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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Families of missing persons under Kumaratunga regime revive protest in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 March 2015, 23:45 GMT]
Around 800 Tamil youth were forcefully disappeared in Jaffna peninsula by the occupying Sri Lankan military under Chandrika Kumaratunga's rule between 1996 and 1998 when Tamils returned to Jaffna peninsula, which was seized by the SL military in 1995 through Operation Riviressa. The family members, who have been struggling to know the whereabouts of their kith and kin for years and were looking for answers through international investigations, have revived their protest in front of Jaffna District Secretariat on Wednesday after learning that the United Nations, under the influence of Washington and New Delhi, is now trying to promote domestic investigation mechanism of Colombo by diluting the OHCHR Investigation on Sri Lanka (OISL) process from evolving into international investigations.
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Visiting UN official in Jaffna ‘questions’ Genocide Resolution

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 March 2015, 19:09 GMT]
The UN Under Secretary General for Political Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, a US diplomat, who was on a visit to Jaffna on Monday met NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran and questioned the Chief Minister on the reason for the NPC Resolution on Tamil genocide at this juncture. The resolution was not against peaceful co-existence with Sinhalese. In fact, it is essential that the Sinhalese understand how the Tamils perceive the collective nature of all crimes committed against them both in the past and at the present, Mr Wigneswaran told the UN official. When Mr Wigneswaran questioned Mr Feltman on the possible danger of OISL findings getting watered down at the end of the deferral period, the UN diplomat assured that the findings would be published without any change, Mr Wigneswaran told reporters.
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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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Bathiudeen dictates affairs of Palmyra Development Board

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 February 2015, 23:57 GMT]
The Sri Lankan Minister of Industry and Commerce, Mr Rishad Bathiudeen (Rishard Badurdeen), who has been notorious for causing dissension between Tamil-speaking Muslims and Tamils belonging to other religions in Mannaar and Vanni under the rule of former SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa, is continuing the same course also under the new regime, sources in Mannaar said. He has virtually hijacked the affairs of the Palmyrah Development Board (PDB), which comes under D.M. Swaminadan, the SL Minister of Resettlement, Reconstruction and Hindu Religious Affairs, reliable sources at the PDB said. Earlier, the PDB came under Douglas Devananda of the EPDP, who was the minister of Traditional Industries and Small Enterprise Development.
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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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Whereabouts of 700 Tamil prisoners detained in Trincomalee questioned in SL Parliament

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 February 2015, 14:05 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran on Thursday questioned the SL Minister for Public Security at the Sri Lankan Parliament on the fate of 700 Tamils, who were alleged to have been kept in a detention camp inside the Trincomalee Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) complex under the past regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa. Around 35 families were also detained in that camp known as ‘Gota camp’ the TNA parliamentarian said.
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Tamil civil society seeks clarification from Zeid on reasons cited for OISL deferral

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 February 2015, 13:07 GMT]
The High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein needs to clarify as to how he envisages OISL receiving new information, given the fact that the Sri Lankan Government does not promise cooperation with the OISL inquiry. The possibility of the OISL inquiry receiving important new information will only be credible if the OISL team is given access to Sri Lanka and given full freedom and access to engage in evidence gathering. But, SL Foreign Minister’s letter to the High Commissioner dated 13 February 2015 does not promise engagement with OISL specifically, Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) said in a statement issued on Friday. “Why should the SL Government's willingness to act on present day human rights issues be a bar to releasing a report on accountability for the past,” the TSCF has further asked in the statement.
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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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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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Break vicious circle of political obfuscation: Sivaram in 2003

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2015, 01:35 GMT]
“Today it is clear beyond all reasonable doubt that India and the US-UK-Japan Bloc are trying to influence and manage Sri Lanka's peace process to promote and consolidate their respective strategic and economic interests. [..] Those who say that we should keep quiet — not rock the boat by clamouring about the true motives of the US-UK-Japan Bloc — while certain objectives are being achieved through the peace process, should remember the developments which led up to the Indo Lanka Treaty and the arrival of the Indian army. [...] The price the Tamil liberation movement as a whole had to pay for not educating the people about the truth of India's intentions was high. At this juncture, even a doddering dullard would find the déjà vu inescapable. The Tamil nation cannot afford to make the same mistake again.” Thus wrote late D. Sivaram in 2003, six years before Mu'l'livaaykkaal genocide.
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