Eezham Tamils protest UK inviting Rajapaksa to Queen’s diamond jubilee

http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=35225

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 May 2012]

Eezham Tamils in the UK gathered outside the UK Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street on Saturday demanding withdrawal of an invitation extended to Mahinda Rajapaksa for the upcoming Diamond Jubilee celebrations of Queen Elizabeth. A petition given to the authorities by the Tamil Coordinating Committee UK (TCC-UK) which had organised the event underscored the significance of Britain recognizing the protracted nature of the genocide of the Tamils in the island stating that “given its colonial history on the island, the UK, more than any other international power, is aware that the Eelam Tamils are a nation of people with their traditional homeland in the north and east of the island. Eelam Tamils expect the UK government to recognise this truth which can go a long way in helping halt the genocide.” 

Sinhala-Buddhist temple opened to ‘celebrate’ genocide at Mu’l’livaaykkaal

http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=35202

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 May 2012,]
Coinciding the third anniversary of Mu’l’livaaykkaal genocide, a secretly built Sinhala-Buddhist stupa was inaugurated at Vaddu-vaakal, the entrance to the Mu’l’livaaykkaal genocidal strip of land in Mullaiththeevu. As the Tamil public is yet to be allowed into the stretch of land, the building of the stupa at the genocidal site went unnoticed until its inauguration. Two weeks ago, Colombo opened a coastal road built by Chinese, linking Mu’l’livaaukkaal with Kokku’laay and Pulmoaddai where Sinhala colonisation takes place in high speed. Mu’l’livaaykkaal has already become a ‘tourist’ place for the Sinhalese from the South. While the ‘tourists’ and the Sinhala colonists using the new road are permitted to roam in the stretch of land, Tamils are not permitted to get out of the vehicles. The stupa, with an all-Sinhalese signboard has been built at the side of the new road. 

The Sinhala-Buddhist stupa at Vadduvaakal at the entrance to the strip of Mu'l'livaaykkaal. While the Tamil public was not allowed to enter the region, the stupa was secretely built and inaugurated recently.

SRI LANKA: Thousands missing three years after war ends

http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95477/SRI-LANKA-Thousands-missing-three-years-after-war-ends

COLOMBO, 18 May 2012 (IRIN) - Three years after the government of Sri Lanka declared an end to decades of civil conflict with separatist rebels, thousands of people are still missing, according to the UN and Sri Lankan activists. 

The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) of the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded 5,671 reported cases of wartime-related disappearance in Sri Lanka, not counting people who went missing in the final stages of fighting from 2008 to 2009. 

Hostilities between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels, who had been fighting for an independent Tamil state for nearly 30 years, ended on 18 May 2009. 

“It’s been almost three years. My son went missing on 14 May [2009] and I have not heard from him ever since. He was not a member of LTTE or [any] other group. He was just a normal Tamil civilian,” said Aarati*, 56, a mother of three in the northern town of Kilinochchi, in the former war zone. Another son has been missing since 1993. 

Ganeshan Thambiah from the town of Jaffna, also in the north, told IRIN he has lost hope. “My son has gone missing for three years. It hurts me a lot but he is probably dead.” 

Disappearances occurred on a “massive scale”, especially between 2006 and 2009 during the last phase of the war, said Ruki Fernando from the Christian Alliance for Social Action, a local NGO. “At the end of the war, many who surrendered to the army disappeared, including a Catholic priest and several high-profile LTTE leaders.”

'Journalists failed to tell the story of war crimes in Sri Lanka'

http://www.journalism.co.uk/news-commentary/frances-harrison-sri-lanka-journalists-failed-to-tell-the-story-of-war-crimes/s6/a549285/

Top SL military hand alleged in killing Canadian Tamil in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 May 2012, 05:34 GMT]
Circumstantial evidences point to the hands of top level Sri Lanka military in the brutal killing of a Canadian Eezham Tamil who came to Vanni to claim his properties appropriated by the occupying military, news sources in Vanni revealed to TamilNet. The victim owned 8 commercially valuable buildings in line in Ki’linochchi town that were appropriated by the Sinhala military to be given in turn to a Colombo-based chain store that now dominates food business in the north. Through the occupying military, presidential sibling and SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has appropriated nearly 250 such commercially valuable properties in Ki’linochchi for his agenda of plunder and structural genocide of Eezham Tamils. The Canadian Tamil lost his life struggling with a genocidal mechanism installed by many world establishments including that of his own adopted country. 


http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=35158

Sri Lanka and its Broken Promises: Time for India to re-examine the Issue

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5cpapers51%5cpaper5023.html

Guest Column by Usha S Sri-Skanda-Rajah
(The views expressed are author’s own) 

It is hard for a man to keep a straight face and tell a lie but President Rajapakse manages to do it every time he has to face the Indians and the International community about devolving power to the Tamil NorthEast. He just did it again when he had breakfast with Sushma Swaraj on the last day of the Indian delegation’s visit to Sri Lanka.

There is now a huge confusion as to who said what. Sushma says Rajapakse talked about devolution and mentioned 13^th +Amendment and Rajapakse through the Island denies he said that: “The Sri Lankan government on Monday strongly denied a statement attributed to Indian Opposition Leader Sushma Swaraj, that her delegation had received an assurance from Mr. Rajapaksa on his commitment to the 13th Amendment, and his readiness to go even beyond it.”