TYO-UK condemns Cameron for ‘engagement’ with genocidal Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 November 2013, 22:45 GMT]
Condemning British Prime Minister David Cameron for his decision to participate in CHOGM in Sri Lanka, TYO-UK, in a press statement released on Monday accused Mr. Cameron of engaging with a genocide-accused state and for “pushing for a solution to be chosen by the Sri Lankan government, one which the Tamil nation is threatened by.” The release further conveyed its dismay over the willingness of Britain and other countries to give approval to the Sri Lankan ‘reconciliation’ model, which in practice amounts to genocide of the Tamil nation. Speaking to TamilNet Shanyuga Ganesan, TYO activist and law student at the University of Leicester expressed her regret at Mr. Cameron’s decision. “For a Tamil youth whose vote now counts in this country, I can't seem to digest the decision made by the Prime Minister to attend the CHOGM. We just feel like we are not being heard,” she said.
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Colombo simulates ‘clustered camp’ for uprooted people of Valikaamam East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 November 2013, 23:27 GMT]
Colombo deployed its officials on Friday to showcase a ‘clustered camp’ project in Valikaamam East in Jaffna, promising ‘settlement’ to a few hundred uprooted Tamils in a deceptive move of moving a few hundred uprooted people from their camps outside the former ‘High Security Zone’ into the clustered camp environment in former grazing lands at Idaik-kaadu and Antony-puram near Palaali in Valikaamam East. Around 150 uprooted people from different camps were taken with journalists from South to showcase the ‘settlement’, a smokescreen move by SL military just ahead of Sri Lanka CHOGM to be held this month. More than 51,000 uprooted people from Valikaamam, which was occupied and declared as HSZ by the SL military, are continuously languishing in more than 10 so-called welfare camps and elsewhere in Jaffna peninsula since 1990.
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UK-PM buttressing SL-CHOGM seeks ‘legitimacy’ from London Tamils

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 November 2013, 00:43 GMT]
British Establishment’s Prime Minister David Cameron hurriedly convened a meeting of handpicked Tamil articulators in London on Thursday evening to showcase that the diaspora has compromised with his participation at the Sri Lanka-CHOGM. The British effort seeking ‘Wigneswarans’ in London to ‘legitimise’ the CHOGM participation was also aiming at relieving the New Delhi Establishment from the mounting pressure in Tamil Nadu, Tamil political observers in London said. A couple of hours before the meeting, a diaspora media in London published the ‘opinion’ of the PM on his CHOGM participation. The meeting ended with a ‘photo session.’
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200 years of British colonial outlook continues to haunt Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 November 2013, 16:08 GMT]
After British colonialism waging the war on Kandy in 1815, administratively uniting the island and creating unitary Ceylon for colonial geopolitical purposes, the next major war of international dimensions was fought against the nation of Eezham Tamils in 2009, in which the genocide was predetermined. While Washington and New Delhi follow the British colonial outlook of keeping the island as one unit, whatever the human cost could be, today’s Britain itself is one of the driving forces behind the ‘strategic partnership.’ Those who doubt the West’s equal culpability with New Delhi should recollect the ‘strategic partnership’ call made in Chennai by US State Department during the war and what the UK is doing today on CHOGM, writes a political observer in Jaffna.
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"Perfidious Albion cannot change its spots"

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 November 2013, 03:12 GMT]
Asserting that the Commonwealth is simply a reincarnation of the British Empire and the British Imperial system, Professor Boyle, an expert in international law, remarked that placing the alleged genocidaire Mahinda Rajapakse as the Commonwealth Chairperson-in-office for the next two years, "will expose the Commonwealth as a Sick Joke." Professor Boyle found Prince of Wales and British Prime Minister David Cameron's attendance to CHOGM despicable and drew similarity to the American Founding Father Thomas Paine's charaterization of the British as "Perfidious Albion cannot change its spots," after the massacres of American soldiers at Lexington by the British Hessian mercenaries.
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British rights group documents 85 new cases of torture by Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 November 2013, 18:18 GMT]
“If the British government wants to be taken seriously in its stated commitment to using the Commonwealth meeting to highlight human rights issues, it must first come clean about how it has facilitated this abuse through the Home Office's forced removals programme,” said Freedom from Torture, the Chief Executive of Freedom from Torture, a UK based medical foundation, which provides therapeutic care for survivors of torture, in a statement issued on 01 November. The charity also stated that it had documented a further 85 cases of ‘post-conflict’ torture since the publication of ‘Out of the Silence’ in 2011.
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Colombo on “witch hunt” against local journalists, says deported IFJ Director

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 November 2013, 09:03 GMT]
The Asia-Pacific Director of the reputed global media watchdog, International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Ms Jacqui Park, who was arrested, detained for two days in house arrest at Hotel Galadari together with her colleague Ms Jean Worthington and kicked out of the island by the Sri Lankan regime on Friday, described Colombo’s officials of conducting a systematic “witch hunt” against local journalists as she reached Sydney on Saturday. While the Free Media Movement (FMM) in Colombo was coordinating an island-wide event in bringing together journalist associations that have been working under the prevailing media suppression and harassments by the Colombo regime, Ms Park and her colleague were visiting the island on tourist visa and were invited to attend the FMM event on Wednesday, where they were arrested.
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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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New Delhi experiments Eezham model ‘counterinsurgency’ on its own people

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 October 2013, 17:04 GMT]
Indian State now consolidates a policy that extraordinary political movements of mass basis, coming from peoples long exposed to social oppression, material deprivation, un-freedom and stark poverty in India, have to be eliminated with the deployment of an increasing number of armed forces. The more the forces are special and armed-to-the-teeth with impunity, the more they are effective, is the policy outlook. “The establishment's view is that over a period of time, this strategy, notwithstanding its viciousness, has paid rich dividends and must be persisted with. The decimation of the LTTE in the summer of 2009 in Sri Lanka has served to consolidate this view,” says an October 2013 publication of the Human Rights Forum based in Andhra Pradesh.
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Muslim party protests in New Delhi against Sri Lanka CHOGM

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 October 2013, 07:09 GMT]
The Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), a pan-Indian Muslim political party, demonstrated on Tuesday at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi demanding India to expel the Sri Lankan State from the Commonwealth. If that is not possible, the very least India could do is not to participate in the CHOGM held at the genocide-accused country, the protestors from the grassroots Muslim organization emphasized. Speakers at the demonstration also condemned Indian Minter for External Affairs Salman Khurshid’s recent statement that he would represent India at the CHOGM in Sri Lanka.
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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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Tamil Nadu protest on Sri Lanka CHOGM targets New Delhi, London

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 October 2013, 18:33 GMT]
Do not conduct Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka and suspend Sri Lanka from Commonwealth till a referendum on independence of Eezham Tamils is held under UN supervision, demanded protestors belonging to 12 political parties and movements that participated in a protest in front of the British Deputy High Commission in Chennai and the Shastri Bhavan office of the Central Government of India at Nungambakkam on Friday. Describing the protest as a siege on Indian and the UK offices in Chennai, May 17 Movement, the organisors of the protest, characterised the Sri Lanka CHOGM as a ‘neo-colonial summit’.
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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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Tamil Nadu Assembly unanimously demands full CHOGM boycott by New Delhi

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 October 2013, 14:02 GMT]
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa on Thursday moved a resolution in the Tamil Nadu State Assembly demanding the Indian Central Government to completely boycott its participation in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka this November. The resolution was particular in demanding that there should not even be a token participation from the Indian side. Instead, India should take steps to temporarily suspend Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth till the Sri Lankan State acts upon ensuring the freedom and equality of Tamils on a par with the Sinhalese. All the political parties present in the Assembly, including the Congress, passed the resolution unanimously.
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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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