Sri Lankan TID releases Fr. Praveen, Ruki Fernando

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 07:51 GMT]
While the Sri Lankan Government delegation in Geneva responded Tuesday evening defending the claims of the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) to the concerns raised by several NGOs against the TID detention of the Human Rights defenders Rev Fr Praveen and Mr Ruki Fernando, both the human rights activists were released a few hours later by the TID due to mounting pressure abroad and in the island. The SL delegation in Geneva came with a ‘point of order’ statement saying that both the activists were linked to someone named K.P Selvanayagam alias Gobi, who had been overseas and was ‘reviving the LTTE’ through ‘regrouping unemployed local youth’. Tamil activist Jeyakumari was in detention for harbouring Gobi, the SL delegation said.
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SL military steps up harassment on IDPs as US draft drops ‘de-militarisation’ in Geneva

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 March 2014, 23:20 GMT]
As the US draft that already failed Tamils by dropping international investigation on Sri Lankan State gets further watered down in its demands at the corridor discourse at Human Rights Council in Geneva, the occupying SL military in North and East of the island has strengthened its grip on Tamil people who have been determined with seeking justice on the ground. While those demanding the SL State to reveal the whereabouts of their missing family members in the North are subjected to harassments by the intelligence wing of the SL military, the uprooted Champoor Tamils still languishing in temporary huts in four camps in Moothoor East in Trincomalee are left to rotten with deteriorating health conditions in their camps, the women in the camps complain.
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Ananthi delivers another UNHRC address on genocide investigation

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 15:38 GMT]
“We request this assembly to call for international investigation on genocide, and as an immediate step, to come out with a mechanism to stop the on-going genocide of Eelam Tamils,” Ms Ananthi Sasitharan told the UN Human Rights Council at Geneva, delivering a second address under the General Debate on Friday. The resolutions passed in the recent years and the draft resolution to be submitted this year have disappointed the Tamils as these resolutions have failed to address the main problems of the victims, she told the Council. As an immediate step, she urged the international community to come out with a mechanism to stop the on-going genocide of Eelam Tamils.
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SLA sets arrest of teen girl and mother figured in British PM's visit to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 06:20 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Ki'linochchi has arrested a 13-year-old girl and her 48-year-old mother, sending shock waves across the entire Tamil nation on Thursday. The girl, Vipooshika Balendren has become a symbol of young children seeking the whereabouts of their family members, as she used to attend the peaceful protests crying in search for her brother, touching the hearts of the people. In a move, believed to be a trap to target the girl and her mother, more than 350 Sri Lankan soldiers rounded up their village Thursday evening in an encounter like operation claiming that they were looking for a ‘terrorist’. The SL military is detaining the girl and her mother, Jeyakkumari Balendran, news sources in Ki'linochchi told TamilNet Thursday night.
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US draft ‘positive’ on many counts in making Tamils ‘learn lesson’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 March 2014, 01:26 GMT]
The US draft tabled at the UNHRC has to be recognized for its positive aspects in disguise that make Tamils learn historic lessons, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The draft opens eyes on the ultimate culprits who actually led Eezham Tamils into Mu’l’livaaykkaal and continue to lead them into accepting structural genocide; on the extent of USA’s confidence in the inherent orientation for subservience and gullibility among Eezham Tamil ‘articulators’; and on the extent of the infiltration the USA has made into various facets of Tamil Nadu – from Brahministic media to ‘original’ Dravidian movements, and from ‘communism’ to various caste politics, the activists in the island said.
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Muslims in Musali division protest against SL military land grab

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 March 2014, 07:28 GMT]
Muslims from Ma’richchuk-kaddi village in Musali DS division in Mannaar sat on the Puththa’lam – Mannaar Road at Maraikkaar-theevu on Sunday and demonstrated against Colombo’s seizure of their lands including their cemetery. The families, uprooted from Musali in 1990, came to Musali division to resettle from Puththa’lam after Muslim ministers aligned with Colombo government promised them resettlement. Ma’richchuk-kaddi is the border between the Northern and Northwestern Provinces.
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NPC minister condemns Colombo for twisting facts on Moongkilaa'ru victims

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 March 2014, 09:58 GMT]
On 28 February, a bunker with dead bodies was located at Moongkilaa'ru in Mullaiththeevu district. Those who perished were people slain in the genocidal onslaught in 2009. But, the Sri Lankan government is only interested in twisting facts and the relatives of the victims are denied of establishing the identity of their kith and kin, said T. Krukularajah, the education minister of the Northern Provincial Council at a meeting organised in Ki'linochchi on the International Women's Day on Saturday. In the meantime, a social worker from Vanni told TamilNet on Sunday that the 9 people exhumed at Moongkilaa'ru were victims of Sri Lankan military attack on civilians and that he was among those who burried them to give the family a decent burial.
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Weak resolutions embolden Colombo: civil society activist

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 March 2014, 19:08 GMT]
The draft resolution to be tabled at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions this month in Geneva has not only disappointed the Tamils by failing to demand an international investigation, it has also failed to recognise the domestic failures despite two rounds of similar resolutions at the UNHRC in 2012 and 2013, said Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) representative and Jaffna University law academic Kumaravadivel Guruparan this week at a press briefing to journalists in Jaffna. Pointing out four major flaws in the latest resolution and comparing the draft with the recent report by the High Commissioner of Human Rights, Mr Guruparan explained the positive and negative aspects of Navi Pillay's approach. The SL State has in fact been emboldened with the weak resolutions year by year, he said.
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IC has deceived Tamils on international investigations: Ananthi Sasistharan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 March 2014, 13:01 GMT]
“The International Community has deceived the genocide affected Tamils on delivering international investigations,” said Ananthi Sasitharan, a councillor of the Northern Provincial Council, at a press conference held in Jaffna on Thursday. “The draft resolution being circulated in Geneva has failed to satisfy even the minimum expectations. It has totally disregarded the repeated requests from Tamils to the IC to deliver international investigations. Furthermore, it is in complete contrast to the impressions given to the Tamils by the international community in recent times,” she told the press. Ms Ananthi Sasistharan also blamed TNA national list parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran for having instructed her to be silent at a crucial meeting with the representatives of 18 countries during her recent visit to Geneva.
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USA ignores requests of Mannaar Bishop on UNHRC Resolution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 14:57 GMT]
Bishop of Mannaar Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph had sent a model resolution to the foreign diplomatic missions, including the Embassy of USA in Colombo, well in advance of the draft resolution by the USA was leaked in Geneva this Monday. The proposal presented by Mannaar Bishop was demanding international investigations on genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prepared by the Tamil Civil Society Forum, the proposal also called upon the “UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council to activate procedures that will lead to a UN sponsored international mechanism to assess the democratic aspirations of the Tamil People, both in the homeland and in the diaspora for a permanent political solution.”
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BIMSTEC having Eelam territory gets secretariat in Dhaka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 09:50 GMT]
The Third Summit Meeting of BIMSTEC States held in Myanmar concluded on Tuesday, with its heads of governments deciding on operating a permanent secretariat based in Dhaka in Bangladesh. A career diplomat of Colombo will be its first Secretary General. Originally formed in 1997, as Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation (hence BIMST-EC), and was joined by Nepal and Bhutan in 2004 to become known as Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, the BIMSTEC is viewed as India’s alternative for SAARC, to have a regional alliance without Pakistan. It is also viewed as an expression of India’s ‘look to East’ policy to balance China's ‘push to South’.
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Tamil academic compares Pakistani-Sri Lankan ‘counterinsurgency’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 06:23 GMT]
“The genocidal oppression faced by the Baloch people and the Eelam Tamil people gains little if any attention in international media. Whatever is represented seems to be permeated by a tendency to absolve genocide and represent a state-centric, depoliticized and minority grounded narration of the plight of the oppressed nations. Such narrations effectively deny the Baloch and Eelam Tamils their inalienable right to self-determination or national liberation,” writes Norway-based Eezham Tamil anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan, in a feature that appeared in a Balochistan website, Balochwarna News last month, urging solidarity between Baloch and Eezham Tamils.
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US draft stops at Navi Pillai inquiry into HR crimes of ‘both parties’

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 March 2014, 23:39 GMT]
A draft resolution on Sri Lanka that is to be tabled at the UNHRC later this month by the USA, UK, Montenegro, FYR of Macedonia and Mauritius was put to circulation on Monday. Contrary to the trumpeting by sections among Tamils expecting US-UK justice through international investigation on war crimes, the draft just harps on OHCHR investigation into “alleged violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes by both parties in Sri Lanka.” On the other hand, the draft that fails in recognising Tamils even by name not only provides more space and time for the completion of their structural genocide but also binds the UNHRC with supporting the “unified land” of the genocidal State.
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Tamil politicians demand international investigation at Jaffna protest

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 March 2014, 23:36 GMT]
When Sinhala prisoners protested in Kandy, Namal Rajapaksa, the son of SL President went to the prison and ordered a report on the condition of prisoners. But, when Tamil political prisoners and prisoners of war, subjected to torture on a daily basis, stage protests, no one from the SL government cares about visiting them, said Sundaram Mahendran, the head of the Colombo based Committee on Missing Persons on Sunday when addressing the people protesting against the mysterious death of a Tamil prisoner Gopithas Visuvalingam, a British citizen who was imprisoned in Colombo since 2007. The protest was staged in the morning of the funeral day of the victim Gopithas, who is a father of two from the UK.
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Britain neglected British Tamil suspiciously died in Sri Lanka's prison

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 March 2014, 23:43 GMT]
The relatives of a 43-year-old British Eelam Tamil, Gopithas Visuvalingam, who died in the Sri Lankan jail under suspicious circumstances on 24 February, blame Colombo for torture of Tamil political prisoners. Mr Gopithas, a British national and father of two, was arrested in Colombo in March 2007 and jailed without any charges till 2012, when he was finally charged and ‘convicted’ for assisting the LTTE. Gopithas had told his aged father, who was visiting him in prison recently that he feared for his life at the hands of operatives, who were under the direct command of the SL presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa before the jail term was over. The family and the relatives of the victim are disappointed with the lack of legal assistance from the British High Commission in Colombo, news sources in Jaffna said.
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EU terror ban on LTTE challenged

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 February 2014, 17:51 GMT]
The European Union's ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) hangs in the balance today after a hearing at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg exposed serious flaws in the original evidence used to proscribe the movement in 2006. Judges expressed concern at the European Council's use of an Indian anti-terror law as a suitable precedent for banning the LTTE, saying there was no evidence that the Council checked if terror suspects had access to a fair trial in India. The court was also dismayed by the Council's use of Wikipedia as a credible source for keeping a terrorism ban on the LTTE. Lawyers for the LTTE left the court in a positive mood, expecting a judgement within the next six months.
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Tamils cautioned against word trick of OHCHR

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 February 2014, 23:11 GMT]
Tamils living world over should take a careful note on who is skipping away from including the demand for an ‘international investigation’ in the draft resolution to be placed at the UN Human Rights Council this March, Tamil activists in the island told TamilNet on Tuesday. The diaspora Tamils and Tamils of Tamil Nadu should not be carried away by the ‘media discourse’ in Colombo following the latest recommendations of the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navanetham Pillay, the activists warned. The latest phrase ‘international inquiry mechanism’ could also imply a process of questioning or fact-finding mission by UN Special Rapporteurs under the human rights regime of the UNHRC, which would only end up adding just another report to the existing piles of UN reports. Tamil lobbyists abroad should not deceive the masses by their misinterpretations of the terminology, the activists said.
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India and world needs prod to recognize, act on Tamil genocide

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 February 2014, 15:36 GMT]
Finding fault with the USA and EU for spoiling negotiated solution by banning the LTTE, the former head of SLMM says that North America and Western Europe lack interest in what is happening in the island as it is not in their backyard, and he points to India to now act on its regional matter. He also implied that effective public and media pressure is a prerequisite for any action in the island in the lines of Bosnia. Tamils in the island, in the diaspora, and especially in Tamil Nadu, will be miserable failures if they show any timidity, or find excuse in diplomacy in not telling the world in no uncertain terms the genocide faced by Eezham Tamils, said Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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EU made big mistake in banning LTTE: Henricsson, former head of SLMM

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 February 2014, 07:58 GMT]
It was a big mistake for the EU to ban the LTTE. There was pressure from the USA and the Sri Lankan government, said Major General Ulf Henricsson, who was heading the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) in 2006. “I would say that was a big mistake, because it stopped the possibility to get a peaceful solution and negotiation,” Henricsson told TamilNet in an interview in Sweden on Saturday. Acting on solutions now, compared to Bosnia, he cited lack of interest in the West. He was stressing on the importance of India in acting on the question, but said that India is not interested in getting engaged. China and India and other countries are not interested in having the international community on that territory, he added.
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Diaspora, Tamil Nadu youth organizations endorse TSC declaration

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 February 2014, 22:59 GMT]
The Tamil Youth Organizations (TYOs) of 12 countries and four Tamil Nadu youth organizations that were active participants in the student uprising of 2013 in a joint statement released on Sunday endorsed the Tamil Sovereignty Cognition declaration. In addition to the TSC declaration, which recognizes the historical, earned and remedial sovereignties of the Eezham Tamil nation, the youth organizations also passed a declaration of principles, calling on the new generation of leaders from Tamil Eelam, Tamil Nadu and the Diaspora to “challenge the international community to re-evaluate its approach to self-determination for unrecognized nations and peoples and to build solidarity with other nations living under occupation to challenge the present geopolitical order.”
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