USA softer than UK in wooing genocidal Colombo: Boyle

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 February 2014, 10:14 GMT]
"Everyone must redouble their pressure on the Obama administration directly at the White House and the Cameron government directly at No. 10 Downing Street in order to get that international commission of investigation at the UNHCR in March. With elections coming up in India, everyone must redouble their pressure on the Tamil Nadu government to get them to pressure the Indian government to support that international commission of investigation at the UNHRC in March. The one hope we have is that the GOSL continues to be so obstinate, stubborn, pig-headed and genocidal that they will do nothing," said Professor Boyle, an expert in International law and a keen observer of Sri Lanka's genocidal politics said in a comment sent to TamilNet.
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Colombo bargains China connections in return for US favour

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 February 2014, 14:36 GMT]
Colombo has been lobbying the members of the US Congress through a Washington DC based advisory and strategy firm, citing its geo strategic location, the China factor and a ‘fast growing’ economy. A Europe-based source has provided TamilNet a letter of invitation sent by Robert J. Thompson, the chairman of the Thompson Advisory Group, which helps governments to solve global strategic problems, to US Congresswoman Gwen Moore on 21 January 2014. “China is making major inroads already in Sri Lanka, but our distinguished visitors wish to make sure that relations with the United States are improved even more strongly,” the letter states attaching a trade routes map projecting the island's geostrategic location.
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London conference explores nature of land grabs in Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 February 2014, 10:50 GMT]
Academics, legal experts, activists, journalists, and Eezham Tamil politicians gathered in London to discuss Sri Lankan state facilitated land grabs in the Eezham Tamils homeland, its nature, its effects, and possible solutions, at a conference on Saturday. While all of the presenters were in consensus that land grabs in the Tamil homeland was a phenomena that was a genuine and pressing issue, many expressed their support for a strong international campaign to put a halt to this. Likewise, some of the participants also criticised the international community’s silence and complicity in the process. There was also heated debate on whether the process could be termed “genocide”, with former UN official and Bremen-PPT judge Dr. Denis Halliday along with Tamil activists from both the presenters and the audience arguing in its favour.
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Tamil Nadu should be welcomed to give jolt to Indian foreign policy

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 February 2014, 00:44 GMT]
“The running of foreign policy by federal units is not advocated, but they can and should make benign inputs into its making. Think-tanks specialising in foreign relations and Area Studies Departments in Universities can play a meaningful role in this direction,” writes Chennai-based former South and Southeast Asian Studies Professor V. Suryanarayan, who was also a member of the National Security Advisory Board of India during the Vanni War. Claiming that his “essay is a perspective from Chennai,” Suryanarayan was particularly elucidating and detracting the moves of Tamil Nadu on the cause of Eezham Tamils in his foreign policy discourse that appeared in the website of New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), on Friday.
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USA continues to harp on ‘reconciliation’ than investigation or arrest of genocide

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 February 2014, 14:00 GMT]
According to the Catholic Bishop of Jaffna, the US Asst Secretary of State, Nisha Desai Biswal, visiting Jaffna on Saturday, was harping on ‘reconciliation’ in response to his request for a credible investigation on the conduct of the war. ‘Reconciliation’ is a paradigm set by the US State Department immediately after the genocidal war to facilitate continued genocide and structural genocide of the nation of Eezham Tamils. The events of the last five years have proved it beyond any doubt that ‘reconciliation’ is a camouflage for genocide. What is needed urgently is an international arrangement to protect the nation and territoriality of Eezham Tamils from the on-going genocide, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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Peasaalai villagers mobilize against genocidal land grab in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Friday, 31 January 2014, 07:52 GMT]
The Tamil Catholic people of the coastal village of Peasaalai in the north-west of the Mannaar island on Thursday took to the streets in protest against the genocidal land grab by the occupying Sinhala military. The protest took place when the SL Navy brought land surveyors to measure a land belonging to the 600-year-old church in their village. The occupying Navy, which is already stationed in the one-acre coconut palm grove, is now trying to permanently seize the land from the church. The people of the village mobilized against the move and blocked the surveyors from measuring the land despite the harassment by the occupying navy video-filming the people amidst the deployment of a large number of SL navy sailors at the site.
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NPC councillors demand SL military to hand over seized cattle back to civilians

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 January 2014, 18:31 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Vanni is operating a dairy farm near Muththaiyan-kaddu tank in Mullaiththeevu and is competing with the resettling Tamil farmers by cutting the prices down through its military-corporatist approach, according to Tamil councillors P. Iyngaranesan and K. Sarveswaran of the Northern Provincial Council. The occupying SL military had seized around 2,000 cattle belonging to Tamil farmers in Vanni during the genocidal onslaught and has seized 65 acres of the lands and buildings belonging to the Irrigation Department to run its dairy farm.
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UNHRC urged against considering PSC route

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 January 2014, 12:33 GMT]
Genocidal Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s submissions to the UNHRC seek international pressure on the TNA and the UNP to take part in the deliberations of the deceptive Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC). Rajapakse has not implemented even a single recommendation of his own Commissions and Committees so far. On what grounds can the International Community guarantee that a future for the Tamils lies in Sri Lanka, questioned a media release of the Tamil Action Front, New Zealand, on Tuesday. The media release signed by Mr. A. Theva Rajan reminded Tamils and the international community to never subscribe to the continuity of the catalogue of deceits.
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More skeletons exhumed from Mannaar mass grave

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 January 2014, 08:54 GMT]
55 human skeletons have been recovered so far from Thirukkeatheesvaram mass grave in Maanthai division of Mannaar district. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Colombo had deployed more than 20 ‘criminal investigators’ to proceed with their version of the ‘investigations’ for the 4th day. The victims are believed to be innocent civilians who were caught and slain by the SL military during the times of Rana Gosha military operation between 1999 and 2001, civil sources in Mannaar say.
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Wigneswaran confuses court and legislature in naming genocide

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 January 2014, 06:32 GMT]
However flimsy it is, if the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) is a legislative body exercising the power of the people, it need not have any inhibition over calling a spade a spade, or qualms over presenting a case to the world with a nomenclature it decides as righteous. But, the NPC Chief Minister Mr C.V. Wigneswaran, a former justice, who was for long interpreting and ensuring the implementation of the laws enacted by the Colombo legislature of the genocidal State of Sri Lanka, confused court and the legislative powers of the NPC in diluting the word genocide into ‘equivalent to genocide’, in passing a crucial resolution on Monday calling for international investigations, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island.
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Current realities of demographic genocide in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 January 2014, 22:52 GMT]
The demographic genocide of the East is carried out in determined and orchestrated ways by the occupying Sinhala military, Buddhist monks, Sinhala land-grab settlers, police, home guards, so-called civil coordinating officers of the military, SL Ministers and by a Provincial Council that is put into the scene by all the actors, both local and international, say farmers in Batticaloa on the lose of their pasture lands and cattle to the Sinhala genocidal settlers. The occupying Sinhala military is pivotal to all the miseries that are taking place, they complained. The height of the current genocidal realities could be seen in the example of a Tamil minister of Rajapaksa refusing to speak to them in Tamil and in demanding them to speak through translators at a meeting in Colombo, the Batticaloa farmers further said.
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Veteran lawyer urges China to ensure UN investigation on Tamil plight

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 January 2014, 23:49 GMT]
A veteran legal and social activist in Malaysia, Mr A. Kanesalingam urged the government of China on Thursday to ensure international conventions that could facilitate an independent international investigation conducted by the UN on the genocide in Sri Lanka. “I ask that China as a world leader and permanent member of he UN Security Council propose that an investigation be conducted by the UN under Chapter 7 of the Charter of the United Nations,” said, Mr A. Kanesalingam, in a letter sent to the Foreign Minister of China, Mr. Wang Yi. The Malaysian Tamils beseeching China on the issue is significant, commented diaspora Tamil political observers.
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SL military steps up monitoring patrols in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 January 2014, 23:37 GMT]
The latest innovation by the US-trained SL military commander of Jaffna, Major General Udaya Perera, is the introduction of 7-member teams patrolling every interior village in the peninsula. The Sri Lankan State, while waging a propaganda campaign to the outside world that it has reduced military deployment in the North, has seized thousands of acres of public and private lands for the establishment of Sinhala Military Zones in the Jaffna peninsula. Permanent camps, built larger than ever before, have been ceremonially opened recently by the SL presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa at several places under the propaganda of relocating the camps away from civilian properties, while the SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa who visited Jaffna came with an open lie on the figure of the occupying SL troops present in the North.
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13 Tamils killed by wild elephants deployed by Colombo in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 January 2014, 23:40 GMT]
Wild elephants that have been brought from the jungles in South to jungles close to Tamil villages in Batticaloa have claimed the lives of 13 Tamils in Batticaloa district since December 2012 to December 2013, Eastern Provincial forest officials said. Seven persons have been handicapped in the assaults by the wild elephants. 12 of the slain victims were men. Many of the families of victims have not been provided compensation. 45 houses have been destroyed partly or fully.
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PPT judgement upholds Eelam Tamil identity and nomenclature

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 January 2014, 10:42 GMT]
The full report of the judgement of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Sri Lanka (Bremen Session), released on Wednesday, came out with a discussion on the choice of nomenclature to identify the victims of genocide and has decided on the use of the term “Eelam Tamils as a national group.” This recognition, coming for the first time, from a credible global body of humanity such as the Peoples’ Tribunal, nullifies the so-called legitimacy in the insistence of the use of the term ‘Sri Lankan Tamil’ thrust on the victims by various States and their international organisations. This part of the PPT judgement is of equal importance like the verdict on genocide, complicity etc., and the implementation of it is of much practical value to the people’s struggle of the victims, said Tamil civil activists.
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‘Extremism talk’ to blunt vigilance on deception

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 January 2014, 07:28 GMT]
A nation of people long affected by genocide exposing the past and present modus operandi of the genocide partnered by leading Establishments of the world, and claiming for independence as a Right to Protection measure through non-violent avenues, is depicted as ‘extremism’ by the ‘counterinsurgency’ mouthpieces, just as the armed struggle was painted as ‘terrorism’. But, architecting, executing and continuing the theoretical facilitations of the genocide, passing the blame on ‘stars’ when the outcome is haunting, never accepting the genocide and righteous solutions by citing ‘lack of appetite’, but audaciously continuing the deception by harping on ‘engagement’ with the gullible among the affected, pass as ‘international diplomacy’ with immunity.
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Navi Pillay urged to launch international investigation on missing persons

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 January 2014, 12:07 GMT]
Stating the recent attacks and threats against Tamil activists in North and East who were in the forefront in the protests reprenting the victims of enforced disappearances, the committees representing the interests of the families and relatives of the disappeared persons in the North and East, on Monday urged UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Navaneethem Pillay to appoint a Sri Lanka specific international independent UN working group to investigate enforced disappearances and abductions that have taken place in the North and East of the island.
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Rajapaksa lies in negating Wigneswaran’s military reduction plea

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 January 2014, 16:49 GMT]
Sri Lankan president and Commander-in-Chief of the occupying Sinhala military Mahinda Rajpaksa put the figure of the SL soldiers in the North as 12,000 in responding to a plea by Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister CW Wigneswaran, at the same stage in Thellippazhai, where a cancer hospital was declared opened on Sunday. Credible sources put the figure of the occupying military at minimum 136,000. At least 36,000 soldiers are stationed in Jaffna peninsula and the remaining 100,000 are in the Vanni mainland. The SL president thinks that the international Establishments would be buying his figures as they did during the genocidal onslaught on Vanni in 2009, political observers in Jaffna said.
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Tamils sidelined in civil service recruitment in East

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 January 2014, 09:08 GMT]
The occupying Colombo’s Ministry of Public Administration and the Eastern Provincial Council administration have sidelined Tamils in public service appointments in the three districts of Eastern Province, Tamil civil sources in Trincomalee said. Tamils who received top marks in the selection examinations held for the administrative assistant posts in the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) in September 2013, have not been called for interviews. Instead, 100 Sinhalese and 49 Muslims are have been called for interviews to be held on 21 January for 153 vacancies. Only a few Tamils have received letters.
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Prolonging debate on 13th Amendment is ploy to deprive genuine solution

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 January 2014, 06:31 GMT]
The rhetoric and political play with the 13th Amendment will continue in the island’s post war constitutional discourse for a considerable period of time. Those who have a vested interest in keeping the debate alive will do their utmost to prolong the debate. It is likely that the next few years might witness an utterly useless battle between the Colombo Government and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) over trying to retain what is left over in the 13th Amendment. But in the midst of all this hysteria, any move towards finding a meaningful and genuine political solution will be lost, writes Jaffna University law academic, Kumaravadivel Guruparan, who is currently on Commonwealth scholarship to do doctoral research at the University College, London.
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