Colombo occupies 5,000 acres of Tamil land in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 September 2013, 23:14 GMT]
Following a recent Gazette notification by Colombo's Minister of ‘Land and Land Development’, a large area of 4,857 acres of lands are being acquired ‘for use of the government’. The area consists of private and public lands located in 8 villages. Most of the lands being seized by the occupying SL State are private lands belonging to Tamils. Several centuries old historic Aathi Koanesvaram koayil is situated at Koayiladi in Thampalakaamam village.
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Buddhist vihara being constructed at Tamil village in Ampaa'rai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 September 2013, 23:54 GMT]
A group of Buddhist monks and Buddhist extremist elements from the South are constructing a Buddhist Vihara in the Tamil village of Thangka-vealaayutha-puram in Ampaa'rai district. The occupying Sri Lankan military is assisting the monks, news sources in Thirukkoayil told TamilNet.
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UN faces political pressure from powers that withhold casualty figures: Jude Lal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 September 2013, 23:21 GMT]
While the UN Security Council is the most decisive political organ, why did the US chose to move the UN Human Rights Commission and that too avoiding any reference to UN's own Expert Panel report, questions Dr. Jude Lal Fernando, one of the organizers of the Peoples' Tribunal on Sri Lanka held in Dublin in 2010, explaining the ‘tension’ found within the UN human rights and humanitarian system. Observing two reactions by the UN system, he also details how the casualty figures were intentionally withheld by major powers during war to let the SL State to complete its genocidal onslaught. Even now, the powers sitting on the issue at the UN are exerting political pressure on the system to control and to ‘interpret’ the vast pool of evidence that is against the SL State as well as themselves, Dr Fernando said in a video interview to TamilNet on Saturday.
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‘Military presence in North-East worrying’: Navi Pillay

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 August 2013, 21:09 GMT]
“I was concerned to hear about the degree to which the military appears to be putting down roots and becoming involved in what should be civilian activities, for instance education, agriculture and even tourism,” Ms Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at a press conference in Colombo on Saturday. Speaking at the conclusion of her visit to the island, Ms Pillay said that that the military presence in the North-East seemed “much greater than is needed for strictly military or reconstruction purposes,” also referring to the vulnerability of women to sexual abuse. While sympathizing with the spirit of the address of Ms Pillay, who has been at the receiving end of vulgar verbal abuse from Sinhala nationalists, Tamil activists in the island expressed regret that she was still conferring legitimacy to the GoSL’s genocidal blueprint called LLRC.
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Australia’s refugee policy draws flak from UNHRC, activists

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 August 2013, 20:26 GMT]
“Australia’s indefinite detention of 46 recognized refugees on security grounds amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, inflicting serious psychological harm on them,” the UNHRC said in a statement last week. The statement further said that Australia should release the refugees, of whom 42 are Tamils from Sri Lanka, who have been held for at least two and a half years, and offer them compensation and rehabilitation. Speaking to TamilNet on the UNHRC observations, Trevor Grant, veteran journalist and spokesperson for the Tamil Refugee Council, said the judgement vindicated the strong belief of many advocates and lawyers that indefinite detention was not only illegal but intolerable in a just society. However, the Australia’s Coalition still maintains a hardline approach against refugees.
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Norwegian ambassador in Colombo bares agenda in Oslo

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 August 2013, 00:58 GMT]
Norway, once hoodwinked the nation of Eezham Tamils with an ‘internal self-determination’ formula in the Oslo Declaration, now bares its deceptive face by talking about ‘development’ of Tamils with diaspora ‘partnership’ within a ‘Sri Lankan minority’ formula and the PC model. While the Norwegian ambassador in Colombo Ms Grete Løchen was baring the agenda in Oslo on Monday, the Tamil participants looped in were not only confirmed revisionists, habitual upholders of the Sri Lankan State and tangent-polity activists, but were also the representatives of the NCET, Tamil Women Organisation, a TCC outfit and the TECH-Norway. If the agenda can’t be perceived with its nuances and rejected outright at the face of Norway, the diaspora will prove only its impotence, commented Tamils for alternative politics in the island.
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Tamils stopped at gunpoint, Sinhalese demonstrate during Pillay visit to Trinco

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 August 2013, 04:09 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army in Trincomalee visited all the camps where uprooted Tamil civilians were staying and threatened them that they would be facing dire consequences if they were to take part in awareness gatherings anywhere in the district during the visit of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Navanetham Pillay. The SL police didn’t allow local media reporters to any of the venues where Ms Pillay was interacting with the people and the civil society. Meanwhile, the SL military deployed its paramilitary and intelligence operatives to organize a protest giving placards portraying that LTTE was the main culprit in ‘abducting’ people. The Sinhala extremist JVP and JHU elements were also behind bringing false victims to the stage-managed protest held in front of the District Secretariat.
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Navi Pillay meeting Tamils in Jaffna ended in eyewash, say Tamil activists

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 August 2013, 01:04 GMT]
The UN Human Rights Commissioner Navanetham Pillay met a group of 15 Tamil rights activists and civil representatives at the UN office in Jaffna. While she spent more time with the Sri Lankan State officials, the independent Tamil activists were given just 90 seconds each to present their cases under 8 different themes that included the cases of missing persons, detention of prisoners, land grab, colonization and attacks on religious institutions.
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SL forces chase out Tamils waiting to see Navi Pillay in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 August 2013, 00:47 GMT]
Sri Lankan military intelligence and SL policemen brutally attacked and chased out a group of 30 families and relatives of missing persons, who had gathered near Paranthan junction in Ki’linochchi district on Tuesday to express their message to the visiting UN Human Rights Commissioner Ms Navanetham Pillay. The families had come as they were told that Navi Pillay would be traveling through A9 on a visit to Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal from Jaffna. Commenting on the nature of the public response to Ms Pillai’s visit to the North, observers said that had Ban Ki Moon come, people wouldn’t have cared or even if they had gathered they wouldn’t have shed tears but would have responded differently.
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Even constitutional restructure is no solution: Kasi Ananthan

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 August 2013, 00:30 GMT]
A constitution, even after any reform or restructure, is meaningless in the context of the island Ilangkai (Sri Lanka), as the single State for the whole island is not disposed towards honouring any constitution. In a two-nation island, where one nation is dominant, there are no safeguards as in the case of the multi-nation India under one federal constitution. There is no point in India and the USA harping on the 13 Amendment under a unitary constitution or any other constitutional changes. The 13th Amendment is not a part of Sri Lankan constitution but a part of Sri Lankan conspiracy. The TNA leadership announcing abandonment of Tamil Eelam is the greatest treachery in our liberation struggle, said poet and veteran Tamil political activist Mr Kasi Ananthan in an interview to TamilNet this week.
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Fundamentals diluted behind the scene in Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 August 2013, 19:09 GMT]
An elitist group of Tamil lawyers and law academics who have become entrenched in the Colombo-centric system, are collaborating with a section of the foreign Establishments in making Tamil demands ‘non-descript’. Removing the notion of Nation, they talk about self-determination that is not self-determination. In their terminology, ‘Nation’ becomes ‘people’ or ‘nationality’; ‘traditional homeland’ becomes ‘historical habitation’; and ‘Tamil homeland’ becomes ‘contiguous and preponderantly Tamil Speaking Northern and Eastern Provinces’. In an anti-thesis to Tamil Sovereignty Cognition approach based on historical sovereignty, earned sovereignty and remedial sovereignty, they talk about ‘shared sovereignty’, writes an informed Tamil activist in Colombo.
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Trust only the peoples of the Palk Bay: Jaffna fishermen leader

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 August 2013, 08:01 GMT]
The perspective of the coastal people of North is that the States of Sri Lanka and India collaborate in the destruction of Eezham Tamils, said Mr N.V. Subramaniam, a fisheries society leader from Maathakal in Jaffna, who is taking part in the Northern Provincial Council elections representing the Tamil National Alliance. Based on his experience in the grassroots activism and participation in the negotiations and meetings held in India and in Colombo, Mr Subramaniam said the coastal people of North had lost all hope in negotiating with the Establishments of both the States. Instead, the only hope for the fishermen now is strengthening the understanding between the fishermen societies across the Palk Strait and also with the fishermen from South in a people-to-people discourse.
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Tamil Nadu students burn 13th Amendment, call for referendum

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 August 2013, 21:17 GMT]
Tamil students burnt symbolic copies of the 13th Amendment at a protest at Va'l'luvar Koaddam, Chennai on Sunday, urging that only an internationally monitored referendum could provide a solution to the national question of the Eezham Tamil nation. The protestors also called for the expulsion of genocidal Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth.
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Conceiving and designing strategy for ‘Struggle and Development’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 August 2013, 20:08 GMT]
Tamil activists have to reject outright any suggestion of ‘partnership’ with genocidal Colombo in the international ‘development’ agendas. They should insist and wage a struggle for a direct deal, writes an academic in Jaffna cautioning against a current move of the Establishments in linking development with the PC-LLRC process, aimed at the annihilation of the identity and territoriality of the nation of Eezham Tamils. Development doesn’t come without justice. Every generation has to be provided with the struggle of its own times, as a righteous struggle only brings in true social progress and development. Genocide-facing Tamils have to conceive and design strategies of their own for a paradigm of “Struggle and Development,” he further said.
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NPC election is no mandate test: Sivagnanam

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 August 2013, 23:11 GMT]
The environment under which the people of the North and East were able to give a mandate [based on Vaddukkoaddai Resolution] in 1977 is not available today or not given to us by the international as well as domestic situation, said Mr CVK Sivagnanam, a candidate for the Northern Provincial Council election held by Colombo in September with the active support of New Delhi and Washington. The NPC election is based on what is already there [in the unitary constitution of Sri Lanka in the last 25 years]. Therefore, outcome of this election could never be interpreted as conveying any mandate, Mr Sivagnanam said, adding that he is personally consistent in the stand, “two nations in one country” and the Tamil right to self-determination. We would take up a people's struggle in the event of Colombo blighting the NPC, he further said, responding to questions put forward by TamilNet on Saturday.
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SL State divides communities in East: Batticaloa MP

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 August 2013, 19:29 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government is doing the opposite to what it wants portrayed to the outside world with the beautiful term ‘reconciliation’, declared Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian from Batticaloa, Mr P. Selvarasa, Friday, at the agricultural development meeting held at the Batticaloa District Secretariat. Allowing the SL State officials to collaborate with the Buddhist prelate of Mangalarama vihara while there is a court order against the illegal settlement in Paddip-pazhai division and literally banning the Tamils at Navakkiri in Vellaa-ve’li division from accessing their tank to engage in their livelihood of fresh water fishing, is nothing else than setting one community against the other, he said citing the latest reports.
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Navi Pillay signals balanced preliminary assessment as Rajapaksa continues LLRC-farce

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 August 2013, 16:41 GMT]
The AFP, Press Trust of India (PTI) and The New Indian Express have given significance to a story originating from Colombo that SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday ‘bifurcated’ the SL Defense Ministry, which has been in-charge of the police as well as the three armed forces, by bringing the Police under a new ministry. In reality, the announcement is just a farce as both Defence Ministry and the newly created ‘Law and Order’ ministry remain under the same powerful minister who is none other than the SL President himself. Former Chief of Staff of the genocidal SL military, Major General (retd) Nanda Mallawarachchi is to be the Secretary of the new ‘police’ ministry. Both the PTI and the New Indian Express reports have also noted that the LLRC had recommended the SL government to exclude the police from the Defence Ministry's control.
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SL military aims to mar Ananthi meeting Navi Pillay

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 August 2013, 23:43 GMT]
Sri Lankan military intelligence in Jaffna on Wednesday staged a ‘protest’ against Ms Ananthi Sasitharan, the representative of thousands of Eezham Tamil women, who are demanding the Sri Lankan State to reveal the whereabouts of their husbands who were filtered away from the civilians in the final hours of the Vanni war by the SL military that had announced ‘general amnesty’ through the loudspeakers. Sinhala workers, intelligence operatives and some ex-LTTE members brought from elsewhere, were holding placards written in broken Tamil against Ananthi Sasitharan in front of the Jaffna Bus Stand. In the meantime, informed sources in Colombo said that the SL State was seeking to ‘influence’ certain foreign missions in Colombo to avoid UN Human Commissioner for Human Rights Navanetham Pillay meeting Ananthi, who is also contesting in the Provincial Council election on behalf of the TNA.
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Abducted Mannaar Tamil youth ‘escapes’ from Sinhala squad

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 August 2013, 08:50 GMT]
A Tamil youth engaged in removing sand legally in Kooraay area in Mannaar district was abducted on Monday by a group of 22 Sinhalese persons deployed by a Sinhalese trader from the South in sand removal in the country of Eezham Tamils. The Sinhala trader operates with the backing of the occupying SL military. The abduction took place while the Tamil youth was at the Anuradhapura office of the SL authority to renew his sand removal permit. However, the 21-year-old youth managed to escape from the custody of the abductors on Tuesday and made a complaint to the SL police in Ilupaaik-kadavai, news sources in Mannaar said. The ‘escape’ was reported after the Tamil villagers in Kooraay held 5 Sinhalese workers deployed by the Southern trader at the house of the Tamil victim.
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23 resettled Tamils slain in Batticaloa since 2009 by wild elephants

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 August 2013, 17:43 GMT]
At least 23 resettled Tamils have been killed in Batticaloa district by wild elephants that have been brought into the jungles close to Tamil villages by genocidal Colombo's Forest Department after 2009. Disregarding the repeated objections of the people, the SL Forest Department has brought in more wild elephants from Hambantota where Rajapaksa government recently launched ‘Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport’. The resettled people have been complaining to the SL Police and civil officials each time a person is slain by the wild elephants brought in from the South.
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