Monday, July 5, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Tamil Diaspora Community Network For Tamils In Ireland
As Tamils world over mark one-year of Indian abetted genocidal war against Eezham Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, the Hindi film industry known as Bollywood and the major Indian conglomerate of trade unions, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) are joining hands with Rajapaksa regime in Colombo in staging 11th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards weekend during the first week of June in Colombo. The FICCI, the largest and oldest business conglomerate of India is the flagship organiser of the business event named FICCI-IIFA Global Business Forum, where hundreds of CEOs and business heads from India would be signing various investment contracts and tie-ups in the island on the second day of the celebrity and corporate event.
Sri Lanka is to spend USD 9 million for the Awards ceremony and associated events. Colombo expects a return of investment of USD 126 million, said a report filed by Eye TV India Bureau.
The IIFA Awards is a showbiz move, which is watched by 600 million TV viewers in 110 nations, according to organizers.
While big businesses involving States and multinational corporations (MNCs) are discussed at high-level meetings without much publicity, businesses involving the middle class and tourism industry depend on showbiz.
Sri Lanka is to spend USD 9 million for the Awards ceremony and associated events. Colombo expects a return of investment of USD 126 million, said a report filed by Eye TV India Bureau.
The IIFA Awards is a showbiz move, which is watched by 600 million TV viewers in 110 nations, according to organizers.
While big businesses involving States and multinational corporations (MNCs) are discussed at high-level meetings without much publicity, businesses involving the middle class and tourism industry depend on showbiz.
Monday, May 17, 2010
SLA tears down Tamil Heroes memorial monuments in VVT
More than a hundred Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers deployed Sunday evening in Theeruvil in Valveddiththu’rai, the birth place of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader V. Pirapaharan in Vadamaraadchi, are tearing down the memorial monuments erected in memory of twelve combatants including senior Commanders Kumarappa, Pulenthiran and another memorial monument of Col. Kiddu, sources in Valveddiththur’ai (VVT) said. Meanwhile, former TNA parliamentarian Sivajilingam told that he too had received complaints about the demolishing of LTTE memorial monuments.
During the India-Sri Lanka Peace Accord in 1987, Liberation Tiger Commanders Kumarappa, Pulenthiran and ten other combatants who had been arrested by Sri Lanka armed forces on Sri Lanka marine boundary had ended their lives taking cyanide as they were about to be taken to Colombo.
A memorial monument called Theeruvil monument had been erected in Theeruvil where their remains were cremated.
In 1999, Col. Kiddu, a senior Liberation Tiger Commander and twelve combatants were killed in Indian seas. A monument in remembrance of these also had been erected in Theeruvil.
Another memorial monument had been built in remembrance of the civilians killed by Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) in VVT, in Theeruvil.
All these monuments were severely damaged by SLA when it occupied Jaffna peninsula in 1991.
During 2002 peace period the above memorial monuments, however, were restored.
All these memorial monuments are being systematically demolished by the SLA soldiers, the sources from VVT said.
LTTE Leader V. Pirapaharan’s residence in VVT which had become an important place of visit to Southern Sinhalese visiting Jaffna peninsula had recently been demolished by SLA soldiers.
During the India-Sri Lanka Peace Accord in 1987, Liberation Tiger Commanders Kumarappa, Pulenthiran and ten other combatants who had been arrested by Sri Lanka armed forces on Sri Lanka marine boundary had ended their lives taking cyanide as they were about to be taken to Colombo.
A memorial monument called Theeruvil monument had been erected in Theeruvil where their remains were cremated.
In 1999, Col. Kiddu, a senior Liberation Tiger Commander and twelve combatants were killed in Indian seas. A monument in remembrance of these also had been erected in Theeruvil.
Another memorial monument had been built in remembrance of the civilians killed by Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) in VVT, in Theeruvil.
All these monuments were severely damaged by SLA when it occupied Jaffna peninsula in 1991.
During 2002 peace period the above memorial monuments, however, were restored.
All these memorial monuments are being systematically demolished by the SLA soldiers, the sources from VVT said.
LTTE Leader V. Pirapaharan’s residence in VVT which had become an important place of visit to Southern Sinhalese visiting Jaffna peninsula had recently been demolished by SLA soldiers.
SLA soldiers deployed again in road checks, patrol in Jaffna peninsula
Thousands of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers are deployed along with the police in carrying out checks and patrol of the main roads in Jaffna peninsula again, sources in Jaffna said. Jaffna SLA Commander Mahinda Kathrusinghe informed that SLA forces are being deployed to help the police in Jaffna peninsula to contain the escalating abductions for ransom, killings, robberies and sexual violence on women, deteriorating law and order in the peninsula, in a meeting with the Jaffna district lawyers and magistrates Saturday.
The SLA commander had also said that the deteriorating law and order situation in the peninsula has called for the deployment of SLA forces in an effort to justify the beefing up of its forces in the peninsula.
Meanwhile, opposition parties including Tamil National Alliance (TNA) accused Sri Lanka government of purposely staging the above mentioned social crimes to be carried out by elements collaborating with its Intelligence Wing so as to create a situation that calls for the permanent presence of SLA forces in the peninsula, to continue to hold it absolute control, the sources added.
The SLA commander had also said that the deteriorating law and order situation in the peninsula has called for the deployment of SLA forces in an effort to justify the beefing up of its forces in the peninsula.
Meanwhile, opposition parties including Tamil National Alliance (TNA) accused Sri Lanka government of purposely staging the above mentioned social crimes to be carried out by elements collaborating with its Intelligence Wing so as to create a situation that calls for the permanent presence of SLA forces in the peninsula, to continue to hold it absolute control, the sources added.
Sri Lanka responsible for mass killings - ICG
The report by International Crisis Group, a Europe based NGO, said that despite its [Colombo’s] promises to protect civilians and aid workers as it made its assault on the Tigers, the Sri Lankan government had bombed relentlessly in areas where it knew unarmed people were present, according to the Monday edition of New York Times. “Evidence gathered by Crisis Group provides reasonable grounds to believe that during these months [the security forces intentionally and repeatedly shelled civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations,” the paper said quoting from the text of the ICG report, and added that “[i]t [the report] also provides reason to believe that senior government and military officials were aware of the massive civilian casualties due to the security forces’ attacks, but failed to protect the civilian population as they were obliged to under the laws of war.”
Full text of the NYT article follows:
Report Holds Sri Lanka to Account for Deaths
Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians died in the last, bloody months of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the International Crisis Group said in an investigative report to be released Monday, most of them as a result of government shelling of areas that were supposed to be safe zones.
The report, which cites witness testimony, satellite images, documents and other evidence, calls for a wide-reaching international investigation into what it calls atrocities committed in the last months of the Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tamil Tiger insurgency.
The war ended a year ago, when the Tigers’ top leadership was killed on a narrow strand of beach in northeastern Sri Lanka, capping a two-decade armed struggle by a group that pioneered some of the ugliest insurgent tactics in the world, including female suicide bombers and child soldiers.
Because the government barred independent journalists and most humanitarian workers from the war zone, the death toll of the final months of fighting, when at least 300,000 Tamil civilians were pinned down on a beach, caught between the rebels and government forces, is not known.
United Nations workers counted about 7,000 dead in the last weeks of April, just before the last phase of the fighting, but diplomats, aid workers and human rights activists have long argued that those figures far underestimated the dead and did not include the final weeks of battle. Government officials, meanwhile, have repeatedly denied singling out civilians, and have said that the total number of people killed is much lower.
Sri Lankan officials declined to comment on the report, saying they had not yet seen it.
The report by the Crisis Group, an advocacy organization based in Brussels and Washington that seeks to resolve and prevent armed conflicts, said that despite its promises to protect civilians and aid workers as it made its assault on the Tigers, the Sri Lankan government had bombed relentlessly in areas where it knew unarmed people were present.
“Evidence gathered by Crisis Group provides reasonable grounds to believe that during these months the security forces intentionally and repeatedly shelled civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations,” the report said. “It also provides reason to believe that senior government and military officials were aware of the massive civilian casualties due to the security forces’ attacks, but failed to protect the civilian population as they were obliged to under the laws of war.”
The report said that the insurgents, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also committed atrocities, particularly in choosing to corral as many people as possible around its fighters, hoping to maximize civilian casualties and force international intervention.
“Their calculation, ultimately an incorrect one, was that escalating civilian casualties would eventually get the attention of the international community to broker a cease-fire so the L.T.T.E. could regroup or perhaps enter negotiations,” the report said, using initials the Tamil Tigers are also known by.
Instead, the Sri Lankan government pressed the rebels to the bitter end. Tamils who tried to escape were killed, children were forced to fight, and the sick and wounded were left to die, the report said.
But it was the Sri Lankan government, the report concluded, that carried the greatest responsibility for the killing.
“All but a small portion of these deaths were due to government shelling,” the report said.
Full text of the NYT article follows:
Report Holds Sri Lanka to Account for Deaths
Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians died in the last, bloody months of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the International Crisis Group said in an investigative report to be released Monday, most of them as a result of government shelling of areas that were supposed to be safe zones.
The report, which cites witness testimony, satellite images, documents and other evidence, calls for a wide-reaching international investigation into what it calls atrocities committed in the last months of the Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tamil Tiger insurgency.
The war ended a year ago, when the Tigers’ top leadership was killed on a narrow strand of beach in northeastern Sri Lanka, capping a two-decade armed struggle by a group that pioneered some of the ugliest insurgent tactics in the world, including female suicide bombers and child soldiers.
Because the government barred independent journalists and most humanitarian workers from the war zone, the death toll of the final months of fighting, when at least 300,000 Tamil civilians were pinned down on a beach, caught between the rebels and government forces, is not known.
United Nations workers counted about 7,000 dead in the last weeks of April, just before the last phase of the fighting, but diplomats, aid workers and human rights activists have long argued that those figures far underestimated the dead and did not include the final weeks of battle. Government officials, meanwhile, have repeatedly denied singling out civilians, and have said that the total number of people killed is much lower.
Sri Lankan officials declined to comment on the report, saying they had not yet seen it.
The report by the Crisis Group, an advocacy organization based in Brussels and Washington that seeks to resolve and prevent armed conflicts, said that despite its promises to protect civilians and aid workers as it made its assault on the Tigers, the Sri Lankan government had bombed relentlessly in areas where it knew unarmed people were present.
“Evidence gathered by Crisis Group provides reasonable grounds to believe that during these months the security forces intentionally and repeatedly shelled civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations,” the report said. “It also provides reason to believe that senior government and military officials were aware of the massive civilian casualties due to the security forces’ attacks, but failed to protect the civilian population as they were obliged to under the laws of war.”
The report said that the insurgents, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also committed atrocities, particularly in choosing to corral as many people as possible around its fighters, hoping to maximize civilian casualties and force international intervention.
“Their calculation, ultimately an incorrect one, was that escalating civilian casualties would eventually get the attention of the international community to broker a cease-fire so the L.T.T.E. could regroup or perhaps enter negotiations,” the report said, using initials the Tamil Tigers are also known by.
Instead, the Sri Lankan government pressed the rebels to the bitter end. Tamils who tried to escape were killed, children were forced to fight, and the sick and wounded were left to die, the report said.
But it was the Sri Lankan government, the report concluded, that carried the greatest responsibility for the killing.
“All but a small portion of these deaths were due to government shelling,” the report said.
NESoHR: Except Dublin, world remains without action on Colombo's War Crimes
"For the last one year, there has only been talk of war crime charges. Repeated attacks on hospitals; killing, torture, rape and sexual abuse of people escaping the war zone are some of the charges leveled against the Sri Lankan forces. But, except for the verdict passed by the Dublin Permanent People’s Tribunal there has been no other concrete action," said the exiled team members of the North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR), the Humanitarian body which was earlier based in Vanni, in a statement issued Monday. "The 300,000 people who walked out of the war zone are witnesses to these war crimes. Each one of them would have narrowly escaped death at least once in those safe zones. Fear, extreme fear, prevents the 300,000 eye witnesses from speaking. Even those who escaped from the island to other countries are silenced by fear."
Full text of the NESoHR statement follows:
Remembering Mullivaikal May-09
When there is widespread attack on a people, the natural reaction is for the people to run to a place where they feel safer. When the people are attacked repeatedly, they move again and again to the places they perceive as safe. This is what happened to the 400,000 people in Vanni for two years, from the start of 2007 till end of 2008. Then came the Sri Lankan Government declared safe zones: one, two and three, from January to May 2009, asking the people to seek safety in these safe zones. These are the final killing fields, the last of which was Mullivaikal. In them 40,000 civilians were killed, the remaining who got out of the “safe zones” were then incarcerated in camps in appalling conditions. In the month of May we mark this history.
The two years, 2007-2008, in Vanni is a history of: building bunkers in every household; living with continuous displacement and digging bunkers again and again as we displaced; living on the roadside and under trees; living with Sri Lankan government imposed shortages of medicine and food; indeed living with shortages of all the basics of life. It is two years of studying the sky for Sri Lankan bombers that frequented the Vanni spaces. Civilian deaths during these aerial raids were common. Claymore attacks on civilian vehicles, ambulances, school buses, pilgrims’ vehicles all became the norm. Dignitaries like NESoHR’s chairperson and a TNA MP were among those targeted and killed.
January-April 09: The safe zones declared to concentrate the people into small areas so that the killings can be more efficient. Over crowded streets with displacing people were attacked with artillery shelling. Many were killed on the narrow traffic jammed streets. Dead bodies transported on tractor-trailers, bloodied and shredded tents where the displaced once lived were common sights. Open spaces became hospitals where the injured and the dead were dumped. Doctors and volunteers risked life to do their best. These too were attacked, killing the injured, the doctors and the volunteers.
Mullivaikal in May-09: bunkers in sand collapsing in rain, permanent sounds of shell explosions, venturing out a gamble with life that must be taken to ward off hunger, mothers holding onto dead children, dead babies delivered with shrapnel lodged into them, dead bodies just left where they fall, mass arrests, disappeared after arrest presumed tortured, sexually abused and killed.... This is May-09.
For the last one year, there has only been talk of war crime charges. Repeated attacks on hospitals; killing, torture, rape and sexual abuse of people escaping the war zone are some of the charges leveled against the Sri Lankan forces. But, except for the verdict passed by the Dublin Permanent People’s Tribunal there has been no other concrete action. The Dublin verdict said,
“Harrowing evidence, including video footage, was submitted by eye-witnesses of the use of heavy artillery and phosphorous munitions, and of the continuous violation of human rights by military activity to a panel of ten international jurors over two days”.
The 300,000 people who walked out of the war zone are witnesses to these war crimes. Each one of them would have narrowly escaped death at least once in those safe zones. Fear, extreme fear, prevents the 300,000 eye witnesses from speaking. Even those who escaped from the island to other countries are silenced by fear. So far, the world remains incapable or unwilling to implement its laws on war crimes.
Whilst remembering Mullivaikal May-2009, we at NESOHR would like to remind the Government of Sri Lanka and the mute U.N. and the International Community that Truth will triumph at the end. We call upon the Human Rights Defenders and the Human race all over the World,’ flinch not until the perpetrators are brought to book.’ May justice prevail.
Full text of the NESoHR statement follows:
Remembering Mullivaikal May-09
When there is widespread attack on a people, the natural reaction is for the people to run to a place where they feel safer. When the people are attacked repeatedly, they move again and again to the places they perceive as safe. This is what happened to the 400,000 people in Vanni for two years, from the start of 2007 till end of 2008. Then came the Sri Lankan Government declared safe zones: one, two and three, from January to May 2009, asking the people to seek safety in these safe zones. These are the final killing fields, the last of which was Mullivaikal. In them 40,000 civilians were killed, the remaining who got out of the “safe zones” were then incarcerated in camps in appalling conditions. In the month of May we mark this history.
The two years, 2007-2008, in Vanni is a history of: building bunkers in every household; living with continuous displacement and digging bunkers again and again as we displaced; living on the roadside and under trees; living with Sri Lankan government imposed shortages of medicine and food; indeed living with shortages of all the basics of life. It is two years of studying the sky for Sri Lankan bombers that frequented the Vanni spaces. Civilian deaths during these aerial raids were common. Claymore attacks on civilian vehicles, ambulances, school buses, pilgrims’ vehicles all became the norm. Dignitaries like NESoHR’s chairperson and a TNA MP were among those targeted and killed.
January-April 09: The safe zones declared to concentrate the people into small areas so that the killings can be more efficient. Over crowded streets with displacing people were attacked with artillery shelling. Many were killed on the narrow traffic jammed streets. Dead bodies transported on tractor-trailers, bloodied and shredded tents where the displaced once lived were common sights. Open spaces became hospitals where the injured and the dead were dumped. Doctors and volunteers risked life to do their best. These too were attacked, killing the injured, the doctors and the volunteers.
Mullivaikal in May-09: bunkers in sand collapsing in rain, permanent sounds of shell explosions, venturing out a gamble with life that must be taken to ward off hunger, mothers holding onto dead children, dead babies delivered with shrapnel lodged into them, dead bodies just left where they fall, mass arrests, disappeared after arrest presumed tortured, sexually abused and killed.... This is May-09.
For the last one year, there has only been talk of war crime charges. Repeated attacks on hospitals; killing, torture, rape and sexual abuse of people escaping the war zone are some of the charges leveled against the Sri Lankan forces. But, except for the verdict passed by the Dublin Permanent People’s Tribunal there has been no other concrete action. The Dublin verdict said,
“Harrowing evidence, including video footage, was submitted by eye-witnesses of the use of heavy artillery and phosphorous munitions, and of the continuous violation of human rights by military activity to a panel of ten international jurors over two days”.
The 300,000 people who walked out of the war zone are witnesses to these war crimes. Each one of them would have narrowly escaped death at least once in those safe zones. Fear, extreme fear, prevents the 300,000 eye witnesses from speaking. Even those who escaped from the island to other countries are silenced by fear. So far, the world remains incapable or unwilling to implement its laws on war crimes.
Whilst remembering Mullivaikal May-2009, we at NESOHR would like to remind the Government of Sri Lanka and the mute U.N. and the International Community that Truth will triumph at the end. We call upon the Human Rights Defenders and the Human race all over the World,’ flinch not until the perpetrators are brought to book.’ May justice prevail.
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