Facing offensive presidential election with self-respect

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 December 2009, 23:04 GMT]
The Tamil parties thinking of fielding a common candidate should rise above outside diktats, should do justice to the Tamil cause at this formative stage of new Tamil polity and should come out with an election agenda that doesn’t harm the cause of Tamils in the long run. Any mistake made now will be irreversible, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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SLA abductions of Tamil youth continue unabated in camps

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 November 2009, 02:19 GMT]
Several Tamil boys and girls including teenagers interned in the camps are called by name through announcing system by the Sri Lanka Army intelligence officers and are taken to unknown destinations, reports reaching from Vavuniyaa camps said. At least 10 young men and boys were thus 'abducted' on 21 November and around 30 youth, including girls, were taken on 27 November from Zone-0 IDP internment camp in Cheddiku'lam alone last week. They were taken in SLA vehicles and their family members lost all contacts with them since then, sources in Vavuniyaa told TamilNet Sunday.
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Locking Tamil nationalism through presidential candidature

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 November 2009, 12:27 GMT]
A Tamil candidature in the presidential elections, proposing a political solution deviating from the goals of Tamil nationalism, is a tactic to bind and nullify the aspirations of Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo. In the current circumstances, Tamils naturally boiling with anger about both the main candidates are most likely to cast their votes en masse to any respectable Tamil candidate. But it is an artful move to get a mandate by stealth from the surviving people of the North and East for dropping the fundamentals of Tamil nationalism set earlier in 1977 and for locking them with political subjugation within a single state in the island. Therefore the election proposal of any potential Tamil candidate should be the removal of the 6th Amendment to the constitution and not any half-backed formula, the commentator further said.
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Heroes and rulers, eternal struggle of humanity

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 November 2009, 22:50 GMT]
The roots of the current tragedy of the island lie in the unscrupulous competition between India and USA over the control of the island as a whole. None of the adamantly competing powers wanted to address the national question in the island with justice. In a way, over the death and captivation of Tamils, powers are now wooing and competing for the ‘democratic’ votes of the Sinhalese. The war has metamorphosed the main personalities in the election fray to full-fledged dummies, as they are not as brave or honest as Pirapaharan in resisting the diktats of powers. When viewed against this backdrop, the universal as well as civilisation-perspectives of the struggle under the LTTE of Pirapaharan and the sacrifices made by thousands and thousands of fighters and people could be understood in an altogether different light, sidelining all the accusations on the modus operandi of the struggle.
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Credentials of IC challenged while widespread rape by SLA alleged in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 November 2009, 17:24 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) intelligence officers operating in the internment camps of Vanni have been allegedly involved in several rape cases during the past months. At least three cases of young victims, aged 14, 15 and 16, appeared in front of Vavuniyaa District Judge in October. SLA soldiers have also raped a 14-year-old mentally retarded Tamil girl inside the Vavuniyaa hospital.
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Counter-national conspiracy against Tamils comes to light

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 November 2009, 07:56 GMT]
LTTE members either in custody or operating units in the island have become the most vulnerable to counter-Tamilnational conspiracies of Colombo government, well informed sources in Colombo indicate. The Colombo government’s focus now is to get the section of the LTTE in its trap to denounce Tamil Eelam and efforts are intensified to make use of the Heroes’ Day to test the conspiracy. Colombo is as usual abetted by certain powers in this exercise, the sources further said. Meanwhile, Tamil diaspora circles responded to the news saying that under current circumstances any ‘statement’ addressed to the public has to be viewed not from the point “what is said or who has said but from where it has been said.” The free LTTE has a great responsibility in promoting the emergence of new democratic political leadership that truly represents the national aspirations of Tamils, they further said.
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Tamil, Muslim political parties find their table in Zurich

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 November 2009, 15:10 GMT]
Widely speculated as a drama backed by ‘high-powers,’ leaders of most of the Tamil and Muslim political parties in the island of Sri Lanka are meeting for the first time in Zurich, Switzerland, between Thursday and Saturday. The move is said to be for ‘extracting’ a joint proclamation of them necessary for further power manoeuvres in the island. A couple of years ago it was such a behind-the-scene move of some powers that made most of these parties except the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to rally behind Mahinda Rajapaksa and pledge support to him in the war that brought in disaster to Tamils, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Sinhala speakers socially fail in moral responsibility: Peter Schalk

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 November 2009, 13:05 GMT]
“We all know there will be no apologizing. It may come only when Lanka’s intellectual and political elite among Sinhala speakers faces its judges in an international war tribunal after an international (military) intervention by the UN or a cluster of states, or when the Lankan economy suffers a breakdown. We should not delay any effort to bring these criminals to justice. If they do not acknowledge any moral responsibility we can teach them legal accountability,” writes Professor Peter Schalk opining futility in expecting change and improvement for the Tamil people to come from the Sinhala society that is structurally not prepared by its mindset to accept responsibility and tactically considers pleading guilty is costly.
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Australia aiding and abetting Sri Lanka’s war crimes - Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 November 2009, 00:25 GMT]
“Australia is a contracting party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees as well as to its related 1967 Protocol. Thereunder Australia has an absolute obligation to provide meaningful and humane asylum procedures, regulations and hearings to all Tamils fleeing from Sri Lanka,” said Francis A. Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, in a note sent to TamilNet Friday.
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Reconciliation of two nation states requires parity

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 November 2009, 18:42 GMT]
Considering all what had gone before, 'reconciliation' has to first take place between the powers and Eezham Tamil psyche and the probabilities are remote unless the powers recognize the national question as national question and come forward to address it in ways fit enough for chronic cases. Ultimate reconciliation has to take place between Sinhala and Tamil nation states but genuine reconciliation cannot come without parity and dignity. The issue has to be approached reconciling to the reality of two nation states, not only for peace in the island but for even achieving shared sovereignty of a regional model, if that is going to be the demand of time in future. Present day International Community will register a point of progress in the polity of humanity by collectively eradicating baneful states like Sri Lanka that habitually use the card of geopolitics to resist restructure.
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Fonseka demands summary justice for LTTE cadres

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 November 2009, 11:45 GMT]
"We must deploy enough troops to provide security for these [resettled] areas. We must in these areas, this virus, there are still 1000’s of terrorists in IDP camps. We must identify these terrorist and destroy them. We must take them into custody and then resettle them. We must provide security in strength to these areas. I will only be happy that we finished the war we ended when I see this," said General Sarath Fonseka during a talk in a Budhist Temple in Washington D.C., according a website's English translation, before the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked for a "voluntary meeting" with the General to discuss the war-crimes alleged to be committed by Sri Lanka's military officials.
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Tamil Eelam not a lost cause: Fr. Jegath Gaspar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 November 2009, 01:14 GMT]
“I don't think Tamil Eelam is a lost cause. If there was any point of time in history that Eelam was a possibility, I think it is now. Tamils all over the world are more determined than ever,” says Fr. Jegath Gaspar Raj, Chennai based Catholic priest and international broadcast journalist in an interview to TamilNet Sunday. “I believe that geopolitics or foreign policy or security policies are never static; they are ever dynamic, they will keep changing. I am confident that at some point of time India will come to realize that the only strategic leverage it has against the Chinese-Sri Lankan combine in the Indian Ocean is the Indo-Tamil combination,” he said, pinning the responsibility for the failure of Indian foreign policy to M K Narayanan Doctrine.
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Abysmal 90% fail rate of internee Tamil children in Year-5 exam

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 November 2009, 12:43 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Tamil cultural destruction continues at unabated speed with the latest results of the year-5 exams released by the Department of Examinations, after a 30-day unexplained delay, revealed that only 507 students out of 5413 children who sat the Year 5 examination-2009 from the internment camps located in Vavuniyaa have passed. The Department released the results of Year 5 examination for other provinces on October 2.
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US legal noose tightening around Fonseka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 October 2009, 22:02 GMT]
The audacious visit to the United States by Major General Sarath Fonseka soon after an incriminating US State Department report over war crimes, appears to have landed the Major in a legal bind with US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to a report in the Sunday Times. While the DHS has requested a "voluntary meeting," Fonseka's legal counsels are yet to determine if US has the authority to trump Fonseka's assumed diplomatic immunity and can force him to testify, or if Fonseka's immunity would grant him the option to refuse to testify and return to Sri Lanka.
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Why are children kept in concentration camps, asks Prof. Peter Schalk

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 October 2009, 14:24 GMT]
Stating that a list of details of children ranging from 1 month to 18 years, within the internment camps in Vavuniyaa, was being composed by concerned western academics and rights activists, Prof. Peter Schalk, of Uppsala University, Sweden, on Tuesday said out of 1,200 names they have composed 1,082 were orphans. The information is documented by human rights’ organisations in the field in August/September 2009. "The list gives unfortunately only a part of the total number of children in all concentration camps," he said adding that the list could be ordered from him. "The list makes it possible to follow up the fate of each child over time and makes denials by the Government of killings through neglect of children impossible," he said in a note sent to TamilNet.
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Sri Lanka editors receive death threats for Channel-4 video comments

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 October 2009, 03:26 GMT]
Sunday Leader, a weekend broadsheet in Sri Lanka, said in the latest edition that two of the paper's editors, Frederica Jansz, and Munza Mushtaq, received Thursday "hand written death threats by post." The threats relate to Sunday Leader news stories on the authenticity of the August Channel-4 video which showed armed Sri Lankan soldiers executing Tamil prisoners stripped naked and hands tied behind their backs. "This newspaper has consistently in the entire 15 years of its existence come under attack. We have been burnt, bombed, sealed, harassed and threatened, culminating in January this year with the brutal killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge," the paper said.
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Tamil Nadu must recognize and support establishment of Tamil Eelam: Thirumavalavan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 13:38 GMT]
Stating that there was a total violation of human rights in the Sri Lankan Government's camps for Internally Displaced Persons, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi President Thol.Thirumavalavan, told TamilNet Friday in an exclusive interview of the "appalling conditions" prevalent in these "barbed-wire concentration camps" which he witnessed firsthand as one of the ten-member parliamentary delegation from Tamil Nadu. Pointing out that Tamil people could not become a "permanent slave society" and "live as second class citizens in Sri Lanka," Thirumavalavan sought to emphasize that Tamil Eelam was the only solution to a struggle that had claimed the lives of nearly fifteen hundred thousand Tamils civilians and more than thirty thousand Tamil Tiger fighters.
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EU Commission: Sri Lanka fails to meet Rights thresholds for GSP+

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 October 2009, 02:27 GMT]
"[N]ational legislation of Sri Lanka incorporating international human rights conventions, in particular the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is not being effectively implemented. In the light of these findings, the Commission will now consider whether a temporary withdrawal of some or all of Sri Lanka's GSP+ benefits is called for and make a suitable proposal to EU Member States in the Council. If such a proposal is made and subsequently adopted by the Council, it would enter into force six months after the date of adoption," the European Commission said in the notice summarizing the Commission's findings on the Sri Lanka's GSP+ status released today.
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Forensic analysis confirms execution-video authentic, says US-group

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 October 2009, 02:25 GMT]
A notarized report of preliminary findings from a US-based forensic company that took nearly three weeks to analyze the Channel-4 broadcast video allegedly showing Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers extra-judicially executing Tamil captives stripped naked and hands tied behind their back, said "[t]he video and audio of the events depicted in the Video, were continuous without any evidence of start/stops, insertions, deletions, over recordings, editing or tampering of any kind." US pressure group, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) which sponsored the study, placed an embargo on revealing the details of the forensic company, until the final report is complete early November.
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Addressing ambiguity of Right to Self-Determination

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 October 2009, 00:26 GMT]
The international system is erratic in justifying right to self-determination (RSD) of nations set against right to security of states. All areas of discretion were interpreted against, in the case of Eezham Tamils. As the militant-created de facto state that has been making a case for RSD all this time doesn’t exist in its territory today, democratic political move should create a new de facto situation. RSD can be invoked when peoples of more than one state are involved, but Mr Karunanidhi nullified the opportunity. The option now is not asking for RSD, but exercising it and mandating democratic de facto situation or situations. This is why spelling out the goal of independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam is paramount for transnational governance. Elected country councils enhance meeting the task by structurally involving ‘peoples of many states.’
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