Tamil Affairs

Tamil News

Latest news from and about the homeland

""
Sri Lanka's United National Party (UNP) has accused the National People's Power (NPP) government of attempting to undermine Buddhism and interfere in the affairs of the Buddhist clergy, as controversy continues over proposed reforms aimed at addressing misconduct within the Buddhist Sangha. The dispute comes amid heightened public scrutiny of Buddhist institutions following allegations of…

Threats to US, whilst appealing for concessions

A Sri Lankan Minister has warned the United States that Sri Lanka would join international allies and align itself against the US, if they were to continue to push Sri Lanka “to extremes”.

Referring to a resolution put forward by the US at the UN Human Rights Council, Minister of Power and Energy Patali Champika Ranawaka said,
"There are friends as well as enemies of the United States. We are ready to join the anti-U.S. allies if it is for forcing us to extremes."

Reconciliation is not happening in Sri Lanka, and the problem isn't a question of time'

Writing in the online site, OpenDemocracy, Sivakami Rajamanoharan from the Tamil Youth Organisation UK argues that the failure of reconciliation in Sri Lanka is as a result of "Sri Lanka’s refusal to accept the Tamil identity as a rightful and equal part of the island" and that the Tamil nation's desire for self-determination is "denounced as an inherent threat to the majority and vilified as 'terrorist ideology'."

SL Minister urges boycott of Google

Addressing a public meeting in Colombo, Sri Lankan government Minister Wimal Weerawansa has called for a boycott of all American products, including the use of Google.

The Minister also called for a boycott of brands such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, KFC and McDonalds. Weerawansa pledged to the crowd that he would personally stop using Google products, stating,

The Tamil people must lead their struggle

The Tamil people should not keep quiet anymore. Their mass organisations and civil groups should realise their duties and the fact that the unfolding scenario has no room for individual issues.

It is futile for the Tamil political leadership, positioning itself against the aspirations of the people, to again and again get trapped in the old ways of polity. The next stage should be a mass struggle.

The stakes of Sri Lanka's strategy - and why only an international investigation will suffice

What is happening in Sri Lanka is a systematic genocide. It has been happening for the last 60 odd years. What happened in the last stages of the war was taking that genocidal project to its extreme.

“It has been three years since the war ended. There are several steps that are being taken currently that carry on the structural genocide of our people. What is happening in Sri Lanka ... is the dismantling of the existence of the Tamils as a distinct nation of people.

Sri Lanka censors text messages

Sri Lanka’s government has extended its censorship to text messages, reports BBC Sandeshaya.

News outlets that send SMS alerts to customers must now get prior approval from the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS), if the messages are related to national security, the military or the police.

Group of 51 Indian NGOs urge Malaysia to back UNHRC resolution

An umbrella body named the Group of Concerned Citizens (GCC), representing fifty-one NGOs based in India, has urged Malaysia to support a resolution on war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan security forces.

In a statement, GCC's coordinator, K Arumugam said that Malaysia should not support Sri Lanka as it did in 2009.

Highlighting Malaysia's role in condemning human rights violations in Bosnia, Palestine, Southern Thailand and Philippines, the GCC coordinator said,

‘A child is summarily executed’

Writing in the Independent, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields Director Callum Macrae has revealed some of the new evidence of summary executions that they have uncovered whilst making their follow up documentary, “War Crimes Unpunished”.

Extracts have been reproduced below. See the full piece here.

For more information on the upcoming documentary “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished”, see here. It will be broadcast on Channel 4 this Wednesday the 14th of March at 10.55pm.

“A 12-year-old boy lies on the ground. He is stripped to the waist and has five neat bullet holes in his chest. His name is Balachandran Prabakaran and he is the son of the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. He has been executed in cold blood. Beside him lie the bodies of five men, believed to be his bodyguards. There are strips of cloth on the ground indicating that they were tied and blindfolded before they were shot – further evidence suggesting that the Sri Lankan government forces had a systematic policy of executing many surrendering or captured LTTE fighters and leading figures, even if they were children.

“In one incident, legally significant because it is well documented, two international UN workers leading the last UN overland food convoy became trapped near a temporary hospital in a village primary school in Uddiyakattu, in the first of the government's No Fire Zones.”

“With the help of other civilians they began to dig bunkers to provide some protection from incoming shellfire. As was standard practice, one of the UN workers, an Australian called Peter Mackay, took precise GPS co-ordinates of the site, and these were supplied to the government. But if that had any effect, it was certainly not the desired one. Over the next couple of days the camp was subjected to a massive, sustained barrage of incoming shellfire, much of it falling directly on or near to the UN bunker. Dozens were killed – and many more horrifically injured. It was all photographed by the UN workers.”

“In a sense, it was just one relatively small incident in the ongoing carnage of the war, but it is potentially significant because it provides specific evidence linking the Sri Lankan government's chain of command to knowledge of targeted attacks on civilians – attacks that appear to constitute war crimes.”

States debate resolution on Sri Lanka

States debated the draft resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday, during an informal session chaired by the US ambassador, Eileen Donahoe.

Rejecting the consultation as a "farce", Sri Lankan officials refused to engage in any dialogue on it.

Sexual abuse rapidly escalates in Jaffna

Girls as young as 7 years old have been sexually abused in Jaffna, as cases of sexual violence against women and children continues to rise according to health officials.

Describing an “alarming rise”, in sexual abuses cases in the Jaffna peninsula the Judicial Medical Officer (JMO) of Jaffna Teaching hospital Dr Sivaruban said that there were 32 incidents of child abuse and sexual abuse in the last two months alone, with at least 9 of classed as “serious and cruel sexual abuses”.