UN uses Tamils to 'learn lessons' but denies justice to their genocide: Ananthi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 March 2014, 12:42 GMT]
The Right to Protect (R2P) concept, accepted by the World Summit in 2005, has totally failed to save Eelam Tamils from the genocidal war in 2009, said NPC councillor, Ms Ananthi Sasitharan at the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday in Geneva. She addressed the council twice, one of them being in Tamil language. Although the United Nation, which has admitted its systemic failure on the conflict, chose to learn lessons from the failures in the island and came up with the Rights Up Front initiative, it has failed to deliver justice to the victims on whose fate these lessons were learned, Ms Ananthi told the Council. “As the victims of a continued genocide, we are disappointed with the resolutions being tabled at this respected assembly, year after year, failing to address the root-problem, which is genocide,” she told the Council.
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Time for International Investigations, says Camp

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 March 2014, 01:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka "looks to be drifting toward authoritarianism. Journalists are terrified and intimidated by arrests and mysterious assaults on those critical of the government....The once-independent judiciary has learned not to challenge the government's edicts. The war-heavy defense establishment carries out many internal security functions, and "white vans" have become synonymous with the disappearance of dissidents who speak out against the government," writes Donald Camp, a retired foreign service officer at the US Department of State, adding, "after five years of stalling by the government [Colombo], it is time for an international investigation to do what Colombo has been unwilling to do."
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SL military deploys terror in Vanni, Priest, NGO activist under TID arrest

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 March 2014, 05:47 GMT]
Human Rights defender Rev. Fr. Praveen, the former director of the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation (CPR), who had been subjected to harassment by the occupying SL military several times before, has been arrested by the occupying Sri Lankan military and Police on Sunday night together with a human rights activist from Colombo, Ruki Fernando, when the two human rights activists were trying to locate information on what had happened to 13-year-old Vipooshika and her mother Jeyakumari at Tharumapuram in Ki’lnochchi. Ruki Fernando is a human rights adivisor with INFORM. In the meantime, a reliable source inside the Sri Lankan police revealed some exclusive details to a media source in Colombo on what happened to the arrested Jeyakumari and her daughter.
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SL military steps up harassment on IDPs as US draft drops ‘de-militarisation’ in Geneva

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 March 2014, 23:20 GMT]
As the US draft that already failed Tamils by dropping international investigation on Sri Lankan State gets further watered down in its demands at the corridor discourse at Human Rights Council in Geneva, the occupying SL military in North and East of the island has strengthened its grip on Tamil people who have been determined with seeking justice on the ground. While those demanding the SL State to reveal the whereabouts of their missing family members in the North are subjected to harassments by the intelligence wing of the SL military, the uprooted Champoor Tamils still languishing in temporary huts in four camps in Moothoor East in Trincomalee are left to rotten with deteriorating health conditions in their camps, the women in the camps complain.
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Ananthi delivers another UNHRC address on genocide investigation

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 15:38 GMT]
“We request this assembly to call for international investigation on genocide, and as an immediate step, to come out with a mechanism to stop the on-going genocide of Eelam Tamils,” Ms Ananthi Sasitharan told the UN Human Rights Council at Geneva, delivering a second address under the General Debate on Friday. The resolutions passed in the recent years and the draft resolution to be submitted this year have disappointed the Tamils as these resolutions have failed to address the main problems of the victims, she told the Council. As an immediate step, she urged the international community to come out with a mechanism to stop the on-going genocide of Eelam Tamils.
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Ananthi addresses UNHRC in Geneva on continued genocide against Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 March 2014, 14:13 GMT]
Ms Ananthi Sasitharan, the popular TNA councillor of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) on Friday addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council's 25th session taking place in Geneva. She requested the UN system to take “bold steps in understanding the 60-year-long genocide and investigate it through an independent international investigation.” Addressing the UNHRCs General Debate, the 47-year-old mother of three told the Council that the children affected in any war spend a lifetime to recover from the impact. “But, the Eelam Tamil children face a continued war with genocidal intent,” she said urging “concrete actions to safeguard our children from becoming permanent victims to the genocide.”
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New Delhi FM wants Tamils to talk to Colombo for India to have leverage

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 March 2014, 07:20 GMT]
The New Delhi Establishment’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Salman Khurshid, in answering a question after his address at the SOAS in London on Wednesday, said, “Tamils should have a dialogue with the government. Then only we can have a leverage on Sri Lankan government.” With a record on complicity in Colombo’s genocidal war and on-going structural genocide of Eezham Tamils; record on tilting the balance in favour of Colombo, and with a long record on setting diktats to the Tamil leadership on what to talk, New Delhi now expecting Tamils to start ‘dialogue’ is for the confirmation of the genocide and for bailing out Colombo from international investigations, Tamil activists in London commented.
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US draft ‘positive’ on many counts in making Tamils ‘learn lesson’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 March 2014, 01:26 GMT]
The US draft tabled at the UNHRC has to be recognized for its positive aspects in disguise that make Tamils learn historic lessons, commented Tamil activists for alternative politics in the island. The draft opens eyes on the ultimate culprits who actually led Eezham Tamils into Mu’l’livaaykkaal and continue to lead them into accepting structural genocide; on the extent of USA’s confidence in the inherent orientation for subservience and gullibility among Eezham Tamil ‘articulators’; and on the extent of the infiltration the USA has made into various facets of Tamil Nadu – from Brahministic media to ‘original’ Dravidian movements, and from ‘communism’ to various caste politics, the activists in the island said.
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Dormant diaspora rises up against US draft, demands genocide investigation, plebiscite

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 March 2014, 23:33 GMT]
In an unprecedented gathering after May 2009, around 10,000 diaspora Eezham Tamils gathered in Geneva on Monday demanding international investigations on genocide and a UN plebiscite on independent an sovereign Tamil Eelam. Disappointed with the discourse in Geneva and losing their trust in the pro-Establishment lobbyists, the Eezham Tamils have begun to rally behind the network of the grassroots organisations in Europe, that were hitherto silently watching the process. Dr Denis Halliday, the former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations, who was one of the judges at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) on Sri Lanka (Bremen Session) addressed the gathering.
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Emboldened Colombo ‘mobilizes’ Ampaa’rai Tamils in favour of Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 March 2014, 16:18 GMT]
While Tamil Naitonal Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians are asked by the Washington and London to lobby Australia and India to gain support to the watered-down resolution to be tabled in Geneva later this month, the occupying Colombo has managed to mobilize 750 Tamils, through various manipulations, to march in a rally carrying placards in support of SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa, news sources in Ampaa’rai said. Sri Lankan military operatives, extremist Sinhala Buddhist Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force) activists, Samurdhi and Devineguma ‘development’ workers were deployed to bring Tamil people from various villages of Ampaa’rai district to the pro-Rajapaksa rally staged in Kalmunai. In an orchestrated move, media personnel were brought from Colombo to witness the manipulated rally at Kalmunai.
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Weak resolutions embolden Colombo: civil society activist

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 March 2014, 19:08 GMT]
The draft resolution to be tabled at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions this month in Geneva has not only disappointed the Tamils by failing to demand an international investigation, it has also failed to recognise the domestic failures despite two rounds of similar resolutions at the UNHRC in 2012 and 2013, said Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) representative and Jaffna University law academic Kumaravadivel Guruparan this week at a press briefing to journalists in Jaffna. Pointing out four major flaws in the latest resolution and comparing the draft with the recent report by the High Commissioner of Human Rights, Mr Guruparan explained the positive and negative aspects of Navi Pillay's approach. The SL State has in fact been emboldened with the weak resolutions year by year, he said.
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IC has deceived Tamils on international investigations: Ananthi Sasistharan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 March 2014, 13:01 GMT]
“The International Community has deceived the genocide affected Tamils on delivering international investigations,” said Ananthi Sasitharan, a councillor of the Northern Provincial Council, at a press conference held in Jaffna on Thursday. “The draft resolution being circulated in Geneva has failed to satisfy even the minimum expectations. It has totally disregarded the repeated requests from Tamils to the IC to deliver international investigations. Furthermore, it is in complete contrast to the impressions given to the Tamils by the international community in recent times,” she told the press. Ms Ananthi Sasistharan also blamed TNA national list parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran for having instructed her to be silent at a crucial meeting with the representatives of 18 countries during her recent visit to Geneva.
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USA ignores requests of Mannaar Bishop on UNHRC Resolution

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 14:57 GMT]
Bishop of Mannaar Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph had sent a model resolution to the foreign diplomatic missions, including the Embassy of USA in Colombo, well in advance of the draft resolution by the USA was leaked in Geneva this Monday. The proposal presented by Mannaar Bishop was demanding international investigations on genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prepared by the Tamil Civil Society Forum, the proposal also called upon the “UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council to activate procedures that will lead to a UN sponsored international mechanism to assess the democratic aspirations of the Tamil People, both in the homeland and in the diaspora for a permanent political solution.”
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BIMSTEC having Eelam territory gets secretariat in Dhaka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 09:50 GMT]
The Third Summit Meeting of BIMSTEC States held in Myanmar concluded on Tuesday, with its heads of governments deciding on operating a permanent secretariat based in Dhaka in Bangladesh. A career diplomat of Colombo will be its first Secretary General. Originally formed in 1997, as Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand Economic Cooperation (hence BIMST-EC), and was joined by Nepal and Bhutan in 2004 to become known as Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, the BIMSTEC is viewed as India’s alternative for SAARC, to have a regional alliance without Pakistan. It is also viewed as an expression of India’s ‘look to East’ policy to balance China's ‘push to South’.
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Tamil academic compares Pakistani-Sri Lankan ‘counterinsurgency’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 March 2014, 06:23 GMT]
“The genocidal oppression faced by the Baloch people and the Eelam Tamil people gains little if any attention in international media. Whatever is represented seems to be permeated by a tendency to absolve genocide and represent a state-centric, depoliticized and minority grounded narration of the plight of the oppressed nations. Such narrations effectively deny the Baloch and Eelam Tamils their inalienable right to self-determination or national liberation,” writes Norway-based Eezham Tamil anthropology academic Athithan Jayapalan, in a feature that appeared in a Balochistan website, Balochwarna News last month, urging solidarity between Baloch and Eezham Tamils.
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US draft stops at Navi Pillai inquiry into HR crimes of ‘both parties’

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 March 2014, 23:39 GMT]
A draft resolution on Sri Lanka that is to be tabled at the UNHRC later this month by the USA, UK, Montenegro, FYR of Macedonia and Mauritius was put to circulation on Monday. Contrary to the trumpeting by sections among Tamils expecting US-UK justice through international investigation on war crimes, the draft just harps on OHCHR investigation into “alleged violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes by both parties in Sri Lanka.” On the other hand, the draft that fails in recognising Tamils even by name not only provides more space and time for the completion of their structural genocide but also binds the UNHRC with supporting the “unified land” of the genocidal State.
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Tamil politicians demand international investigation at Jaffna protest

[TamilNet, Sunday, 02 March 2014, 23:36 GMT]
When Sinhala prisoners protested in Kandy, Namal Rajapaksa, the son of SL President went to the prison and ordered a report on the condition of prisoners. But, when Tamil political prisoners and prisoners of war, subjected to torture on a daily basis, stage protests, no one from the SL government cares about visiting them, said Sundaram Mahendran, the head of the Colombo based Committee on Missing Persons on Sunday when addressing the people protesting against the mysterious death of a Tamil prisoner Gopithas Visuvalingam, a British citizen who was imprisoned in Colombo since 2007. The protest was staged in the morning of the funeral day of the victim Gopithas, who is a father of two from the UK.
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SL military seeks to appropriate market complex at Tamil suburb of Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 February 2014, 23:02 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan military in Trincomalee has sought to permanently appropriate the land and the buildings of Malaiyaruvi, a building complex constructed in 1994 by the Trincomalee Town Council to establish a public market at the Power House Road, where Eezham Tamils reside in large numbers. Recently, the SL military has approached Mr Sirimewan Dharmasena, the land commissioner at the Eastern Provincial Department asking the latter to undertake surveying of the lands.
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EU terror ban on LTTE challenged

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 February 2014, 17:51 GMT]
The European Union's ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) hangs in the balance today after a hearing at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg exposed serious flaws in the original evidence used to proscribe the movement in 2006. Judges expressed concern at the European Council's use of an Indian anti-terror law as a suitable precedent for banning the LTTE, saying there was no evidence that the Council checked if terror suspects had access to a fair trial in India. The court was also dismayed by the Council's use of Wikipedia as a credible source for keeping a terrorism ban on the LTTE. Lawyers for the LTTE left the court in a positive mood, expecting a judgement within the next six months.
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Tamils cautioned against word trick of OHCHR

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 February 2014, 23:11 GMT]
Tamils living world over should take a careful note on who is skipping away from including the demand for an ‘international investigation’ in the draft resolution to be placed at the UN Human Rights Council this March, Tamil activists in the island told TamilNet on Tuesday. The diaspora Tamils and Tamils of Tamil Nadu should not be carried away by the ‘media discourse’ in Colombo following the latest recommendations of the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navanetham Pillay, the activists warned. The latest phrase ‘international inquiry mechanism’ could also imply a process of questioning or fact-finding mission by UN Special Rapporteurs under the human rights regime of the UNHRC, which would only end up adding just another report to the existing piles of UN reports. Tamil lobbyists abroad should not deceive the masses by their misinterpretations of the terminology, the activists said.
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