Maithiripala regime accelerates Sinhala occupation of Nayinaatheevu islet off Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 November 2015, 23:47 GMT]
The occupying Navy of genocidal Sri Lanka and the Chief Buddhist monk stationed at Nayinaatheevu, an islet off Jaffna, have accelerated Sinhalicisation and Buddhicisation of the islet through military occupation. SL Minister for Justice and Buddha Sasana Mr Wijedasa Rajapakshe, who was visiting the peninsula last week, was encouraging Ven Navadagala Paduma Kiththi Tissa Thero to expand further the Buddhist vihara constructions in the island. The Northern Provincial Council (NPC) on Friday condemned the Sinhala-Buddhisication of the settlement wards belonging to Eezham Tamils. The Sinhala Buddhist domination and occupation, purely based on mythical claims, is being accelerated at the strategically located island where popular Saiva and Islamic sites of worships have existed for a long time along with a Buddhist temple.
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Tamil POWs, political prisoners announce fast unto death

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 November 2015, 23:44 GMT]
Rejecting the offer by the SL State to release them on bail, Tamil prisoners of war and political prisoners on Friday announced that they are going to begin a fast-unto-death protest in the prisons starting from 08 November on Sunday. Giving a last chance to the president, prime minister, attorney general and justice minister of the SL State to conduct negotiations with Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, the Tamil prisoners who are going to commence the hunger-strike said they are determined to wage the struggle. Upon their demise, the SL Prsident Maithiripala Sirisena should come in person to receive their dead bodies and hand them over to the medical faculty of the University of Jaffna and that their organs should be donated or used for medical research, the Tamil prisoners said. “We are determined like Thileepan”, a POW told TamilNet.
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SL Navy continues to occupy church lands in Peasaalai, Mannaar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 November 2015, 22:16 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) in Mannaar has transformed illegally seized lands belonging to one of the largest churches in the island, into military-owned property during the regime of Maithiripala Sirisena. The SL Navy which occupied the lands in 2006 after carrying out a genocidal attack on the church killing a woman and injuring more than 44 by lobbing grenades on people who had sought asylum at the church, was telling the Parish Priest Fr. Vincent Patrick at that time the SLN was going to be stationed for a while as a temporary measure and that the lands would be handed back to the church. The lands seized for the camp were 3,000 square meters in 2006. But, later the SLN base was expanded to 8,000 square meters and now under Maithiripala Sirisene's regime, the occupation has been further expanded to 14,000 square meters.
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Tamil leadership need not shy away or react to unfair challenge coming from Sumanthiran

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 November 2015, 03:34 GMT]
The Eezham Tamil leadership should positively consider seeking pardon from the Tamil-speaking Muslims, explaining the dynamics, going back to the root of the evil lying in the mentality of the sections of elite of all sides in upholding the colonially created Colombo-centric genocidal State in the island and its patrons outside, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The Muslim grievances, as often highlighted by them, do not begin from the LTTE eviction of Muslims from Jaffna. They start from Sir. P. Ramanathan, lawyering and achieving impunity for the Colombo-centric Sinhala leadership’s crimes against Muslims in the Puththa'lam pogrom of 1915. The dynamics of Colombo, now added with international partners in deploying ‘lawyers’ to seek impunity continues to this day, the activists said.
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Jaffna lawyers tell SL Minister to prove political will in releasing Tamil prisoners

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 November 2015, 23:20 GMT]
Lawyers from Jaffna district, who met the SL Justice Minister Mr Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe in Jaffna on Tuesday urged the Colombo government to release all the Tamil political prisoners rotting in the jails without looking at their cases through criminal or legal procedures. The SL minister was visiting Jaffna to stage a deceptive campaign claiming that the SL Attorney General was prepared to grant bail to a considerable number of prisoners and that all the cases of the persons detained by the notorious ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ (TID) have been transferred to the office of the SL Attorney General.
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Veteran Tamil scholar Professor Veluppillai passes away

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 November 2015, 20:49 GMT]
Veteran Eezham Tamil scholar, Professor Alvappillai Veluppillai, who has internationally contributed over several decades to serious academic work in Tamil language, epigraphy, Dravidian linguistics and religion, passed away on Sunday night in San Francisco in the USA. He was 79. Born in Puloali South of Vadamaraadchi, Jaffna, in 1936, he was Professor of Tamil at the University of Jaffna as well as the University of Peradeniya. He also served at the Institute of Dravidian Linguistics in Trivandrum, Kerala University, the International Tamil Research Centre at Chennai, Uppsala University of Sweden and at the Virginia and Arizona Universities of the USA.
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Independent media watchdogs urged to visit Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 November 2015, 21:17 GMT]
International media watch dogs, not funded by State actors or Corporates, are urged to visit Northern and Eastern Provinces in the island and record the failure of domestic investigation mechanisms of the present regime in Colombo in bringing justice to the killings, enforced disappearances and harassments that prevailed and continue to prevail against independent journalists in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. Those who ordered the assassinations of leading reporters and those who took part in the executions are still being operated by the occupying SL military in Jaffna and other places, independent Tamil journalists who are not exposed to funded agendas in the North and East told TamilNet.
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ITAK leaders stand exposed as powers deceive Tamils with hypocritical investigations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 October 2015, 21:48 GMT]
Refusing to look at the affairs of the nation of Eezham Tamils through their homeland in the North-East and being bent on approaching the Eezham Tamils through Colombo-centric geopolitical designs, the West and the UN mechanisms have nakedly exposed themselves even before the ink went dry on the OISL report and the ‘US-Sri Lanka’ co-sponsored resolution in the UN Human Rights Council. In the meantime, the leaders of Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK) stand exposed for their lack of statesmanship and for the failure of not clarifying TNA's position regarding the deceptive path of ‘domestic’ investigations. The ITAK leaders have also failed the nation of Eezham Tamils by not demanding the release the Tamil political prisoners, who have been rotting in the jails of genocidal Sri Lanka for years.
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Wild elephant rampage on resettled villagers continues unabated in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 October 2015, 16:37 GMT]
The systematic ignorance by genocidal Sri Lanka to arrest the menace caused by wild elephants that go on rampage killing and maiming resettled Tamils in former LTTE-administered areas in Paduvaankarai region of Batticaloa, is an intentional tactic to chase Tamils permanently away from their native villages and colonise Paduvaankarai with Sinhalese, Tamil civil officials in Batticaloa District Secretariat told TamilNet on Friday. In the meantime, Yogarasa Ganesh the chairman of Rural Development Society (RDS) in Katchatkodi, a village situated in Paddippazhai division of Paduvaankarai region, confirmed that there has been no action despite repeated appeals through GS, DS officers and the provincial councillors. The SL authorities were giving better protection to Sinhala settlers in the nearby villages, the RDS chairman said when contacted by TamilNet.
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Colombo beefs up borders of Sinhala military colonization in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 October 2015, 00:09 GMT]
The occupying military of ‘Sri Lanka’ is once again strengthening the borderlines along the former ‘High Security Zone’ areas in Valikaamam North in Jaffna. Most of these lands were permanently seized from Eezham Tamils by the previous regime of Colombo. The SL military and the new regime in Colombo, buying time citing ‘step-by-step’ release, have been reluctant to release the illegally seized lands back to Tamil owners. When the uprooted Tamils stepped up their protests demanding the SL President Maithiripala Sirisena to officially gazette the release of the lands, the new regime openly claimed that the release of lands was a matter to be decided by the SL military. Now, after coming to terms with the USA through UNHRC discourse, Colombo is again restricting access across the borders of the former HSZ that encloses the KKS harbour, Palaali airport and the SL military base at Palaali.
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Tamil civil groups under pressure to dilute their investigation demand

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 October 2015, 23:37 GMT]
A section of so-called human rights activists from South are exerting pressure on civil groups in North-East, including the Citizens' Committees, women groups, missing persons groups to take part in a deceptive move being organised in Colombo by Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera with the aim of projecting their participation as giving consent to Colombo's domestic investigations. The majority of the participants are from South. Ms Nimalka Fernando, a Sinhala Christian and the president of the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), has joined Mr Samaraweera in protecting the interests of the new regime in Colombo, a citizens' committee leader in North told TamilNet on Monday. The Tamil civil groups met on Saturday in Jaffna to discuss how to face the move, which is scheduled on 29 October in Colombo.
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US designs target Trincomalee, Champoor Tamils remain deprived of compensation

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 October 2015, 23:27 GMT]
The occupying navy of genocidal ‘Sri Lanka’ is buying time to vacate its naval school ‘SLNS Vidura’, which is situated in 40 acres of 237 acres of SL navy seized lands in Champoor. The resettling Tamils are unable to access their lands within the remaining areas of 237 acres as the main routes to these lands run through the 40 acres of lands of the naval training base. Although the SL Navy has moved the activities from the training base, a few officers are instructed to stay behind to delay the process. Now, the occupying navy is buying time citing monsoon rains. The uprooted people have been explicitly demanding the SL authorities to relocate the military before the monsoon rains. In the meantime, SL Governor to East, Austin Fernando, a former SL defence secretary, is busy in scheming US entry into Trincomalee, informed sources in Trincomalee said.
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Denial of genocide ‘even-handed’ for EPW writer

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2015, 23:24 GMT]
Denial of genocide and genocide intent in the long war and on-going structural war in the island, amounts to saying in other words that the war was fought only on the issue of ‘international terrorism’ as the USA and its bandwagon were saying earlier in directing the course of the war. The denial and refusal to even consider investigation on genocidal intent are nothing but completely airbrushing the ethnonational dimensions of the war and even the pogroms preceded that. It is no less a lie than the Rajapaksa lie of ‘zero casualty’ of civilians in the war. But when the fundamental twist comes from the OISL report submitted to the UNHRC that doesn’t recognize even the word Tamil, it becomes consistently ‘even-handed’ for an EPW writer, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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Two more human skeletons exhumed from Kumaratunga's killings fields in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 October 2015, 20:29 GMT]
The organization representing the families of forced disappeared in Jaffna has demanded on Friday credible and independent forensic analysis to be conducted without further delay on recently exhumed skeletons from Mu'l'li at Ariyaalai East, located near the genocidal killing fields of Chemma'ni. Skeletons of two females, one of them believed to be a schoolgirl allegedly raped and killed by the occupying SL military, have been recently exhumed after sand scoopers discovered the remains. The SL military had vacated from Mu'l'li two years ago after keeping the area as a ‘High Security Zone’ since 1996. Around 800 Tamil youth were forcefully disappeared between 1996 and 1999 in Jaffna peninsula under Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga's (CBK) rule.
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‘Tamils in Norway should take hint from question posed by former peace monitor’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 October 2015, 23:56 GMT]
The judicial model being advocated by the Sri Lankan State following the UNHRC Resolution in Geneva is set to cause headache for Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as soon as Colombo summons the former Norwegian peace envoys as witnesses in what is being interpreted largely as a domestic mechanism with international ‘assistance’, writes Christian Ranheim, a Norwegian Human Rights and Law Consultant, who was a former member of the Sri Lankan Monitoring Mission (SLMM) that monitored the implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement between Colombo government and the LTTE. In a blog article on Thursday Mr Ranheim has hinted that Oslo's participation in a ‘Sri Lankan’ domestic court would be a matter of debate, if the judicial process in Colombo is not seen as a legitimate one.
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Tamil political prisoners complain about increased harassment at SL prisons

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 October 2015, 22:18 GMT]
The intelligence operatives of the Sri Lankan military and the prison officers are threatening the Tamil political prisoners against their attempts to file Fundamental Rights (FR) petitions challenging their continued imprisonment, the families visiting the prisoners from Batticaloa told TamilNet this week. When the families are visiting the prisoners, two intelligence operatives were accompanying the imprisoned Tamils. In the meantime, rights activists from Batticaloa, providing free legal assistance to the prisoners in Colombo Magazine prison and at Anurdhapura prison, complain that the prisoners were unable to communicate with them about filing FR petitions.
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David in 2012: Diaspora duty-bound in advancing independent polity of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 October 2015, 23:32 GMT]
The late Gandhiyam David, when interviewed in Tamil Nadu in 2012 for TamilNet, categorically stated that an independent state for the Tamils was the only viable solution. The USA was playing “double game” behind the back of Eezham Tamils. India took a decisive role in Colombo's war against Tamils. It was Pirapaharan who defended Eezham Tamils through the army he had built up independently, he said. After decades, Colombo had realised the crucial political backing it needed from New Delhi to militarily destroy the Tamil movement and India played a key role during the Mu'l'livaaykkaal massacre, before and after that. It was only recently they are trying to get out and the Chinese are getting into their boots to transform the island into a base for Chinese politics, he said stressing that Tamils need independent people-centric mobilisation to preserve their existence as Eezham Tamils.
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OISL report downplays mass killings, silent on genocide: Law academic

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 October 2015, 23:09 GMT]
An article which appeared on Monday in the Blog of the European Journal of International Law (EJIL: Talk!), comparing the 2011 UN's Panel of Expert's report on Sri Lanka with the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL) 2015 report, points out that the OISL shies away from estimating the scale of deaths and avoids attributing to the [Sri Lanka] government's intent in directing attacks against the civilian [Tamil] population. The article adds that "given this shift of focus away from mass killings of civilians...it is not surprising the OISL is silent on the crime of genocide..." The article is authored by Umesh Perinpanayagam, an Eezham Tamil academic, who works as a researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
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Ex-LTTE Women's Political Head Thamilini dies of cancer at 43

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 October 2015, 18:37 GMT]
Sivakamy Sivasubramaniyam alias Thamilni, who was formerly the head of LTTE's Women Political Wing, has passed away on Sunday at Maharagama cancer hospital after battling cancer for some months, news sources in Colombo said. Coming from an Up-Country Tamil family settled in Paranthan in Vanni, Ms Thamilini served in the LTTE for almost 18 years and had earned the trust of the LTTE leader V. Pirapaharan for her political work. Thamilini was one of the foremost political leaders of the LTTE, who had proved that women were not second to men in contributing to the liberation of the nation of Eezham Tamils.
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Health of hunger-striking Tamil political prisoners worsens

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 October 2015, 23:42 GMT]
At least 20 of around 300 Eezham Tamil political prisoners on hunger strike at 11 prisons in the island have been admitted to hospital by Friday night, according to news sources in Colombo and Jaffna. The prison authorities of genocidal Sri Lanka have refused access to the relatives and rights activists to witness the deteriorating situation of the hunger strikers in the prisons. While ITAK Parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran failed to secure tangible results in his meeting with SL Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe, the students and teachers of Jaffna University, together with the relatives of the imprisoned Tamils, have stepped up their mobilisation demanding immediate release of the political prisoners. The Commission For Justice and Peace of the Catholic Diocese of Jaffna, in a statement issued on Friday, has demanded immediate release of the Tamil political prisoners.
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