Tamil Justice

Sri Lanka Guardian - The Sri Lankan Government Has Tarnished Its Own Image – Bruce Haigh

The Sri Lanka Government killed press freedom

China and India friendship with Sri Lanka will end in tears with the Sri Lanka losing autonomy

Sri Lankan diplomatic missions have been a partisan disgrace.

Interviewed by Nilantha Ilangamuwa

The Sri Lankan Government has tarnished its own image, without help from anyone else, Bruce Douglas Haig, former Deputy High Commissioner of Australia to Sri Lanka in 1994, said in an exclusive interview with the Sri Lanka Guardian. More

IBN Live – Tamils urge Bachchan not to visit Sri Lanka

Hundreds of Tamils on Sunday protested outside the bungalow of actor Amitabh Bachchan in Mumbai, shouting slogans against his decision to visit Sri Lanka as chief guest for the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards function in July.

“We urge him not to attend the function in Colombo as a symbol of solidarity for the Tamilian cause in Sri Lanka. Tamils have been subject to atrocities and war crimes perpetrated by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government in that country,” C. Rajendran, spokesperson for the protesters, told IANS.

The protesters marched from Bachchan’s Pratiksha bungalow to his Jalsa residence, where a delegation met him and two IIFA office bearers, who assured the representatives that they would convey the sentiments of Tamils to the IIFA governing board and take a suitable decision.

Later, Rajendran told mediapersons that the Sri Lankan government had allegedly killed over 1.5 lakh Tamils during its war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the last couple of years. He claimed that over 3.5 lakh Tamils continue to face a “hostile administration” in that country.

The Independent - Sri Lanka looks for help from above to revive its post-war tourist trade

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent

A year after the defeat of Tamil rebels who had made parts of Sri Lanka a no-go area, the island hopes to entice tens of thousands of tourists to places that appear in one of Asia’s most celebrated religious sagas.

Tourist officials have identified and collated more than 50 sites said to feature in the Ramayana, a Sanskrit epic more than 2,000 years old. The saga tells the story of Rama, an incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu, who battles to rescue his wife, Sita, who is held captive by an evil demon king who lives on what is today Sri Lanka.

With an eye specifically to attracting Indian visitors, tourism officials in Colombo believe the trips to palm-fringed beaches and unspoilt jungles can be seamlessly combined with tours of the places where Rama fought – and defeated – the powerful demon, Ravana. More

Lanka News Web – India displeased with the President’s speech in the North

Sources from the Foreign Ministry said that India has expressed its displeasure at the derogatory speech made by the President in Vavuniya on the 1st where he said, “We are Sinhala, and the country is also Sinhala, so listen you Demala (Tamil)…”

An official from the Presidential Media Unit told us that the President’s speech referred to Demalun (Tamilians) and not Demela (Tamils). After saying this, the official e-mailed us the President’s recorded speech. We have carried the recorded clip without any editing. More

Times of India – US gives India policing power in the Indian Ocean

 Taking note of India’s “growing influence” in global affairs, the US has said the country will be a net provider of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond with the growth of its military capabilities.

Expressbuzz (17/01) - ‘Rajapaksa helped Congress-DMK win LS polls’

by P K Balachandran

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa helped the Congress-DMK alliance win the Lok Sabha elections in the State, in May last year, by acceding to New Delhi’s request to suspend the use of heavy weapons in the final phase of the Eelam war.

President’s secretary Lalith Weeratunga told Daily Mirror on Thursday (January 14) that New Delhi feared that if it did not stop, what the rest of the world wrongly thought was the massacre of Tamils in Lanka’s war zone, the Tamils would not vote for the Congress-DMK alliance.

“They (India) said, please stop this. But the President said, sorry, I cannot do that.

But he added, ok what do you want me to do to ensure the victory of the Congress party? They requested that the use of heavy weaponry be stopped.” The President agreed. More

Tamilnet (17/01) - Weeratunge statement proves India’s complicity in Sri Lanka’s genocide, says Prof. Boyle

If the statement of Lalith Weeratunga, a top aide to Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse, that Sri Lanka’s use of heavy weapons was eventually stopped as part of a political deal with the Indian government, was true, “then it proves India’s complicity in the GOSL’s [Government of Sri Lanka's] genocide against the Tamils,” says Professor Boyle, expert in International Law in a note sent to TamilNet. “The Government of India temporarily stopped the GOSL’s genocide against the Tamils, thus proving it could do so…. India therefore violated its obligation under article 1 of the Genocide Convention “to prevent” the GOSL genocide against the Tamils,” asserts Prof. Boyle.

Full text of the statement from Prof. Boyle follows:

If this report is correct on the facts, then it proves India’s complicity in the GOSL’s genocide against the Tamils. Under basic principles of criminal law that are recognized and applied internationally, when there is an obligation to act to prevent the death of a human being that is incumbent upon a person in a position of trust with respect to that human being such as a policeman, fireman, medical doctor, lifeguard etc., and that person fails or refuses to act to prevent the death of that human being, that person becomes legally responsible for the homicide of that human being. More

Dawn.Com – Peace is as elusive as its more agreeable definition

by Jawed Naqvi

Excerpt – “There is nothing wrong about the vision except that there is nothing in it that helps the votaries of peace seize the initiative from the entrenched system that works against the vision. Finally, we need to stop choosing our injustices. We can’t campaign to liberate Kashmir or Balochistan or to bring greater democracy there while telling the Tamils in Sri Lanka to go to hell. I asked Gen Musharraf once about his duplicitous approach to people seeking independence or autonomy in different parts of South Asia.

Why would he support the government in Colombo with arms and military advice that would suppress the Tamils in Sri Lanka, while he was all for a so-called political and diplomatic support (he would disown giving military help, wouldn’t he?) to the Kashmiris. How was the Kashmiri struggle any different from the bludgeoned Tamil campaign? “I do not interfere in other countries’ affairs,” he said cleverly. We can either be clever or work for genuine peace globally, regionally and between India and Pakistan. We also need to define peace to distinguish it from President Obama’s take on it.” Read full article here

AFP – S.Lanka govt ‘helped’ India’s ruling party in poll

Sri Lanka stopped using heavy weapons against Tamil Tiger rebels to help the re-election bid of neighbouring India’s ruling party, a top official in Colombo said Thursday.

Lalith Weeratunga, senior aide to President Mahinda Rajapakse, said New Delhi requested the complete halt in the offensive against the Tamil Tigers because it affected the Tamil vote in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Weeratunga said Rajapakse did not want to stop the offensive against Tamil separatists, but was ready for a compromise to help Congress retain power.

“OK, what do you want me to do to ensure victory of the Congress Party?,” the president had asked, Weeratunga said in a video interview with Colombo’s Daily Mirror website.

“They requested that the use of heavy weaponry be stopped… With the halt in use of heavy weaponry, the Congress gained strength and the victory in Tamil Nadu can be attributed to this decision by the government of Sri Lanka.” More

Truthdive (11/01) - Separation of Andhra / Telangana and Non-Separation of Sri Lanka / Tamil Eelam

The present ruling Congress party under Sonia’s leadership has proved time and again that it lacks democratic decision making capability and basic common sense to solve sensitive issues be it within India or outside India. Recent flare up of events in Andhra – Telungana is one more feather in its “clown” cap. Many political observers accused Congress has a tacit hand behind the recent Sri Lankan government’s genocidal war on Tamils. In the final phase of the war alone, hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians have been killed and many more maimed due to unrestrained use of banned weapons on the densely populated civilian areas. More

World Socialist Web Site (11/01) – Sri Lankan election: Tamil politicians line up behind warmongers

By Subash Somachandran

In what amounts to a damning indictment of its own politics, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA)—the party that functioned as the political mouthpiece for the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)—is supporting General Sarath Fonseka in the country’s January 26 presidential election.

As the country’s top general, Fonseka was responsible for ruthlessly prosecuting the civil war that was restarted by President Mahinda Rajapakse in July 2006 and ended with the LTTE’s defeat last May.

TNA leader R. Sambandan announced last week that the party’s majority had decided to back Fonseka—the “common candidate” of the opposition parties, the United National Party (UNP) and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). According to media reports, some dissenting TNA parliamentarians are supporting Rajapakse. More

The Sunday Times (10/01) – ‘Ceylonkaran’ — a tale of Sri Lankans in India

by Isuri Kaviratne

Despite not having been to Ceylon for nearly 30 years and Sri Lanka having repatriated them to India, they still prefer to call themselves ‘Ceylonese’ but are referred to as ‘Ceylonkaran’ by the local populace.
This is a story of split families and broken hearts yearning for the country in which they were born –a country which did not accept them.Six lakhs of Sri Lankan Tamils of Indian origin were repatriated to India under the Sirima-Sastri Pact. They were resettled in Rehabilitation Plantations in Kollathupuzha, a Panchayat in Kerala; Sullia, a taluk in Karnataka and in Nilagiri in Tamil Nadu.

The repatriates were employed in rubber estates in Kerala and in Tamil Nadu. They were later joined by Tamils who fled Sri Lanka during the 1983 riots. Two estates in Kollathupuzha accommodate 7,000 people, a majority of whom still cherish childhood memories of ‘Ceylon’ and wish to visit the country they were born in at least once, before death. More