Shivajilingam urges TNA to avoid backing any particular presidential candidate

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 December 2014, 23:00 GMT]
If the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) asks the Tamil people to back a presidential candidate, who is not committed to federalism and international investigations, it would only backfire on Tamils as the global powers representing the international community could cite our own stand against ourselves in the future, said former parliamentarian and TNA councillor at the Northern Provincial Council M.K. Shivajilingam, who addressed the press in Jaffna on Friday. The TNA should avoid backing a candidate, Mr Shivajilingam said. “The Tamil people are intelligent. Let them decide on their own without giving them any hint,” he said.
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New Delhi mission traps Tamil Nadu film director

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 December 2014, 11:50 GMT]
By trapping him into a meeting with SL Minister Douglas Devananda in Jaffna last Saturday and by circulating photos of the meeting, a sinister attempt has been made to discredit his image among global Tamils, accuses leading Tamil Nadu film director P. Bharathiraja. While in Jaffna, Bharathiraja was told by the Indian High Commission over phone that an SL Minister would be visiting him, and he obliged. Addressing a function at Kiraan-ku'lam in Batticaloa on Tuesday, Bharathiraja, who was invited to the island by Akilan Foundation to meet and felicitate artists, said that he had to clarify the circumstances by which he had been duped.
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Tamils can't endorse Sinhala-centric presidential election: TCSF

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 December 2014, 16:07 GMT]
As long as Sri Lanka’s democratic practice and culture is driven by chauvinist Sinhala Buddhist politics no change of form of Government is going to benefit the Tamil people,” the Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) said in a statement issued on Tuesday. The denial of democracy that the Sinhalese suffer now is result of them being by-standers, endorsing the anti-Tamil agenda of successive Governments. “[T]he Tamil people do not have to take a collective stance at the forthcoming elections. To explicitly call for a vote for either of the main candidates will be tantamount to accepting a unitary constitution and to rejecting international investigations,” the TCSF further said noting that both the main candidates election are in denial of the problems being faced by the Tamil people and that they have taken positions contrary to Tamil interests.
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TNA agrees to hijack Tamils for ‘unconditional’ support to Maithiri

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 December 2014, 18:50 GMT]
At a so-called high-level meeting held Monday in Colombo between the main delegation of the Sri Lankan opposition and the constituent parties of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the national list parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran has promised TNA's unconditional support to Maithiripala Sirisena, informed TNA sources told TamilNet. “The opposition was not prepared to provide any assurance to Tamils. Suresh Premachandran of the EPRLF raised certain questions that on what promises the opposition is expecting the support of the Tamils. There was none from the opposition. The discussion on the topic was knocked down by TNA's national list parliamentarian in front of Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickramasinghe,” the source further told TamilNet.
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Controversial SL minister Badurdeen backs Sirisena

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 December 2014, 13:21 GMT]
Rishad Badurdeen, a cabinet minister in the Rajapaksa regime, who has been causing ethnic unrest between the Muslims and Tamils in the North has defected from SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa's UPFA and joined hands with the joint opposition on Monday, news sources in Colombo said. Mr Badurdeen, who is elected from North and Amir Ali, elected from East, together with many other All Ceylon Muslim Congress (ACMC) members have pledged their support to common opposition’s presidential candidate Maithripala Sirisena a short while ago in Colombo.
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Mavai wants Tamils to vote at SL presidential elections

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 December 2014, 22:04 GMT]
Tamil people should use their voting rights without fail in the upcoming Sri Lankan presidential election. The Tamil National Alliance is in the process of preparing statement to be issued very shortly in this regard in few days, said Mr. Mavai Senathirajah, Jaffna district parliamentarian and the President of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchchi (ITAK), a constituent party of the TNA.
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Sumanthiran makes challenges to shield political bankruptcy

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 December 2014, 23:35 GMT]
Colombo-based parliamentarian of Tamil National Alliance (TNA), M.A. Sumanthiran, who visited Batticaloa on Thursday challenged the SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa to release the purported ‘secret agreement’, signed between the common opposition candidate Maithiripala Srisena and the TNA. Responding, the grassroots activists from Aalaiyadi-vempu who met Mr Sumanthiran told TamilNet Friday that the TNA had failed to come out with a people-centric political move challenging the real perpetrators of the plight faced by Tamils and instead comes out with empty challenges to shield its political-agenda bankruptcy. The TNA should have made use of the opportunity to mobilise the Tamil masses to send message to the forces that stage the deceptive game of presidential election for the perpetuation of the genocidal State, the activists in the East further said.
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Tamil people should reject both Mahinda and Maithiripala: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 December 2014, 18:55 GMT]
The global and regional powers locked in a geopolitical gambling have brought a contest between Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithiripala Sirisena. Rajapaksa is backed by China while the West and possibly India back Rajapaksa's former associate Sirisena, said Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the leader of Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF) on Thursday. Declared that there is no use for Tamil people by going behind any of the two mainstream candidates of the South in the upcoming Sri Lankan presidential election, the former Tamil parliamentarian, who addressed the press on behalf of the TNPF and the All Ceylon Tamil Congress, urged the Tamil people to refrain from backing any of the two candidates. The TNPF leader blamed the TNA for betraying the Tamil people for the second time as it did by backing Sarath Fonseka in 2010.
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1,500 acres of lands seized for Sinhalicisation in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 December 2014, 20:50 GMT]
In a closed-door meeting held at Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat on Friday, the divisional secretaries of Mullaiththeevu district were informed that 1,500 acres of lands belonging to Eezham Tamils had been transferred to Sinhala settlers in Kokkuththoduvaay of Karai-thu'raip-pattu division of Mullaiththeevu district. While the Tamil landowners, chased away from their villages in 1980, are in possession of documents of ownership and have been demanding resettlement in their villages, the Land Commissioner of Northern Province, Ponnambalam Dayanandan, has transferred the lands to 600 Sinhala families, civil sources in Mullaiththeevu told TamilNet.
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Premachandran denounces clandestine TNA deal with NDF

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 December 2014, 18:15 GMT]
The basic strength of the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) led by the incumbent Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, and the National Democratic Front (NDF) led by the Common Opposition Presidential candidate Mr Maithiripala Sirisena, has been solely depending on the Sinhala communal mindset South in the upcoming presidential election and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) cannot enter into an agreement with any of them, said the TNA media spokesman and Jaffna district TNA parliamentarian Suresh Premachchandran on Thursday. However, responding to Premachchandran, NDF's Maithiripala Sirisena said ‘individual politicians’ could make ‘different’ statements.
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Tamil civil society formalises TCSF organisation

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 December 2014, 10:12 GMT]
A loosely organised network of Tamil Civil Society Activists from the North-East of Sri Lanka who had been functioning for the past five years under the leadership of the Mannaar Bishop have now formally constituted themselves as an organization – the Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF). A policy document setting out the aims, objectives and core beliefs of the organisation and a constitution were adopted by more than 60 Tamil Civil Society Activists who took part in the Annual General Meeting of the forum held in mid-November 2014. The aim of the TCSF forum is to protect and promote the existential rights of the Tamil people and the exercise of their right to self determine their social, political, linguistic, cultural and economic future. TCSF is a network of Tamil Civil Society Activists living and/or working primarily in the North-East part of the island.
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Arundhati misses Buddhist casteism, Wigneswaran massages Hindu imperialism

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 December 2014, 12:18 GMT]
Brilliantly exposing the legacy of Hinduism in the political, social, cultural and economic oppression committed in India by a small section against the vast majority of the masses, Indian writer Arundhati Roy in an article last month said: “Now, the caste system is up for export. Wherever Hindus go, they take it with them. It exists among the brutalised Tamils in Sri Lanka.” She sadly misses the caste structured Sinhala-Buddhism, with which now India’s Hindutva makes an unholy alliance through a genocidal route, in the process of empire building and consolidation of the traditional forces of oppression. Meanwhile, the Sanskrit sloka-reciting NPC chief minister Wigneswaran, attending World Hindu Conference in New Delhi last month, was appealing to ‘Sanaadhana Dharma’ for the salvation of Tamils, writes an academic in Jaffna.
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Sirisena, Rajapaksa compete to deceive Tamil voters, Sampanthan faces criticism

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 November 2014, 23:36 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance Parliamentary Group Leader R. Sampanthan, who recently assured that the TNA would not take any decision ignoring his own Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK) party and the other parties in the Tamil alliance on the issue of SL presidential elections, has again come under criticism from the ITAK structures for deciding to send TNA national list parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran to a meeting of the opposition parties, scheduled to take place on Tuesday, ITAK sources told TamilNet Sunday. In the meantime, Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa has been targeting Tamils in the education sector in the North and East inviting different organisations, trade unions and interest groups to Temple Trees seeking votes, informed sources said.
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Sustaining egalitarian national culture is key to Tamil unity: Tamil academic

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 November 2014, 09:09 GMT]
“The material force and the historical significance of the liberation struggle for [Tamil] Eelam, battled by the LTTE provided a counter-hegemonic source for all oppressed people to organize a sovereign and people-centered and highly effective liberation struggle, to the dismay of international and regional establishments,” writes Norway-based Anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan, in an article on the role of national narratives of liberation and culture for the oppressed. “The destruction of the LTTE was a loss for oppressed people across the world and for people of South Asia in particular,” he writes.
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SL military arrests two Tamil youths in Batticaloa for Heroes Day SMS

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 November 2014, 20:48 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military that was spying on SMS messages exchanged among the young generation of Eezham Tamils in Batticaloa district on Thursday instructed the SL police to arrest and detain two Tamil youths at Vaazhaich-cheanai police division of Batticaloa district, news sources in Batticaloa said. The SL military had intensified deployment of military intelligence operatives in all places, from places of worship to private tuition centres in the Batticaloa district.
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Heroes Day in London highlights global significance of Tamil struggle

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 November 2014, 18:17 GMT]
Conveying a spirit of struggle taking the Tamil Eelam liberation movement as inspiration, speakers at the Maaveerar Naa'l (Tamil Eelam Heroes Day) event in London highlighted the global significance of the Tamils’ struggle. The powers who collaborated with genocidal Sri Lanka, who take a position of genocide-denial, who deny the nationhood and self-determination of the Eezham Tamils, who banned and still push for the ban of the LTTE – these are the issues that Tamils need to challenge, not just as an ethical responsibility, but also to set a paradigm-setting example for other nations without states, opined Tamil activist Lathan Suntharalingam who spoke at the event. Solidarity speakers at the event also conveyed a similar opinion as regards the nature of the Tamils’ struggle.
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Heroes Day marked in occupied Tamil Eelam

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 November 2014, 15:30 GMT]
Amidst hundreds of Sri Lankan soldiers deployed surrounding the University of Jaffna, a group of students who were inside the premises of the university lit the common flame of sacrifice at the Selvanagam Block. A selected group of journalists witnessed the event. Defying threats from the occupying Sri Lanka Army soldiers, bells were tolled at temples and churches. Sacrifices were offered at churches in Thenmaraadchi. Former LTTE members gathered at various places paying tribute to their fallen fighters. The families of the fighters who had laid down their lives for the liberation of Eezham Tamils, gathered at secret locations, made memorial monuments in paper and paid their tribute in a touching way, according to the journalists who witnessed the events.
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Tamils mark Pirapaharan's 60th birthday

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 November 2014, 06:17 GMT]
While Tamil poets, students and activists belonging to all Tamil nationalist movements in Tamil Nadu marked LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan's 60th birth anniversary, political activists marked the day with planting trees at the birthplace of Mr Pirapaharan at Valveddithu'rai in Jaffna. The birth anniversary was also observed in several cities in the West.
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Es Po passes away in Australia

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 November 2014, 20:32 GMT]
Veteran Eezham Tamil creative writer, author, translator, columnist, literary critic and publisher S. Ponnuthurai passed away at the age of 82 in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday. He was popularly known as Es Po. Born in 1932 at Nalloor in Jaffna, Es Po studied at Madras Christian College and at Annaamalai University. Writing nearly for six decades, Es Po was a school by himself in contemporary Tamil literature. His demise creates an irreplaceable vacuum in the literary world of Eezham Tamils. At a time, especially after 2009, when many Tamil academics, intellectuals and writers, thinking of ‘acceptability’ of the Establishments, were opportunistically detractive, evasive or ambiguous in their expressions on the national liberation of Eezham Tamils, Es Po's voice was the foremost in loudly justifying it.
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Tamil youth interrogated for alleged possession of Heroes Day poster

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 November 2014, 11:22 GMT]
Sri Lankan ’Terrorist’ Investigation Division (TID) is interrogating a youth Tamil activist, S. Sulaxan, from Meesaalai in Thenmaraadchi for alleged possession of Tamil Eelam Heroes Day posters, according to SL police in Thenmaraadchi. In the meantime, relatives of the detained youth said SL military intelligence operatives had seized a laptop computer from the youth, who has been a grassroot Tamil national activist in Meesaalai.
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