Indian Foreign Secretary thanks Sampanthan for Jaffna invitation to Indian PM

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 November 2013, 23:37 GMT]
Indian Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh who accompanied Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo, when she met the Tamil National Alliance parliamentarians last Wednesday repeatedly thanked R Sampanthan, MA Sumanthiran and Suresh Premachandran of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) for having extended an invitation to the Indian PM to visit the island appreciating the ‘usefulness’ of the invitation that had coincided with the controversial Indian delegation’s attendance to the CHOGM, informed sources within the TNA told TamilNet on Monday.
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Britain epitomizes genocide in ‘British Commonwealth’: QSM recipient

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 November 2013, 16:33 GMT]
British Prime Minister David Cameron being edged to deal directly with the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, and that too in a periodical session of the Commonwealth, hints at the dismal failure of Britain's normal diplomatic channels, said veteran Tamil activist and Queen’s Service Medal (QSM) recipient A. Theva Rajan in a statement issued by New Zealand Tamil Action Front (TAF) on Thursday. “130 years on, your crowning of a war criminal as Commonwealth head will only help epitomize Tamil genocide. Please do not damage the Tamil cause,” the veteran Tamil activist urged the British PM in his letter.
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Prime Minister of Mauritius to boycott Sri Lanka CHOGM

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 November 2013, 12:18 GMT]
Navin Ramgoolam, the Prime Minister of Mauritius, the country slated to host the next CHOGM at the conclusion of Sri Lanka's two year tenure, has reportedly decided to boycott the CHOGM meet in Colombo. Prime Minister Ramgoolam said that he made ​​the decision because "he is a man of principle,” and added that he had received information that the situation in the north of the island of Sri Lanka has not improved in the four years after the war ended, Le Défi Media Group, a news media based in Port Louis reported Tuesday.
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Colombo suspends flights to Jaffna ahead of CHOGM

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 November 2013, 10:47 GMT]
In an apparent move to make foreign diplomats and journalists attending Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting [CHOGM] in Colombo steer away from Jaffna and block them from witnessing the protest of uprooted people of Valikaamam North as well as meeting their representatives, Colombo government has instructed the only private passenger flight operator, FITS Aviation (Pvt) limited, to suspend all flights from Ratmalana in Colombo to Palaali in Jaffna till 18 November. On Tuesday, the Canadian officials visiting North had to travel by road to Jaffna.
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Colombo spends funds from military budget for wedging North from East

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 November 2013, 01:24 GMT]
Aiming to increase the number of Sinhala settlers in the newly created division of Ma’nalaa’ru in Mulliath-theevu, which has been Sinhalicised into ‘Weli-oya’, the occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has made hurried arrangements for bringing in 2,000 new Sinhala families, informed sources in Mullaith-theevu told TamilNet. Colombo government has allocated funds for the Sinhalicisation scheme under the Sri Lankan ‘defence expenditure’, the sources further said adding that large tracts of forest reserves have also been cleared for the colonization scheme.
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Colombo in CHOGM panic interrogates, gags NZ, Aussie MPs

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 November 2013, 17:25 GMT]
Australian Senator Lee Rhiannon of the Greens party and New Zealand MP Jan Logie were detained, and interrogated separately in Colombo and were"sent back to their countries," for, according to Colombo, allegedly breaking the island's visa laws, a Sydney popular daily reported Sunday. Sri Lanka authorities appeared to have been perturbed by the damaging independent observations on rights issues made by the two MPs in their visit to the North, political observers said. In a joint statement that was to be released by the two MPs, before Immigration officials took the two MPs into custody, the MPs called for the cancellation of Commonwealth Meet in Colombo saying, "[i]f CHOGM goes ahead and if Sri Lanka is given the Chair of this organisation the Commonwealth will have failed the people of Sri Lanka and damaged its own high standing with the international community."
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200 years of British colonial outlook continues to haunt Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 November 2013, 16:08 GMT]
After British colonialism waging the war on Kandy in 1815, administratively uniting the island and creating unitary Ceylon for colonial geopolitical purposes, the next major war of international dimensions was fought against the nation of Eezham Tamils in 2009, in which the genocide was predetermined. While Washington and New Delhi follow the British colonial outlook of keeping the island as one unit, whatever the human cost could be, today’s Britain itself is one of the driving forces behind the ‘strategic partnership.’ Those who doubt the West’s equal culpability with New Delhi should recollect the ‘strategic partnership’ call made in Chennai by US State Department during the war and what the UK is doing today on CHOGM, writes a political observer in Jaffna.
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Ma'rava-ku'richchi

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 November 2013, 07:28 GMT]
The part of the village or settlement of the Ma'ravar community
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"Perfidious Albion cannot change its spots"

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 November 2013, 03:12 GMT]
Asserting that the Commonwealth is simply a reincarnation of the British Empire and the British Imperial system, Professor Boyle, an expert in international law, remarked that placing the alleged genocidaire Mahinda Rajapakse as the Commonwealth Chairperson-in-office for the next two years, "will expose the Commonwealth as a Sick Joke." Professor Boyle found Prince of Wales and British Prime Minister David Cameron's attendance to CHOGM despicable and drew similarity to the American Founding Father Thomas Paine's charaterization of the British as "Perfidious Albion cannot change its spots," after the massacres of American soldiers at Lexington by the British Hessian mercenaries.
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British rights group documents 85 new cases of torture by Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 November 2013, 18:18 GMT]
“If the British government wants to be taken seriously in its stated commitment to using the Commonwealth meeting to highlight human rights issues, it must first come clean about how it has facilitated this abuse through the Home Office's forced removals programme,” said Freedom from Torture, the Chief Executive of Freedom from Torture, a UK based medical foundation, which provides therapeutic care for survivors of torture, in a statement issued on 01 November. The charity also stated that it had documented a further 85 cases of ‘post-conflict’ torture since the publication of ‘Out of the Silence’ in 2011.
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SL military steps up demolition of houses in Valikaamam North, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 November 2013, 23:41 GMT]
Despite the ‘assurance’ to Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R. Sampanthan by Sri Lankan president’s secretary Mr Lalith Weerthunga that the demolition of houses inside the former ‘High Security Zone’ would be postponed, the occupying Sri Lanka Army in Palaali continues to bulldoze the houses of Tamil civilians in Va’ruththalai-vi’laan and Kurumpachiddi now being transformed into a permanent Sinhala Military Zone in 6,000 acres land in Valikaamam North in Jaffna. The Civil Military Coordination Office of the SL military in Jaffna told the civilians of Valikaamam that the SL military was free to demolish the houses and clear the area as it has officially been taken over by the military Establishment. Journalists were not allowed to witness the destruction.
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Colombo on “witch hunt” against local journalists, says deported IFJ Director

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 November 2013, 09:03 GMT]
The Asia-Pacific Director of the reputed global media watchdog, International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Ms Jacqui Park, who was arrested, detained for two days in house arrest at Hotel Galadari together with her colleague Ms Jean Worthington and kicked out of the island by the Sri Lankan regime on Friday, described Colombo’s officials of conducting a systematic “witch hunt” against local journalists as she reached Sydney on Saturday. While the Free Media Movement (FMM) in Colombo was coordinating an island-wide event in bringing together journalist associations that have been working under the prevailing media suppression and harassments by the Colombo regime, Ms Park and her colleague were visiting the island on tourist visa and were invited to attend the FMM event on Wednesday, where they were arrested.
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SL military, Buddhist monks demolish Saiva temple in Dambulla

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 November 2013, 23:16 GMT]
Buddhist monks assisted by SL military in civil, claiming that a Saiva temple in Dambulla is situated on the ‘sacred grounds’ of Buddha Boomi (Buddhist soil) demolished the Paththirakaa’li Amman Koayil Tuesday night, without allowing the temple management to even conduct the rituals for the closure of the temple and relocate the idols of deities inside the temple. The controversial demolition has taken place at the place where Buddhist extremists targeted a 50-year-old mosque for destruction last year, provoking the Muslims in the entire island. Dambulla, situated in the Matale District of Central Province, is a junction of major highways that link Jaffna, Trincomalee, Colombo and Kandy. Colombo – Trincomalee and Jaffna – Kandy highways cut at Dumbulla.
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SLA held Isaippiriyaa in custody before she was killed - Channel 4

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 November 2013, 11:45 GMT]
Channel-4 has uncovered new evidence in the form of a video where the 27-year-old LTTE journalist Shoba (Isaippiriyaa) was seen under the custody of the Sri Lanka Army soldiers before she was killed. Previously, Channel-4 has released images of the journalist and TV commentator stripped naked, hands tied behind back, and shot dead. Channel-4 adds in its news report that this new evidence of war-crime will add to pressure to British Prime Minister David Cameron to not attend the Commonwealth leaders' meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo scheduled to take place this month.
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Dias refused of participation in ICRC meet for alleged war crimes

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 October 2013, 12:51 GMT]
Major General Jagath Dias, who was previously a deputy Counsel in Sri Lanka’s embassy in Germany, and was recalled by Colombo in 2011 "in response to accusations he was involved in war crimes," was refused participation in an ICRC conference to be held in Australia this December, media in Colombo reported. ICRC, while refusing to spell out the reason barring Dias from the meeting, said that "procedural matters, relating to international travel, were beyond the control of the ICRC." Dias was the commander of Sri Lanka Army's (SLA's) 57th division during the last phase of the Vanni war, where according UN estimate more than 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed. Another U.N document, the Petrie report, estimated the killings to be more than 70,000.
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EPC silent on appropriation of Tamil lands in Thennaimaravadi

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 October 2013, 01:16 GMT]
The Mahaweli Development Authority that is under the control of the Colombo government is engaged in appropriating several acres of lands belonging to Eezham Tamils in their traditional village of Thennai-maravadi on the border of Trincomalee district and Mullaith-theevu district, despite repeated appeals to Eastern Provincial Council by the concerned people and their elected representatives. On Tuesday, a team of Mahaweli ‘Development’ Authority officials visited the lands to earmark these lands for appropriation.
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Media organizations condemn SL military intimidation of 5 journalists in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 October 2013, 23:12 GMT]
The Jaffna Press Club (JPC) and Colombo-based Sri Lanka Tamil Media Association (SLTMA) have condemned SL military for intimidation, censorship and death threat on five Tamil journalists on Monday at Valikaamam North in Jaffna, where the journalists working for different media organisations, went to cover the visit by a delegation comprising of Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian and Northern Provincial Council members.
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New Delhi experiments Eezham model ‘counterinsurgency’ on its own people

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 October 2013, 17:04 GMT]
Indian State now consolidates a policy that extraordinary political movements of mass basis, coming from peoples long exposed to social oppression, material deprivation, un-freedom and stark poverty in India, have to be eliminated with the deployment of an increasing number of armed forces. The more the forces are special and armed-to-the-teeth with impunity, the more they are effective, is the policy outlook. “The establishment's view is that over a period of time, this strategy, notwithstanding its viciousness, has paid rich dividends and must be persisted with. The decimation of the LTTE in the summer of 2009 in Sri Lanka has served to consolidate this view,” says an October 2013 publication of the Human Rights Forum based in Andhra Pradesh.
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Alarm over malnutrition in North East

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 October 2013, 12:08 GMT]
Malnutrition level has reached 50% in North and East while the island-wide rate stands at 29%, according to a leading Community Medicine Specialist attached to Sri Lankan Ministry of Health in Colombo. Dr Murali Vallipuranathan, who held a workshop to journalists in Jaffna on reporting health, revealed the latest malnutrition rates from the districts in North and East as 53% in Batticaloa, 51% in Vanni (comprising 4 districts), 45% in Trincomalee, 44% in Ampaa’rai and 43% in Jaffna district. The alarming malnutrition rate in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils comes after more than 4 years of the so-called ‘development’ propaganda waged by the Sri Lankan State.
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SL military issues death threat to NPC members, TNA parliamentarian in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 October 2013, 10:13 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers deployed in transforming the former High Security Zone in Valikaamam North into a Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ) on Monday rounded up and threatened a delegation of TNA parliamentarian, elected members of the Northern Provincial Council and the members of two civic bodies, at gunpoint on Monday, when the delegation went to the site following the complaints by the uprooted people that the occupying SLA was demolishing their houses using bulldozers. When the TNA parliamentarian E. Saravanapavan and the elected members of Northern Provincial Council M.K. Sivajilingam and Tharmalingam Sitharthan were watching the demolition, armed SLA soldiers with their officers rounded up and threatened the delegation at gunpoint and threatened them to leave the site after deleting photos and recordings from their cameras.
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