Veteran Eezham Tamil journalist, poet, Parvathinathasivam passes away

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 March 2013, 17:16 GMT]
Pulavar Parvathinathasivam, poet, journalist, author and Tamil scholar passed away in Jaffna on Tuesday morning at the age of 77. Coming from an illustrious family of Tamil scholars in Jaffna, Parvathi-natha-sivam was further inspired in his outlook and writings by his association with the renowned Tamil poet Bharathidasan in the late 1950s. Starting his journalistic career with Suthanthiran, he served as editor of the weekly edition of Eezhanaadu daily in Jaffna for a long time in the 1970s and 80s. Later, he worked for Uthayan in the 90s and also contributed to Murasoli, Sanjeevi and Thinakkural. The funeral ceremonies will take place at his family’s present residence at Nanthaavil Lane in Kokkuvil on Wednesday. His ancestral house at Maaviddapuram, coming under the SL military-occupied HSZ for two decades, was released recently, but in a completely razed-down condition.
Full story >>

BJP cell of Tamil Nadu ex-servicemen apologises to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 March 2013, 02:42 GMT]
“The deepest psychological wound rankling the minds of every veteran in Tamilnadu is the killing of Tamilians during the Indo-Srilankan war of 1987-90 by the Indian Armed Forces,” says the President of the Tamil Nadu BJP Ex-Servicemen’s Cell, Lt Col CR Sundar, in a statement circulated to media this week. Had the war crimes been taken up for investigations at that time itself, the later tragedy befallen on Tamils in the island could have been averted, he told Tamil Nadu correspondent of TamilNet on Tuesday. The need that has arisen for Tamil ex-servicemen to take up party line of politics on the Eezham Tamil issue is a significant development in India, political observers said.
Full story >>

Nailing genocidaires

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 March 2013, 17:05 GMT]
When Sri Lanka is being hauled naked with alleged international crimes committed against its own Tamil citizens exposed to the rest of the world in the UN's Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva this week, two other stories of genocidaires nabbed and brought to justice in other parts of the world drew media headlines. Yvonne Basebya, 66, becomes first Dutch citizen to be convicted in Denmark for complicity in the Rwandan genocide, and the former Guatemalan president, José Efraín Ríos Montt, was ordered to stand trial in the Guatamalan national court for genocide and crimes against humanity carried out during his seventeen month dictatorship between 1982 and 1983.
Full story >>

Condemn genocide in a single-line resolution at Geneva: AIADMK tells New Delhi

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 March 2013, 00:28 GMT]
“India should move a single-line resolution in the Council condemning the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka and demand an independent international investigation,” said AIADMK’s MP, Dr. Maitreyan, during the parliamentary debate in New Delhi on Wednesday. Citing Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalithaa linking the war crimes to the days of the Nazi Germany of Hitler, Dr. V. Maitreyan condemned Indian Foreign Minister calling Sri Lanka a friendly country. “Sri Lanka, as a friendly country, is a thing of the past. How can a country, which carried out a systematic genocide of my umbilical-cord brethren, Tamils, be termed as a friendly country,” he asked, blaming India for diluting the impact of the UNHRC resolution last year, by softening its tone, tenor and contents.
Full story >>

Daily Mirror fabricates news: Gajendrakumar

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 March 2013, 00:01 GMT]
“It is sometimes possible for journalists to misunderstand what is being said, and as a result misquote. But in this case, the major part of the said news item is entirely fabricated,” says Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam responding to Colombo-based English media Daily Mirror reporting his speech at the Press Club in Jaffna on Monday. While he had cited the report of Ms. Navi Pillai in appreciation for evidencing the grave violations committed against Tamils in the last one year, the Daily Mirror titled its news report on Wednesday as “Pillai responsible, says Ponnambalam,” Gajendrakumar said. Following protests by Gajendrakumar, Daily Mirror carried another report on Thursday, titled “Ponnambalam clarifies.” This was even more disappointing and completely inadequate, Gajendrakumar told TamilNet.
Full story >>

Australia should withdraw from CHOGM in Sri Lanka: Lee Rhiannon

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 February 2013, 05:24 GMT]
While Australian Liberal MPs Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop gave a clean chit to the genocide-accused Sri Lankan state after their recent visit to the island, Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon has called on Australia to end its silence on Sri Lanka and to withdraw from the CHOGM in a statement on Thursday. Referring to the recent report by HRW on Sri Lanka’s systematic sexual violence on Tamils and to an earlier TamilNet’s feature on the genocidal rape of LTTE cadres, she further lamented Australia still not taking a decisive position for the Tamils. Speaking to TamilNet, Ms. Rhiannon said “The international community must no longer fail the people of Sri Lanka. With the UNHCR meeting in Geneva and the mounting evidence of war crimes emerging, this is an ideal moment to support the Tamil diaspora’s call for an international investigation into the charges of war crimes and genocide.”
Full story >>

Colombo uses international aid, abetment, for structural genocide in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 February 2013, 04:02 GMT]
The genocidal Sinhala State in Colombo has accelerated the process of creating a Sinhala division at Ma'nal-aa'ru renamed as Wæli-oya in Sinhala, in the strategic locality linking North and East territory of the Tamil nation in the island of Sri Lanka, by deploying Indian and other international aid, civil sources in Mullaiththeevu said. The housing aid of India and the infrastructure aid of the IC are pooled in creating the Sinhala division, with all facilities of attraction for the Sinhalicisation process at the wedging locality. This is carried out not without the blessings of India, the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia whose delegates visited the region in the recent months, the civil sources commented, adding that what was heard from the Indian Foreign Minister in the parliament on Wednesday on implementing the 13th Amendment was a sour joke of quarter a century.
Full story >>

‘Sexual violence against Tamils is premeditated, deliberate’: HRW UK Director

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 February 2013, 06:26 GMT]
Responding to a question posed by TamilNet at a Human Rights Watch press meet in London on Tuesday, UK director of the HRW, Mr. David Mepham stated that the sexual violence perpetrated by the Sri Lankan state forces against the Tamils was not random but had a method in it, adding that it was deliberate and premeditated. In an exclusive interview to TamilNet, Mr. Mepham further said that HRW stood for an independent international investigation into human rights abuses committed by the GoSL, terming the LLRC “a bit of a farce”, and opining that the “culture of impunity” in Sri Lanka needs to be addressed by the International Community. However, Mr. Mepham said that HRW “has not taken the view that this is genocide,” but only that systematic human rights abuses were committed by the Sri Lankan government, blaming the LTTE also for human rights violations.
Full story >>

Systematic rape of Tamils violates Genocide convention, says Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 February 2013, 00:51 GMT]
Professor Boyle, an expert in International Law and who represented nearly 40,000 raped Women of Bosnia and argued their case for genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, commenting on the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, "Sri Lanka: Rape of Tamil detainees," said, "[c]learly, this continuing Campaign of widespread and systematic rape by the Government of Sri Lanka against the Tamils violates Article II(b) of the 1948 Genocide Convention, to which Sri Lanka is a contracting party."
Full story >>

UNHRC heads for structural genocide if Tamil nation territory is not guaranteed: TNPF

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 February 2013, 15:02 GMT]
An internationally monitored interim administration in the North and East under UN supervision outside the parameters of the Sri Lankan Constitution is the only way forward to stop the genocide being committed on Tamils, especially to put an immediate end to the accelerated structural genocide taking place in the Tamil homeland, reiterated Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, the president of the Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF), in the first press meeting held at the newly opened press club in Jaffna on Monday. The current indications are that the UNHRC would end up giving another year of time and space to Colombo and the TNA that supported the resolution last year without a principled approach is answerable to what resulted from the resolution in the past 12 months, Gajendrakumar further said.
Full story >>

NZ Tamils raise question on applying SA model to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 February 2013, 00:03 GMT]
“We are constrained to seek a clarification from those few who are waxing eloquently on the need to study and gain from the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa vis-à-vis the LLRC recommendations of Sri Lanka,” said a press release coming from the Tamil Action Front (TAF) of New Zealand on Sunday, raising the question, “Will those protagonists of the South African experience please explain to the Tamil diaspora at least what they mean – what is it that is so significant for the Tamils to emulate?” The press release signed by the TAF coordinator Mr. A Theva Rajan, brought out the contextual difference between South Africa and the island of Sri Lanka.
Full story >>

New Delhi, Colombo, jointly ‘cherish’ IPKF memory at Palaali SMZ

[TamilNet, Saturday, 23 February 2013, 22:13 GMT]
New Delhi Establishment’s envoy in Colombo, Ashok K. Kantha, accompanied by his wife Mrs. Sharmila Kantha paid tribute at the newly ‘rediscovered’ IPKF memorial at Palaali in the Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ) on Saturday. Joining the couple in cherishing the legacy of the IPKF was Colombo’s occupying Sinhala military commander in Jaffna, Maj. Gen Mahinda Hathurusinghe, senior officers of the SL military, New Delhi’s Defence Advisor at the Colombo High Commission and the Establishment’s Consul General in Jaffna. New Delhi already has a memorial built for the war-crimes-accused IPKF at Colombo. New Delhi’s current gesture of rediscovering another memorial at Palaali along with the occupying genocidal Sinhala military signals negatively when there is demand for international investigation of war crimes in the island.
Full story >>

Blake, architect of Tamil tragedy, spectator to genocide

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 February 2013, 22:22 GMT]
Blinded by the 9/11 terror and impelled by the perceived need for swift action against "terrorism," the US-led International Community, made two serious miscalculations in Sri Lanka war: By allowing unhindered space for Sri Lanka's final military thrust, they misjudged Sinhala society's willing capacity to inflict bestial, savage crimes on fellow human beings; and the IC's belief that, once the Tigers are eliminated Rajapakses will “fill in the gaps” and provide an acceptable political solution, has been shown as embarrassingly flawed. Now, as the IC savors the dystopian-monster they created, the need to whitewash the atrocities by side-stepping accountability, and to focus on development, appear to be driving IC's actions. Tamils, now left defenseless, hold Ambassador Blake, as the key US official who shaped the US policy on Sri Lanka's war, responsible for the tragedy.
Full story >>

SLA threatens Mannaar farmers not to protest against discrimination

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 February 2013, 06:51 GMT]
The demonstration and fasting campaign organized by farmers organizations in Mannaar district earlier this week to protest against the discrimination by the SL government in Colombo in providing relief to affected farmers following the recent floods, was put off due to the threat issued by the intelligence Unit of the occupying Sri Lanka Army that those participating would be dealt severely under the ‘Sri Lankan Law’. Due to the threat and intimidation exerted by the SL intelligence, the demonstration was now put off for February 26, the organisers said.
Full story >>

Pita-kotte, Pita-kotuwa, Pettah

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 February 2013, 08:31 GMT]
The outside of the fort/
The backside of the fort
The extramural suburb of the fort/
The town adjacent to the fort

Full story >>

Washington Post: Sri Lanka's squandered opportunities

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 February 2013, 12:08 GMT]
Washington Post, in a main editorial piece Thursday, said that Sri Lanka is on a descent from democracy, and noting that repeated and public protest by the West on Rajapaksa’s retrograde measures "have fallen on deaf ears," advocated that threats to "move or boycott the [Commonwealth] summit and Sri Lanka’s assumption of the Commonwealth chairmanship, [by] governments such as Britain, Canada and Australia could send a clear message to Mr. Rajapaksa that his policies are unacceptable to democratic nations."
Full story >>

Channel 4 releases documentary evidence on SL war crime

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 February 2013, 01:03 GMT]
Releasing photos of LTTE leader Pirapaharan's 12-year-old son Balachandran, who was captured by the occupying Sinhala military in the final hours of the genocidal onslaught on Vanni, the British Channel 4 television on Monday said that the photos, which had been taken before and after the brutal slaying of the boy, stemmed from the same camera within a period of two hours. Releasing the photos in a write up to The Independent, Callum Macrae, the director of “No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka,” said “this is proof, beyond reasonable doubt, of the execution of a child – not a battlefield death.” The news was titled “Handed a snack, and then executed: the last hours of the 12-year-old son of a Tamil Tiger”.
Full story >>

Flood victims deprived of relief by Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 February 2013, 23:35 GMT]
63,386 members of 13,903 families have been displaced in the Northern and Eastern provinces while two died and one hundred thousand and thirty four thousand persons have been affected in the whole island due to torrential rain with strong winds in recent days. Hundreds of acres of paddy crops ready for harvesting are under water and harvested paddy crops floating in flood water. But no action has been taken to provide any relief to affected families, civil officials say. Heavy torrential rains and floods have repeatedly affected the lives of the people struggling to resettle in their homeland subjected to structural genocide by the occupying Sinhala military and its administrative apparatus in the North and East.
Full story >>

Sinhala militarisation, genocide in East goes unnoticed, unaccounted

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 February 2013, 10:51 GMT]
In the name of a Sinhala-titled programme ‘Divineguma,’ Colombo intensively spearheads structural genocide of Eezham Tamils in the East. It has now gone to the extent of mushrooming Sinhala military camps and settlements running grocery shops and restaurants to the public. The only major construction activity in the East is the construction of Sinhala military camps. By talking only of the North and leaving out the East, the visiting foreign dignitaries buttressing State in the island systematically obscure what is happening in the East and imply that the annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the East is ‘normal and acceptable’. The line of subversion started when Mr. Robert Blake was the US ambassador in Colombo after the SL military capture of the East from the LTTE, and the line was later taken up by the Indians, political activists in the East said.
Full story >>

UK under secretary gives ‘friendly’ advice to genocidal Colombo

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 February 2013, 04:30 GMT]
Stating that the genocide-accused Mahinda Rajapaksa “has banished terrorism from his country and ushered in a new period of prosperity”, Alistair Burt, British Under Secretary of State at the FCO, advised Colombo to learn from the British experience in Northern Ireland and to implement the LLRC recommendations, in an article written for the Canadian news agency The Globe and Mail, on Friday. Mr. Burt was making these comments after a tour of the militarily occupied Tamil homeland earlier this month, which was criticized by civil society activists in the North as a “war picnic”. Grassroots Eezham Tamil activists in the UK came down on the Conservative minister’s article, alleging that it was lending legitimacy to the genocidal Sri Lankan state.
Full story >>