‘Collective trauma inflicted on Tamil nation is part of structural genocide’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 August 2014, 08:47 GMT]
In a presentation at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (APA) on 8 August, independent journalist and human rights activist Nirmanusan Balasundaram, talking about “visible and latent factors” of decades of oppression of the Eezham Tamil nation by the Sri Lankan state, explained how collective trauma inflicted on the Tamil nation is a part of structural genocide. Further talking about how militarization, demographic changes in the Tamil homeland, and abuse of Tamil women by occupying Sri Lankan forces were part of that process, he argued that “it is vital for major stakeholders of conflict to identify and address causes of psychological and collective trauma of the Tamil people.”
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Alcohol becomes genocide weapon deployed by occupying Sinhala State

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 August 2014, 05:13 GMT]
Thriving alcohol business ‘licensed’ by genocidal Sri Lanka in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, especially after the end of the LTTE-run civil administration, is conceived as a potential ‘counterinsurgency’ and structural genocide weapon, besides sucking money of a war-torn people, commented social activists in Batticaloa district. Responding to an incident that took place in the district this week, in which a poor, female-headed family, brewing country liquor was shot by raiding Sinhala police of a State that promotes its alcohol business, the social activists were coming out with the larger dimensions of the alcohol crisis in the district.
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Indian housing scheme in Trincomalee ignores uprooted Champoor Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 August 2014, 14:08 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Trincomalee has blocked the representatives of uprooted Eezham Tamils from Champoor from presenting their appeal in person to the Indian High Commissioner Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha, who visited Moothoor East last Friday to lay the foundation stone for the housing scheme for the war affected people from the three villages of Koonith-theevu, Navaratnapuram and Choodaik-kudaa. The uprooted Tamils, still living in four so-called welfare camps at Paddith-thidal, Ma’nat-cheanai, Ki’liveddi and Kaddai-pa’richchaan, who were blocked from the handing over their appeal have sent a letter to the Indian High Commissioner detailing their suffering for the past 9 years.
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Colombo schemes Sinhala colony at Saiva Shrine of Kanniyaa Hot Wells

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 August 2014, 13:36 GMT]
After illegally occupying the Hot Wells, a Saiva sacred site in the traditional Tamil village of Kanniyaa in the Uppu-ve’li division of the Trincomalee district, and after constructing a Buddhist Shrine at the locality, the genocidal State of Sri Lanka is now ‘developing’ a new road to connect the traditional Hindu shrine with a remote Sinhala settlement, abandoning the already existing road that links the village wtih Jaffna – Anuradhapura Road. The Colombo government is also scheming a large Sinhala colonization project along the new road in thousands of acres of public lands in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils, informed Tamil civil sources in Trincomalee told TamilNet.
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Kurds display self-reliance and unity in the midst of world apathy

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 August 2014, 08:53 GMT]
During the course of the siege and following the takeover of the City of Sinjar in Southern Kurdistan by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), coordinated policies of eradicating the Yazidi and the Kurdish population were unleashed, forcing a mass exodus of people from the city of 300000 towards the inhospitable mountains adjoining the city. However, Kurdish forces from other parts of Kurdistan have displayed a historic and phenomenal cooperation in coordinating the Kurdish national resistance. On 4th August, the PKK issued a statement on its website “All Kurds in the north, east, south and west must rise up against the attack on Kurds in Sinjar.” On Friday, Kurdish diaspora from all these regions demonstrated in Oslo, condemning ISIS brutalities and the silence of the International Community.
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Mannaar Bishop rejects GoSL’s Presidential commission on missing persons

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 August 2014, 18:21 GMT]
Rejecting an offer to make presentations before the GoSL’s Presidential commission on missing persons, Mannaar Bishop Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph said “Over the years many commissions such as yours have been set up and there is absolutely no shred of evidence that they have tackled impunity. Most, if not all of these commissions have provided only to be eye washers for the then Governments in power.” In a letter sent on Sunday addressed to the Chairman and Commissioners of this setup, he further expressed his concern that “the recent expansion of your mandate and the appointment of international experts to oversee the work of the commission without any clear terms of reference has been deliberately done to undermine the work of the UN OHCHR's inquiry into Sri Lanka which commenced recently.”
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SL TID detains another Tamil student of Sabaragamuwa university

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 August 2014, 10:23 GMT]
The Tamil student, who was arrested last Tuesday by the SL Terrorist Investigation Division (TID), has been released as protests by Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim students of the Sabaragamuwa University gained momentum on Friday. However, another Tamil student of the same university has been arrested and subjected to interrogation at the notorious 4th Floor in Colombo. The students of the Sabaragamuwa University have termed the harassment of Tamil students as State Terrorism in their protest. Sutharsan from Mukamalaai, Ki’linochchi, was arrested while he was recovering from an injury.
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British officials held secretive Belfast meeting with Sri Lanka after Mu'l'livaaykkaal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 August 2014, 00:02 GMT]
UK government lawyers are claiming there are no minutes available from a controversial meeting held between British officials and a Sri Lankan military adviser at Belfast's Policing Board HQ one month after the genocidal onsluaght on Vanni in 2009. The revelation comes after a year-long legal battle to get full disclosure from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to a Freedom of Information request. The British government withdrew its national security exemptions just days before the matter was to due to be decided by a judge at the Information Tribunal. The Belfast meeting related to the deployment of two senior Northern Ireland police officers to Sri Lanka as “critical friends” of the regime during the final stages of the genocidal onslaught in 2009.
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SL military steps up threats, harassment of Tamil councillors in North

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 August 2014, 10:58 GMT]
The so-called white vans and motorbikes without number plates operated by the SL military intelligence have been deployed to monitor the movement of Tamil councillors in the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) in recent days, complain several members of the NPC. A prominent councillor, Ms Ananthy Sasitharan, recently lodged a complaint with Vadduk-koaddai Police complaining that white van and motorbike squads were chasing her round the clock, monitoring all her movements. In the name of investigating the complaint, the police went ahead with engineering false evidence that there were no reports of white van or motorbike squads in the area where she resides, TNA sources told TamilNet. The SL Defence Ministry was behind the recent withdrawal of police protection that was provided to some of NPC members, according to NPC Chairman CVK Sivagnanam.
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Tamils show solidarity with Kurdistan, Palestine

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 August 2014, 00:17 GMT]
In a series of protests that happened across the globe, Tamils demonstrated their solidarity with the nations of Kurdistan and Palestine. Condemning the Islamist ISIS’ brutality and ethnic cleansing against the Kurds in the Kurdish territories of Syria and Iraq and Israel’s unrelenting assault on Palestine, Tamil activists conveyed their support for independent Kurdistan and Palestine. Over the past few weeks, protests for these causes in Chennai, London, Washington, Los Angeles, Sydney, Toronto and other places saw active Tamil participation. Over 2000 activists of different organizations staged a protest in Chennai on Friday for Kurdistan and Palestine. Likewise, Tamil activists who attended a Kurdish demonstration in London on Friday highlighted the need for greater solidarity among Nations-Without-States.
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Tamil man dies at hospital, SL police shields traffic crime by SL Navy

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 August 2014, 10:54 GMT]
A speeding tractor belonging to the Naayaa’ru camp of the occupying SL Navy in Mullaiththeevu on 02 August hit a motorbike causing serious injuries to two 24-year-old Eezham Tamil men from Mullaiththeevu. One of the victims, Arumukam Sivakumar from Chilaavaththai South of Mullaiththeevu district, succumbed to his injuries at Jaffna Teaching Hospital on Thursday after struggling for his life for four days. The victim is a father of two children. The SL Navy trooper who was riding the tractor and his fellow troopers in the trailer had run away into a nearby military camp after the accident, and they have not been ‘identified’ by the SL police.
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Monks-led mob disrupts Tamil victims’ meet in Colombo church

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 August 2014, 12:35 GMT]
Encouraged by BJP New Delhi’s stand against UN crimes investigation in the island, a Sinhala-Buddhist mob, led by monks, flexed muscles against Tamil rights activists and family members of missing persons, who went to Colombo from the Vanni districts to present their case in a meeting held at a Catholic church at Maradana in Colombo on Monday. The meeting was organised by the Center for Society and Religion and by Inform Human Rights Center and the incident took place in the presence of the US Deputy Ambassador in Colombo. The Tamil victims who went to present their plight to southerners and diplomats were largely led by Catholic church personalities of the Mannaar Diocese.
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Sinhala division hijacks civil affairs of Tamil division in East

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 August 2014, 23:49 GMT]
After Sinhalicising the strategic land-link between the Northern and Eastern provinces and demographically changing the Ma’nal-aa’ru region of Eezham Tamils into a fully Sinhalicised DS division in the south of Northern province, the Colombo government and its military Establishment have now instructed the Sinhala Divisional Secretariat of Padavi Sripura in Trincomalee to take charge of the civil affairs in the northernmost part of Kuchave’li division of Trincomalee district in the Eastern province. The move intends to carve out a Sinhala district, occupying the strategic land and the sea link between the Northern and Eastern provinces and annex that part with the North Central Province, fear informed Tamil civil officials in Trincomalee.
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BJP’s bypass ‘geopolitics’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 August 2014, 19:03 GMT]
New Delhi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) comes out with a comical ‘geopolitics’ bypassing India’s own Tamil Nadu State and the nation of Eezham Tamils at the closest proximity, to build a ‘Ram Sethu’ to genocidal Sri Lanka, and in that process concedes to the total annihilation of the nation and territoriality of Eezham Tamils. Even though the inroads of China and Pakistan are cited as usual, and now added with citation of US interference as well, the DNA of the thinking of New Delhi and some of its South Indian articulators on the question of Tamils has to be carefully understood by all Tamils. There is no alternative to Tamils proving their geopolitical strength in all justifiable ways possible.
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Israel, Sri Lanka, need collective world action

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 August 2014, 00:02 GMT]
What Israel is doing in Gaza now is collective punishment. Israel will accept nothing short of the acquiescence of Palestinians to their own subordination. The twenty-three-year charade of the “peace process” has shown that this is all Israel is offering, with the full approval of Washington. The U.S. must either reverse its policies or abandon its claim of being an “honest broker.” It should certainly not insult Palestinians by saying that it cares about them or their children, who are dying in Gaza today, writes Arab Studies Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University. What is said on Palestine is no different from what could be said on Washington and New Delhi put together in the case of the nation of Eezham Tamils, comment Tamil activists for alternative politics.
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British-trained STF brings night terror back to Jaffna streets

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 July 2014, 20:42 GMT]
The STF, trained by the British, which is a full-fledged military outfit under the SL Police and was directly engaged in acts of genocide in the East as well as in Vanni during the war, has started arbitrary arrests in Jaffna peninsula during the night time. Tamil youths are being detained for being spotted on the streets without identity papers in their own villages and towns. The civilian freedom of movement has been severely restricted and the people are again afraid to move around after 8:00 p.m. A so-called ‘Zonal Commander’ of the STF has been appointed for Jaffna peninsula, receiving direct instructions from the SL Military Establishment, informed sources said.
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Vaiko condemns BJP’s ‘poisonous’ nexus with genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 July 2014, 18:01 GMT]
The General Secretary of MDMK, Mr Vaiko, on Tuesday condemned Indian participation at an annual military conference organized by genocidal Sri Lanka in August. The annual 'Defence Seminar' is conceived by the SL State as a gimmick venue to market its military corporatism project to the external forces under the banner of geo-strategic location of the island. Mr Vaiko has described Indian participation as ‘unpardonable‘, according to a news report by the Press Trust of India (PTI). The BJP government's move to participate in the seminar comes after it rejected entry to the members of the UN panel appointed by UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) head Navanethem Pillay to conduct an inquiry into alleged war crimes and human rights violations by the SL government and its military forces.
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6,000 families in Poaratheevup-pattu, Batticaloa, suffer without potable water

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 July 2014, 22:33 GMT]
2,219 Tamil civilians are still residing in temporary huts and 747 families lack permanent housing in 43 Village (GS) Divisions of Poaratheevup-pattu Divisional Secretariat (DS) division in Batticaloa district, according to Divisional Secretary N. Vilvaratnam. The families have suffered not only from the genocidal onslaught, but also from the seasonal flooding and draught. 5,602 families have no access to toilets, according to the statistics from the divisional secretary. “This is the development brought to Batticaloa by the genocidal State and its Mahinda Chinthana,” a Tamil official who didn’t wish to be named commented providing the figures to TamilNet on Monday.
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SL Navy refuses to release Hindu cremation ground in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 July 2014, 22:39 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Navy has been refusing to release the Hindu cremation ground at Kadatkaraich-cheanai in Moothoor East of Trincomalee district since it occupied the area in 2006. Despite a section of the people were allowed to resettle in Moothoor East, the SL Navy is still holding the cremation grounds causing difficulties for the resettled people to cremate their dead and conduct the funeral rituals, says Eastern Provincial Council opposition member Kumarasamy Nageswaran.
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Women groups protest against SL Navy rape of Tamil children at Kaarainakar

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 July 2014, 23:22 GMT]
A group of people representing the women groups in Jaffna staged a protest in front of the High Court in Jaffna on Friday demanding the legal system to punish the culprits behind the brutal rape of children in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. The protestors had sealed their mouths with black bands to register the gagged condition under SL military occupation. In the meantime, SL navy and army intelligence operatives harassed two female reporters who went to Juvenile Magistrate’s Court at Kurunakar to report the news of another identification parade where two alleged culprits of the SL Navy from Kaarainakar base were supposed to be present.
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