Mannaar

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 August 2013, 00:52 GMT]
The raised place (of sand)
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SL-UGC steps up Sinhalicisation of Batticaloa University

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 August 2013, 22:34 GMT]
Sri Lanka's University Grant Commission (UGC) has been admitting more Sinhala students to the universities in the North and East. About 600 to 700 Sinhala students have been enrolled to the faculties of Arts and Culture, Management, Science and Agriculture in the Eastern University (EUSL) in Batticaloa alone, news sources in the East said. A Sri Lankan police station has been established inside the University premises in the name of providing protection to Sinhala students. The SL policemen have been monitoring the activities of Tamil-speaking students with the assistance of paramilitary groups. A Buddha statue has been declared opened last month at the presence of the Vice Chancellor inside the campus by the Buddhist Students Forum, which was backed by the UGC.
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Colombo schemes new ways to appropriate more lands for Sinhalicisation in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 August 2013, 22:50 GMT]
Thousands of acres of land in the Batticaloa district in the Eastern Province are likely to be appropriated under the Land Reform Laws of the occupying Sri Lankan State, according to informed civil sources in Batticaloa. The Colombo government is to appropriate lands that have been legally possessed by Tamils for the last fifty years under the one-acre permit scheme. Colombo and its Eastern Provincial Council are to formulate necessary legislation to appropriate lands above one-acre in 14 DS divisions in the Batticaloa district. More than one hundred acres of lands are to be appropriated under the Land Reform Laws of the Sinhala government.
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US-Sri Lanka collaboration conducts ‘Exercise Pacific Angel’ in occupied Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 August 2013, 18:16 GMT]
A joint ‘disaster response’ training operation by the US Pacific Air Force and the genocide-accused Sri Lanka Air Force is being conducted in occupied Jaffna. Named ‘Exercise Pacific Angel’, the collaborative activity began on 5th August and is scheduled to end on the 10th. Sri Lanka’s Defence.lk reports that the exercise will comprise of two components, namely a medical program and a renovation program. The irony of the name of the exercise and of the training of Sri Lanka Air Force, which caused genocidal disaster during the war on the Eezham Tamil nation, in ‘disaster response’ is not lost on Tamil activists, sources in Jaffna commented.
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Tamil contiguity to be wedged at district level in East

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 August 2013, 01:04 GMT]
The Eastern Provincial Council headed by Chief Minister Najeeb Abdul Majeed of the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) is keeping mum while covert plan is being designed to carve out a separate Sinhala district called Seruvila district out of Trincomalee district, by selling lands in coastal areas to Sinhalese businessmen of the South. Valuable lands along the coastal areas in Trincomalee district are being appropriated to be given on lease and to be sold for outsiders by the Colombo government. While on one side the contiguity of the Tamil speaking people are wedged between the North and East provinces by the creation of the Weli-Oya division, on the other side, the contiguity is wedged even within the Eastern Province itself, between the Tamil-speaking people of Trincomalee and Batticaloa. Seruvila comes between Trincomalee and Batticaloa.
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Tamils should boycott Conservatives: British activist

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 August 2013, 20:35 GMT]
“There is no point in any vote or any penny of Tamil money or Tamil votes going to the Conservative party. They have shown time and again whose side they are on. They are not on our side,” Sarah Sachs-Eldridge, British activist working with Tamil Solidarity, stated. In a video interview to TamilNet, referring to the systematic deception of the British Conservatives on the issue of Sri Lanka, Sachs-Eldridge said that “The Tamil community is getting nothing from these people.” The British activist, commenting on the recent response of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to the trade union Unison, wherein the FCO had defended Britain’s participation in CHOGM, argued that the British government had no intention of putting any significant pressure on Sri Lanka.
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New Delhi insists on use of Hindi script for Konkani language

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 August 2013, 07:14 GMT]
New Delhi Establishment’s Sahitya Academy insists on Konkani language, spoken in coastal Maharashtra, Goa, coastal Karnataka and parts of Kerala, to present literature in the Nagari script of Hindi/ Sanskrit, for consideration of its awards, said a feature appeared in the Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), dated 03 August. At present, the Konkani language, which was recognized as a major national language of India in 1992, is written in 5 scripts: Kannada, Roman, Malayalam, Nagari and Persian-Arabic, depending on the State where it is spoken. 45 per cent of the Konkani speakers, the largest group, live in Karnataka, where the script of Konkani is Kannada. 40 per cent of the speakers are in Goa, where the language is mostly written in Roman.
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Sinhala military takes over Muslim cemetery at Pulmoaddai

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 August 2013, 18:29 GMT]
Even the sole Muslim cemetery in Pulmoaddai at the narrow border between the North and East of the country of Ezham Tamils was not spared from appropriation by the occupying Sinhala military that bents on Sinhalicising and militarizing the strategic link. While the Tamil-speaking Muslims, who make 90 per cent of the traditional village of Pul-moaddai is left without a cemetery, about 500 acres of land in that place has been given to a Buddhist monk to build a Sinhala-Buddhist enclave. The military and Survey Department of the Sinhala State were openly involved in the project. The blatant demographic genocide takes place while there is a Muslim Chief Minister in the East, proving what is ultimately aimed by the Provincial Councils backed by New Delhi and Washington, political activists in the East said.
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Gajendrakumar explains why TNPF boycotts NPC elections

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 August 2013, 02:50 GMT]
Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) leader Gajendrakumar Ponnampalam addressed a press meet in Jaffna on Tuesday, explaining why the TNPF totally boycotts the Northern Provincial Council elections held under the 13th Amendment of the unitary constitution of Sri Lanka. Rejecting rumours that the TNPF might support an independent group and a media report that the TNPF has shown green signal to the PC election, as misleading, Gajendrakumar said that the TNPF totally boycotts the election. We will not contest and under no circumstances we will support any independent group directly or indirectly, Gajendrakumar said, adding that let people decide with clarity what to do with the election.
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Batticaloa inscription refers to visit of founder of Sikh religion

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 July 2013, 15:50 GMT]
A Tamil-Sanskrit-Gurmukhi inscription, dateable to 1511 CE, excavated in the Batticaloa (Maddak-ka’lappu) district of the country of Eezham Tamils, refers to the visit of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikh religion, to the island. The inscription refers to a conversation between the Guru and Vikramabahu VI, a king in the island at that time, The Times of India reported on Wednesday, citing Ashok Kumar Kainth, a Punjabi historian working in the island since 2004. The Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) will send a delegation to the island to study the inscription and site, the historian was further cited.
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Wigneswaran seeks mandate for ‘IC-facilitated’ Northern Provincial Council

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 July 2013, 01:12 GMT]
People's participation in the polls to Northern Provincial Council will be significant to the implementation of the 13th Amendment. Since Colombo has agreed to conduct the election merely because of international pressure, people have to be prepared to resist any sabotage. The elected PC will help to end the governor’s rule and interferences in civil administration, said Tamil National Alliance's Chief Minister candidate for Northern Province and retired Justice C.V. Wigneswaran on Monday in Jaffna, after fielding TNA's list of candidates for Northern PC elections. Meanwhile, Colombo President Mahinda Rajapaksa implied ‘understanding’ with the candidature of Wigneswaran, when he said on Tuesday that he would be willing to meet Wigneswaran to discuss land and police powers to provinces.
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Colombo accelerates Sinhala colonisation in Batticaloa: TNA MP

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 July 2013, 23:54 GMT]
The Colombo government is accelerating the Sinhala colonization in the Batticaloa district. More than one hundred Sinhalese families were brought down from Ampaa'rai district and have been settled down in Kevu'liya-madu village in Paddippazhai DS division, according to Batticaloa district Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Mr. P. Selvarasa.
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Genocidal Sinhala State cultivates ‘historiography’ in New Delhi

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 July 2013, 05:41 GMT]
Like getting journalists, politicians, diplomats and academics in India from time to time over the decades, to engineer public opinion justifying the genocidal unity and integrity of the Sinhala-Buddhist State in the island, Colombo is now actively engaged in grooming ‘historiographers’ in India specialised in the Sinhala-Buddhist ‘State’ history, to which New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has become the partner and space provider, said an academic in Jaffna. He was citing the JNU in collaboration with the genocidal State’s High Commission in New Delhi starting a course in the university last year on “State, Society and religion in Sri Lanka, from circa 3rd century BCE to 13th century CE” with specific focus on Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa period.
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‘Habitual British treachery played on Eezham Tamils continues unabated’

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 July 2013, 14:35 GMT]
British Conservative Parliamentarian Eleanor Laing, who led a 6-member all-party parliamentary delegation from UK to Sri Lanka last week, has ‘hailed the progress in the country following the end of the war’. The British parliamentarian from Epping Forest has expressed “hope for Sri Lanka's future, saying that one cannot compare human rights in Britain to human rights in Sri Lanka as the island suffered 30 years of war,” a report filed by Xinhua said quoting her as saying: "There is a lot of hope for the future. We are very positive about Sri Lanka. I believe reconciliation is important. We should not rake back the past." While the genocide was being committed on Eezham Tamils in the war, the British representative at the UNSC and later the MI6 chief has gone on record for defending the war by saying that the LTTE was long blighting the SL government.
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‘13th Amendment, PC system cannot provide political solution to Tamils’: TNPF

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 July 2013, 13:14 GMT]
Reiterating their position that “the recognition of the distinct sovereignty of the Eelam Tamil Nation and our right to self-determination is non-negotiable,” the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) in a statement released on Saturday asserted that the 13th Amendment and the Provincial Councils system, rejected by the Eezham Tamil nation way back in 1987, “can never play any part of a process to reach a political solution today.” The statement released on the 30th anniversary of Black July, further said “if there is a firm resolve of the Eelam Tamil Diaspora to be true to this righteous cause at all occasions and venues, we in the homeland believe that it can ultimately serve to reinvigorate the Tamils in the homeland to mobilize and democratically counter the machinations of the Genocidal intent of the Sinhala Buddhist state.”
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Sinhala archaeology focuses operation in North-East corridor

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 July 2013, 09:07 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Postgratuate Institute of Archaeology (PGIAR), based in Colombo and exclusively staffed by Sinhalese, has recently undertaken a special project called “Yan Oya Middle Basin” research for the years 2011-2015, which will be focussing on a region that links the Northern and Eastern provinces of the country of Eezham Tamils in the island. Yan Oya is a river that originates in the North Central Province, follows the boundary of the Eastern Province and enters into the sea at Pul-moaddai that links the North and East. The selection of this location for intense archaeological research by an exclusive Sinhala team, go hand in hand with the accelerated Sinhala-Buddhicisation of the region, observers said, citing a State-sponsored Buddhist enclave coming up at Pulmoaddai in 500 acres of land.
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Ku'lakkaadu, Vaarivanam

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 July 2013, 00:09 GMT]
The jungle of the pond
The tract of ponds and jungles
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Another link to North and East sieged by Sinhala Buddhists

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 July 2013, 23:40 GMT]
A place called Kanthasaami-malai in Thennai-maravadi village, along the narrow border of the Trincomalee and Mullaiththeevu districts of the North and East provinces of the country of Eezham Tamils, is under siege by the Sinhala-Buddhist monks, who have arrived from the South. They claim that Kanthasaami-malai area belongs to a historic Buddhist Vihara and want about one hundred acres of land to be handed over to them. They have made ‘representations’ to the occupying Sri Lanka Army to get these lands for a new construction of the so-called Purana (ancient) Buddhist Vihara. While such claims are made for the interior landward link at Thennaimaravadi, a Buddhist monk from the South has already appropriated 500 acres of land at the coastal link at Pul-moaddai for a Buddhist enclave. The land was surveyed for him by the genocidal State’s Survey Department.
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Albright-Williamson report paves way for further injustice to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 July 2013, 15:44 GMT]
The “United States and R2P” report authored by Madeleine K. Albright, former US Secretary of State, and Richard S. Williamson, former US presidential special envoy to Sudan, paves way for further injustice to the genocide-affected nation of Eezham Tamils, by harping on “national reconciliation” of the genocidal State of Sri Lanka and by harping on helping the genocidal government to respond to the needs of “all communities” in the so-called country, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The deliberate flaw in the report stems from the stand of not recognising the genocide in the war and the genocidal intent of the Sinhala State decades before the war and the years following the war, the activists said.
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‘IC neglected responsibility to take timely action in Sri Lanka’: Report

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 July 2013, 19:02 GMT]
In face of the mounting civilian casualties between January and May 2009 in the island of Sri Lanka, the international community “did little beyond issuing statements of concern” and “neglected its responsibility to take timely action when it was apparent that violations of humanitarian law were taking place”, states a report authored by Madeleine K. Albright, former US Secretary of State and Richard S. Williamson, former US presidential special envoy to Sudan. For Sri Lanka, the report lays emphasis on the IC supporting a “national reconciliation” process. The report titled “The United States and R2P: From Words to Action” released on Tuesday, analysing cases of Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, Syria, Sudan and South Sudan, Congo, and Sri Lanka, provides general recommendations for US policy vis-a-vis R2P. Tamil activists have taken a different perspective on R2P’s role in Sri Lanka.
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