IIFA showbiz event blamed for promoting ‘paradise of genocide’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 May 2010, 16:24 GMT]
As Tamils world over mark one-year of Indian abetted genocidal war against Eezham Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, the Hindi film industry known as Bollywood and the major Indian conglomerate of trade unions, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) are joining hands with Rajapaksa regime in Colombo in staging 11th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards weekend during the first week of June in Colombo. The FICCI, the largest and oldest business conglomerate of India is the flagship organiser of the business event named FICCI-IIFA Global Business Forum, where hundreds of CEOs and business heads from India would be signing various investment contracts and tie-ups in the island on the second day of the celebrity and corporate event.
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Sri Lankan CID to record statement from UN representative over Fonseka interview

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 May 2010, 12:01 GMT]
The Colombo Chief Magistrate Champa Janaki Seneviratne Wednesday allowed an application by the Sri Lankan Criminal Investigations Department (CID) to record a statement from Keshunaka Seneviratne, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative in United Nations in Geneva regarding the comment by United Nations Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston on an alleged interview made by former Commander of the Sri Lanka Army General (retd.) Sarath Fonseka in a letter to her. Sarath Fonseka in an interview with the Sunday Leader, English weekly on the eve of presidential election alleging that the SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse in the final leg of war with the LTTE had ordered Brigadier Shavendra Silva to shoot the LTTE officials carrying white flags.
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Fonseka files writ application challenging the composition of second Court Martial

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 May 2010, 16:58 GMT]
Retired General Sarath Fonseka Monday filed a Writ Application in the Court of Appeal challenging the composition of the second Court Martial. He has leveled serious allegations against the three Major Generals of the Sri Lanka Army appointed to the Court Martial. He sought the Court of Appeal to quash the hearings of the Court Martial stating that one of the Major Generals was in the pay of the LTTE and the other tried by the SLA for giving false evidence at an inquiry.
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Camouflaged ban on Tamil Eelam by New Delhi, Chennai

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 May 2010, 23:07 GMT]
The Government of Tamil Nadu has gazetted a notification by the Indian Central Government's Ministry of Home Affairs, dated 14 May, banning the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as an 'unlawful association'. The announcement falsely linked 'Tamil Eelam' as threatening the 'sovereignty and territorial integrity of a part of the territory of India'. Questioning when Tamil Eelam became part of Indian territory, Eezham Tamil circles in the diaspora said the notification reflected the guilt related paranoia of New Delhi and Chennai and urged the democratic bodies in the diaspora and the legal activists in Tamil Nadu to address the false interpretation, politically and legally.
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Wife of victim in Channel-4 photo identifies husband

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 May 2010, 16:28 GMT]
The 7-year-old daughter of a 40-year-old victim of Vanni War identified her father from the photos released by Channel-4 last week and published in local papers in Jaffna. She and her mother, who lost her husband and a 2-year-old son, are now sheltered in an orphanage in Jaffna. A humanitarian activist who met the mother told TamilNet that the victim in the photo, kept naked inside a bunker by the Sri Lanka Army, was Harikrishanan Thuraichamy. He was reported missing since April 2009, when he went to Ananthapuram area promising his family to recover their belongings. He was a former LTTE member, but had left the movement and living with his family, according to his wife. Although some friends of Mr. Harikrishnan had told her that his body was seen among LTTE fighters killed, she has not seen any evidence and she still believes her husband is alive in SLA custody.
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Taking stock on the first anniversary of Internationally abetted genocide

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 May 2010, 14:07 GMT]
The Tamil struggle for independence, one of the longest running struggles of Asia, which has progressed through the Colonial phase and the World Wars, through Cold-War era and through the period of War on Terrorism and the times of economic conquest, now stands at the juncture of a paradigm shift, one-year after the end of asymmetric, but largely conventional Eezham War IV. If Eezham Tamil Nation is to advance successfully forward from where it stands, it needs to adopt its own set of paradigms, capable of not only defeating opposing maneuvers of the Sri Lankan state and the abettors from outside, but also powerful in addressing the future from a broad perspective, rising above the classical dialectic approach.
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Citing photo evidence, HRW calls for UN war crimes probes

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 May 2010, 22:22 GMT]
Citing photographic evidence in its possession of war crimes committed in Sri Lanka in early 2009, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Thursday joined a chorus of calls this week for an independent international investigation into violations of the laws of war during the closing months of Sri Lanka’s campaign against the Tamil Tigers. Calling on the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to promptly establish an international investigation to examine allegations of wartime abuse by both sides to the conflict, HRW said it has examined more than 200 photos taken on the front lines in early 2009 by a soldier from the Sri Lankan Army’s Air Mobile Brigade. The pictures include a series showing a captured long-standing LTTE Political Wing cadre being executed by Sri Lankan troops, probably after torture, as well as the possible rape or mutilation of LTTE women cadres.
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New political party in Tamil Nadu vows to fight for Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 May 2010, 18:18 GMT]
Around 75,000 Tamils, most of them of younger generation, attended the May Remembrance of Vanni massacre and the inauguration rally of Naam Thamilar political party at Virakanoor in the city of Madurai in the Tamil Nadu state of India, vowing to fight for the creation Tamil Eelam by politically capturing the power of the Tamil Nadu state as Tamils world over observed Genocidal War Crimes Day on Tuesday, remembering thousands who perished one year ago. “The Tamil Eelam struggle has been transcended into the hands of Tamil Nadu Tamils and the younger generation in particular,” S. Seeman, a Tamil activist and a popular film director told media. “War is politics with bloodshed, our way would be Politics without bloodshed,’ he told the gathering vowing to take forward the struggle for the freedom of Eezham Tamils and to voice for global Tamil freedom.
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Senior SLA officer: ‘Kill everybody!’ order came from the top

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 19:33 GMT]
A senior Sri Lankan Army commander and frontline soldier have told Britain’s Channel 4 News that point-blank executions of Tamils at the end of the civil war in May 2009 were carried out under orders ‘from the top’. In an extended segment on Sri Lanka Tuesday, Channel 4 broadcast translated video interviews with the two soldiers. Surrendering LTTE fighters and their families were detained, tortured and shot, the trooper said. Channel 4 also interviewed in the studio the former Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, Louis Arbour, who slammed the impunity enjoyed by Sri Lankan forces throughout the armed conflict. Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United Nations, Palitha Kohana, failed to show up, despite agreeing beforehand to appear to defend his government’s record.
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Accounting for 2009 will define Sri Lanka’s future - editorial

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 11:10 GMT]
“2009’s single, protracted program of state-conducted slaughter in Sri Lanka has a sixty year-long antecedent, beginning well before the armed conflict erupted in 1983 … Since independence from Britain the Tamils have been a clear target for state-sanctioned and, later, state-conducted violence on a massive scale. … In that sense, the Tamils today embody the raison d’etre of the ‘responsibility to protect,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper argued in its latest editorial.
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Tamil Nadu Police denies permission to Muthukumaran statue

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 May 2010, 13:43 GMT]
Tanjavoor police in Tamil Nadu Sunday denied permission to erect the statue of Muthukumaran of Kolaththoor in Tamil Nadu who had set himself ablaze demanding to stop the war waged on Eezham Tamils by Sri Lanka Army. ‘I’lanthth Thamizhar Iyakkam’ (Young Tamils Movement) had decided to erect the statue of Muthukumaran near Tanjavoor in Tamil Nadu and to hold a public meeting named ‘Mu’l’livaaikkaal Veerava’nakkam (Mu’l’livaaikkaal Homage of Valor) Sunday. Tamil Nadu Police banned the meeting and the Torch Marathon that was to be held before the meeting and the opening of the statue event, sources from Tamil Nadu said.
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SLA tears down Tamil Heroes memorial monuments in VVT

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 May 2010, 15:28 GMT]
More than a hundred Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers deployed Sunday evening in Theeruvil in Valveddiththu’rai, the birth place of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader V. Pirapaharan in Vadamaraadchi, are tearing down the memorial monuments erected in memory of twelve combatants including senior Commanders Kumarappa, Pulenthiran and another memorial monument of Col. Kiddu, sources in Valveddiththur’ai (VVT) said. Meanwhile, former TNA parliamentarian Sivajilingam told that he too had received complaints about the demolishing of LTTE memorial monuments.
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SLA converts Tiger Heroes Resting Homes into bases in Vanni, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 May 2010, 14:25 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) authorities are hastily converting the Heroes Resting Homes where Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) war heroes are buried in Vanni main land and Jaffna peninsula, to obliterate all traces of them and to prevent their dear and near ones visiting the tombs in fond memory, sources in Jaffna said. Another reason for the demolishing of the Heroes Resting Homes (HRH) is to prevent people from South seeing them when visiting North, the sources added.
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“I don’t know why Kalaignar Aiya sent me back”: Parvathi Amma

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 May 2010, 14:02 GMT]
“I do not know why Kalaignar Aiya [Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi] sent me back,” Parvathi Amma, mother of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader Velupillai Pirapaharan, admitted to Valveddiththu’rai (VVT) hospital told TamilNet Sunday. Being very frail after going through the ordeal of being sent back to Malaysia from Chennai and coming to Sri Lanka from Malaysia in her old age and paralyzed condition, she ended the conversation saying, “I went there only to get medical treatment.” Meanwhile, many Sinhalese journalists come to Jaffna to see her at the hospital and some of them touching her feet with reverence on leaving, moves the hearts of those around, hospital sources said.
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Former caretaker of Uduppiddi LTTE Heroes Resting Home found dead in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 May 2010, 19:26 GMT]
Former caretaker of Uduppiddi E’l’langku’lam Heroes Resting Home of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eezham (LTTE) was found dead Saturday evening near the cremation grounds in Veampadi area in Thunnaalay South, Karaveddi, Vadamaraadchi, sources in Jaffna said. His body was naked and hands bound with many assault injuries.
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Thought crime, torture and kingly fiat

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 May 2010, 03:22 GMT]
“Tissainayagam’s pardon is clearly an act of Sri Lanka’s international diplomacy, an act made possible by the complete absence of the rule of law as an operating principle in its legal system,” writes a columnist in the Tamil Guardian newspaper. “[While] the legal system’s ability to convict Tissainayagam on the basis of a confession obtained under torture on charges that amount to accusations ‘thought crime’ reveal that Sri Lanka has fully departed from the principles of the rule of law […] the Presidential pardon echoes medieval forms of justice dispensed as royal patronage and is in keeping with Sinhala leaders’ proclivity for styling themselves as mythical Sinhala rulers.”
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Ranil returns home after India visit

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 May 2010, 03:50 GMT]
Ranil Wickremesinghe, opposition leader in the parliament and the leader of the main opposition United National Party (UNP), returned home Thursday evening after a four-day visit to India. He had held talks with several Indian leaders including External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna in New Delhi Wednesday.
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Parvathi Amma treated with loving care in VVT hospital - DMO

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 May 2010, 16:02 GMT]
“Parvathi Amma is being served with special loving care by our hospital staff which is hard to come by either in India or any other country and she is continually attended by our medical specialists,” Dr. A. Mayilerumperumal, District Medical Officer (DMO) of Valveddiththu’rai (VVT) government hospital told TamilNet in the context of Ms. Parvathi Velupillai, mother of LTTE leader Velupillai Pirabaharan, being admitted to VVT hospital in Jaffna, Wednesday evening. “We believe that she will soon recover as we offer her medical treatment equal to international medical standards,” he further said.
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Pirapaharan's mother admitted to VVT hospital in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 May 2010, 12:24 GMT]
Parvathi Velupillai, mother of LTTE leader Velupillai Pirabaharan, has been admitted to the Valdveddiththu'rai (VVT) hospital in Jaffna, Wednesday evening. Parvathi amma, denied entry to Tamil Nadu and deported back to Malaysia earlier, was brought down to Sri Lanka earlier this week and stayed at a lodge in Colombo in a bedridden state.
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Arbour to campaign for independent war-crimes inquiry in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 May 2010, 23:29 GMT]
Louise Arbour, president of the NGO International Crisis Group (ICG) and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "will examine these allegations [of war crimes in Sri Lanka] and make the case for an independent international inquiry as a necessary step in making Sri Lanka's tenuous and bitter peace more just and sustainable," said a note sent to the invitees for a conference on "War Crimes in Sri Lanka" to be held Monday at the premises of the event's joint sponsor, Chatham House, London.
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