Profound experience of attending Tamil Genocide Remembrance in Vanni: Bremen Tribunal Judge

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 May 2019, 18:06 GMT]
Colombian theologist Rev Fr Javier Giraldo Moreno was visiting the island this month taking part in the tenth Tamil Genocide Remembrance event, which was held at Mu'l'livaaykkaal in Vanni on 18 May. Fr Javier Giraldo was one of the eleven judges of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT) which found the unitary state of Sri Lanka guilty of the crime of genocide in the hearings held in Bremen, Germany in January 2014. Before leaving the island, Fr Giraldo addressed journalists at a press conference held at Jaffna Press Club on 20 May, and he was responding to four specific questions. Re-examining Norway-facilitated 2002 peace process was necessary to advance the struggle for the rights of the Tamils, he said. Furthermore, the leaders of all religions should get together to counter the divide-and-rule tactics of the SL government, especially after the Easter attacks, the Catholic priest said.
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Wigneswaran writes to Guterres: Urgent need for UN Monitoring Mission to North-East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 May 2019, 22:33 GMT]
Former Chief Minister of Northern Provincial Council Justice CV Wigneswaran has written to UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres urging the latter to appoint a United Nations Monitoring Mission to record ongoing human rights violations in the North-East. The SL military has put up ten checkpoints between the Tamil-dominated areas of Vavuniyaa and Jaffna, and these checkpoints have become sites of countless human rights violations, mainly targeted harassment of Tamil women and arbitrary detentions, Justice Wigneswaran said in his letter sent to UN offices on Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day.
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Metanarrative of Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal, geopolitics and secularism: Jude Lal Fernando

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 May 2019, 00:28 GMT]
The outside powers, be it USA, UK, China or India, are always pre-occupied with the geo-strategic location of the island. During the British colonial period, the Sinhalese were made to believe that they were closer to the British than to the Tamils (Tamils were the ‘invaders’). This resulted in a religiously defined Sinhala Buddhist unitary, which sought to consolidate itself after the ‘independence’. The genocidal process was the outcome. The Tamil liberation struggle, which was a secular nationalist struggle, culminated into the Tamil Eelam state and stopped the genocide. The 2009 onslaught not only destroyed the human lives, but also the secular nationalist liberational ethos. After the Easter Sunday attack in 2019, religious conflicts have been imposed with global implications. Professor Jude Lal Fernando explains the metanarrative and proposes an action to overcome the challenges.
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Photos from Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal Remembrance in Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 May 2019, 16:05 GMT]
“The Tamils all over the world commemorate not only the death of our brothers and sisters who were killed but the history of resistance and its sacrifice for the collective cause of the Tamil people,” said Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal Remembrance Public Forum (North-East) in a statement read out at the commemoration event, which was marked by around one thousand people who braved the harassment of the occupying SL military in marking the 10th year of Tamil Genocide on 18 May 2019 at Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal in Vanni. The photos narrate the emotional nature of the event.
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Kalaikkoan's premonition proved right, Tamils cannot shy away from international struggle

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 May 2019, 23:41 GMT]
The chauvinist elements in the South which were behind the State-sponsored anti-Tamil pogrom in 1958 also chose to warn the Muslims and the Burghers that they would be the next targets in the aftermath. Many Tamils were chased out from South to Jaffna and Batticaloa, But they would be eradicated from there as well, in the future, through Sinhala militarisation, the warning claimed. Fifty years later, Colombo and the powers abetting its war, would be achieving that if the war was allowed to proceed the course it was taking, warned Kalaikkoan master, the head of LTTE's Navam Academy, in 2009. The 36-year-old student of history, who had almost lost sight in both of his eyes was an articulate teacher. He was subjected to enforced disappearance at the hands of the SL military on 17 May 2009. TamilNet releases the unedited audio of the Satellite phone communication with him from 13 April 2009.
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Emergency used to target peaceful Tamil activists at Keappaa-pulavu in Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 May 2019, 09:49 GMT]
The SL Military and the Police were allowing the Sinhala colonists to lay siege to the District Secretariat in Mullaiththeevu on Monday. However, they were harassing four Tamil protesters, who met a small group of foreign journalists at Keappaa-pulavu in Vanni on the same day. “The checkpoint was not there when we started the meeting. However, after 25 minutes, the checkpoint was hurriedly put up near the protest site and the four of us, as well as the journalists talking to us, were thoroughly checked at the post. The SL military knows us very well as we have been staging the protest along the street near the military camp for 807 days,” Chandraleela Simidkasan, a leader of protesting Tamil women at Keappaa-pulavu said on Tuesday.
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New Delhi continues to interpret aspiration of Eezham Tamils as threatening its sovereignty

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 May 2019, 23:13 GMT]
Eezham Tamils should get the clue from New Delhi's latest proscription of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that the idea of Tamil Eelam remains strong even though the LTTE was institutionally destroyed a decade ago through a genocidal onslaught, commented Tamil activists in Jaffna. The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs proscribed the LTTE for five more years issuing a notification through the Gazette of India on Tuesday. The announcement observed that “[t]he LTTE’s objective for a separate homeland (Tamil Eelam) for all Tamils threatens the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India, and amounts to cession and secession of a part of the territory of India from the Union and thus falls within the ambit of unlawful activities”.
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SL State-run sea cucumber farming becomes major threat to Tamil fishers of North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 May 2019, 20:58 GMT]
The occupying unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka is scheming to shrink the coastal fishing access to Eezham Tamil fishers in the islets and along the west coast of Vanni, where the resettled Tamils are already struggling with limited access to their coastal belt due to militarization and other activities from the South. Several new locations have been identified by the SL state-run National Aquaculture Development Authority (NAQDA) and the SL National Aquatic Resources Research And Development Agency (NARA), informed sources at Jaffna District Secretariat told TamilNet on Tuesday.
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Sinhala colonists protest against Tamil officials in Vanni

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 May 2019, 18:57 GMT]
More than one hundred Sinhala colonist families staged a protest laying siege to the Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat on Monday opposing the Tamil officials, including the District Secretary (GA) Ms Rupavathy Ketheeswaran, for objecting their illegal occupation of the lands. Even after the district secretary had met them, the protesters were blockading the entrance. The SL Police was not acting against the protesters. The SL military and police, who blocking Tamils from gathering to commemorate the 10th year of 2009 genocide that took place in the district citing Emergency Regulations, were not acting against the Sinhala protesters, the officials at the District Secretariat told TamilNet.
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Academics across continents mark Tamil genocide remembrance in Dublin, discuss global injustice

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 May 2019, 23:34 GMT]
Irish, Cypriot, Rwandan, Palestinian, Rohingya, Korean and Colombian academics were taking part in an academic conference and a commemorative event on the tenth year of 2009 Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal Tamil genocide in Dublin, Ireland on the 02nd of May and on the 08th of May. The reflections made at these events provided both insights from lived experiences of genocide as well analysis of the situation before and in the aftermath of May 2009. The geopolitical context of Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal, attempts to de-politicize Tamil resistance and consolidate the ongoing structural genocide institutionalized through the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka were discussed in detail in the events making comparisons with the oppressions elsewhere in the world.
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Blake's Colombo lecture reminds Tamils of bureaucracy abetting 2009 genocide

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 May 2019, 16:57 GMT]
Former US Ambassador Robert O. Blake was visiting Colombo on Tuesday to deliver a lecture titled ‘US Foreign Policy towards China and South Asia and what it means for Sri Lanka’. He was advising Colombo to tackle the response to the Easter Sunday attacks by drawing lessons from the 2001 Bush Administration and form an intelligence coordinating body of technocrats not to miss any single lead of information on potential attacks. Former SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was precisely doing that during the war, he said. He also warned against over-reacting as the US did after 9/11 by expanding government surveillance without appropriate constitutional checks. On geopolitics, Mr Blake was enticing Colombo to engage with China, the USA and other countries in parallel, a paradigm which enabled Colombo to annihilate the military power of Tamils through a genocidal onslaught in 2009.
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SL military, police go all out against everything ‘Thowheed’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 May 2019, 23:54 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military and the SL police have detained at least 21 Muslims in Mannar up to Wednesday night. Most of the arrested are members of various Thowheed Jamath groups that are different from the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ), which was created by the Easter Sunday attacker Zahran Hashim. These are multiple organisations such as Ceylon TJ, SLTJ, All Ceylon TJ and United TJ which are not prohibited. Even the hardliners in these groups have faith-oriented difference with the NTJ. However, the SL Police and the military are going after everything that has 'Thowheed' in the name, legal sources in Mannaar said. The personnel carrying out the cordon and search operations are Sinhalese. Meanwhile, the SL soldiers are also desecrating the places of worship by wearing shoes inside the premises, the people complained.
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SLA exerts pressure on ex-LTTE members to act as informants after Easter attacks

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 April 2019, 23:12 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala Army in Jaffna is trying to set Tamils against the Muslims in the peninsula by attempting to recruit former LTTE members to work as informants. On Tuesday, more than fifty ex-LTTE members were instructed to attend a meeting at the SL Army's 512 Brigade camp at the Sinhala Maha Vidyalaya in the city of Jaffna. The SLA officers were offering biscuits with a soothing talk, an ex-LTTE member who attended the meeting said. A former LTTE political division member openly stated in the meeting that he had joined the movement to serve the cause of the people and not to operate against any people. However, the SLA officers were attempting to turn the argument to their favour saying that the Tiger members knew their society well and it should be in their interest to serve the public interest by detecting the strangers, who were infiltrating to seek safe havens in the North.
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Muslims fear next wave of attacks could target Sufi Dargahs in Mannaar, Musali under cordon

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 April 2019, 17:52 GMT]
Security has been beefed up at the five pilgrimage sites in Mannaar district as the Muslim religious leaders expressed fear of the next wave of externally influenced Islamist attacks could target their traditional pilgrimage sites as the ring leader of the terror attacks on Easter Sunday was also opposed to such worship as “anti-Islamic” practice. In the meantime, the occupying SL Army, SL Navy, the STF commandos and the SL Police have subjected the entire 107 km coastal road from Puththa'lam in the North Western Province to Mannaar in the Northern province with ten check posts since Saturday. The security beef-up has increased the travel time from Mannaar to Puththa'lam from two hours to six hours. The SL forces are mainly targeting the Tamil-speaking Muslims in Musali division with three large cordon-and-search operations for the past three days, civil sources in Musali said.
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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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Journalist harassed after exposing SLN surveillance on peaceful protest in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 April 2019, 23:18 GMT]
The SL Police in Mullaith-theevu has instructed Tamil journalist, Shanmugam Thavaseelan, to attend questioning at its station on Thursday. The move is interpreted as harassment against the Tamil journalists covering the peaceful protests in the district. A Sinhala intelligence operative of the SL Navy, who was caught red-handed by the Tamil protesters while taking close-up photos of the participants of a peaceful protest at Vadduvaakal, was behind the complaint. The Sinhala operative was claiming that he belonged to the SLN Intelligence Wing. However, he was not in possession of papers or identity card to document his military identity. The people handed him over to the naval base, Gotabhaya SLNS, after verifying his identity. He was also forced to delete some of the surveillance photos during the intervention.
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Uprooted Tamils in Karanthaay enter their lands in dispute with SL authority

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 April 2019, 22:20 GMT]
The Coconut Development Authority (CDA), which comes under the unitary occupying system of Colombo was claiming 90 acres of lands that belong to private land-owners at Karanthaay village near Mukamaalai, which was a ‘Forward Defence Line’ during the times of war. The lands were to be released back to the rightful owners in 2012-2013 when mines clearance in the area came to an end. However, the SL CDA was quick to claim the lands despite the owners proving their ownership. On Tuesday, the land-owners entered their lands and put up temporary huts. They said the SL authority was trying to convert their properties into state-owned farm without resolving the dispute of ownership.
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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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Sumanthiran's rationality exposes Wigneswaran's gullibility

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2019, 22:11 GMT]
ITAK Parliamentarian and President Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran, a proven ‘revisionist’ of Eezham Tamils’ external right of self-determination who sophisticatedly denies Tamil genocide, has now assailed former NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, who mistakenly or deceptively ended up harping on IIGEP as a precedent-setting argument to justify the illogical demand for hybrid courts. After Sumanthiran's intervention, which was highlighted by Jaffna daily Kaalaik-Kathir on 31st March, Wigneswaran issued a new statement on the same day – this time in Tamil only – and said he was not asking to set up a group like the IIGEP. His initial statement also pointed out that the act of IIGEP dissolving itself was an example why an international investigation was necessary in the island, he reiterated.
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IC urged to pressure Colombo to allow ICMP to detect more mass graves in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 March 2019, 09:23 GMT]
If the Colombo government wants to establish that there are no war-time mass graves in Mannaar district, it should invite the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) to initiate systematic scanning of all former and present military zones for mass graves, say families of persons subjected to enforced disappearances during the times of genocidal war in the district. More than 800 Tamil people have been subjected to enforced disappearances in Mannaar district alone within 19 years between 1990 and 2009. The families of the victims want to initiate a broader campaign calling for an independent international competent authority to take charge of the entire process. The families suspect there are potential sites of mass graves the Sunny Village in Mannaar island as well as in the notorious SL military base in the mainland.
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