யாழ் திரைகடலோடி

Will the Tamils Lose the Plot Again? Photo courtesy Christian Science Monitor Chaos and Fear Much has happened in the space of three months. Soon after the Eastern Provincial Council election came the Divi Neguma bill and the subsequent calls for the abolition of the 13th Amendment. The impeachment motion against the Chief Justice and the recruitment of Tamil women to the military followed before the Maveerar Naal (Heroes’ Day) incidents in Jaffna. It would seem that the government is bent on creating chaos and fear. The Present State of Affairs In response to the negative Supreme Court verdict on the Divi Neguma bill, the government did two things: it …

China’s capabilities for naval force projection in the Indian Ocean are dependent on closer Sino-Sri Lankan relations, relations not benefitting India given long-standing Sino-Indian disputes. The Sino-Indo-Sri Lankan geostrategic relationship, in turn, is curiously dependent on the political influence of domestic Tamils in New Delhi. Tamils living in India, motivated by continuing animosities over Sri Lankan Tamil rights, are complicating New Delhi’s policies towards Colombo by narrowing India’s Sri Lanka foreign policy options. Hence, domestic political dynamics are compromising India’s ability to counter China’s deepening relationship with Sri Lanka, including the …

The Human Rights Commission (HRC) in Jaffna was flooded with complaints last week from distressed family members whose relatives were arrested by the police. The complaints lodged at the HRC Jaffna rose to 43 by Friday following an intensive operation carried out by the police over allegations that those arrested were ex LTTE cadres. A swoop down on the suspects followed the arrest of eleven Jaffna university students by the police over the lighting of flames by Jaffna university students to commemorate the dead on the LTTE ‘Heroes day’ anniversary last month. Jaffna Human Rights Commission coordinator K. Kanagaraj said that the arrests are all legal as receipts…

British Labour party Parliamentarian Simon Danczuk has expressed fears of a cover-up by the Sri Lankan Government after Red Cross worker Khuram Shaikh was murdered last Christmas. Speaking as the first anniversary of Khuram’s death approaches, he said he was worried the Government was trying to “quietly drop the case to protect a local politician”. Khuram was shot and stabbed on Christmas day in the resort of Tangelle after he tried to act as peacemaker to rescue a local restaurant owner who was being harassed by a group of drunks. But now, almost a year on, the eight have been released on bail, no charges brought and there is no trial in sight. The politicia…

Statement by Liberal Leader Bob Rae on the Situation in Jaffna, Sri Lanka TORONTO- Liberal Leader Bob Rae made the following statement today on the situation in Jaffna, Sri Lanka: “News is slowly emerging of an attack on the men’s and women’s dormitories at Jaffna University, with some fifty students being sent to hospital, and many arrested without warrants. Sri Lanka’s civil peace is still under threat from its own government. The United States government has issued a call for a respect for civil liberties and pluralism. Canadians can hardly do less in the face of continuing attacks on journalists and others expressing their opinions. I had the chance, n…

World Bank population data from Sri Lanka indicates up to a hundred thousand Tamils are unaccounted for after the final war against the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009, raising questions about whether they could be dead. A UN report cited a death toll of forty thousand for the climax of the war in 2009 but a UN internal inquiry last month acknowledged for the first time that up to seventy thousand civilian deaths were possible. The leaked World Bank spreadsheets broken down by village for the north of the island estimate numbers of returnees to the former conflict area in mid 2010. The Bank also cites Statistical Handbook Numbers for population in 2007 - before the fighting …

A Sri Lankan minister has hit out against American sanctions on Iran that are preventing the government from accepting development financing from Teheran. The Obama administration reissued waivers last week that exempt nine countries, including China, India, Sri Lanka and Turkey, from fully complying with U.S. sanctions targeting Iran's oil exports. However these loopholes do little to allow the Sri Lankan government to obtain funding from Iran for poverty alleviation and power distribution programs financed by Iran. A statement issued by the Power and Energy Ministry quoted Minister Champika Ranawaka as strongly criticizing American sanctions as they "infrin…

Rudramoorthy Cheran, perhaps the most clairvoyant among the poets of the Eelam movement There can be two opinions about the politics and the tactics of the Eelam movement in Sri Lanka, but there cannot be two about the brutal massacre of Sri Lankan Tamils at Mullivaikkal which was the culmination of a series of smaller, indiscriminate attacks on the Tamils —including women and children—that had gone on for years since the beginning of the movement and had taken a bloodier course from the latter half of 2008 to May 18, 2009, when it was officially announced that the war on Eelam Tamils had finally been concluded. The atrocities have not gone unrecorded, thanks to…

No one knows how many thousands of people died in Sri Lanka in 2009, the year that marked the end of a decades-long struggle between the Sri Lankan government and the secessionist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (known more commonly as the Tamil Tigers). Certainly, it was one of the bloodier conflicts that the world has witnessed in recent decades. But no one outside Sri Lanka really seems to care. After years of bitter conflict between the two sides, one that witnessed the inaugural use of the suicide belt in the 1980s, the Sri Lankan government launched a no-holds-barred offensive against the Tigers in the latter years of the last decade, resulting in enormous carn…

The Reign of Terror The Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Jaffna would like to bring to the attention of the peace and freedom-loving people, the fact that people in the North of Sri Lanka continue to be tormented by ‘State Terrorism’. Of late the situation has worsened. Since November 2012 the repressive measures of the Sri Lankan government unleashed on the people, and the arbitrary arrests of the Jaffna University students and other youngsters, have reached new heights. We have earlier pointed out four months back that the lasting peace we longed for still remains elusive, and that the measures taken by the Sri Lankan Government do not in …

India's foreign minister has said New Delhi must accept China's growing presence in its own backyard as Beijing steps up its investments and diplomatic efforts in South Asia. New Delhi has been wary of growing Chinese influence around the Indian Ocean, where Beijing has forged ties with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Maldives and military-ruled Myanmar, often through funding and building infrastructure. Speaking at a conference in the Indian capital on Monday, Salman Khurshid said: "We will have to accept the new reality of China's presence in many areas that we consider an exclusive playground for India and its friends. "China for instance would give a right arm…

Intellectuals for Human Rights (IFHR) in its report for this year said the Human Rights situation in Sri Lanka has suffered a major setback in the first 10 months with the rule of law, individual liberty and the independence of the Judiciary having received an unprecedented beating. According to the report issued yesterday to coincide with United Nations Human Rights Day, 148 females were murdered and 408 raped during the period under review, but only 10 cases had been filed in courts. The rise of the extrajudicial killings and inhuman torture clearly indicates the lack of respect of society for legal procedures and the rights of the citizens. It symbolizes the lawles…

A large mob including many Buddhist monks stormed the Jeevalokaya Sabhawa premises at Weeraketiya in Hambantota district where a Christian Congregation was gathered together for worship this morning(9th). 8 police officers who were present in the vicinity to monitor a demonstration organized by the monks against the church were overpowered by the unruly mob who caused serious damage to furniture and equipment within the building as well as to vehicles belonging to church members which were parked outside. The pastor was hit with a rock and was suffering from severe pain in his lower abdomen. It is reported that the mob also assaulted 2 of the police officers when th…

A talk by Dr Arvind Gupta, Director General of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, New Delhi, held at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies on Thursday marked an interesting development in the trajectory of local research activity in international relations. It was the first time such an event was organized jointly by the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS) and the LKIIRSS. Introducing the speaker, Sunimal Fernando, Advisor to the President and member of the BCIS’s Board of Studies indicated that the two think tanks planned to work together and ‘provide complementarities’ to each other in the f…

Sri Lanka, the “pearl” of the Indian Ocean, is strategically located within the east-west international shipping passageway. Like the old Silk Road that stretched from the ancient Chinese capital of Xian all the way to ancient Rome, modern China’s strategic and commercial supply line extends over the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea to include the focal transit port of Sri Lanka at the southern tip of India. Today, over 85 percent of China’s energy imports from the Middle East and mineral resources from Africa transit through Sri Lanka and other so-called “string of pearls” ports. Beijing seeks to protect these “pearls” as strategic economic arteries anchored all…

Tamil Women Coerced into Joining the Military- A Statement of Concern by the Women’s Action Network Women’s Action Network (WAN), as a collective of 11 women's groups from the North and the East, is deeply concerned by the recent efforts to recruit women into the military in the districts of Killinochchi and Mullaitheevu. Post-war development has failed to provide the most basic needs for those who live in Killinochchi and Mullaitheevu, especially the women of the area. People continue to live in vulnerable situations without sufficient security and independence, so may even lack the basics such as a safe place to sleep. After the war over 60% of families in Van…

By Jonathan Power Foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune for 20 years and guest columnist for New York Times Not since the early Cold War days, when the US and NATO effectively encircled the Soviet Union, feeding Stalin’s paranoia, has America moved to be so profoundly counterproductive. It is now beginning to encircle China - at least that is how China is seeing it. Of course “encircling” is a bit of an exaggerated notion since the Soviet Union was too large ever to be totally encircled. Likewise today China is content with the state of affairs on its long Russian, Mongolian and North Korean borders. But “encircling” does suggest a proces…

[size=6][/size] [size=5]Sri Lanka, a country of 20 million, has had democratic institutions and practices since 1931, when universal suffrage (including for women) was granted by the British. Sri Lanka was a poor country, but well-educated and with a range of social services and subsidies which reached the majority rural population. Power changed hands peacefully.[/size] [size=3][size=5]Today, there are many disturbing political issues which did not exist 40 years ago. These include the chaos and destruction caused by the long civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers.[/size][/size] [size=3][size=5]This marked the end of the steady af…

“…..to not to be a fanatic means to be, to some extent and in some way, a traitor in the eyes of the fanatic”. Amos Oz (How to cure a fanatic) What if after the defeat of the JVP insurgency, the Premadasa administration prevented Sinhala families from mourning their JVP-dead? What if every commemorative activity from the political to the religious was banned? What if Buddhists monks were told to stop preaching sermons (bana) and accepting alms (dane) on behalf of dead JVPers? Would such measures have caused reconciliation or a renewal of hatred? By turning mourning into a crime, are the Rajapaksas building-peace or seeding another conflict? The Tigers were …

The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) pushing for an international war crimes inquiry targeting Sri Lanka over accountability issues during the conflict here yesterday said that the Palestinian authority could use the newly gained UN recognition to take up Israeli atrocities at the International Criminal Court (ICC). UK based GTF is widely believed to be the most influential Tamil Diaspora organization pushing western powers to haul Sri Lanka up before an international tribunal on the basis of ‘Darusman report’ which dealt with accountability issues. The GTF was responding to a query by The Sunday Island. GTF spokesman Suren Surendiran said that they whole heartedly con…

Catalonia held provincial elections on Sunday (November 25) at which the main issue was whether a referendum should be held within a few years to test if it should be independent from Spain and aspire for EU status as a separate nation. There are few parallels with a hypothetical Eelam scenario but secession issues anywhere in the world put everyone, on all sides, on the alert. Hence I will present here an analysis of the outcome and draw, but not overdraw parallels and anti-parallels with the Eelam hypothesis; more in respect of processes than outcomes. The number one difference of course is that there has been no civil war and no recitation of mutual hatred between Ca…

While the accusation that Dr. Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, intentionally mislead the public by saying that the Bengazhi killings of four Americans was a spontaneous attack in response to a film mocking prophet Mohammed, appears to have damaged her chances of being appointed as the U.S.'s Secretary of State after Hilary Clinton, Rice's human rights record in the U.N., including her inaction on Sri Lanka killings, has also come under closer scrutiny, Washington Post said in an article this Friday, quoting comment from an official of the Human Rights Watch. "Rice speaks often about her commitment to human rights, a cause that allies say is centr…

[size=5]As the Israelis lay siege to Gaza, killing children by the score, our newsroom received a whole new batch of images from the Genocide in Sri Lanka that ended just a little over three years ago. The subject, as you will see at the bottom of this report, is one I have covered for years in great detail. In fact, past articles exposing these horrific slaughter photos of dead and twisted human bodies, are some of Salem-News.com's most viewed pages right now, even though they were written months ago. The writings and multi-media reports are a sad and terrible tribute for tens of thousands of ethnically cleansed Tamils- the minority group in Sri Lanka forever under …

கிழக்கு திமோர் நாட்டின் உருவாக்கம் பற்றி அறிய உதவும் நேர்காணல். The Frost Interview - Jose Ramos-Horta: Lessons in patience

[size=5]Jacqueline Fernandez, who seems to be doing rather well for herself, has bought an island off the south coast of Sri Lanka. The isle is close to where former Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara has also bought a little island. [/size] [size=5]This is part of a realty project that is now a playground of the rich and famous, and looks like Jackie's obviously one of them.[/size] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Jacqueline-buys-an-island/articleshow/17401837.cms