Sirisena didn't keep word on resettling Tamil Catholics of Musali before 31 December

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 December 2018, 22:59 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena promised to resettle the people of Mu'l'lik-ku'lam before the end of 31st December 2018. Despite the repeated pleas the people made through their political representatives in the SL Parliament and the Bishop of Mannaar taking up the matter with the SL President and his secretariat in Colombo, nothing has taken place, complained Rev Fr Lawrence Leon on Monday. The SL Navy was refusing to release the lands and is still putting up constructions while the people are languishing without infrastructure and roads. Last year, a bus transporting people narrowly escaped from a fatal accident during the Christmas time. The new year mass at the church of Our Lady of the Assumption at Mu'l'li-ku'lam has therefore been moved to the morning on 01st of January 2019, the parish priest further said.
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Heritage-genocide was motive behind scrapping of Tamil centre at Nalloor, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 December 2018, 22:58 GMT]
The SL Governor to North Reginald Cooray in November instructed to remove the plaque off the wall of the Tamil Heritage Centre, which had been launched by the democratically elected Northern Provincial Council (NPC) under the former Chief Minister Justice C.V. Wigneswaran in October 2018. The initial set of cultural artefacts that were showcased inside the building have been dumped at an abandoned room of the Teachers Training College at Koappaay. Although the plaque was removed, the board was still standing inside the premises of the Nalloor Stana C.C.T.M School near Muththiraich-chanthi in Jaffna in November. However, this too has been later removed from the locality.
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Ilmenite exploitation targets Vaakarai, civic members on alert

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 December 2018, 22:17 GMT]
Alchemy Heavy Metals Ltd, a Dambulla-based private mining and processing company has recently stepped up an exploitative move to obtain lands for mineral excavation in Vaakarai, which is located in the northern part of the Batticaloa district. The activity of the company, also known as Mirama Minerals, was unusually high during the recent soft coup in Colombo. There were indications of a similar trend in the past in 2010 and 2013, says Koa'ra'lap-pattu North (Vaakarai) Divisional Council Chairman Sivagnanam Konalingam. The democratically elected Divisional Council functioning since June 2018 is now tracing the background of the move to exploit ilmenite mineral, he told TamilNet on Thursday. The council is deploying the Right to Information Act in investigating the matter as the exploitation has been targeting two hotspots, Kathirave'li (40 acres) and Puchchaak-kea'ni (13 acres).
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Racist UNP Minister from Ampaa'ari deploys ‘human rights’ to terminate Tamil school

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 December 2018, 11:06 GMT]
SL Minister of ‘Labour, Trade Union Relations and Social Empowerment’ Daya Gamage, widely known for his anti-Tamil politics in the district, has been working behind the scene to terminate the operation of the only government Tamil school in the town, Ampaa'arai Tamil Maha Viththiyaalayam, Tamil civil officials in the East told TamilNet this week. In 2016, the then Zonal Director of Education, Sunil Gunathilake, a Sinhalese, handed over the classrooms of the school to the ‘National Youth Corps’ under the influence of Mr Gamage without consulting the principal of the school, K Loganathan, they said. However, the racist minister has deployed a Sinhala journalist and the ‘Sri Lanka’ Human Rights Commission office in the district to harass the Tamil principal and a teacher to issue leaving certificates to the students in an apparent bid to cease the operation of the Tamil school, they said.
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SL State could tamper with skeletal evidence from Mannaar on the way to foreign labs, lawyers warn

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 December 2018, 21:20 GMT]
There must be a credible independent international mechanism to oversee and ensure that the human skeletal remains exhumed from the Mannaar killing fields get transported without the risk of tampering with the evidence by the SL State, the team of lawyers representing the families of enforced disappeared in Mannaar have cautioned. The lawyers, who didn't wish to be named, said they have urged the Bishop of Mannaar and are preparing to take up the matter with international actors once the exhumation commences again on 02 January 2019. The lawyers also told TamilNet that they would stand firm in their demand to be allowed to monitor the entire transportation process.
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Sinhala extremists set to install 25 Buddha statues in Tamil-Muslim division of Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 December 2018, 15:12 GMT]
The extremist Sinhala Buddhist establishment has increased activities of genocidal land grab in Trincomalee North through the SL Archaeology Department in the recent weeks. The monks are using Sinhala paramilitary (Civil Defence Force), Army and Navy personnel in civilian clothes to put up concrete structures in the seized lands. The intruders are waging heritage genocide as they aim systematic transformation of all hill-tops, and rocky or cave-areas with traditions of folk deities, Saivist or Tamil Mahayana Buddhist Saivist traces into Sinhala Theravada Buddhist installations through placing brand new Buddha statues. Twenty-five new Buddha statues are going to be brought into Kuchchave'li in Trincomalee North, a division with predominantly Tamil-speaking people, civil officials from Pulmoaddai said on Friday.
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Sirisena brings ‘sacred area’ deception to subvert Madu Shrine into ‘Anuradhapura’ paradigm

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 December 2018, 21:50 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena and a section of Sinhala Catholics in Colombo are pushing to demarcate the Madu area, where Our Lady of Madu shrine is located. The sinister move is based on the advice coming from the Sinhala Theravada Buddhist establishment, which wants to assert a mythical ‘Pathini Deiyo’ legacy in the next phase through the ‘Anuradhapura’ perception of so-called Sinhala heritage. Sections of Tamil Catholic priests in Mannaar have already sensed the heat in Sinhala establishment in Colombo and advocate caution without much public attention, informed sources in Mannaar told TamilNet. The Sanctity of Madu (Madhu) has always been beyond the scope of the boundary of a non-secular state apparatus and it should remain so also in the future is the general opinion being whispered within the ranks of Mannaar Diocese, the sources further said.
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Sirisena showcases military-to-military relationship with China

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 December 2018, 11:33 GMT]
SL President Maithiripala Sirisena on Saturday gave prominence to a photo session with Chinese military officers and Ambassador Cheng Xueyuan staging a grand opening ceremony to a Chinese military constructed auditorium at Diyatalawa military academy of genocidal Sri Lanka. The publicity stunt was aimed at passing a message to India and the West, observers in Colombo said. Mr Sirisena was using the opportunity in an attempt to balance out his setback in the constitutional with the military relation stunt with China, the observers said adding that Sirisena, who is the Commander-in-Chief of the SL military, was also passing a warning signal to the USA and India. Similarly, Chinese were giving a message by appointing Major General Shen Jun to lead their military delegation to the event, a diplomatic source in Colombo told TamilNet.
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Ex-Land Commissioner observes systematic ethnic discrimination in issuing land documents in East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 December 2018, 22:42 GMT]
The SL Government in Colombo has been issuing circulars instructing the provincial land authorities to release land documents to displaced and uprooted war-affected people. Such circulars were attempting to document ‘adherence’ to the recommendations of the so-called ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’. These circulars were also intended to convince the UN Human Rights Council and the international community that the SL State was implementing reconciliatory measures without discrimination. However, the Tamil people in the Eastern Province have been systematically and ethnically discriminated in the delivery of land documents even after the issuance of specific circulars, former Land Commissioner of Eastern Province Kathirgamathamby Kurunathan told TamilNet this week.
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SL military erects giant Buddha statue at controversial heritage site in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 December 2018, 21:45 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military in Mullaith-theevu installed a small Buddha statue, which was covered with glass at the disputed heritage site of Neeraaviyadi-eattam in Chemmalai in November. The SL military has now hurriedly replaced it with a huge Buddha statue disregarding the interim order and the protests of Tamil residents. The move comes after a delegation from the SL Archaeology Department in Colombo visited the SL military prompting it to accomplish the mission, civil sources in Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat told TamilNet. An extremist Buddhist monk, Kolamba Medhalankara Thera, staying with the SL Army's 593rd Brigade at Naayaa'ru is operating with the thinking that once the giant statue has been successfully erected, Tamil protests, as well as the interim orders, would lose their impact as the SL Constitution accords ‘foremost place to Buddhism’, the sources further said.
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SL military wants Cooray to liaise with Tamil diaspora industrialists from islets off Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 December 2018, 22:31 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala Navy and its intelligence wing have drawn a plan to recruit and deceive the business elite among the Tamils in the Northern Province, particularly the Tamil diaspora industrialists who hail from the islets off Jaffna, with the propaganda of ‘development’, informed sources at Ooraath-thu'rai (Kayts) told TamilNet this week. Under the pretext of facilitating infrastructure investment from the Tamil diaspora, the SL Navy wants to maintain its hold and open up the islets for more Sinhala tourists from the South with a large-scale trade and cultural Sinhalicisaiton of the islands. As part of this military conceived programme, the SL Governor is actively engaged in collecting details of Tamil diaspora industrialists and business owners, who are exiled in the West from the islets, the sources further said.
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Monks incite SL paramilitary to Sinhalicise Tamil heritage site in Trincomalee North

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 December 2018, 23:16 GMT]
An extremist section of the Sinhala-Buddhist Theravada monks establishment, which has been trying for more almost ten years to claim the ancient Tamil village of Thennai-maravadi as a heritage and archaeology site of Sinhala Buddhism, abandoned their attempt to erect a Buddhist temple at the lands of the Tamil village deity of Kanthasaami. However, the monks left behind noticeboards claiming the Saiva (Hindu) temple lands, where they conducted the excavations, as coming under the purview of the SL Department of Archaeology. Recently, on 30th November, Sinhala paramilitary personnel of the so-called ‘Civil Defence Force’ have put up foundations for a building inside the demarcated lands. If the seized properties of the Hindu temple come under the SL Archaeology department, how could the CDF personnel start constructing structures inside the grounds, the resettled Tamils questioned.
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Washington set to downgrade ‘human rights politics’ to association level in Indo-Pacific

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 December 2018, 19:26 GMT]
A new US Senate bill named as “Asia Reassurance Initiative Act of 2018” (ARIA) has been passed with an amendment by unanimous consent on 04 December 2018. The Trump Administration that has fully withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva will be downscaling the scope of its human rights agenda er to a regional intergovernmental association level (ASEAN) if ARIA becomes a law. Republican Senator Cory Gardner from Colorado, who proposed the bill in April has urged the US House of Representatives to quickly send the legislation to the desk of President Donald Trump for him to sign it into law.
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Skeletal remains with shackled legs exhumed in Mannaar mass grave

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 December 2018, 23:31 GMT]
Skeletal remains of legs belonging to two different victims were found locked together into a single iron shackle at Mannaar mass grave on Thursday, eyewitnesses in Mannaar told TamilNet. The excavation continued amidst rains for the 112th day and bone remains of 266 different victims, believed to be slain by the SL military during the times of war, have been discovered so far, and 260 of these have been exhumed and boxed for forensic investigations. The legal activists witnessing the excavation fear that Colombo and its justice system would never subject the remains to forensic analyses with an independent international third party. A female ring was also discovered this week at the mass grave site, which is located at the premises of Cooperative Wholesale Establishment (Sathosa) at the entrance to Mannaar city. Since 1990, and until recently, the premises was under SL military control.
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SL State becomes prime reference for ‘debt trap diplomacy’ of China in US rhetorics

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 December 2018, 19:03 GMT]
The unitary state of genocidal Sri Lanka has become the de-facto reference case for Chinese debt-trap diplomacy, which is being increasingly referred in the US political, military and financial discussions. USINDOPACOM Commander Admiral Philip S. Davidson made a reference to ‘Sri Lanka’ when he faced a question on what he found as the most problematic with the Belt and Road initiative on 30 November. In the meantime, Roland de Marcellus, the acting deputy assistant secretary for international finance and development within the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, testifying at a US Senate subcommittee hearing on “multilateral economic institutions in foreign policy,” on 27 November said ‘Sri Lanka’ had become “a campaign issue in many elections around the world where opposition groups are criticizing the volume of Chinese lending and the terms and all of the other drawbacks”.
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Germany abets Sinhalicisation of education in occupied Tamil homeland

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 November 2018, 18:02 GMT]
A'riviyal-nakar (Knowledge city) was a concept developed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during the de-facto administration of the Tamil state in the suburb of Ki'linochchi. The University of Jaffna established the Faculty of Engineering in 2013 at A'riviyal-nakar, which is located 7km south of Ki'linochchi town. The ‘Sri Lanka’ German Training Institute (SLGTI) conceived during the regime of Rajapaksa in 2010 as a “vocational training project for the regions affected by the war,” started to function in 2014. Now, 80% of the students are Sinhala students. While all other technical institutions operating in the North use Tamil as the default language of learning and teaching, Tamil is not used as the language of education at the SLGTI, which is operating in “A'riviyal-nakar”.
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Sinhala police threaten organisers of Heroes Day events in Vadamaraadchi, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 November 2018, 21:13 GMT]
Unknown attackers, believed to be policemen from Point Pedro station, on Tuesday night smashed the doors and windows of the residence of Mr Pon Sakthivel, a fisheries society activist and poet, who was involved in mobilising the Heroes Day Remembrance event at Chuppar-madam. The attackers had come with the intention of causing bodily harm to Mr Sakthivel and his brother, fisheries society sources told TamilNet on Wednesday. However, the family members who sensed suspicious activity in the vicinity of their house decided to spend the night with a relative elsewhere. Unable to find anyone in the house, the attackers have smashed the door and window, the sources said.
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Sinhala ethnocracy's entrenched insecurity, ultimate spoiler of stability: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 November 2018, 21:07 GMT]
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the leader of Tamil National Peoples' Front, was the first Tamil politician to warn – well in advance – that the powers collaborating with the SL State were risking instability in the island. The former Tamil parliamentarian came with the observation, which he has been implying for a long time, also in an interview to TamilNet in September 2018, two weeks ahead of Lt. Col. Thileepan's remembrance in Jaffna. The current political instability, predicted by Gajendrakumar in September, happened within 45 days, sending shockwaves across the international community. In a follow-up interview, just ahead of Maaveerar Remembrance in Jaffna, he indicates that any strategic collaboration between the external powers and the SL State, which is Sinhala-Buddhist ethnocracy in nature, would be doomed to falter, because of its entrenched attitude of insecurity.
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Germany promotes trade with genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 November 2018, 12:25 GMT]
The Federal Republic of Germany, which is the 4th largest economy in the world and the biggest economy within the European Union, has been accelerating trade moves to create business opportunities for ‘Sri Lankan’ and German companies between March and October 2018. Germany is also home to a large number of genocide-affected Eezham Tamils. Tamil grassroots activists in Jaffna have urged increased awareness among the Tamil diaspora at the wake of a call to conceive a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against genocidal Sri Lanka as the SL President Maithiripala Sirisena installed Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Prime Minister. In the meantime, a report by the leading German media house Deutsche Welle said: “German companies have so far invested around one billion dollars in Sri Lanka. Compared to China’s investment since 2005, that figure is modest.”
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SL military defies court order, erects Buddha statue in Mullaith-theevu

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 November 2018, 09:28 GMT]
Emboldened by the recent re-emergence of Rajapaksa brothers in the South, the occupying Sinhala Army has erected a Buddha statue at Neeraavi-eattam (Neeraaviyadi) on Friday. The SLA 593 Brigade was openly violating a stay order on converting Pazhaiya-Chemmalai Pi'l'liaayar temple into a Buddhist vihara, Karai-thu'raip-pattu Divisional Secretariat officials told TamilNet on Monday. The SL Army soldiers were having a Buddha statue covered in a glass box inside their camp. On Friday, they moved it to the disputed Neeraaviyadi temple, the sources said. Both the UNP regime, which was controlling the SL Archaeology Department until recently, SL President Maithiripala Sirisena and Mahinda Rajapaksa's SLPP have been competing to Sinhalicise Neeraaviyadi, the Tamil officials said.
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