ICP asks UN to confirm receiving NPC Genocide Resolution

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 March 2015, 08:57 GMT]
The Inner City Press on Tuesday questioned the UN Spokesperson in New York whether the UN would confirm receiving the Genocide Resolution passed by the Northern Provincial Council given to the UN Under-Secretary General Jeffrey Feltman who visited Jaffna on Monday. The spokesperson said: “I will”. On Wednesday, the ICP asked again that what would Mr Feltman do with the genocide resolution and the question went unanswered, according to ICP on Thursday. In ‘seeking truth’, when the Colombo government came out with the LLRC report that paves way for a structural genocide of Eezham Tamils, the report was ‘accepted’ by the UN as model for its Geneva deliberations. But, when the NPC came out with the resolution on investigating protracted genocide, the visiting UN official questioned the NPC Chief Minister, why this resolution now.
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Domestic investigations, even with external supervision, will not work: NESoHR

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 March 2015, 23:18 GMT]
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera’s statement on Monday to the High Level Segment of the 28th UN Human Rights Council Session at Geneva, where he stated that “the content of the Report of OHCHR Investigation too can be taken into account by domestic investigative and judicial mechanisms,” is a point of contention said North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR) in a statement issued on Tuesday. None of the recommendations of the internal Commissions of Inquiry held in Sri Lanka has been implemented, the NESoHR said adding that even the international monitors, as in the case of the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP), had to withdraw from the proceedings in the past. Mr Samaraweera was touching upon absurdity when he claimed that the civil war in the island had to be brought to an end to restore human rights, the statement further said.
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Dadayan-thalaawa

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 March 2015, 20:54 GMT]
The hunting range of open glade
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UN maintains ‘genocide without witnesses paradigm’ with Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 March 2015, 16:37 GMT]
When the genocidal war against the nation of Eezham Tamils took place in the island of Sri Lanka, the UN played a major role in keeping it as ‘war without witnesses’, by not bringing it to the international arena of discussion and action. The UN plays the same role in maintaining and continuing the ‘genocide without witnesses’ paradigm in the case of Eezham Tamils, by sabotaging and denying any international investigation on the matter, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The deferral of the OISL report is directly connected to the arrangement of the new regime in Colombo conducting a domestic investigation with the ‘label’ of UN supervision, which suits the original agenda of genocide without international scrutiny, designed by the ultimate culprits, the activists further said.
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Tamils boycott Trinco sittings of domestic commission on missing persons

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 February 2015, 17:52 GMT]
The first day sittings of the Presidential Commission on Missing Persons commenced at Kuchchave'li Divisional Secretariat auditorium Saturday morning. Only four or five Tamil complainants gave evidence as the majority of Tamil complainants boycotted the sitting with the demand of international investigations into the complaints. The Tamils who boycotted the sitting on Saturday were seen in front of the Kuchchave'li Divisional Secretariat, holding placards written in Tamil. They were demanding that the victims should be heard by a UN team and not by any commission appointed by the government in Colombo.
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Tamil activists protest in front of US embassy in UK

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 February 2015, 19:49 GMT]
Hundreds of Tamil activists gathered outside US embassy on Tuesday to protest against the OISL deferral mooted by the USA, the key actor behind the UNHRC discourse on Sri Lanka. Endorsing the petition drafted by the Tamil Coordinating Committee - UK, the protesters demanded immediate referral of Sri Lanka to the UN Security Council and urgent action to stop ongoing structural genocide of the Eelam Tamil nation. The protesters also burnt the photos of TNA's Parliamentary Group Leader R. Sampanthan and the nominated parliamentarian of the alliance M.A. Sumanthiran, blaming the duo for deceiving Tamils from achieving international justice.
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Protesters demand international prosecutions, decry supervision of domestic mechanisms

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 February 2015, 11:31 GMT]
“While it is true that the Tamil people voted in large numbers for President Sirisena, we wish to emphasise that this was merely an anti-Rajapksa vote. We did not vote with the hope of any substantive change resulting from regime change,” said the appeal by the organisers of the massive protest in Jaffna on Tuesday. More than 5,000 students and people from all walks of life in Jaffna took part in the first largest demonstration after the end of genocidal war in Vanni on Tuesday. “International supervision of any domestic mechanism will only serve to waste time,” the appeal by the Jaffna University society said. The procession, which started at the University of Jaffna ended at the remains of the foundation of Thileepan monument at Nalloor.
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4,000 poverty-stricken Tamil families deprived of Samurdhi assistance in Moothoor

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 February 2015, 18:45 GMT]
3,898 families of genocide-affected Eezham Tamils from 11 Tamil villages in the Moothoor division of Trincomalee district have been completely deprived of Samurdhi poverty alleviation food stamps for 106 months under the previous regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa, civil sources in Trincomalee said. The distribution of food stamps and other poverty alleviation benefits were stopped since March 2006, before the SL military launched military onslaught destroying the Tamil villages.
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OISL deferral has dashed Tamils' hope on permanent settlement: NPC Councillor

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 February 2015, 23:22 GMT]
The international community has opted for the deferral of the OISL findings without understanding the grave impact of the act of postponement, said Northern Province Councillor K. Saraweswaran in a video interview to TamilNet this week. More than its findings on the war crimes, the timely release of the report itself was anticipated to open the door for a sustainable and permanent political solution to the Tamil national question in the island. The deferral has dashed that particular hope that prevailed among the Tamil people in the North-East, he said.
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Protesters condemning OISL delay burn effigy of Sumanthiran

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 February 2015, 15:06 GMT]
Condemning the recently announced deferral of the OISL investigative report by the OHCHR in Geneva, voicing against the talk of UN converting the international investigation into a domestic one, and demanding immediate response on the fate of the thousands of missing persons, Women’s Organisation of Missing Persons' Families in Jaffna staged a protest on Saturday in front of the Bus Stand in the city. The protestors, numbering more than 250, blamed New Delhi and Washington for buying time and space for the Sri Lankan State, with the intention of shielding the crime of genocide. At the end of the protest, an effigy of nominated TNA parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran was burnt by a section of youth from the ITAK, who blamed the Colombo-centric elements within the TNA for collaborating with the global actors discarding the fundamental principles of the Tamil cause.
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Victims demand immediate action against Colombo's squad in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 February 2015, 11:02 GMT]
The families of forcefully disappeared Tamil victims in Ampaa'rai district have demanded immediate arrest and action against Karuna Group paramilitary operative, K. Pushpakumar alias Iniyabarathy, who was the Ampaa'rai district coordinator of Mahinda Rajapaksa's UPFA and a member of the Eastern Provincial Council. After the entire Ampaa'rai district was brought under the control of the occupying Sri Lankan military in 2007, more than 200 Tamil youth have been reported missing in the district after arrest or abduction by Sri Lanka military operated squads. Iniyabarathy has been the key paramilitary operative operating a squad for the genocidal SL military in the district. Iniyabarathy is blamed for the assassination of veteran Tamil journalist Aiyathurai Nadesan in May 2004. Incumbent SL president Maithiripala Sirisena was also having a hand in the paramilitary operations in the East.
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Varippaththaan-cheanai

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 February 2015, 18:48 GMT]
The shifting cultivation field of a person belonging to the temple service community
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No-surprise postponement of OISL report gives time and space to culprits

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 February 2015, 16:53 GMT]
As anticipated by the ‘regime change’ in Colombo, engineered by Washington and New Delhi, who also designed and remotely directed the genocidal war against the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island, the release of the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL) report mandated by the UNHRC on the war crimes and the crimes against humanity in the island, has been postponed to September. One of the citations of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, for the postponement of the report is the “possibility that new information will become available,” besides “signals of broad cooperation [from the Government of Sri Lanka],” according to a news report by the Reuters on Monday.
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Awakening of Tamil polity evokes ‘concern’ in Indian Intelligence

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 February 2015, 23:06 GMT]
Two intelligence operatives attached to the Indian Consulate General in Jaffna and two senior intelligence officers from the Indian High Commission in Colombo hurriedly invited a section of Tamil politicians and paramilitary elements for secret consultations at the Assistant High Commission of India in Kandy this weekend after the latest NPC resolution calling for international investigation on Tamil genocide continuing for decades. The New Delhi Establishment views the call coming from hitherto gagged Tamils in the island as a ‘disturbing development’, informed sources told TamilNet on Sunday.
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NPC resolution gives hopes on Tamil political unity

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 February 2015, 14:32 GMT]
The recent resolution presented and unanimously adopted in the Northern Provincial Council on historic and recent genocide against Tamils in the island, has rung alarm bells at necessary diplomatic quarters, say Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran (EPRLF) and TNA Councillor M.K. Shivajilingam (TELO). In a Palaka'ni interview to TamilNet this week, Mr Shivajilingam said there were attempts afoot to influence certain Tamil diaspora activists to issue sophisticated statements urging the UN Rights Chief to postpone the OISL report. Labelling such manipulations as ‘sugar-coated tablets’, he urged the Tamil diaspora activists to be cautious about such deceptive moves. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam of the TNPF and NPC Councillor Ananthy Sasitharan of the TNA have come up with immediate suggestions on how to take forward the resolution to strengthen the Tamil cause.
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Understanding accountability: international investigation on outlook crime

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 February 2015, 00:31 GMT]
The historic resolution unanimously passed by the Northern Provincial Council on Tuesday has demanded urgent international investigation on the historically continued genocide against Eezham Tamils in the island. Presenting the resolution, the NPC Chief Minister, Justice Wigneswaran was elucidating on the deception and genocide carried out for decades by successive governments of Colombo. He observed that such an investigation would make Sinhala people to see the truth and would help getting justice. Equally important or more important is an international investigation on the adamant ‘outlook crime’ of certain powers that fundamentally contributed to the genocide, especially in the recent decades. The former investigation alone will not bring in justice without the latter and change in the ‘Sri Lanka’ outlook of the concerned powers.
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Wigneswaran exposes US delay tactics at Geneva

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2015, 13:56 GMT]
The US Asst. Secretary of State Nisha Biswal was not in favour of pursuing the Geneva OISL investigation on Sri Lanka in the March sessions as scheduled, revealed NPC Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran in his speech in Tamil at the council on Tuesday, while introducing the resolution that demanded urgent international investigation on historically continuing genocide against Tamils. “In my recent conversation with Ms Biswal, I understood that the USA wants to be in favour of the present Sri Lanka government, as this government is favourable to the USA,” Wigneswaran said. “When Ms Biswal asked what could be the appropriate time for the release of the Geneva report and when I replied that it should be in March, she didn’t accept it,” the NPC-CM said.
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Key to struggle is to change outlook of powers: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2015, 00:04 GMT]
Equal to the war crimes, there is an outlook crime of the powers involved in the island that was responsible for the genocide and is responsible for the on-going genocide of Eezham Tamils. Whether changing the outlook is possible through edification or through challenging the concerned powers? Whether changing the outlook is going to be the major issue in the future decades of the Tamil politics? When TamilNet-Palaka’ni interviewer Haydn Howard asked these questions to Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) leader Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam last week, his reply was “Yes I think that is the key.” The outlook in question doesn’t come from lack of knowledge, Gajendrakumar said, naming US-dominated West, India and China as actors primarily involved. It is certainly not going to be through education, it is something that has to come through a struggle, he said.
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Task of real Tamil political leadership: Sivaram in 2003

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 February 2015, 18:39 GMT]
Sivaram Dharmeratnam alias Taraki, the late senior editor of TamilNet, wrote an article in January 2003, explaining the deadlock of the Sri Lankan unitary constitution which cannot provide for a solution within its framework. The international backers were also aware that a federal solution to the ethnic conflict was practically, legally and politically impossible with the Sri Lankan Constitution, he wrote. “Demystifying the realm of Tamil politics and ridding it of the host of canards, half-truths and obfuscations that have plagued for long the national will to struggle for our inalienable rights,” was the key task of the real Tamil political leadership, he wrote in the article.
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ITAK youth wing leader urges Tamils not to be deceived by deviators

[TamilNet, Sunday, 08 February 2015, 13:01 GMT]
There is no change in Sri Lankan military deployment in the Tamil homeland. On the contrary, the SL military seems to be enthusiastic about setting up bigger noticeboards than before along the border of Valikaamam North ‘High Security Zone’ said VS Sivakaran, the youth wing leader of Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK) in a video interview this week. “However, a section among Tamils are being deceived to expect that there will be positive changes and that the SL military deployment would be reduced under Maithiripala Sirisena,” Sivakaran said. “But, this is not going to happen,” the ITAK youth wing leader said. The USA and India wanted to reverse the Chinese influence in the island. They needed a regime change, which they got. But, this has taken place at the expense of the political aspirations of the small nation of Eelam Tamils, he said.
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