ICG plays mischief with TamilNet

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 November 2012, 08:40 GMT]
The International Crisis Group (ICG) in its latest report on Sri Lanka, No. 239, dated 20 November 2012, came out with the following sentence: “The influential website TamilNet, whose editors are linked to the so-called Nediyavan faction of the LTTE, frequently criticises the TNA for moderation allegedly imposed by the Indian and U.S. governments.” In the footnotes for the statement, the ICG cites Norway questioning Nediyavan, the Dutch investigating illegal LTTE fundraising and D.B.S. Jeyaraj writing on “Tigers overseas chief Nediyavan” getting questioned in Oslo over alleged links to LTTE fund raising (page 13).
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Honest intellectual discourse missing in Tamil Nadu: Thirumurugan

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 November 2012, 08:38 GMT]
Lack of honest intellectual discussion in Tamil Nadu is the reason why the Tamil Eezham cause has not been taken up for intense intellectual discussion at a larger All-India level, said Thirumurugan Gandhi, coordinator of May 17 civil society movement of TamilNadu in an interview to TamilNet earlier this month. Such intellectual discourses usually dominated by Marxist Communists and Brahmanistic sections in Tamil Nadu failed the Eezham Tamils. But the biased sections that theoretically opposed Tamil Eezham, opposed the LTTE, pushed back the cause and contributed favourably to the Sri Lankan state now find themselves sidelined in Tamil Nadu due to civil society awakening, Thirumurugan said, adding an appreciating note on the support of Muslim civil society in Tamil Nadu.
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"Multimedia book to unbury facts of Sri Lanka war"

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 November 2012, 00:18 GMT]
Benjamin Dix, a former UN staffer who spent four years in Sri Lanka from 2004 till 2008 when Sri Lanka asked all NGOs to leave the island, and who with illustrator Lindsay Pollock, is documenting the effects of Sri Lanka war through the story of a Tamil refugee, in an interview given to TamilNet says, "I felt terrible after the UN evacuation from Vanni and very angry that they international system had abandoned civilians at their time of need....Due to the media blackout on the conflict, I felt that it was very important to tell the stories of the dead and the survivors of the conflict." Arundhati Roy, writes in support of Dix's project, "tens of thousands of tamil civilians who were brazenly and brutally killed and powerful countries which have strategic and business interests in the region are rapidly burying these facts," and that the book will unbury these facts.
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SL ambassador cites China for ‘autonomy within unitary structure’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 November 2012, 06:25 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka’s ambassador in France, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke, on Sunday reiterated his stand of finding ‘autonomy’ solutions for Tamils within a ‘unitary’ state. The model he cited was China. He was replying to criticism on his stand by Emeritus Professor Peter Schalk that appeared in TamilNet last Thursday. “The reply of the ambassador only confirms what we all have a foreboding of, namely that the ambassador of Sri Lanka has a totalitarian system like the Chinese as a model for the unitary state of Lanka. What about the "autonomy" of Tibet in practice? There is no autonomy,” commented Peter Schalk in a note sent to TamilNet on Monday.
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Eyewitnesses to Kumaarapuram massacre summoned to Anuradhapura

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 November 2012, 20:16 GMT]
Witnesses to February 1996 brutal massacre of 24 Tamils by the occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) at Kumarapuram vilage in Trincomalee, have been sent summons to appear on Monday in Anuradhapura High Court situated in predominantly Sinhala district, more than 16 years after the genocidal massacre. “This gang rape and massacre of innocent civilians, including children and women, forms part of a system evidence of Genocide against Eezham Tamils,” a lawyer from Trincomalee told TamilNet commenting “justice delayed is justice denied.” Many of the witnesses are poor labourers who do not know Sinhala. The witnesses have also been threatened by the SL military not to appear in the Courts, the sources further said.
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Politics of Genocide

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 November 2012, 09:51 GMT]
While the Mu'l'livaaykkaal killings and the on-going cultural destruction in the NorthEast can be argued to constitute "Genocide" within the definition of the Genocide Convention of 1948, a virtual codification of the “Never Again” ethos, Western Nations including the United Nations have shown not only any inclination to accept that the crime occurred, but also are likely complicit in allowing the allegedly criminal state to continue to commit genocidal crimes, and to avoid accountability for crimes committed during the war. The criminality that may befall the West arising from Article 3(e), and the violation of Article I of the Genocide Convention for failing to prevent genocide, are likely reasons for the officials of the UN and UN member states to avoid calling the killings a "Genocide."
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Tamil activists take different view of Canada’s support to UN’s internal report

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 November 2012, 00:16 GMT]
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird issued a statement on Thursday regarding the UN Secretary General’s Internal Review Panel Report on Sri Lanka. Offering support to the report, the statement laid stress on the failure of the Sri Lankan government to make progress on ‘reconciliation, accountability and respect for human rights in Sri Lanka’. Responding to this, Tamil activists in Canada told TamilNet “ if the Canadian government is genuinely concerned about ensuring that mistakes made in Sri Lanka are not repeated, then they must acknowledge that addressing the fundamental national question of Eezham Tamils and providing justice for the genocide they suffered should be a prerequisite to any ‘work’ of the international community.”
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Israel airstrikes kill Hamas military commander

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 November 2012, 09:33 GMT]
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) began on Wednesday a heavy bombardment of the Gaza strip with a targeted airstrike, killing Hamas military commander Ahmad al-Jabari and a passenger in his vehicle. The IDF cited his involvement in the hostage-taking of Gilad Shalit, an episode in the 2006 war on Lebanon, as its justification. Israel's "Operation Pillar of Cloud" signals the largest escalation in the conflict since 2008-9 Gaza invasions. “This name invokes the Hebrew nation's biblical pre-history - much as Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism conjures the Mahavamsa as an ideological tool in it’s very modern state military strategy,” comments Lorenzo Fiorito, an activist working with solidarity groups in Canada. “The present Gaza offensive has little to do with the individuals it has killed or with millenia-old founding myths - it has to do with the Palestinian claim to statehood,” he adds.
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Autonomy within unitary structure paradoxical: Peter Schalk

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 November 2012, 14:17 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s ambassador in France, Dayan Jayatilleke, calling for “autonomy within a unitary structure,” at a seminar in Paris earlier this month was a political-populist statement, responded Professor Emeritus Peter Schalk, who participated the seminar arranged by Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). A unitary structure excludes autonomy. A social scientist would not have uttered such a sentence, Prof Schalk said, in a note sent to TamilNet on Thursday. Calling CNRS partial in providing propaganda platform to Colombo, he said that the violence by the governments of Lanka is structural and genocidal that is practiced over the decades and not just an occasional aberration or some nuts.
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UN consistent in ‘leaking’ on Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 November 2012, 04:21 GMT]
An internal review panel report on the UN ‘s conduct in the final months of the Vanni War has found the UN guilty of “systematic failure” in Sri Lanka, according to the report leaked to the BBC on Tuesday. The practice of ‘leaking’ information and reports on Sri Lanka is consistent with the UN ever since the times of the Vanni War, and this only shows how the UN is still not straight forward in remedying the genocide of Eezham Tamils it abetted in the island, commented a new generation Tamil politician. He cited the leaked documents of the UN on the casualties in Vanni War in March 2009 and the UNSG panel report that was leaked to media before being made public in April 2011. BBC cited sources that the executive summary of stark conclusions in the current draft report will be removed in the final report.
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Politics breaches international law in denying Eezham Tamil Nation: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 November 2012, 23:20 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the president of the Tamil National People's Front (TNPF), interviewed by TamilNet's Palaka'ni on Saturday said that Eezham Tamils are legally qualified for nationhood under the existing international law. Nationhood is denied to Eezham Tamils not by the law, but by the international politics, he said.
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Tamil nationalist political organiser assassinated in France

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 November 2012, 23:41 GMT]
Nadarajah Mathinthiran alias Parithi, an ex-LTTE commander who had left the movement in the early 90's and later coordinated Tamil organisational political activities in France since 2003, has been assassinated on Thursday evening outside the office of the Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC) in Paris, news sources in France said. People close to the 50-year-old organiser, who was also known as Reagon, blamed the Sri Lankan military establishment for the assassination. “This seems to be a psyop assassination serving the agenda of the Sri Lankan state targeting the political mobilisation of the Tamil diaspora,” Mr Pradeep, an independent political activist based in Paris told TamilNet. The French Police is investigating the killing.
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Sri Lanka must be investigated for crime of genocide: London conference

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 November 2012, 18:09 GMT]
The global conference organized by British Tamils’ Forum (BTF) and All Party Parliamentary Groups for Tamils (APPGT), involving participation of civil society activists and politicians from the island and Tamil Nadu, diaspora groups, and British parliamentarians, on Wednesday called for an independent international investigation on the complete conduct of the Sri Lankan state against the Tamil nation, specifically calling for an investigation on the allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by the GoSL on the Tamil people. The proposed resolution also urged the global civil society and leaders of the IC to stop decimation of the Tamil nation by the Sri Lankan state.
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British historian questions ‘parliamentary freedom’ in Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 November 2012, 15:15 GMT]
Reputed British Marxist scholar specialised in intellectual history, Perry Anderson, interviewed by Indian magazine Outlook, opined that as regards ‘parliamentary freedom’, Jamaica and Mauritius fared better than Sri Lanka, India and Malaysia, citing respectively, disenfranchisement of Tamils, Kashmiris, and the lack of freedom during polls. He was responding to columnist Praful Bidwai who asked whether Indian democracy was a ‘unique achievement’, better than SL where “a state of war and emergency has prevailed for decades, with effective disenfranchisement of the Tamils” and Malaysia that has a “corrupt Lebanese-style ethnic power-sharing system”. Prof. Anderson’s observations were further elucidated by an Indian academic researcher writing to TamilNet that the disenfranchisement of the Eezham Tamils is a structural necessity of genocidal and unitary Sri Lanka.
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‘Independent civil society activism best tribute to Thamilchelvan’: Tamil Nadu writer

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 November 2012, 23:20 GMT]
Arguing that Sri Lanka’s genocidal war on the Eezham Tamils and the protracted genocide post-2009 was possible only due to the system of global injustice, Tamil Nadu based writer, poet and civil society activist Meena Kandasamy urged the Eezham Tamils in the island, the people of Tamil Nadu, the Tamil diaspora and other solidarity groups to form a ‘global civil society’ so as to politically and ideologically counter the designs of the establishments, in a commentary sent to TamilNet. Writing on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the assassination of S.P. Thamilchelvan, Ms. Kandasamy opines that such activism would be the best tribute to the legacy of the late political leader of the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam.
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Sri Lanka demands ‘time and space’ to complete genocide

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 November 2012, 16:53 GMT]
“What we ask our friends in the international community is to acknowledge the progress that has been made and at the same time give us the time and space to work towards further progress,” said Rajapaksa regime’s minister Mahinda Samarasinghe in his concluding remarks at the UPR session in Geneva on Thursday. The progress that has been made by Colombo in militarisation, colonisation, genocide, structural genocide and annihilation of the identity of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island is explicit in the last few years. The regime’s audacity in asking for more time and space to complete the process stems from the continued failure of the International Community of Establishments (ICE) in addressing the issue as one that of genocide and national question, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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‘Resettled’ people stranded by heavy rains in Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 October 2012, 23:31 GMT]
Heavy rainfall, reported amidst cyclone warning, has stranded thousands of people living along the coastal stretch of Mullaiththeevu and Vadamaraadchi East without shelter and food. The people of Keappapulavu, recently left under the trees by the SL military that has occupied their lands, are the worst affected in Mullaiththeevu district. In the meantime, the occupying Sri Lankan military has hijacked the assistance that was supposed to be provided by the civil authorities to the affected people. The SL Government Agent of Mullaiththeevu, Mr N. Vethanayakam, hesitant to to disclose the details of the displacement, has been instructed by Colombo to receive humanitarian assistance through the SL military, informed sources at the District Secretariat told TamilNet on Wednesday.
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SL military, paramilitary embark on ‘legal intimidation’ against Tamil media

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 October 2012, 15:28 GMT]
Sri Lanka's military establishment and EPDP paramilitary opt for new ways in recent times to suppress media critical of the SL defence ministry and its paramilitary operatives. Sri Lanka's military commander Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya has reportedly filed a defamation case against Jaffna-based Uthayan daily and SL minister Douglas Devananda, who is also the leader of EPDP paramilitary, has filed a similar case in the courts in Jaffna demanding a huge sum of compensation against a WikiLeaks-based story filed by the paper, media sources in Jaffna told TamilNet. Sri Lankan Defence Ministry, led by SL presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has found ‘legal operations’ more effective than ‘white van operations’ in silencing critical media, journalists in Colombo said adding that the role of ‘registered’ media in the island has now come to almost an effective end.
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Solidarity activists protest UK deportations of Eezham Tamil asylum seekers

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 October 2012, 00:20 GMT]
Condemning deportations of Eezham Tamil asylum seekers to Sri Lanka by the UKBA, solidarity activists staged a demonstration near Heathrow, London today. The protest called for by an anti-deportation group ‘No Borders which saw the participation of mostly non-Tamil activists, also had participation of activists from Tamil Solidarity. Meanwhile, a London high court “ordered that the imminent deportation to Sri Lanka of a number of Tamils be halted amid claims they may be tortured on their return,” the Guardian reported on Tuesday. In a mail sent to TamilNet, UK based activists of the NSSP asked why the diaspora organizations involved in lobbying, especially the pro-Conservatives, have failed to challenge the deportation of Tamil asylum seekers who face obvious threat of persecution by the Sri Lankan state.
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Fighter plane gift to British in WWI: diaspora mindset of Jaffna Tamils revisited

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 October 2012, 03:27 GMT]
On special requests sent to colonial communities by the British to support them in the war against Germany, on 22 Dec 1915, Jaffna Tamils living in Malaya, donated the cost of a fighter plane and named it “Jaffna,” says an informed source, adding that it shows the ‘characteristic of Eezham Tamils supporting the war efforts of guardians of safety, justice and economic prosperity.’ But almost during the time, poet Bharathi in Tamil Nadu welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1917. During WWII, a number of Eezham Tamils joined the Tamil Nadu Tamils in Malaya in supporting the Indian National Army of Subhas Chandra Bose, aligned with the Japanese. Some among them saw the imperialist games and joined the Malayan Communist Party led by Chinese in Malaya. What is the ideological course of the diaspora today, in response to the establishments-led genocide, ask Eezham Tamil activists in the island.
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