Veeraich-choalai, Weera-sole

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2013, 23:56 GMT]
The forest or grove of Drypetes sepiaria trees
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Canadian Eezham Tamil MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan under house arrest in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2013, 20:51 GMT]
Canadian Eezham Tamil parliamentarian Rathika Sitsabaiesan representing Sacarborough-Rouge River constituency, who was on a visit to the island has come under the harassment of the occupying Sri Lankan military and police establishment in Jaffna on Tuesday evening. SL ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ Officer-in-Charge in Jaffna Ranaweera accompanied by two TID female officers, who were waiting at a hotel in Jaffna, where Ms Rathika Sitsabaiesan was staying, have placed the visiting Canadian parliamentarian under an ‘unofficial’ house-arrest after she entered the hotel around 7:00 p.m., concluding a visit to the uprooted people of Valikaamam North and Vadamaraadchi with the chairman of Valikaamam North Piratheasa Chapai (PS) Mr S. Sugirthan.
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Sri Lankan TID declares ‘shadow war’ on Tamil journalists in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 December 2013, 09:10 GMT]
“We will not abduct you or take you for 4th floor for interrogations. But, we will make sure you die in the road hit by our encounter teams in natural accidents and dispute-like killings. You will not become heroes among your own people and die like street dogs,” is the message re-iterated by the so-called ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ interrogators, who operate various interrogation-cells in the North chasing the journalists in Jaffna. A Colombo-based media rights activist observing the pattern of the psychological warfare by the TID on journalists in Jaffna described the unfolding scenario as Colombo's latest ‘shadow war’ on Tamils, similar to the one that preceded the 2009 genocidal onslaught.
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Resettled survivors of Vanni onslaught languish in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 December 2013, 17:14 GMT]
95% of the 1080 families of Batticaloa Tamils who survived the 2009 genocidal onslaught in Vanni and resettled back in Batticaloa district have been completely neglected from any help and still languish without basic facilities. When the families displaced from Batticaloa to Vanni in 2004 from different places of the district, Karuna group paramilitary destroyed their houses and their possessions were robbed. When they returned to their district, surviving the genocidal onslaught, Europe-based NGOs and UN agencies provided temporary huts to these families. All support stopped there, and these huts became the ‘markers’ for these families to get isolated from further aid, the families complain. They have also been sidelined from the Indian housing assistance.
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Local contacts of visiting Indian journalist exposed to TID interrogators in Colombo

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 December 2013, 21:34 GMT]
In one of the strongest investigations and monitoring conducted so far on a foreign journalist visiting the island, the experienced interrogators of the notorious ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ of Colombo had not only confiscated the electronic and non-electronic possessions from the young journalist from Tamil Nadu, but also monitored and traced all his contacts from the moment he landed at Colombo airport for the second time, informed media sources in Colombo told TamilNet Sunday. In the meantime 22-year-old Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran, when contacted by TamilNet after his deportation to Chennai, said he was subjected to ‘psychological torture’ like condition at the hands of the TID interrogators in Colombo and that the TID had his Tamil book of his first visit translated when they questioned him on his affiliations.
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No Indian houses for uprooted Batticaloa Tamils from Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 December 2013, 22:30 GMT]
Hundreds of Tamil residents, who were uprooted from Vanni in the 2009 genocidal onslaught and resettled in Batticaloa district now, have not been provided permanent houses under the Indian housing project, according to complaints made to the Batticaloa District Citizen Committee.
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Pa'raa'lai

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 December 2013, 13:35 GMT]
The ruins.

The place or structure ruined to the foundation level.
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Sri Lanka’s TID interrogates Indian journalist in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 December 2013, 13:19 GMT]
The journalist from Tamil Nadu, Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran, who was arrested by the occupying SL military and police in Vanni, while he was visiting Ki’linochchi was still under the custody of the ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ as late as Thursday night, informed sources in Colombo said. Earlier, the SL police spokesman in Colombo had stated that the Mr Thamizh Prabhagaran was being handed over to the immigration authorities for deportation. But, Colombo's TID officers were interrogating the Indian journalist on his contact network in the island by going through his article series that has appeared in Junior Vikatan, the sources further said.
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Vadamaraadchi East remembers Tamil tsunami victims

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 December 2013, 16:06 GMT]
Families, relatives and friends of victims who perished in the 2004 tsunami gathered at Uduththu’rai, Ma'natkaadu and Thaazhaiyadi burial grounds on Thursday remembering their loved ones on the 9th anniversary of the devastating catastrophe. The gigantic waves of tsunami claimed the lives of 41,000 people in the island on 26 December 2004 and most of the victims were from eastern and northern coasts of the Tamil homeland. Around 1.5 million people lost their homes in the tsunami. The International Community of Establishments, who failed the victims of tsunami, were not only complicit in Sri Lanka's genocidal onslaught on them in 2009, but they continue to fail the victims of the tsunami and the genocide by allowing the Sri Lankan State to continue the structural genocide on the nation of Eezham Tamils.
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Colombo arrests Indian journalist touring Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 December 2013, 01:48 GMT]
A young journalist from Tamil Nadu, Maga Thamizh Prabhagaran, who was touring in the North was arrested by the occupying Sri Lankan military and the SL police Wednesday noon, while he was talking to the parish priest of St. Antony’s Church in Ponnaavea’li, news sources in Vanni said. The Indian journalist visiting the island on tourist visa was together with Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian S. Sritharan, Northern Provincial Council (NPC) member S. Pasupathipillai and Karaichchi Piratheasa Chapai (PS) member S. Thayaparan during the detention, interrogation and arrest, the news sources further said.
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Genocide has to be compensated by separation: Sikh politician

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 December 2013, 22:30 GMT]
“Tamils can’t live [in a united Sri Lanka] after the perpetration of the crime of genocide. I think the wounds are too deep historically there to be reconciliation. After a State has committed genocide, there can’t be any reconciliation,” says Simranjit Singh Mann, the president of Shiromani Akali Dal Amritsar party, who advocates the formation of Khalistan as an independent and sovereign State for Sikhs, in an exchange of views with Tamil Nadu based May 17 Movement. “Pirapaharan and his movement was too powerful for the Sri Lankan government,” he said, adding that “it was under the collaboration of UPA-led Congress government that the Sri Lanka government was able to achieve and crush the movement for freedom by committing a genocide on the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.”
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Mukaththuvaaram, Modara

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 December 2013, 20:04 GMT]
The river mouth
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Tamils should guard against from being misled by IC, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 December 2013, 19:45 GMT]
"Based upon my first-hand personal experiences working with the Palestinians at their peace negotiations and the Bosnians at their peace negotiations, the Tamils cannot trust the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Nations, the European Union and its Member States to do the right thing for them. The Tamils can only trust in themselves,” responded Professor Francis Boyle on Monday, when TamilNet asked him what would be his advice to the Tamil diaspora in engaging with the ‘International Community’. TamilNet posed the question to Professor Boyle following his recent interview on Bosnian ‘peace’ negotiations to the Institute for Research of Genocide, Canada.
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DNA testing, a persistent threat to Colombo on genocide culpability

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 December 2013, 18:08 GMT]
While in the western liberal democracies advanced DNA-based evidence collection has been the staple of modern crime investigations since the advent of DNA testing in 1985, in Sri Lanka DNA testing on Tamil victims have been systematically blocked by Colombo likely as part of the politically sanctioned strategy and forced on the subservient judicial branch to suppress evidence of Sinhala military criminality. While the blocking of Maanthai skeletal findings is the latest in Colombo's involvement in suppressing possible military complicity, the results of the DNA testing of the body of the popular Catholic priest Rev. Fr. Jim Brown, whose mutilated torso was found at Pungkudutheevu sea on 14 March 2007, was also suppressed by Colombo. Colombo media, under direct and indirect threat from Rajapaksas, self-censored the coverage of the Brown story in 2007.
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Colombo sabotages DNA testing on skeletal remains from mass graves

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 December 2013, 17:29 GMT]
A new site of a mass grave was located this week in Mannaar, 75 meters from Maanthai junction towards Thirukkeatheesvaram, in an area that has been under the control of the occupying Sri Lanka Army since 1990 to the end of Vanni war. Such discoveries, which get highlighted as news stories, do not get proper investigative follow-up by the media, complain legal activists in Jaffna. Observing the pattern of systematic sabotage by the Colombo-centric Sri Lankan justice system on similar discoveries of mass graves in North in the past, Tamil lawyers say all requests for forensic examinations forwarded to Colombo by the SL courts in North and East get blocked in Colombo.
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Jayalalithaa voices against Indian complicity, but considers Eezham Tamils as ‘minority’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 December 2013, 21:35 GMT]
India's “insensitive policy” and “overt act of defence cooperation with Sri Lanka”, which totally ignores the impact it may have upon not just the sentiments of the people of Tamil Nadu, but the direct effect on the right to livelihood of the Tamil Nadu fishermen, said Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Ms J Jayalalithaa in a strongly worded letter to Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Saturday. Indian Coast Guard is allowed to participate in a marine defence exercise and has deputed ships, officers and men to Trincomalee, to participate in an exercise, despite repeated calls from Tamil Nadu to issue a clear policy direction that the Ministry of Defence should not provide training, or engage in any form of co-operation with the Sri Lankan Armed Forces that were responsible for rights violations against “Tamil minority” in the island Ms Jayalalithaa said.
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Colombo seeks genocidal subordination through military indoctrination of students

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 December 2013, 12:21 GMT]
A Tamil student from Aaraip-pattai (Aaraiyampathi) in Ma’nmunaip-pattu division of Batticaloa district was rushed to the hospital in serious condition on Saturday, when he attempted to commit suicide by self-poisoning just a few hours before he was supposed to travel to the notorious Minneriya camp of the occupying SL military to attend an enforced indoctrination programme for all new students in order to become eligible for university entrance. The SL military is conducting a genocidal subordination in addition to the psychological pressure. There are students who lost their hard earned university admission as they were not able to secure the money needed to spend on meeting the demands of the military indoctrination programme, under the so-called ‘leadership’ indoctrination, the students from East say.
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Civil activists condemn Colombo for detaining Tamil youth under PTA

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 December 2013, 16:12 GMT]
More than 100 civil activists from all walks of life, including religious dignitaries, human rights activists, journalists, writers and academics, both from within and outside the island, have strongly condemned the Government of Sri Lanka for the continuous detention of 7 Tamil youth under the so-called Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) since their arrest during the last week of November following the Tamil Heroes Day observations in Jaffna and Mannaar. The aactivists said that they were concerned as the arrests were unfounded and only served to perpetuate the climate of fear and insecurity of the people of the North.
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A'lawwa, A'lavakkai-chi'ru-ku'lam

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 December 2013, 19:37 GMT]
The canal

The small tank of the canal (fed by the canal)
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Colombo steps up military deployment under SL Police in Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 December 2013, 23:40 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government is stepping up the deployment of the notorious Special Task Force (STF) commandos in all the districts in the Northern and Eastern provinces, according to latest reports in Colombo media. In August, when UN Human Rights High Commissioner Ms Navi Pillay visited the North and East, the Sri Lankan government announced that it was ‘separating’ the administration of SL Police department from the Defence Ministry and that the police was now coming under the ministry of ‘Law and Order’ according to a recommendation of Rajapaksa’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The STF, trained by the British, is a full-fledged military outfit under the SL Police, which was directly engaged in acts of genocide in the East as well as in Vanni during the war.
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