Rajaratnam Snr, an icon in Tamil philanthropy, passes away

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 June 2014, 16:24 GMT]
Jesuthasan Rajaratnam (JMR), born in Alvai, Point Pedro, and an old boy of Hartley College, later of Jaffna Central College, passed away at the age of 86, in Tenafly, New Jersey 17th June, Tuesday. His funeral was held on the 21st Saturday with a large gathering of his relatives, friends and leaders of various Tamil diaspora organizations in which he was a prominent member. A long-term friend who had known JMR for more than 60 years, while Rajaratnam was a student in accounting in U.K. in the 50s and later while holding executive positions in several Colombo-based corporations, described JMR as the most noteworthy person in his life "who has shown singular commitment to the rights and welfare of Tamil people in the NorthEast of Sri Lanka, and who took action to alleviate the debilitating conditions of his people."
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Another Eezham Tamil refugee attempts self-immolation in Australia

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 June 2014, 00:06 GMT]
A 40-year old Eezham Tamil, who was seeking asylum in Australia, has attempted self-immolation in Melbourne on Friday evening. The Tamil man, who hails from the Eastern part of the Eezham Tamil homeland, was rescued by his friends and escaped with minor burns, sources from Melbourne said. This follows the tragic incident of Leo Seemanpillai, another refugee, who had self-immolated on 31 May and succumbed to his burns on 01 June. Tamil activists in Australia who are working with refugees are gravely concerned that this trend is likely to be repeated in the future, mainly because the nexus between the Australian government and the genocidal Sri Lankan State facilitates a brutal policy towards Eezham Tamil refugees in Australia.
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Pogrom spreads to Colombo district while ‘Sri Lanka’ claims normalcy

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 June 2014, 22:55 GMT]
While genocidal Sri Lanka was telling the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that it had restored ‘normalcy’ after what it described as ‘communal tension’ in Aluthgama and in Beruwala, an unidentified squad set fire to a Muslim-owned cloth store in Panadura (Paa’nan-thu’rai), a town in Colombo district, in the early hours of Saturday. In the meantime, the Sri Lankan Minister of Justice, a Muslim leader collaborating with the ruling Rajapaksa regime, who is under the pressure from his community, termed it as an attack on Muslims while the SL police was trying to project it as an accident.
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Tamil Nadu Muslims protest against genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 June 2014, 23:39 GMT]
On the 17th of June two Tamil Muslim organizations, the Tamil Nadu Thowheedh Jamaath (TNTJ) and Tamil Nadu Muslim Munneatta Kazhakam (TMMK) staged protests outside the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission office at Nungambakkam protesting the recent anti Muslim riots in the Altuhagama and Beruwela in the island of Sri Lanka. While a section of the Muslim leaders in the Colombo parliament were avoiding any overt condemnation of the Sri Lankan state, the Muslims in Tamil Nadu vehemently condemned the SL State and the Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism. Such a move was also reflected in what Asad Sally, the leader of the Muslim solidarity front told TamilNet on Tuesday.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka shields terror against Tamil Muslims

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 June 2014, 08:27 GMT]
The legal and police system of the Sri Lankan State was indirectly aiding the Sinhala extremist mob to incite violence against Muslims in Aluthgama and Durgah-nagar in Kalutura district, Muslim reporters from Kalutara told TamilNet on Tuesday. The shut-down of mobile communications and the curfew imposed by the Sri Lankan State also strengthened the hands of the Sinhala Buddhist extremist Bodu Bala Sena mobs that went amok on innocent Tamil-speaking Muslim villagers in Beruwala, Alutgama, Kotapitiya, Meeripenna and Adigarigoda. In the meantime, journalists, Muslim politicians and activists who rushed to Kalurara to witness the anti-Muslim violence were blocked at road barriers. Even those who attended the funeral of the three slain Muslim youth were also attacked Monday evening by a Sinhala extremist mob.
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Sinhala Buddhist monk attacks Muslims for use of Arabic

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 June 2014, 01:08 GMT]
“There was information the Arabian language too, was being used in Muslim-majority areas in the eastern province, […] roads and lanes are being displayed only in the Tamil and Arabian languages there. Extremist forces are trying to promote the use of the Arabian language among the Muslims,” Colombo media reports cited Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) central committee member, Ven. Passaramulla Dayawansa Thera saying earlier this month. The very Sinhala language itself evolved in a similar process of Buddhism introducing a religious language, Pali, to overlap with the proto-Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic tongues prevailing in the island. Later, a myth was created that the Sinhalese came with their language from North India to get ‘polluted’ by ‘South Indian invaders’, responded an academic in the island.
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Navalar documents: Tamils should work for own revival of culture links

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 June 2014, 03:22 GMT]
Tamil Nadu government should come out with an independent cultural initiative in reviving the identity and involvement of Eezham Tamils in their charities at Chithamparam. Eezham Tamils living in the island, in Tamil Nadu and in the diaspora should be able to participate and be benefitted by the cultural initiative in which education, publication, heritage museum and heritage tourism should get priority. While documentation on the Mutts of Eezham Tamils at Chithamparam from the times of the Kings of Jaffna appeared earlier in TamilNet, the documents currently released on Arumuga Navalar charities at Chithamparam speak for themselves on what the Eezham Tamils should do. There is no substitute to self-initiation in the cultural pursuance of a people.
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India to build ‘cultural centre’ at Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 June 2014, 23:12 GMT]
The Government of India, after taking permission from the Sri Lankan state, is planning to construct a cultural centre at Jaffna. A Memorandum of Understanding for implementation of the project was signed by the High Commissioner of India Mr. Y.K. Sinha and the Secretary to the Ministry of Economic Development, Dr. Nihal Jayathilaka in the presence of Basil Rajapaksa, the website of the Indian High Commission for Sri Lanka reported on Monday. The aim of the project was “to rejuvenate and nurture the ancient cultural heritage of Jaffna”, the report further said. Jaffna civil society activists however are sceptical and wonder whether this project is a “cultural imperialist” collaboration between New Delhi and Colombo to distort, fetishize and commercialize the culture of the Eezham Tamils.
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Ensure safety of TN fishermen, find permanent solution: Jayalalithaa to Modi

[TamilNet, Sunday, 08 June 2014, 23:07 GMT]
Condemning the Saturday arrest of 82 Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lanka Navy, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa impressed upon Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure the safety of Tamil Nadu fishermen. In a release dated Sunday, she urged the PM “to put an end to the unabated, brutal, unprovoked attacks on and abduction of our fishermen by the marauding Sri Lankan Navy” and to arrive at a permanent solution to this problem along with “a strong and robust diplomatic response”. Referring to consistent attacks on the Tamil Nadu fishermen in the past three years, she also lamented that despite a change of regime in the centre, these brutal assaults by the Sri Lanka Navy continued unabated. As an immediate measure, she called on India to register “the strongest disapproval of the belligerent actions of the Sri Lankan Navy.”
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‘Proliferation of micronarratives assists the logic of counterinsurgency’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 June 2014, 23:48 GMT]
In the context of the Tamil Eelam liberation struggle, when a “micronarrative” discourse about gender, caste, region or other “special interest groups” claims autonomous status, “when it divorces itself from the primary contradiction between the Tamil nationalist metanarrative and the Sri Lankan state, it only ends up fracturing a resistance movement against genocide” argues Karthick RM. In an article published on Indian journal Sanhati, providing examples of how such differences were used to fracture the Eezham Tamils liberation struggle in the past and the present, he shows that such “dissidence” only assists the logic of counterinsurgency (COIN). Drawing from classical and contemporary COIN experts and from the writings of psychologists, Mr. Karthick also observes how such micronarratives and a defeatist mentality complement each other.
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SL Army conducts ‘archaeology’, The Hindu relays ‘history’

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 June 2014, 17:23 GMT]
In addition to doing agriculture, industries and tourism, genocidal Sri Lanka’s occupying Sinhala Army, groomed to set a new paradigm jointly by Washington, New Delhi, Beijing and the UN, has started conducting archaeology too in the country of Eezham Tamils. The military claims ‘exploring and discovering’ a Buddhist site at the locality of Uruththirapuram Siva temple in Ki’linochchi. Meanwhile, The Hindu last week relayed a one-sided history projected by Colombo’s High Commission in New Delhi, on the Buddhist connections of Lanka and Odisha (Orissa), to envisage new business enterprises. The relay also added on Sita temple in Nuwara Eliya, a fake promoted into a larger regional myth in recent times.
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Panaa-goda

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 June 2014, 07:38 GMT]
The hill, bank or village of jackfruit trees
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Obama’s West Point address ‘missing’ Sri Lanka is double edged

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 May 2014, 15:26 GMT]
The US President Barack Obama missing Sri Lanka in a key foreign policy address is double edged, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. Obama was addressing the US Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday. He was listing out his administration’s direct, indirect and collaborative deliberations as well as achievements over ‘terrorism’ all over the world and was coming out with his vision for future. Sri Lanka didn’t figure among the 30+ countries noted by Obama, in past, present or future. Whether the USA now feels embarrassed in claiming its unprecedented ‘achievement’ in the island, or is it another tactic of down playing the gravity and establishing a paradigm, asked the Tamil activists.
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Polarization widens between New Delhi and Tamil Nadu following Rajapaksa visit

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 May 2014, 23:24 GMT]
Protests have proliferated in Tamil Nadu state against what activists have termed as “New Delhi’s unwavering courting of genocidal Sri Lanka”, at the very inception of the new BJP government. The decision to invite the Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa to the swearing-in ceremony of the newly elected Indian Prime Minister is interpreted as New Delhi’s disrespect to the democratic mandate expressed in Tamil Nadu State Assembly resolutions calling for sanctions on Sri Lanka and for a referendum to be conducted among the Eezham Tamil nation.
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Tamil Nadu students rally against BJP invitation to Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 May 2014, 23:38 GMT]
Shedding differences among different formations of activists in Tamil Nadu, the student groups came together on Saturday to protest against the newly elected BJP government inviting the president of genocidal Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to the swearing in ceremony of the Prime Minister Elect Narendra Modi, amidst strong opposition from the Tamil Nadu State Government and the opposition against the invitation. The latest justification given by BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman has irked the entire Tamil Nadu, the protesting students who courted arrest told TamilNet. In fact the first protest against the newly elected BJP government in India has emanated from Tamil Nadu, the students added. The organisers also said that a protest was planned by several social organizations on the 26th of May in Chennai as well as other places against BJP inviting Rajapaksa.
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Machiavellian ‘Prince’ of Sri Lanka?

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 May 2014, 04:09 GMT]
The Prince, a short treatise written by Niccolo Machiavelli in about 1527 as an advice to the Governor of Florence, to win his favour presents doctrines which have a striking similarity to those adopted by Rajapaksa, with unapologetic obeisance from Colombo elites. While historians and political scientists argue on the true objectives of the book, the term "Machiavellian" is near universally used to refer to amoral, unscrupulous, and devious power games in the conduct of States. Rajapaksa’s calculated acts to destroy the Tamil nationalist struggle by first killing thousands of Tamil civilians in the "crime of the century," and then continuing the structural genocide in the NorthEast, with the complicit West unable to arrest the Sinhala state machinery, appear to be policy actions directly pulled out from The Prince.
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Jayalalithaa to boycott PM swearing-in over ‘ill-advised’ invitation to Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 May 2014, 07:15 GMT]
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalithaa will boycott the swearing-in event of India’s new Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi on 26 May, over the issue of invitation to Mahinda Rajapaksa, latest news reports said on Friday, citing AIADMK party sources. Earlier, Ms. Jayalalithaa described the invitation to genocide-accused Rajapaksa as “ill-advised” and as “rubbing salt into the wounds.” Modi’s camouflage in inviting SAARC heads of governments is impelled by his priority to Pakistan and Muslim factor, and the Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s immediate response to come shows the US advice behind the move, political analysts said, adding that the USA and India long sidelining and sabotaging the Tamil question is the boon for genocidal Colombo and the Rajapaksas.
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Jaffna University, NPC brave threats to observe Mu'l'livaaykkaal Remembrance

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 May 2014, 20:06 GMT]
While the Sri Lankan military was recklessly determined to suppress the Tamil students, academics, religious dignitaries, democratically elected political representatives and the common public against observing the 5th Mu’l’livaaykkaal Remembrance, the University students and academics at Jaffna University emotionally commemorated the supreme sacrifice by the thousands of Eezham Tamils who faced the genocidal onslaught in the final days of Vanni war. Also the elected Northern Provincial Council (NPC) members on Thursday marked their observance by lighting candles at the NPC Secretariat where councillors Mr Shivajilingam and Ms Ananthi Sasitharan were blocked by the occupying SL police, who also desecrated the tribute site at the gate.
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New Delhi has to be told whether it wants Tamil Nadu or genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 May 2014, 23:02 GMT]
New Delhi’s prime minister designate Narendra Modi can’t have an excuse in inviting genocidal Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa to the inauguration of his government, citing his invitation to all SAARC heads of governments. None of the States in India has ever indicted the head of government of a neighbouring country, as the Tamil Nadu State Assembly has unanimously resolved against Rajapaksa’s genocide of Eezham Tamils. The Rajapaksa case is a unique case India has never seen before, and that too considerably involving the previous Congress government at New Delhi. Tamil Nadu, having a duty in showing a protest in no uncertain terms to New Delhi that whether it wants its southern State or a genocidal State in the neighbourhood, need not care Mr. Modi’s self-invited diplomatic compulsions.
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Indian corporate to build houses for Gotabhaya’s Colombo development

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 May 2014, 07:04 GMT]
Timed to the Indian election results, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa-controlled Urban Development Authority of Colombo has made an unconventional deal with a leading corporate house of India, the Tata Group, by giving a prime area of Colombo city on a 99 years lease ‘free of charge’, for the group to ‘build houses’. While Sri Lanka’s strategy is to bind India with the structural genocide of Eezham Tamils, through Colombo-centric interests and building Sinhala military capitals in Jaffna and Trincomalee, the Indian intelligence agencies deceptively tell Tamil activists that an ‘economic integration’ would bring in political solutions. The Colombo-backing stand of Observer Research Foundation has to be understood in the background of the actual happenings, said Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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