Fraser supports CHOGM boycott as CMAG ducks action

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 April 2013, 00:42 GMT]
Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser joined calls on the federal government to boycott the Commonwealth summit, CHOGM, in Sri Lanka, as its Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) failed to discuss Sri Lanka on its formal agenda during CMAG's meeting in London Friday. The deliberations on Sri Lanka fell into the “Other Matters of Interest to Ministers”, which are not made public, a news media monitoring the CMAG reported. Meanwhile, Minister Baird, Canada’s Foreign Minister, said he was appalled that Sri Lanka seems poised to have the honour and responsibility of hosting the Commonwealth summit meeting in November. Speaking at London after the CMAG meeting, Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird alluded to Sri Lanka hosting the CHOGM as ‘evil’.
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CPI urges TN government to initiate Eezham Tamil heritage centre at Chithamparam

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 April 2013, 15:33 GMT]
Speaking at the Tamil Nadu State Assembly on Friday on the budget allocations of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Communist Party of India’s Tha’li constituency member, Mr. T. Ramachandran urged the Tamil Nadu Government to initiate an Eezham Tamil Cultural Centre at Chithamparam by taking over and protecting the enclave of Eezham Tamil Mutts in Chithamparam. The Mutts date from the times of the Kingdom of Jaffna. King Pararaja Sekaran, who ruled in the 16th century, before the advent of the Portuguese, built the earliest known among them. Most of the Eezham Tamil Mutts at Chithamparam are located as an enclave around a large tank called Gnaanap-pirakaasam, excavated by the ascetic Gnaanap-pirakaasar who came from Jaffna in the 17th century.
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SL Military turns back Ranil visiting Valikaamam

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 April 2013, 11:34 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army, which is busily transforming the former High Security Zone (HSZ) in Valikaamam North in Jaffna into a Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ), turned away a delegation led by SL opposition leader Ranil Wickramasinghe on Thursday evening, denying them access to visit the area and witness the scale of the land acquisition. In the meantime, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran told the visiting UNP leader to voice for the rights of the uprooted people of Valikaamam North.
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Tamil from Australia tortured, abused by Sri Lankan forces during visit to island

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 April 2013, 17:48 GMT]
An Eezham Tamil male currently residing in Melbourne, Australia was tortured and sexually abused by Sri Lankan forces when he paid a visit to the island a few weeks before, Australian media reports. Speaking under a different name of ‘Kumar’ to the ABC on Wednesday, the father of three described in graphic detail of how he was abducted and tortured. This was, however, flatly rejected as “false allegations” by the SL High Commissioner for Australia, Thisara Samarasinghe, himself a military officer accused of war crimes. Despite living in Australia, the torture survivor is unable to come out in public owing to fear of retaliation by the GoSL on his family back in the island. Tamil sources from Australia further said that as long as the US and its bloc are going to churn out only impotent resolutions, this arrogance of the genocide-accused SL state would continue.
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People rise up against SL military seizure of Valikaamam in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 April 2013, 06:57 GMT]
Hundreds of people, braving the hurdles put up by the Sri Lankan military, gathered on Wednesday in front of the District Secretariat in Jaffna, protesting against the systematic seizure of their already SL-military occupied lands in Valikaamam North, transforming the former ‘High Security Zone’ area into a permanent Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ). The successful protest, for the first time saw active participation of law students and activists, news sources in Jaffna said. Despite the deployment of SL military, intelligence operatives and the SL police in blocking peoples’ participation, around 500 people gathered in front of the District Secretariat passing a strong message to not only the occupying military, but also to the powers abetting the continued LLRC-based structural genocide.
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Sinhala military assaults Trinco villagers for calling their village in Tamil

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 April 2013, 11:02 GMT]
Ilangkaith-thu’rai, meaning in this context “the islet-port,” is an ancient Tamil coastal village at a scenic location in the Eechchilam-pattai division of Trincomalee district. The occupying Sinhala military has Sinhalicized the place-name as “Lankaa-patana” and insists the local villagers to use the Sinhala name even in their speech. If any of the villagers mention their village name in Tamil, they are beaten up by the Sinhala military, news sources in Trincomalee said. Two years ago, the occupying military destroyed a Murukan temple located at the port entrance, appropriated 15 acres of land, and built a Buddhist temple named “Samudra-giri Vihara,” at that spot. While the village roads are in dilapidated condition, a new, broad road now links the Buddhist temple, facilitating Sinhala visitors from the South who come in thousands nowadays.
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6,400 acres of civilian land to be seized for military purposes in Jaffna HSZ

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 April 2013, 06:40 GMT]
The occupying Colombo, through its Land Acquisition Officer attached to the District Secretariat in Jaffna, has issued a notice dated 27 April 2013, claiming that the owners of lands for 6,381 acres and 38.91 perches in 11 GS divisions in two DS divisions, Valikaamam North (Thellippazhai) and Valikaamam East (Koappaay), have not been identified and that the officials who come under the Sri Lankan Ministry of Land and Land Development are being given necessary rights to enter the lands, survey them and to define how to take over these lands for ‘public purpose’ and for ‘planned activity’. The purpose for the land acquisition is also stated as ‘to orderly hand over the lands where Defence Battalion Head Quarters (Jaffna) High Security Zone (Palaali and Kaangkeasanthu’rai) is situated’.
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Colombo begins legal appropriation of former HSZ lands in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 April 2013, 22:59 GMT]
The occupying Colombo, which is converting the lands of the former High Security Zone (HSZ) in Valikaamam North in Jaffna into permanent Sinhala Military Zone (SMZ), has now instructed Village level Officials of 24 GS divisions, under SL military occupation, to visit and place legal notices announcing the ‘State takeover’ of the lands in the already SL military-occupied zone on Monday. Placing such takeover-notices inside the lands of the owners without allowing them to view the announcement, is a calculated move to deny them the legal opportunity of filing suits against the appropriation move, say legal activists representing the uprooted people in Jaffna. In the meantime, informed sources said some of the land owners are scheduled to be taken to their lands on Tuesday to give consent to the move or else suffer some negative consequences.
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Basil Rajapaksa employs ‘intelligence operatives’ to monitor civil servants in East

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 April 2013, 15:21 GMT]
SL presidential sibling and Economic ‘Development’ Minister Basil Rajapaksa, has deployed three officials per division in all the three districts of the Eastern Province to monitor the activities of Divisional Secretaries and Village level (GS) officers and all other public officials, informed sources in Batticaloa say. These intelligence operatives, appointed under the ‘Divineguma’ programme, are required to send monthly reports with intelligence input to colonial Colombo. The ‘civil’ intelligence officers are tasked to oversee the process of structural genocide against Eezham Tamils.
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War-torn Tamil villages continue with kerosene lamps in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 April 2013, 07:55 GMT]
People of several Tamil villages in the Ampaa’rai district, affected by the war, continue using kerosene lamps. While the Tamil villagers affected in the East by SL military operations and were allowed to resettle after 2007 are not provided with any basic facilities, the Sinhala settlers and their villages get all the assistance, news sources in the East said. During the so-called resettlement and rehabilitation programmes in the East after 2007, many of the Tamil villagers were brought and left in the forests. As the “Dawn of the East” programme proclaimed with much pomp by occupying Colombo and eulogised by some world Establishments has been left to its failure, Colombo now talks about another programme “Crowning the Nation” to carry out Sinhalicisation of the East, the news sources further said.
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Tehelka report misled on British treatment of Tamils: Jaffna academic

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 April 2013, 08:03 GMT]
The Tehelka feature on Friday by Revati Laul is highly appreciable on many counts, as it has brought out the multifaceted genocide committed on Eezham Tamils so that they would remain “people without a nation, much like the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” the military-occupied situation that is worse than that of Afghanistan and the double game of the world cum UN expecting that the “idea of nationhood could be the next to disappear,” but yet the reality and determination of the people alive with the idea of a separate Tamil nation despite the terror and genocide. However, the feature is misled by a repeatedly told myth by the adversaries of Tamils and believed by the gullible even among the Tamils especially in the diaspora, that British colonialism once favoured the Tamils, writes an academic in Jaffna.
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Tehelka report brings out genocide at sea: Eezham Tamil activist

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 April 2013, 05:29 GMT]
The Tehelka report on Friday by Revati Laul touches a crucial facet of the structural genocide against Eezham Tamils that takes place not only in land but also in sea, commented a Tamil political activist in the island. This facet of structural genocide, dating from the British rule in severing the natural relations of Eezham Tamils with the Tamils of Tamil Nadu was structured further by the Sinhala State after the so-called independence. It is now intensified with the complicity of New Delhi in coming to the level of sealing off the coasts of Eezham Tamils depriving of their traditional economic activity, industrial exploitation of their seas without their consent or participation, and even snatching away their subsistence by bringing in militarily protected Sinhala fishermen from the South to occupy the coasts and seas, the activist said.
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Kerala researcher speaks on facets of Indo-Eezham discourse

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 April 2013, 07:35 GMT]
“Eelam and Kerala share similar history. We were ruled by the same colonial powers, the Portuguese, Dutch and later English. Kerala is not very far from Eelam and the war in Eelam was something happening right in front of our eyes. Yet Eelam never became the agenda before any political organizations in Kerala. Keralites were in the streets in solidarity with Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan. This never happened in the case of Eelam,” said Dr Vinod Krishnan from Kerala in an exclusive interview to TamilNet this week. Dr Krishnan, an academic researcher involved in studies related to social exclusion in South and Southeast Asia, is currently attached to the Centre for Research and Education for Social Transformation (CREST) in India.
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Colombo revives colonial rule to monitor foreign tourists

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 April 2013, 20:26 GMT]
Citing an obscure 1886 ordinance of the colonial times of British Ceylon, that has been largely ignored for decades, the Sri Lankan Police now says that it will monitor foreign tourists’ whereabouts in the entire island, a report by the International Business Times said Wednesday. The news report in the IBT has come while Eezham Tamils world over have been campaigning against tourists visiting the Sri Lankan ‘killing fields’.
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Cancel CHOGM, appeals Prof. Lynch

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 April 2013, 00:31 GMT]
Prof. Jake Lynch, director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, in an opinion column in the ABC website, called for cancellation of the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting (CHOGM), pointing to 'serious allegations of violations of international human rights law' in Sri Lanka "including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture and violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, as well as intimidation of and reprisals against human rights defenders, members of civil society and journalists, threats to judicial independence and the rule of law, and discrimination on the basis of religion or belief," which prompted UNHCR voting to send its own investigators to Sri Lanka.
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Sri Lanka torture concerns well founded, says Time

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 April 2013, 06:17 GMT]
The popular biweekly, the Time magazine, commenting on Sri Lanka's deteriorating rights climate, said that amid abuse and fear, Tamils are continuing to flee Sri Lanka, and that torture and sexual violence by Sri Lanka's military against Tamils with alleged separatist ties during the 26-year civil war make credible the threat of torture to a well-known Tamil TV reporter who the UAE is threatening to deport to Sri Lanka. Also pointing to the attack on Uthayan, the Time said, "[t]he tensions revealed in the incident [at Uthayan] are becoming depressingly familiar. The clouds have been darkening over this picturesque island nation in recent years as euphoria over the end of its long-running civil war has ebbed."
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Three-pronged land grab against Eezham Tamils stepped up in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 April 2013, 23:41 GMT]
The occupying SL military, Buddhist monks and Sinhala civil officials have stepped up appropriating lands belonging to Eezham Tamils in Ampaa’rai district. The instructions for land grab come from Colombo and the appropriation of Tamils’ lands has accelerated since the Provincial Council elections in the East and the recent ‘development’ exhibition held in Ampaa'rai. Threatened by prevailing ‘disappearances’ and other forms of harassments in the district, the victims hesitate to lodge complaints with the SL Police.
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Plight of UAE refugees expose human rights deception of IC, UN

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 April 2013, 08:08 GMT]
No country in the West should have any problem with providing political asylum to the fleeing Tamil Journalist Ms Lokini Rathimohan, currently held at detention in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), rights activists in the island concerned with the protection of journalists fleeing genocidal Sri Lanka told TamilNet. As the journalist's name and photos have been published in the international media now and as there have been write-ups in the hostile press in Colombo suggesting to the SL government to get her deported to Colombo to ‘disprove’ the killing of Isaippiriya, a colleague of Lokini at the National Television of Tamileelam (NTT), the need to assure Lokini's security has become much more important than ever before, the activists further said. In the meantime, a former administrative official at the NTT confirmed that Ms Lokini was not an LTTE member, but was an employed journalist.
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TN government requested to protect heritage site of Eezham Tamils in Chithamparam

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 April 2013, 00:05 GMT]
Eezham Tamil circles in the island and in the diaspora, connected to charities established in Chithamparam by their ancestors, request the Tamil Nadu government, especially the Chief Minister Ms Jayalalithaa, to make legislation to protect the charity enclave at Chithamparam and to promote it as a heritage site of Eezham Tamils, participated by Eezham Tamils in the island and in the diaspora. They cited at the promotion Sri Lanka’s Maha Bodhi Society gets in India, but the dilapidated condition of the Tamil-Saiva heritage site of Eezham Tamils in Tamil Nadu. The Eezham Tamil charities at Chithamparam that record from the times of the Kingdom of Jaffna and that make an enclave around the Gnaanap-pirakaasar Tank are found in almost ruined conditions today.
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Geneva resolution answerable to arson committed on Tamil press: Jaffna activist

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 April 2013, 15:37 GMT]
Burning the press of Eezham Tamils in the island has more than three decades of history. The office and machinery of the Jaffna-based Tamil Daily Eezha Naadu was burnt down the very night the Jaffna Public Library was put to ashes in 1981. Arson was once again committed on Eezha Naadu while the IPKF of the New Delhi Establishment was occupying Jaffna. The Washington-New Delhi deception carried out in the name of Geneva resolution, allowing Sri Lanka to escape from genocide indictment and to continue with structural genocide, is answerable to the current attacks and arson committed on the press of Eezham Tamils in the island, said a new generation political activist in Jaffna.
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