Blake to visit Colombo to steer LLRC course of politics

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 September 2012, 00:06 GMT]
One of the main articulators of the system that architected the genocidal war in the country of Eezham Tamils and the US Asst. Secretary of State, Robert O. Blake Jr., will be visiting Colombo between September 12 and 14. According to a US State Department press release, he will be meeting Colombo’s External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris and senior officials to discuss a wide range of issues, including progress in implementing the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) Action Plan. For 25 years New Delhi was harping on the 13th Amendment. Now the USA comes out with the LLRC implementation, which in the thrust of it, is worse than the 13th Amendment in the annihilation of the nation and territoriality of Eezham Tamils, commented Tamil political activists in the island, adding condemnation at the gullibility of the hijacked political dealers in the diaspora.
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‘Sexist cartoons on Tamil Nadu CM reflect Sinhala patriarchal attitude to Tamil women’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 September 2012, 00:03 GMT]
In the garb of criticizing protests in Tamil Nadu against visiting Sri Lankan pilgrims, Lakbima, a mainstream Sinhala daily published two cartoons on Sunday portraying the Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa in a derogatory manner. The libellous cartoons, which targeted Ms. Jayalalitha on the basis of her status as a woman political leader, also targeted the late MGR, former Tamil Nadu CM and popular Tamil cinema icon, and the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “The sexist nature of these cartoons on a political leader of Tamil Nadu published in a major Sinhala newspaper reflect the patriarchal attitude of the Sinhala state machinery towards Tamil women in general,” commented a feminist working with war survivors in Vanni adding that this attitude manifested itself as genocide-intended sexual violence against Eezham Tamil women by the occupying Sinhala forces in the Tamil homeland.
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Tamil civil society cautions UNHRC to safeguard reputation

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 September 2012, 14:58 GMT]
Civil society activists of Eezham Tamils are worried about possibilities of Sri Lanka manipulating the visit of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) team to the island next week. In a letter addressed to HE Navanetham Pillai, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the civil society has cautioned the team against Sri Lanka buying more time to continue and complete its agenda of Sinhalicisation of the North and East. The civil society expressed its fear based on past instances where the GOSL had been able to manipulate visits by members of the International and UN community so as to benefit its agenda. The letter requested the team to have its own agenda for assessment of the situation, to get guarantees from GOSL for that freedom and to let the public know on the terms of reference as well as restrictions.
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Arnestad’s ‘Silenced Voices’ documentary gains momentum

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 September 2012, 14:27 GMT]
Even as the GoSL tightens its vice through different means to gag democratic voices in the island from expressing the truth about the genocide of the Eezham Tamils, award-winning Norwegian documentary filmmaker Beate Arnestad’s ‘Silenced Voices - Tales of Sri Lankan Journalists in Exile’ has been steadily gaining momentum at acclaimed film festivals and screenings across the world, exposing the truth about media repression by the Sri Lankan state. After a grand pre-première in Oslo in February 2012, a world premiere in Hague at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in March, screenings at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York in June, Arnestad’s documentary received a salubrious welcome at public screenings in Australia this week.
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Genocidal sex abuse of ex-LTTE female cadres becomes routine in North and East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 August 2012, 08:29 GMT]
The genocidal Sri Lanka military occupying the country of Eezham Tamils is routinely engaged in repeated sexual abuse of the former female members of the LTTE to see them pregnant by the Sinhala soldiers, in the model of former Yugoslavia, news sources citing a number of cases and medical professionals told TamilNet. While Radha D’Souza views the Tamil struggle “as one of the most significant movements since the end of the Vietnam War,” the former US Deputy Secretary of State and a current ICG trustee Richard Armitage in Oslo last year was harping on the unawareness of the world on the happenings in the island. The genocide is meant to be so by the architects, and the Akashi visit last week viewing ‘rehabilitated’ female cadres was another effort to keep the on-going genocide under the carpet, political observers in the island said.
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Australia’s Greens senator calls for SL High Commissioner to be recalled

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 July 2012, 18:00 GMT]
Following reports in Australian media that Sri Lankan High Commissioner, the war crimes accused ex-Navy chief Thisara Samarasinghe had overseen efforts to stop Tamil asylum-seekers fleeing by boat to escape the massacre by the GoSL’s military in 2009, Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon has called on the Australian government to ask the Sri Lankan Government to recall its High Commissioner, or move to expel him, in a media release dated July 17. Referring to a recent ruling by the Canadian Federal Court to deport a SL Navy officer alleged of war crimes, Senator Rhiannon’s release said “This Canadian ruling should sound a large warning to the Australian government not to turn a blind eye to the High Commissioner’s role during the Sri Lankan civil war.”
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Eezham Tamil youth in Germany resolve to uphold Tamil sovereignty

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 July 2012, 11:21 GMT]
Condemning the attempts by establishments to compel Eezham Tamils to accept the genocidal development model of Colombo in the Tamil homeland, second generation Eezham Tamil youth in Germany resolved “to raise awareness and educate Tamils and non-Tamils about the ongoing-internationally abetted-genocide of the Tamil nation” and to educate the IC about the legitimacy of the Tamil struggle for sovereignty at the ‘Tamil Eelam Sovereignty conference’ organized by TYO-Germany at Landau, on Sunday. Speaking to TamilNet, Vibisanan Rajasingam of the TYO said that it was important for the second generation youth in the diaspora to understand the need for a sovereign state of Tamil Eelam as the only solution to check the genocide of the Eelam Tamils, referring to the three types of sovereignty of the Eelam Tamils as mentioned in the Tamil sovereignty cognition declaration.
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‘IC turns deaf ear to struggling Eezham Tamil Prisoners of War’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 July 2012, 09:05 GMT]
The international community of establishments and their agenda-driven outfits continue to turn deaf-ear to the plight of the Eezham Tamil Prisoners of War (POWs), failing to accord the necessary international legal status to Eezham Tamil POWs, who have become the ‘pawns of genocide’, activists in the island blamed following the reports on Wednesday that a 28-year-old Tamil prisoner, Ganesan Nimalarooban from Nelukku'lam in Vavuniyaa, had succumbed to his injuries at Mahara prison in South. All the 122 prisoners who were inside the raided prison cell in Vavuniyaa last Friday were taken to Anuradhapura prison, where Sinhala prison guards and criminal inmates tortured them for more than 10 hours. 22 of these Eezham Tamil POWs were later transferred to Mahara prison and Nimalarooban, hailng from a poverty-stricken family in the suburb of Vavuniyaa, was one of them.
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‘Reconciliation in unitary Sri Lanka a cover for genocide, assimilation’

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 June 2012, 06:43 GMT]
After threatening the Eezham Tamils with annihilation with the genocidal massacre at Mu’l’livaaykkaal, unitary Sri Lanka’s idea of reconciliation and the best solution it can offer is assimilation “where the Eelam Tamils will lose all sense of identity and become ‘authentic Sri Lankans’ i.e. mimics of the Sinhalese,” writes RM Karthick, in an article published on JDSLanka . But even as the Sri Lanka implements its model of ‘reconciliation’ through land grabs, Sinhalisation and Buddhicisation, world establishments are compelling the Eezham Tamils in the homeland and diaspora to reconcile with this ‘change of ground realities’. Likewise, the concept of ‘restorative justice’, taken from South Africa being proposed by such establishments in a wrong context to the Eezham Tamils who bear the brunt of genocide will only facilitate eventual assimilation into unitary Sri Lanka.
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Defender of Tamil sovereignty selected for Queen's Jubilee medal in Canada

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 June 2012, 11:13 GMT]
Krisna Saravanamuttu, a second generation Eezham Tamil youth activist in Canada, is set to receive the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal next month. The 26-year-old Mr. Saravanamuttu, who was nominated for this award for his work within the Tamils in Canada and the broader Canadian community by Cabinet Minister in charge of Training, Colleges and Universities Mr. Glen Murray, has been in the forefront advocating the need for an independent international investigation into the war crimes and genocide of Eezham Tamils by Sri Lanka. He has also been demanding a referendum among the Eezham Tamils on the basis of historical, earned and remedial aspects of Tamil sovereignty as the only means to check the protracted genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation.
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Dublin conference on geopolitics highlights need for critical solidarity

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 May 2012, 23:40 GMT]
Activists from Kurdistan, Colombia, Ireland and the island of Sri Lanka, talking about the role geopolitics played in determining peace-processes and conflict in various cases, informed a mixed audience of activists, academics and journalists of the nuances of their respective cases connecting it with larger trends at an event organized at Trinity College, Dublin on Thursday. The public meeting titled ‘The Local and the Global: The Geopolitics of Peace and Conflict’, focussing on conflicts in Colombia, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, elaborated on how different alignments of global interests influenced political outcomes at local levels. The conclusion of the conference saw the unanimous passing of a resolution that opposed the criminalization of political organizations like the FARC, PKK, LTTE that fought for political and democratic demands of peoples.
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Independent international investigation on Sri Lanka called for at London event

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 May 2012, 05:35 GMT]
Eezham Tamils from across the UK gathered at Trafalgar Square, London to remember the Mu’l’livaaykkaal massacre at a remembrance event organized by the British Tamils’ Forum, on Saturday. With participation from the main political parties of the UK, diaspora groups and activists from the homeland and Tamil Nadu, speakers at the occasion emphasised the need for an independent international investigation in the island, a probe into charges of genocide committed by the Sri Lankan state, ending the militarization and colonization of the Tamil homeland, and self-determination of the Tamil people. Many of the non-Tamil speakers also strongly stated that the UK should stop deporting the Eezham Tamil asylum seekers back to the island. The event drew a crowd of over five thousand the organizers said, citing police sources.
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Tamil Nadu begins campaign for UN referendum on Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 May 2012, 00:03 GMT]
Demanding the UN to conduct a referendum among Eezham Tamils to allow them to determine the political future of their homeland, Tamil Nadu based civil society group Youth Against War Crimes and Genocide (YAWCAG) started a campaign to collect one crore signatures to convey solidarity for the same, on Wednesday. The signature campaign which was inaugurated near the Gandhi statue at Marina beach involved participation of veteran political activists and civil society groups from Tamil Nadu. The organizers plan to take the campaign to other districts of Tamil Nadu soon. “It is necessary for the people of Tamil Nadu to pressurize the state and central government to recognize that the Eezham Tamils cannot live with dignity and peace under a unitary Sri Lankan state,” E. Ra. Thirumalai, one of the co-ordinators of YAWCAG, told TamilNet.
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Contributions of Sivaram remembered at Memorial Seminar in London

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 May 2012, 02:41 GMT]
Commemorating the life, thoughts and contributions of ‘Taraki’ Sivaram Dharmeratnam, and inviting diverse views on the same, the Sivaram Memorial Seminar conducted in London on Sunday brought together Tamil, Sinhala, Muslim, British and Tamil Nadu journalists, academics and activists to discuss the intellectual legacy of the late senior editor of TamilNet. Referring to personal interactions with Sivaram, his ideological influences, his life as journalist and activist, his political and strategic analysis, the speakers interacted with the audience that included members of different shades of diaspora organizations, mainstream media and solidarity groups. The tightly packed programme included a closed door screening of award winning film-maker Beate Arnestad’s documentary ‘Silenced Voices’ to the seminar attendees.
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The court of international public opinion

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 April 2012, 21:59 GMT]
During the last stages of the war, the Tamil diaspora did organize demonstrations in a historic way, but they were confined to Tamils and did not have the support from the rest of the international public as was the case with anti Vietnam-war protests or even in the case of recent anti Iraq-war protests, writes TamilNet Economic and Geopolitical Analyst in the Asia Pacific, stressing on the importance of mobilizing solidarity and public opinion of the Fourth World, compared to lobbying within the Establishments and filing futile court cases. As the May 17 movement has recently stated, the ICG representatives had spent 5 hours on him asking him not to raise the issues of genocide, war crimes and independence, but could not succeed, whereas certain international forces could convince our nominated politicians over a cup of coffee, he writes on the dependability of grassroot.
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U.S. report: a contradicting confluence of politics, international law

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 April 2012, 08:02 GMT]
In the recently released factual supplement on the violations of international law in Sri Lanka's conflict, the US State Department Office of Global Criminal Justice (GCJ) exposes the defects in the investigations into the crimes reported by the Sri Lanka's President appointed LLRC and the deviations in the LLRC report with reference to the report by the UN's Panel of Experts (PoE). However, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), an activist group in the US, expressing concern for the damaging impact of the report to Tamil justice, said, "the deficiency in the fundamental framework of reference articulated in the key sections of "accountability" and the "legal framework" will seriously undermine justice for the victims who were subjected to the 'crime of the 21st century' where the Sri Lanka state stands accused of killing more than 40,000 Tamil civilians."
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Boyle compares Syria action, dismisses UNHRC resolution as a "fraud"

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 April 2012, 23:53 GMT]
Dismissing the US sponsored United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution as "a fraud," Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in international law, said, "if the US were serious about Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Tamils, US would have done something like it did to Syria this week." The U.S. State Department established a Clearinghouse on Syria and provided $1.25m to assist to "collect, collate, analyze, and securely store evidence, documentation, and other information concerning human rights abuses and violations, while protecting witnesses and sources."
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Plaintiffs file appeal on war-crimes case against Rajapakse in U.S.

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 April 2012, 02:50 GMT]
Bruce Fein, the attorney for the three Tamil plaintiffs who filed war-crimes charges against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse, said Sunday that as instructed by his clients he has filed an appeal against the ruling by the District Court of District of Columbia. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said in the Court opinion that she had to dismiss the case because the Obama administration had intervened to say Rajapakse was immune from litigation as a foreign head of state. "We intend to ask for an initial en banc hearing by the entire U.S. Court of Appeals in lieu of a three-judge panel," Fein said, adding, "the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Zivotofsky v. Clinton strengthens our appeal immeasurably. There the Court held that the Executive Branch’s foreign policy prerogatives cannot dictate to federal courts the outcome of cases that rest on statutory rights created by Congress."
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Post-UNHRC needs show of Fourth World solidarity

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 March 2012, 06:03 GMT]
Pointing out that the UNHRC resolution is not the First Step to liberation but a Closing Step conceived by Globalized Establishments to conclude the process of Tamil subjugation started by the 2002 CFA, mere exposure of the collusion games of the Establishments is not enough, but action is needed rather than the euphoric diaspora chasing mirages, writes TamilNet Economic and Geopolitical Analyst in the Asia Pacific. Being in the Fourth World of nations without state, Tamils paid the price for not building solidarity with fellow peoples of the world. We paid the highest price and should take the initiative otherwise even our future struggle will be organized only by our enemy in a reactionary way. Our alliance with Tamil Nadu is of great importance. As Globalized Establishments cannot survive without consumption and consumers, they will certainly respect the strength of numbers.
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India placates Sri Lanka, claims it had ‘balanced’ US resolution

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 March 2012, 08:51 GMT]
Soon after the successful adoption of the pro-LLRC US resolution, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sent a letter to the Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa claiming that the Indians “spared no effort and were successful in introducing an element of balance in the language of the resolution”. Openly admitting how India had gone out of the way to water down the resolution to make it “non-intrusive” so as to defend Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, he emphasised on a political solution based on the 13th amendment model.
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