Learn from Kosgama blast, de-militarise civilian areas in North: Premachandran

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 June 2016, 22:33 GMT]
Colombo must remove the military camps in the North, especially the camps situated in residential areas away from Tamil civilians. The representatives in South have called for relocation camps away from civilian areas after the blast in Kosgama, where people lost lives, sustained injuries and the blast completely destroyed all the surrounding civilian properties. Imagine the situation in North, where several hundreds of army camps have been installed in residential areas among the civilians, said Suresh Premachandran, the leader of EPRLF, which is one of the four parties comprising the Tamil National Alliance.
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Maithiripala to stage another selfie session in Jaffna before next Geneva session

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 June 2016, 22:31 GMT]
Maithiripala Sirisena, the president of genocidal Sri Lanka, is scheduled to visit Jaffna on 18 June to take part in another publicity and ‘selfie’ stunt. Amidst the ‘lack’ of fresh venues to be released to the uprooted Tamils, the visiting SL President will be taking part in an event of ‘releasing’ Nadeswara College and Nadeswara Kansita Viththiyaalayam at militarized Kaangkeasan-thu'rai (KKS) for the second time this year. Mr Sirisena handed over the two schools at a PR move on 12 March. Since the initial PR move, which was also timed before a Geneva session earlier this year, the teachers and the labourers engaged in the reconstruction were being regularly harassed at the ‘Forward Defence Line’ of the SL military zone. Although education activities have been launched last Friday, the schools are still kept under military zone and civilians have not been allowed to resettle there.
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SL military ammunition dump explodes in Colombo suburb

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 June 2016, 20:26 GMT]
At least one Sri Lanka Army soldier was killed and three civilians sustained injuries as an explosions ripple ammunition dump of the SL military camp at Salalwa situated at Kosgama in Awissawela, 36 km east of Colombo Sunday evening. An SL military spokesperson said a fire had started off the explosions, adding that the cause was yet to be established. Chaos prevailed as thousands of people were fleeing the area to escape from the shrapnel from the continuous explosions.
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Spy in background, complicit in genocide, Ban aspires South Korean presidency

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 May 2016, 23:40 GMT]
“It is crystal clear that the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon works for the powers who orchestrate wars even though he is supposed to represent the United Nations. His positions are morally indefensible and he is complicit in the genocide of the Tamil people and the dismantling of Tamil Eelam state. His earlier role as a spy for the South Korean dictatorship shows that his history of complicity cannot be limited to Mullivaikkal. It goes back to the 1970s and 1980s,” comments Professor Jude Lal Fernando, in a note sent to TamilNet on Monday. Meanwhile, citing media reports, a South Korean academic detailed the role played by Mr Ban Ki-moon four decades ago as spy for South Korean dictatorship that massacred civilians protesting for democracy.
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Illegal occupation of pasturelands continues unabated in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 May 2016, 07:55 GMT]
4,000 acres of lands, officially declared as pastureland in 1974, have been illegally seized by farmers having Colombo connections through their parliamentarians. The land situated between Rufus-ku’lam and Vammiyadik-ku’lam in Thirukkoayil division where Tamils constitute the majority of the residents, is known as Vadda-madu area and is situated 15 km southwest of Thirukkoayil. Tamil cattle farmers from Akkaraippattu complain that they are being deprived of sustaining their livelihood after the end of war.
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Kurdistan National Congress expresses solidarity with Tamils on genocide remembrance

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 May 2016, 23:50 GMT]
The Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) has expressed its solidarity with the Tamil people on the 7th anniversary of the massacres committed against the Tamils and all civilian victims and their families during the war in the island. “Even though the ethnically-motivated mass murder of the Tamils shows clear features of genocide, it is not recognized as such by international institutions. In fact, the massacre on the Tamil people was possible due to the tacit approval of global actors,” the Brussels-based umbrella group of exiled Kurds said in a statement dated 20 May 2016. Comparing the oppression of the Kurds and the Tamils, the KNK said the model behind the States of Turkey and Sri Lanka, based on the hegemony of one ethnic group over another, is doomed to fail. The KNK also drew parallels between the continued support extended to these States by the Western powers.
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Genocide Remembrance at Mu'l'livaaykkaal passes strong messages to IC

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 May 2016, 17:22 GMT]
It would tantamount to betrayal of the victims of war if Tamils were to engage in ‘swap trade’ (pa'nda-maattu) exchanging accountability for the heinous war-crimes that were intentionally committed against them in the past with future reconciliation efforts, said the Chief Minister of Northern Provincial Council Justice C.V. Wigneswaran on Genocide Remembrance, which was collectively marked at Mu'l'livaaykkaal on Wednesday. In a carefully worded statement read out among the crying survivors of Tamil genocide, Mr Wigneswaran also delivered a sharp message to the member states of the ‘International Community’, the UN Human Rights Establishment, particularly its chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, not to ask Tamils to forget war crimes in return for the promises of federal solution.
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Neduntheevu marks Genocide Remembrance on 31st anniversary of Kumuthini massacre

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 May 2016, 23:32 GMT]
Coinciding with the 31st anniversary of the massacre of 36 Tamil civilians on Kumuthini boat in 1985, the people of Nedun-theevu (Delft) island, the farthest inhabited island off the Jaffna Peninsula, marked the fourth day of Mu'l'livaaykkaal Genocide Remembrance Week on Sunday by paying tribute to all those who perished in the decades long genocide against Eezham Tamils. On 15 May 1985, 36 Tamil passengers, including four children and one of them being a two-year-old, were hacked to death by Sinhala Navy personnel, who came in two boats. The SL Navy later refused the people of Neduntheevu to commemorate their dead by destroying the memorial site, which was constructed at the jetty. This year, the remembrance took place at the newly constructed memorial site.
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Mu'l'livaaykkaal remembrance gains momentum amidst renewed harassments

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 May 2016, 17:18 GMT]
Elected councillors of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC), former members of civic bodies, militant-turned political parties in the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Tamil National Peoples' Front (TNPF) are engaged in organising memorial events in the country of Eezham Tamils amidst recently renewed threats and harassments against former Tamil fighters in the North and East. The SL military intelligence circles have been telling former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that there will be consequences if they were seen paying tribute to fallen LTTE members. Not only the LTTE fighters, all the Tamils who wanted to be free and stood with the LTTE in Vanni while all the global Establishments were directly or indirectly assisting Colombo were all real Tamil Heroes, said NPC Councillors who are organising a series of memorial events and meetings in the North.
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War-affected, poverty-stricken Tamil villagers complain of neglect in housing assistance

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 May 2016, 23:35 GMT]
104 Eezham Tamil families, who have resettled in Isaimalaith-thaazhvu village, which is located 3 km southeast of Murungkan town along Mannaar - Mathavaachchi Road in Naanaaddaan division, complain that they are being systematically neglected in all the housing schemes reaching Mannaar district. The families, mostly dependent on animal farming or agriculture close to their temporary huts, live below the poverty line, and are among the poorest in Mannaar district. Their houses were either demolished or taken over by the occupying SL military and the notorious Special Task Force (STF) in February 1997 during the brutal military operation code named ‘Edibala’.
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No sign of ‘change’ in shifting genocidal military away from residential areas in East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 April 2016, 23:29 GMT]
The 11th Regiment of the occupying Sinhala Army, organized under the 233 Brigade of the military of genocidal Sri Lanka, is refusing to release the lands belonging to Murakkoddaan-cheanai Government Tamil Mixed School, situated 18 km north of the city of Batticaloa on Batticaloa – Vaazhaichcheanai Road zonal education officials told TamilNet on Friday. The SL military is also occupying the lands that belong to 25 Tamil families in the surroundings of the lands of the school. There is no sign of SL military making the area suitable for civil life. The school is operating at a different location 200 meters away from the seized lands. Continued militarisation of residential areas should be perceived by Tamils realising how large tracts of farm lands are being seized for demographic genocide by occupying Sri Lanka and how ‘Mahaweli’ scheme is conceived to complete the genocide in East.
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Road accidents involving occupying military escalate, jouranlists threatened

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 April 2016, 17:10 GMT]
The increasing accidents and aggressive behaviour by the occupying Sinhala military is on the increase as witnessed this week in two accidents in Poonakari in the North and in Trincomalee. A 59-year-old Tamil mother and her 33-year-old daughter were killed Monday night near Vigneswara College in Trincomalee city when a speeding military vehicle crashed on their autorickshaw. The driver and another 33-year-old woman were rushed to hospital. At Poonakari in Ki'linochci district, a 23-year-old Sri Lanka Army driver of a military water bowser was killed and a civilian driver of a dump truck (Tipper) sustained injuries in the accident on Tuesday night.
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Sinhala military of US design consolidates along Palk Bay challenging Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 March 2016, 23:07 GMT]
Hundreds of soldiers of genocidal Sri Lanka have been deployed between Iluppaik-kadavai in Maanthai-West of Mannaar and the strategic Poonakari in the north of Vanni mainland along the coastal belt facing the Palk Bay in recent days. The occupying Sinhala soldiers are transforming their temporary positions into permanent structures. Even the travellers along the A32 Highway from Mannaar through Poonakari to Jaffna could witness the systematic deployment of the SL soldiers being busily engaged in consolidating their positions and cantonments. The betrayal committed upon the Eezham Tamils by the Geneva-based ‘Human Rights’ discourse, which is primarily exploited by the world powers for their geopolitical manoeuvrings on the island, has ended up strengthening the military grip of genocidal Sri Lanka on Eezham Tamils.
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West endorses regional allies as State violence against Kurds escalates

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 March 2016, 00:06 GMT]
As the Kurds are at the eye of the storm unravelling in the geo-political dynamics of world and regional establishments in Turkey and Syria, Eezham Tamils need to display solidarity with the Kurdish struggles for sovereignty and self-governance transcending the narratives of the US-ISIS paradigm. The US and NATO alliance are endorsing their traditional strategic partners, the States of Turkey and Saudi-Arabia, as the regional hegemons of the Middle-East assert their geo-political and strategic ambitions in the region. Becoming evident with the course of the crisis in Syria is the hegemons predilection at one hand towards dismantling Kurdish self-governance and the politico-military powers represented by the PKK and PYD and on the other efforts to topple the Assad regime and by extension weakening the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance in the region.
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Colonial legacy, New Delhi failure, prolong Mizo national question

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 March 2016, 15:36 GMT]
Remembering New Delhi sending Air Force to bomb its own people in Mizoram 50 years ago in 1966, an article appeared in Scroll.in on Saturday said, “The bombing of Aizawl did not deter or detach the heart of Zo nationalism. Instead it makes Zo nationalism more evident and alive and outside the interest and understanding of Indian nationalism. The bomb actually othered the Mizos from India and Indians. The blunder made by the government of India with its decision to bomb Aizawl was an affirmation and acknowledgment of Mizo nationalism."
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Colombo resumes surveillance of Eezham Tamils through ‘registration’ in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 March 2016, 11:11 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Sinhala police, the intelligence operatives of the SL State and military surveillance officers are conducting fresh ‘registrations’ of people living across the 14 divisions of Batticaloa district, citing section 76 of the SL ‘Police Ordinance’ which states that householders should furnish the officer of police of his or her division with a list of all the inmates in the house and that any change occurring in the households should be reported to the police or legal authorities of the SL State. The surveillance measure is now being systematically implemented in the entire district of Batticaloa. In addition, Sinhala military intelligence officers are visiting selected households every month and some others every third month. Those who have been in Vanni earlier are being harassed with ‘terrorist’ questions, Tamil civil sources in Batticaloa told TamilNet on Friday.
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Veteran drama artist Maamanithar S.T. Arasu passes away

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 February 2016, 23:18 GMT]
Veteran Eezham Tamil drama artist Kalaapooshanam S.T. Arasu, who was betowed with the highest civilian Maamanithar title by LTTE Leader Velupillai Pirapaharan in 1990, passed away after a brief illness at the age of 89 in Nalloor, Jaffna on Friday. Sivakkolunthu Thirunavukkarasu (S.T. Arasu) received an emotional funeral service, attended by Tamil artists, academics and politicians on Sunday. As a multi-talented creative artist, S.T. Arasu has worked with prominent drama directors of his times and has contributed at various fronts including make-up and music. S.T.Arasu had a keen interest in sculpture and was also a professional photographer.
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Tamil solidarity with Kurds to go beyond IS-US paradigm

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 February 2016, 23:01 GMT]
Since the Mu'l'livaaykkaal killings of 2009, the Tamil diaspora has mostly focused political efforts towards demanding justice for the inhuman crimes committed against Tamil civilians. While such efforts have elevated international awareness of the gross human rights violations committed by the Sri Lanka military during the war, the approach has not yielded results on prosecuting the perpetrators of the international crimes. In light of this situation, it is imperative for the Tamil diaspora to establish alliances with the Kurds and other people marginalized by oppressive states and the International Community.
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Colombo silently consolidates military positions facing Gulf of Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 February 2016, 23:43 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military of genocidal Sri Lanka has been silently consolidating its temporary positions and camps into permanent structures inside the limits of Mannaar Urban Council area within the last 30 days. There are more than 6,000 Sinhala military personnel within the UC area where 25,000 civilians reside. The SL Army, Navy and the STF troopers are stationed at more than 15 positions within the 27 square km. The systematic consolidation of the naval and army cantonments, camps, and positions has taken place despite clear demands from the civil sources to de-militarize the densely populated UC area. The strategic part of the district, commanding both the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannaar as well as commanding the closest communication line with the Tamil Nadu coast, has become a hive of intense Sinhala militarisation and demographic changes in recent times.
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Genocidal Sri Lanka, IC abetters, not understood in Latin America, Africa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 February 2016, 20:17 GMT]
Latin American Herald Tribune featured an article on Thursday, projecting the so-called independence day of ‘Sri Lanka’ as promoting ‘national reconciliation’ and said: “In the final months of the war from March to May 2009, both the LTTE - which is listed as a terrorist organisation by 32 countries - and the Sri Lankan military were accused of war crimes, including genocide, against civilians. Genocide by both sides is the picture given. Last month, Reuter Africa came out with another story: “Ethnic minority Tamils were often favoured for higher government positions under British colonial rule. After independence in 1948, many lost their positions as successive governments pursued language and other policies favouring the majority Sinhalese population,” the story said.
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