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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US, South Korean ambassadors meet Wigneswaran in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 October 2013, 23:50 GMT]
The US Ambassador in Colombo, Michele Sison, visited Jaffna Wednesday to greet the newly elected Northern Provincial Council (NPC) Chief Minister CV Wigneswaran in the presence of media at a photo session at the Chief Minister's residence. The US Ambassador told the journalists in Jaffna that the NPC election was a ‘big milestone’ for the people of the Northern province. The provincial administration under unitary and genocidal Sri Lanka, set up in Jaffna by Indo-US ‘strategic partnership,’ focuses on every inroad it could make without conceding any of the fundamental aspirations of Eezham Tamils, commented political observers in Jaffna, adding that the picture is becoming increasingly clear that the Tamil struggle has to be now waged directly against Washington and New Delhi.
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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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Sinhala paramilitary attacks resettling Tamils in Trincomalee, 7 wounded

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 October 2013, 20:08 GMT]
Seven Tamil farmers were seriously injured Monday evening when Sinhala encroachers, accompanied by Sinhala paramilitary known as ‘home guards’ attacked them using axes and swords at Padu-kaadu in Kangkuveali of Moothoor division of Trincomalee district. The wounded victims were rushed to Moothoor hospital. Four of the victims have been admitted to the emergency ward, according to medical sources at Moothoor hospital. Sinhala paramilitary men, who attacked the uprooted Tamils, have come from Deyyata village. The brutal attack took place when the uprooted Tamil farmers were preparing to resume agriculture at their 900 acres of paddy land after securing permission from the divisional secretary and the SL police to engage in farming.
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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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Penang Chief Minister calls for boycott of CHOGM in Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 October 2013, 20:14 GMT]
Chief Minister of the State of Penang in Malaysia, Mr. Lim Guan Eng, has called for the boycott of CHOGM in Colombo, Sri Lanka, scheduled to take place in November. Lim Guan Eng is also the Secretary General of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), which is the ruling party in the state of Penang. In the DAP’s Central Executive Council (CEC), which is the highest decision making body of the DAP, it was unanimously endorsed that the party, long known for its firm stand on human rights, democracy and justice, would call for the boycott of CHOGM in Colombo, sources close to DAP told TamilNet. The Penang CM's boycott call follows similar call by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and a unanimous resolution in the Tamil Nadu State Assembly on Thursday.
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Wigneswaran attempts bailing out genocidal military of Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 October 2013, 12:21 GMT]
Northern Provincial Council (NPC) Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran, speaking at the inaugural session of the council on Friday, urged Colombo to confine the SL military in Jaffna to the barracks and suggested that Colombo should consider deputing its military to UN peace-keeping missions abroad. NPC will give full support for Colombo getting international assistance for the rehabilitation of the SL military into civilian life, he further said, linking the process with the rehabilitation of the LTTE cadres. In addition to usurping the right of forfeiting the independence claim of Eezham Tamils, Wigneswaran also went on record in vesting the security of the nation of Eezham Tamils with the military of Colombo.
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Colombo ‘legalizes’ land distribution to Sinhalaese at North-East link

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 October 2013, 22:14 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lankan State has deployed its divisional secretaries and provincial land officials in the East to legally re-distribute thousands of acres of agricultural lands of the uprooted Eezham Tamils in Thennai-maravadi village in Trincomalee district to Sinhala villagers from the nearby ‘Padavi Sripura’. The latest move comes while hundreds of uprooted Tamil families are still awaiting resettlement in their village. The ancient Tamil village of Thennai-maravadi is situated in the strategic narrow corridor linking the North and East in Trincomalee district. Washington, New-Delhi and the UN, maintaining total silence on the geographical and demographic genocide undertaken by Colombo and imposing the LLRC-13A ‘experiment’ amounts to complicity with Colombo in the genocide, said Tamil civil sources in Trincomalee.
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Jaffna hospital observes 26th year of IPKF massacre

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 October 2013, 15:54 GMT]
Donating modern scanners to the X-ray division of the Jaffna Teaching Hospital, the Indian government had recently requested the administration of the Jaffna Teaching Hospital to do away with the memorial site situated within the hospital, but the employees were firm in refusing to erase the memory of 21 doctors, nurses and other medical staff together with 46 patients were slain by the so-called Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in one of the brutal massacres witnessed in Jaffna when the invading Indian military was at war with the LTTE in 1987. The medical staff and the kith and kin of the victims, who remembered their co-workers, patients and family members on Monday, demanded a public apology from the Government of India.
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Kenyan snub to add to Sri Lanka's CHOGM woes

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 October 2013, 00:22 GMT]
Adding to Sri Lanka's jitters over the rights controversy surrounding the Commonwealth meeting [CHOGM] in Colombo next month, Kenya is reported to be quietly lobbying African countries including Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria, South and Zambia also to boycott, for another reason, as a protest against Commonwealth's failure to take a decisive stance against the prosecution of Kenya's President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto at the ICC. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper earlier announced his decision to boycott the CHOGM, and UK's shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander also had urged Prime Minister Cameron to stay away from the summit to express British concern about Sri Lanka's lack of progress on improving human rights. South Sudan and Burundi which had launched bids to join Commonwealth have suspended their bids indefinitely to support Kenya's boycott.
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Catholic peace group in Jaffna details structural genocide to Apostolic Nuncio

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 October 2013, 15:28 GMT]
The Chairman of Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Jaffna, Fr. S.V.B Mangalarajah, has written a detailed letter on Friday to the permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See in Colombo, Most Rev. Dr. Joseph Spiteri, elucidating the structural genocide being carried out by occupying Sri Lanka on the country of Eezham Tamils. The letter comes following the move by the Colombo's colonial regime handing over a report to the Apostolic Nuncio, detailing the so-called development activities carried out in North and East. The JPC Chairman was categoric in his letter that external ‘development’ cannot substitute the settling of the political solution and urged the Vatican to exert political pressure on Sri Lanka to put forward a political solution framework. The detailed letter summarises the genocidal programme of the Sri Lankan State under 10 topics.
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Colombo CHOGM means condoning Sri Lanka: HR expert

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 October 2013, 23:44 GMT]
“Sri Lanka has got a lot to answer internationally in actually accepting an investigation into the atrocities. We don’t think that the CHOGM should be happening in Colombo, because it is like an almost condonation [of Sri Lanka],” said Margaret Owen, the director of Widows for Peace through Democracy (WPD), 3 months ago at a conference held in London by the Centre for Community Development (CDC). “Could we talk [on Sri Lanka] to the Foreign Office, whom we are in discussions with the whole time on revising the UK national action plan,” Ms Owen said she had asked her group. The response from the members of her own group was that even attempting to mention Sri Lanka to the FCO may blow everything else the group was working with the British FCO. “That is the attitude, I am afraid at the moment. The UK doesn't feel it can get involved.”
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New Delhi following British imperialism does no justice to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 October 2013, 05:59 GMT]
200 years of imperialist outlook, knowing very well that there are two historically evolved nations in the island but engineering unification for imperialistic purposes, has always gone against the nation of Eezham Tamils and contributed only to its genocide in every respect, including in its territory and demography, writes an academic in Jaffna. The academic was commenting on New Delhi’s External Affairs Minister visiting Jaffna harping on making Sri Lanka ‘tri-lingual and united’. The academic compared it to early English Governor Sir Robert Brownrigg’s policy outlook in 1813, recognizing parity between Sinhala and Tamil languages, but that policy foundation not leading to parity in territory and power.
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Occupying Sri Lanka rushes to legalize Sinhalicisation of strategic entrance to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 October 2013, 17:34 GMT]
Colombo's ‘National Housing Development Authority’ (NHDA) and the Cvil Military Coordination Office (CIMIC) of the occupying SL military in Jaffna have been jointly engaged in legalising the Sinhala occupation of the strategic entrance to Jaffna city at Naavat-kuzhi this week. The NHDA and CIMIC have been distributing lands to 126 Sinhala families that have been occupying the public lands at Naavatkuzhi under the security of SL military despite the protest by the Tamil residents and refugees still struggling to resettle at the locality. Naavatkuzhi is a place just 5 km east of Jaffna city where the two highways A9 and A32, the only existing land arteries that lead into Jaffna from the south and the western coast meet.
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Media training centre opened in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 October 2013, 13:07 GMT]
Aiming to improve the abilities of Eezham Tamil journalists in Jaffna, a new Media Training Centre, named after former Senior Editor of TamilNet, Maamanithar D Sivaram (Taraki), has been declared opened in Jaffna on Wednesday. The new training centre is situated close to Jaffna Press Club at Raasaavin Thoaddam. Two senior journalists, S. Ratheyan, the former editor of Eezha-murasu, Eezha-Naatham and Namathu Eezhanaadu, and Iya Sachithananthan, who narrowly escaped when the office of the Eezhanaadu newspaper was set to fire by the SL forces in 1982 and who later became its editor, jointly opened the training centre. Journalists and civil society activists from all walks of life were present at the event.
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EPC opposes affiliation of Trinco campus with universities in South

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 October 2013, 10:22 GMT]
The Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) has unanimously adopted a motion against the proposed affiliation of the Trincomalee campus of the Eastern University with the Rajarata University of Anuradhapura or with the Jayewardanapura University in Colombo. The motion was moved at EPC's September session by the Leader of the Opposition Mr C.Thandayuthapani, the group leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in the council. Mr R.Thurairatnam, TNA’s Batticaloa district councillor seconded the motion.
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Anti-Eezham fanaticism in India cites NPC to save Colombo on CHOGM

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 October 2013, 02:55 GMT]
On Monday, writing a letter to DMK chief Karunanidhi, requesting him to persuade Thoazhar Thiyagu to call off his fast unto death campaign, New Delhi Establishment’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that “ a decision on the issue of my participation in the CHOGM conference will be taken only after considering all relevant factors, including the sentiments of your party and the Tamil people.” On Tuesday, Chennai-based V. Suryanarayan, who has spent a lifetime in serving New Delhi’s security–intelligence outfits and in opposing independence of Eezham Tamils, wrote that if New Delhi boycotts CHOGM it will harm the NPC ‘experiment’ and “it would be playing into the hands of the fanatical sections among the Tamil diaspora.”
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Colombo plans District ‘Development’ Ministers to undermine NPC

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 October 2013, 23:33 GMT]
In a move to sideline the Northern Provincial Council, the occupying Colombo is to appoint new ‘district-level development ministers’ under its central command by SL presidential sibling and ‘Economic Development’ Minister Basil Rajapaksa, informed circles in Colombo said. Colombo plans to offer the portfolio to a Tamil parliamentarian of UNP who has recently joined the UPFA, although the SL minister Douglas Devananda was promised the ministry earlier, the sources further said. A paramilitary operative, Uthayarasa, of the so-called Sri-TELO is seeking the portfolio in Vavuniyaa where the paramilitary served Colombo earlier. A Sinhala person would be appointed to Mullaiththeevu and a Muslim minister in UPFA is vying for the portfolio in Mannaar, the sources said.
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NPC culture deviating from secularism of Vaddukkoaddai Resolution questioned

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 October 2013, 21:02 GMT]
The Vaddukkoaddai Resolution (VR) of 1976, mandated by Tamil speaking people of the North and East in the 1977 general elections, calling for the creation of a secular State of Tamil Eelam is well known. Whether the overwhelming mandate by the people of the North to the TNA in 2013, hijacked by the Sampanthan-Sumanthiran-Wigneswaran trio to interpret it as something that has superseded the VR, is also hijacked to supersede the secular outlook in the polity of the nation of Eezham Tamils, asked Tamil activists for alternative politics in Jaffna. They were cautioning on certain politico-cultural expressions surfacing with the Wigneswaran administration and said that Tamils have to rise above the culture of the genocidal State in Colombo than imitating it.
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