Sinhala colonisation escalated in Vavuniyaa North with a multitude of players backing infrastructure

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 April 2019, 21:24 GMT]
Elected civic members of Vavuniyaa North Divisional Council (PS) complain that the Sinhala colonisation is relentlessly targeting the eastern side of their division. The occupying Sinhala Army and its home-guards paramilitary act as the guardians of the colony while the extremist Buddhist monks coordinate the systematic expansion. Various SL ministries provide the infrastructure. Besides, a host of actors from a leading socio-economic NGO with Buddhist philosophy to a local extremist group known as ‘Sinhala Power in the North‘ (‘Uture Hela Balaya’ or ‘Utura Rakina Raṭa Surakina Jātika Balaya - Vanni’) facilitate it through different approaches. Also, sections of expatriate Sinhalese, including a retired professor from Australia, have funded the housing projects of the scheme. The Sinhala settlers are being radicalised without any provocation or hostility from the Tamils.
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Colombo schemes new settler colony for intruding Sinhala fishers in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 April 2019, 22:43 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DFAR) has recently permitted twenty-six migrant fishers from outside the Mullaiththeevu district to put up huts as season settler fishers along the Chaalai lagoon in Mullaiththeevu district. None among these 26 settlers are Tamils. Eighteen of them are from Negombo, Chilaw and Puththa'lam while eight are Tamil-speaking Muslims from Trincomalee, informed civil sources in Mullaiththeevu said. The scheme is going to be a Sinhala colony as the one in Mukaththuvaaram in Kokku'laay, Tamil civil sources said.
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Tamil youth in Batticaloa irked by SL State-backed southern company bent on ilmenite mining

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 April 2019, 08:01 GMT]
Tension prevailed in Kathira-ve'li, and the surrounding villages located 75 km north of Batticaloa city on Wednesday when Tamil youth went on a motorbike rally opposing the move for mineral excavation by a corporate from the South. Protesters were riding around 60 motorbikes from Verukal Bridge to Vaakarai through Panichchangkea'ni. The residents of three villages, Kathirave'li, Puchchang-kea'ni and Puthoor have been protesting against the exploitative ilmenite excavation project launched with the backing of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka. “Now, the people here are outraged, especially the youth. Recently, one youth wanted to self-immolate himself to protect his soil. We struggled to stop it,” Kathirve'li Fisheries Society leader M Subramaniyam told TamilNet. “We are finding it difficult to control the youth, and they could resort to extreme response any time,” he warned.
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SLA deployed Tamils as human shields in 1990, activists allege mass graves in Jaffna islet

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 April 2019, 21:01 GMT]
The occupying SL Navy harassed 25 Tamil protesters who had mobilised to wage a peaceful protest against the seizure of their lands at Ma’ndai-theevu, an islet off Jaffna, by photographing and recording them. However, the protesters successfully blocked the survey officials for the second time in two years. After the last attempt in June 2018, on Thursday the SL Survey Department tried again to measure the eighteen acres of residential and agricultural lands belonging to eleven families. The lands in question are already fenced off within the premises of SLNS Welusumana naval base and are declared as a no-go zone by the SL Navy, which wants to militarise them permanently. Ma’ndai-theevu, an islet located at a strategic locality towards the entrance from the Palk Bay into the Jaffna lagoon, needs to be subjected to excavations for alleged mass graves, say Tamil rights activists in Jaffna.
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Analyst: Transitional justice will never work, SL State institutionally genocidal

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 April 2019, 17:20 GMT]
Eezham Tamils should not fall prey to the advocacy coming from the Western countries that prod them into the roadmap of unworkable transitional justice in the island, Jaffna-based Senior Lawyer and Political Analyst S.A. Jothilingam told TamilNet on Tuesday. The Tamils have almost lost their trust in the UN institutions after witnessing the events unfolding at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. If the UN system, also politically siding with the political establishment, could not deliver justice to the crimes committed against the Tamils in the island, it would not be able to resolve the political conflicts anywhere else, he reiterated. The Western states involved in the geopolitical race against China want to make concessions to the UNP government. In their greed for securing strategic interests, they are sacrificing the justice owed to Tamils, he said.
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Sumanthiran's rationality exposes Wigneswaran's gullibility

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 April 2019, 22:11 GMT]
ITAK Parliamentarian and President Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran, a proven ‘revisionist’ of Eezham Tamils’ external right of self-determination who sophisticatedly denies Tamil genocide, has now assailed former NPC Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, who mistakenly or deceptively ended up harping on IIGEP as a precedent-setting argument to justify the illogical demand for hybrid courts. After Sumanthiran's intervention, which was highlighted by Jaffna daily Kaalaik-Kathir on 31st March, Wigneswaran issued a new statement on the same day – this time in Tamil only – and said he was not asking to set up a group like the IIGEP. His initial statement also pointed out that the act of IIGEP dissolving itself was an example why an international investigation was necessary in the island, he reiterated.
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DMK billionaire downplays record investment near Chinese port in Hambantota

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 March 2019, 23:04 GMT]
DMK Politician S. Jagathrakshakan is trying to downplay the move for record-high investment in constructing an oil refinery and a cement plant by his family-owned business in Hambantota. The step, partnering with genocidal Sri Lanka and the Sultanate of Oman, which is having China as its biggest trade partner, “could see several more investors once the details were worked out”, the former Union minister has reportedly told media in India on Sunday. Eezham Tamils have severely criticised the move as being contradictory to the policy of his party and the legislature of Tamil Nadu, which has called for international investigations against Tamil genocide in the island as well as for an economic embargo.
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Senior TELO leader urges DMK to withdraw Hambantota investment

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 March 2019, 22:04 GMT]
M.K. Shivajilingam, the senior political leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) and former TNA parliamentarian, has urged DMK politician Samikannu Jagathratchagan in Tamil Nadu to reconsider the decision of his family to invest in the big business of building an oil refinery and cement factory in Hambantota in the South. “I urge Mr Jagathratchagan to reconsider his decision [...] Eezham Tamils have not yet gained justice to the genocide committed against them. A political solution is still far away [..] At this juncture, the investment move is also contradictory to the unanimous position of Tamil Nadu State Assembly which had called for economic sanctions on Sri Lanka until these issues are resolved,” Shivajligam told TamilNet on Friday.
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Interior village faces imminent Sinhalicisation in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 March 2019, 17:22 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military chased away the residents of four villages in Kudumpi-malai GS division, which is also known as Thoppik-kal and Baron’s Cap, during the times of war in 2007. The villages are located close to Polonnaruwa border. Although the uprooted Eezham Tamils were allowed to resettle back in 2013, the fertile highlands at Periya Miyaang-kal village, owned by Tamil settlers since 1969 were being retained by the occupying Sinhala military occupation. Even though the SL Army relocated its 11th Regiment troops from the location two years ago in 2017, the Tamil landowners are not being allowed to enter their lands. Now, the SL authorities have started to claim that the grounds have become ‘state property’ says Nagarasa Nagathamby, who was living there since 1969. The Buddha statue and the structures are intact, and the Tamils fear a Sinhala colony at the locality.
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Colombo ‘reminds’ Eezham Tamils on significance of theorising war historiography

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 March 2019, 19:47 GMT]
Occupying Colombo's Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) has filed a ‘B Report’ requesting the Magistrates’ Court in Jaffna to demand the editor of Colombo-based Thamizhth-thanthi weekly to reveal the author and the source of an article, which was published in May 2018. The article was about the late Brigadier Balraj, a highly esteemed military commander of the LTTE, who played the key role in the Tiger victory of the Elephant Pass garrison in 2000. The TID has approached the SL Court in January 2019, eight months after the article, titled “Balraj, the unparalleled war hero of the 21st century”, appeared. The SL State wants to suppress the media freedom of Eezham Tamil writers to file articles under pen names. It wants the editors to impose self-censorship and not to protect the identity of the authors. Colombo wants to make an example through this case, journalists in Jaffna said.
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Sinhala monks deploy different tactics to make inroad into Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 March 2019, 21:18 GMT]
Trincomalee and Ampaa'rai, two of the three districts in the East, are long subjected to systematic Sinhala-Buddhicisation. Although the district of Batticaloa is facing structural occupation across the interior villages that border with Polonnaruwa and Ampaa'rai districts, the supremacist Sinhala Theravada Buddhist establishment and the unitary state system were unable to make headway for Sinhalicisation agenda in the urban areas of the district. However, two Sinhala monks have been experimenting with different tactics to achieve that agenda in the city and its suburbs after the end of the genocidal war in Vanni in 2009. The latest experiment seeks to deceive Tamils through accommodating two Hindu temples within the Sinhala Buddhist monastery establishment which is being expanded with a Vihara at “Jayanthi-pura,” 5 km northeast of the city where no Sinhala people reside.
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TNA hierarchy backs controversial Sinhala extremist project at Jaffna entrance

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 March 2019, 21:02 GMT]
The unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka, which constitutionally accords ‘foremost place’ to Buddhism, has stepped up the hurried erection of a large Buddhist stupa at the entrance to Jaffna city in Naavatkuzhi. The ruling UNP has exerted pressure on the elected Divisional Council (PS) of Chaavakach-cheari to silently withdraw the case against the controversial project through its TNA collaborator M.A. Sumanthiran, civil servants who were forced to withdraw the case told TamilNet. The vihara was not to be built without the permission from the democratically elected civic council, the Magistrate of Chaavakach-cheari had previously ruled. After getting the TNA to withdraw its objection, SL Minister of Megapolis & Western Development ‘Patali’ Champika Ranawaka, a Sinhala extremist, visited Naavatkuzhi on 22 February to accelerate the ‘development’ of the hostile project in Jaffna.
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Tamil parties failing to single-mindedly demand genocide justice, more dangerous than ITAK

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 March 2019, 14:11 GMT]
The Eezham Tamils need to objectively and scientifically distinguish the competing discourses of the collaborative politics of the ITAK and the actors claiming to counter the wrong narrative of the ITAK. While the ITAK is lost to ‘quisling politics’, there is a danger that the emerging alternative actors also succumbing to a rather dangerous ‘diplopia politics’, which is a double-option trap. The bedrock of both the deceptions is the overt orientation of relying upon the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), tasked to promote and protect the human rights and function also as the secretariat of the UNHRC. It is important that Tamils should engage and interact with UN bodies. However, limiting the demands to the inside-the-box thinking of that system is more disastrous than the ITAK advocating quisling politics.
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Sinhala ‘emperor’ monk wants Muslims expelled from Arisi-malai in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 March 2019, 17:29 GMT]
An extremist Sinhala-Buddhist monk in Pulmoaddai division of Trincomalee has vowed to expel all the Muslims from Arisi-malai area, which he considered as ‘Buddha Pooja Boomi’ of an allegedly fictive ‘ancient heritage’. The monk, Panamure Thilakawansa, was attending the SL courts earlier this year carrying a placard which said ‘I am Chakravarthy’ (emperor). L.H.M. Halid, one of the six families that filed a case against their lands being appropriated, said the latest dispute was about six of forty-six acres of lands in extent.
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Colombo wants to mark ancient villages in East as ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ villages

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 March 2019, 21:52 GMT]
SL Minister of Internal Home Affairs, Provincial Council and Local Government Mr Wajira Abeywardhana has instructed the district secretariats in the three districts of the Eastern Province to declare each village having at least one Sinhala Buddhist family as a Buddhist village, highly placed civil sources at the Trincomalee District Secretariat told TamilNet on Friday. Mr Abeywardhana is a UNP politician, who hails from the Galle District in the South. The UNP is following the footsteps of notorious Cyril Mathew (1912 - 1989), an outright racist UNP politician who was the SL Minister of Industry and Scientific Affairs (1977 - 1986) under J.R. Jayewardene, commented the civil sources at Trincomalee District Secretariat.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhalicisaton of disputed heritage hilltop in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 January 2019, 22:38 GMT]
A team of technicians from the SL Archaeology Department were deployed to copy stone inscriptions found at the disputed heritage site of Vedukku-naa'ri hill-top in Vavuniyaa on Thursday and Friday. The members of the group were claiming that they had come following special requests from the District Secretary of Vavuniyaa, a Sinhalese, and the secretariat of the SL President Maithiripala Sirisena, said Thamilchelvan Thurairajah, an elected councillor at the Civic Divisional Council of Vavuniyaa North, who confronted and interacted with the team on Thursday. Two armed Special Task Force commandos and two police officers were providing ‘security’ to the technicians to carry out the recordings on Thursday and Friday. They were also making some other measurements at the hilltop, the witnesses said.
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SL State apparatus at full swing to Sinhalicise ancient temple of Tamils in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 January 2019, 22:41 GMT]
The trustees of Thiruk-koa'neasvaram (Koneswaram) temple in the eastern port city of Trincomalee blame three different authorities of the unitary of state of genocidal Sri Lanka as severely restricting their initiatives to preserve the spiritual environment at the historic Saiva temple. The Tamil devotees experience the conduct of the SL state apparatus as racial discrimination, reporters in the city said. The secretary of the trustee board, Mr K. Parameswaran, when contacted by TamilNet said the SL Archaeology Department, SL Department of Coast Conservation and the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau, which is a statutory body of the Colombo government, were confronting the trustee board.
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Top military post for genocidaire Sinhala commander, Quisling acid-test to Tamil academic

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 January 2019, 23:18 GMT]
Two appointments recently made by the president of the unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka have evoked much attention. One is the appointment of a Tamil person, Dr Suren Raghavan, who has been serving him for some time, as the Governor of the Northern Province; and the other is the appointment of Major General Shavendra Silva as the new Chief of Staff of the Sri Lanka Army. The appointments manifest in a classic setting of the genocidal Mahavansa-and-Mahaweli mindset of the Polonnaruwa-Anuradhapura establishment of Maithiripala Sirisena, commented Tamil political observers in Jaffna. The intentions behind the appointment of a Tamil academic, who is loyal to Sirisena and ‘acceptable’ to the Maha Sangha of the Sinhala Theravada Buddhist establishment, should be easy to grasp, they said.
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SL Navy restricts humanitarian access to resettling people of Ira'nai-theevu

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 January 2019, 22:21 GMT]
Nine months have elapsed since the uprooted people embarked on a courageous sea landing to SL Navy occupied twin-islet of Ira'nai-theevu at the western coast of Vanni. Only a few toilets and temporary huts have been provided to them. While the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is set to assist the resettled people with necessary facilities such as access to potable water, the SL Navy stationed at Muzhangkaavil along the coast of the Vanni mainland has restricted the NGOs and community organisations from accessing the twin-islets, which it regards as a ‘high-security zone’. The local workers of the UNDP and other NGOs as well as the community-based organisations, trying to visit Ira'nai-theevu are facing strict procedures and are subjected to surveillance as if they were enemies entering the property of the SL Navy, humanitarian workers said.
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Tamil dairy farmers face two-frontal attacks in interior Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 January 2019, 17:11 GMT]
Ex-paramilitary Karuna Group, which is aligned with former SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been gunning down the cattle belonging to dairy farmers at the pasturelands of Paalai-vaddavaan (Paalai-madu) in Paduvaan-karai, the interior northwestern part of Batticaloa district which was protected by the LTTE before 2007 from Sinhala colonisation coming from Polonnaruwa, the home district of Mr Sirisena. In the meantime, Sinhala encroacher ‘home guards’ paramilitary men have stolen eight calves within the last 20 days. The SL police are taking the side of the encroachers and demands the Tamil dairy farmers to identify the ‘thieves’ to register a complaint. The calve thefts have taken place at Mayilaththa-madu pasture land, which is located within two kilometres from the Paalai-madu tank, where the former paramilitary men who have been firing at the cows.
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