 08 before initiating a struggle, he said. In the meantime, all other avenues must be pursued in parallel, he said. TNA's Sumanthiran and Civil Society activist Guruparan are already done their part, the fellow students told TamilNet.
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PTA-arguments of SL Police detaining Tamil student leaders baseless: Guruparan

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 May 2019, 19:42 GMT]
The SL Police, pursuing Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) based investigations against the president and the secretary of the Jaffna University Student Union (JUSU), was arguing that the student leaders were provoking racial and communal disharmony through the banners and other visual representations, which were apprehended by the SL Army at the JUSU office on Friday. The SL Government itself had admitted, through the act of co-sponsoring Resolution 30/1 at the UN Human Rights Council in 2015, that allegations of war crimes need to be investigated. How could the banners calling for justice for crimes committed during the war incite disharmony, questioned Attorney Guruparan Kumaravadivel who was representing the student leaders at the Magistrate’s Court in Jaffna on Monday.
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SLM Hanifa remembers Sivaram's insight, warns of more challenging times ahead

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 April 2019, 14:42 GMT]
The inhumane terror attacks on Easter Sunday have worsened the chauvinist paradigm prevailing in the island and exposed it as the terrain for global power politics. None of the three powers, the USA, China nor India would be doing anything meaningful for the merger of the North-East or to secure the rights of the people here, said veteran writer SLM Hanifa, interviewed by TamilNet on the occasion of the 14th remembrance of the late Senior Editor of TamilNet, Maa-manithar D. Sivaram (Taraki), on Sunday. Unlike those who passionately talk about Tamil-Muslim unity and do nothing on the ground in practice, Mr Hanifa, a long-term friend of Sivaram, is one of the very few, who have been working for Tamil Muslim unity at the grassroots level in the East.
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Sinhala colonisation escalated in Vavuniyaa North with a multitude of players backing infrastructure

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 April 2019, 21:24 GMT]
Elected civic members of Vavuniyaa North Divisional Council (PS) complain that the Sinhala colonisation is relentlessly targeting the eastern side of their division. The occupying Sinhala Army and its home-guards paramilitary act as the guardians of the colony while the extremist Buddhist monks coordinate the systematic expansion. Various SL ministries provide the infrastructure. Besides, a host of actors from a leading socio-economic NGO with Buddhist philosophy to a local extremist group known as ‘Sinhala Power in the North‘ (‘Uture Hela Balaya’ or ‘Utura Rakina Raṭa Surakina Jātika Balaya - Vanni’) facilitate it through different approaches. Also, sections of expatriate Sinhalese, including a retired professor from Australia, have funded the housing projects of the scheme. The Sinhala settlers are being radicalised without any provocation or hostility from the Tamils.
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Tamil youth in Batticaloa irked by SL State-backed southern company bent on ilmenite mining

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 April 2019, 08:01 GMT]
Tension prevailed in Kathira-ve'li, and the surrounding villages located 75 km north of Batticaloa city on Wednesday when Tamil youth went on a motorbike rally opposing the move for mineral excavation by a corporate from the South. Protesters were riding around 60 motorbikes from Verukal Bridge to Vaakarai through Panichchangkea'ni. The residents of three villages, Kathirave'li, Puchchang-kea'ni and Puthoor have been protesting against the exploitative ilmenite excavation project launched with the backing of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka. “Now, the people here are outraged, especially the youth. Recently, one youth wanted to self-immolate himself to protect his soil. We struggled to stop it,” Kathirve'li Fisheries Society leader M Subramaniyam told TamilNet. “We are finding it difficult to control the youth, and they could resort to extreme response any time,” he warned.
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SLA deployed Tamils as human shields in 1990, activists allege mass graves in Jaffna islet

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 April 2019, 21:01 GMT]
The occupying SL Navy harassed 25 Tamil protesters who had mobilised to wage a peaceful protest against the seizure of their lands at Ma’ndai-theevu, an islet off Jaffna, by photographing and recording them. However, the protesters successfully blocked the survey officials for the second time in two years. After the last attempt in June 2018, on Thursday the SL Survey Department tried again to measure the eighteen acres of residential and agricultural lands belonging to eleven families. The lands in question are already fenced off within the premises of SLNS Welusumana naval base and are declared as a no-go zone by the SL Navy, which wants to militarise them permanently. Ma’ndai-theevu, an islet located at a strategic locality towards the entrance from the Palk Bay into the Jaffna lagoon, needs to be subjected to excavations for alleged mass graves, say Tamil rights activists in Jaffna.
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Tamils discriminated in demarcation of education zones in Ampaa'rai district

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 April 2019, 21:25 GMT]
The Eastern Provincial Council passed a resolution almost thirty months ago approving creation of two new Education Zones in Ampaa'rai district. Now, the SL colonial Governor to the Eastern Province, MLAM Hizbullah is launching one of them, Poththuvil with predominantly Tamil-speaking Muslims. However, the other approved proposal of creating Kalmunai Central Education Zone by joining the Tamil schools from the zones of Kalmunai and Chammaan-thu'rai has not been implemented. In the meantime, a Sinhala Education Zone, Uhana has been separated from Ampara. Poththuvil is being separated from Akkaraip-pattu, which is also a Muslim majority zone. Tamil Education Directors in Ampaa'rai complain that the proposals of Tamils are being sidelined in the province.
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Monks groom SL police on misusing UN rights intended for controlling hate speech

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 April 2019, 22:59 GMT]
The Magistrate of Polgahawela in the South has detained an award-winning Sinhala novelist on the charges of inciting ‘religious hatred’ for his short story on homosexuality among the Theravada Buddhist monks. The monks got the SL Police and the judiciary to invoke the clauses of the SL State's ‘compliance’ to International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which prohibited religious hatred to remand 33-year-old Shakthika Sathkumara on 01 April. Meanwhile, Jaffna Magistrate Peter Paul, a Tamil who hails from the up-country, delivered a blow to the SL ‘Terrorist’ Investigation Division on the issue of Freedom of Speech and the SL State's ‘compliance’ to ICCPR on Friday. To set everything into context, a Tamil short story, Pali-peedam, authored by the late Eezham Tamil creative writer S. Ponnuthurai (Es Po) four decades ago is reproduced at the end of this news feature.
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USA strengthens Quad, India set to receive anti-submarine Seahawks

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 April 2019, 23:55 GMT]
India is set to purchase twenty-four Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk choppers (also known as Romeo choppers) from the USA for USD 2.4 billion, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. The US Navy operates more than 250 Romeo choppers, which were developed based on the US Army’s UH-60 Black Hawk, as its primary helicopters for anti-submarine warfare and open ocean duties. The Indian move comes after the Australian Navy upgrading its naval combat capabilities with Seahawk ‘Romeo’ helicopters between 2014 and 2016. Japan, the fourth member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) formation, has already modernised its military helicopter fleet with its own Mitsubishi H-60 series equivalent of the anti-submarine helicopters.
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Senior TELO leader urges DMK to withdraw Hambantota investment

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 March 2019, 22:04 GMT]
M.K. Shivajilingam, the senior political leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) and former TNA parliamentarian, has urged DMK politician Samikannu Jagathratchagan in Tamil Nadu to reconsider the decision of his family to invest in the big business of building an oil refinery and cement factory in Hambantota in the South. “I urge Mr Jagathratchagan to reconsider his decision [...] Eezham Tamils have not yet gained justice to the genocide committed against them. A political solution is still far away [..] At this juncture, the investment move is also contradictory to the unanimous position of Tamil Nadu State Assembly which had called for economic sanctions on Sri Lanka until these issues are resolved,” Shivajligam told TamilNet on Friday.
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Colombo ‘reminds’ Eezham Tamils on significance of theorising war historiography

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2019, 19:47 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) has filed a ‘B Report’ requesting the Magistrates’ Court in Jaffna to demand the editor of Colombo-based Thamizhth-thanthi weekly to reveal the author and the source of an article, which was published in May 2018. The article was about the late Brigadier Balraj, a highly esteemed military commander of the LTTE, who played the key role in the Tiger victory of the Elephant Pass garrison in 2000. The TID has approached the SL Court in January 2019, eight months after the article, titled “Balraj, the unparalleled war hero of the 21st century”, appeared. The SL State wants to suppress the media freedom of Eezham Tamil writers to file articles under pen names. It wants the editors to impose self-censorship and not to protect the identity of the authors. Colombo wants to make an example through this case, journalists in Jaffna said.
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TNA hierarchy backs controversial Sinhala extremist project at Jaffna entrance

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2019, 21:02 GMT]
The unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka, which constitutionally accords ‘foremost place’ to Buddhism, has stepped up the hurried erection of a large Buddhist stupa at the entrance to Jaffna city in Naavatkuzhi. The ruling UNP has exerted pressure on the elected Divisional Council (PS) of Chaavakach-cheari to silently withdraw the case against the controversial project through its TNA collaborator M.A. Sumanthiran, civil servants who were forced to withdraw the case told TamilNet. The vihara was not to be built without the permission from the democratically elected civic council, the Magistrate of Chaavakach-cheari had previously ruled. After getting the TNA to withdraw its objection, SL Minister of Megapolis & Western Development ‘Patali’ Champika Ranawaka, a Sinhala extremist, visited Naavatkuzhi on 22 February to accelerate the ‘development’ of the hostile project in Jaffna.
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Tamil parties failing to single-mindedly demand genocide justice, more dangerous than ITAK

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 March 2019, 14:11 GMT]
The Eezham Tamils need to objectively and scientifically distinguish the competing discourses of the collaborative politics of the ITAK and the actors claiming to counter the wrong narrative of the ITAK. While the ITAK is lost to ‘quisling politics’, there is a danger that the emerging alternative actors also succumbing to a rather dangerous ‘diplopia politics’, which is a double-option trap. The bedrock of both the deceptions is the overt orientation of relying upon the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), tasked to promote and protect the human rights and function also as the secretariat of the UNHRC. It is important that Tamils should engage and interact with UN bodies. However, limiting the demands to the inside-the-box thinking of that system is more disastrous than the ITAK advocating quisling politics.
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Colombo schemes Sinhala Buddhicisation of 40 more locations in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 March 2019, 17:28 GMT]
The anti-Tamil Archaeology Department of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka has approached the SL Survey Department to survey 40 more locations in Mullaith-theevu district alone with the intention of permanently declaring the places as heritage monuments of Sinhala Theravada Buddhism, informed civil officials had alerted the TNA Parliamentarian Shanthy Sriskandarajah. It is not known whether these are the places identified in a controversial Gazette declaration made already in 2013 or if these places are additional locations based on a new list, the civil officials who alerted the TNA parliamentarian explained to the journalists who were seeking to verify the information. The Eezham Tamils in Vanni should rapidly form heritage vigilance groups to confront the widespread surveying activities being schemed by the SL Archaeology Department, commented grassroots activists in Vanni.
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Colombo sabotaging mass grave investigations and Tamils learning lessons on ‘hybrid’ paradigm

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 March 2019, 18:34 GMT]
The radiocarbon tests carried out on bone samples, which the SL authorities had dispatched to a US laboratory, as dating 377 to 615 years back has disappointed many people, who have valid reasons to believe that the recently exhumed mass graves in Mannaar are from the 1990s. The results obtained from Florida-based Beta Analytic (BETA) are being prematurely released by Colombo to imply that the period of the mass grave predates the genocidal war in the island by centuries. BETA has not issued an overall interpretation of all the samples or passed any judgement on the supplied samples as being adequate to conclude the core issue. Besides, there are several unanswered questions, most of them concerning the trustworthiness of the SL State-operated institutions handling the submission, as well as other artefacts revealing 1990s as the time of the crime.
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Manipulations at work to nullify NPC-evolved identity to Eezham Tamils food court

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 March 2019, 17:11 GMT]
The forces opposed to the concept of allowing Eezham Tamils to articulate a collective identity to their traditional food court have pressurised the elected divisional council (Piratheasa chapai) of Vavuniyaa North to deviate from the unilaterally democratic decision adopted by the council a month ago to name the latest restaurant as ‘Ammaachchi’. The council was manipulated to change the name to "Vanni A'ru-chuvai-akam" before inviting former SL President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga who is leading Colombo's Office of National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR) to inaugurate the restaurant on Thursday.
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