by The Hindu, Chennai, April 30, 2021 Live results at https://www.thehindu.com/elections/tamil-nadu-assembly/ The election for 16th Legislative Assembly of Tamil Nadu was held on April 6. The counting of votes is on May 2. The main contest is between AIADMK, which is hoping for an hattrick and DMK that wants to wrest power after 10 years…. Read more »
Monthly Archives: April 2021
Sri Lanka’s Muslims Face Backlash
Two years after Easter attacks Sri Lankan government ramps up restrictions on minority community. by Jumaina Siddiqui & Melissa Nozell, US Institute for Peace, Washington, DC, Thursday, April 29, 2021 Two years after the Easter Sunday attacks that left 269 dead and injured more than 500, Sri Lanka’s Christian community is still waiting for justice… Read more »
The Vice Tightens
Tamil Guardian editorial, April 19, 2021 Across the North-East, a crackdown is in full effect. Despite a renewed international focus on the island’s human rights record following the passing of yet another UN resolution on Sri Lanka, the state has decided to respond by doubling down on its repression. The expansion of the Prevention of… Read more »
OISL: a Media Guide
by Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace & Justice, London, September 14, 2015 OISL a media guide 2015 What is the OISL report? The story the UN process so far Immediately after the war, some states pushed for allegations of war crimes to be investigated, including at the UN. Other states were willing to accept the… Read more »
Hardeep Singh Puri
Hardeep Singh Puri is now India’s Union Home Minister grappling with the pandemic. At one time he was the Indian High Commission’s First Secretary in Colombo. On May 17, 2020 last year he tweeted: I was a young First Secy (Political) at the Indian High Commission in Colombo in 1987 when I met V. Prabhakaran… Read more »
Sabaratnasinghe Thananjayarajasingham (1933- 1977)
Tamil linguistic scholar by Sachi Sri Kantha, April 27, 2021 If there is one academic who had contributed to the understanding of linguistics of Jaffna Tamil, only one name can be stated with distinction. It is, Sabaratnasinghe Thananjayarajasingham! – Quite a mouthful. Due to this long, polysyllabic name (even by Tamil standards) with 21 English… Read more »
‘Tigresses in the Tamil Eelam Struggle’ Review
‘The Orders Were to Rape You: Tigresses in the Tamil Eelam Struggle’ review: Surviving war by Meera Srinivasan, The Hindu, Chennai, India, April 24, 2021 Meena Kandasamy records the gruesome first-person experiences of two women of the Tamil Eelam struggle The picture of a woman with cropped hair, attired in camouflage shirt and trousers, and… Read more »
Rathika Pathmanathan’s Northern Memoir
Light to shed darkness on Southern war-myths by Lanka Associate blog, December 19, 2019 Rathika’s narrative builds through her experiences as a trainee in an LTTE camp, her brief war experiences, and the last days of battle after which she enters military-held ground as a maimed combatant. The spirit that echoes through these words is… Read more »
Home Is Elsewhere
One of Sri Lanka’s most compelling voices plays with ideas of displacement by Shahnaz Habib, OpentheMagazine.com, February 15, 2015 In an airplane from Frankfurt to Colombo, as the seat belt sign flickers alive, warning passengers of turbulence, two men sitting next to each other wonder where they have seen each other before. Sitting in the… Read more »
Getting Away with War Crimes
by Phil Miller, Tribune, Dagenham, UK, June 23, 2020 For decades, former British soldiers with friends in high places ran a mercenary enterprise from Sri Lanka to Nicaragua – leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake… Behind this respectable facade, the company took on much riskier contracts, that would see it exert… Read more »
Can the Sri Lanka Army be Described as a Counterinsurgency Force?
by Rob Pinney, Small Wars Journal, Virginia, USA, June 23, 2014 SL military counterinsurgency force or not As potentially the ‘first counterinsurgency victory of the twenty-first century’, the Sri Lankan experienceturns much of this conventional wisdom on its head. The ‘Sri Lankan model’, as it has become known,demonstrated a new way of conducting counterinsurgency operations – one… Read more »
P2P Demands & Pledge
by North East Civil Society Forum, February 7, 2021 P2P Demands and Pledge Pottuvil to Polikandy (P2P) – Demands and Pledge 1) We Tamils have been fighting for over seventy years for self Determination. We are a nation of people living in the merged North and East in the island of Ceylon. We have our… Read more »
K. Thavamani Devi (1924-2001)
A pioneer Eelam Tamil actress, dancer and singer by Sachi Sri Kantha, April 19, 2021 As of now, I had profiled the careers of five Eelam Tamil women on this website. Dr. Grace Rajamalar Barr Kumarakulasinghe (1908-2013) https://sangam.org/dr-grace-rajamalar-barr-kumarakulasinghe-1908-2013/ Dr. Siva Chinnatamby (1923-2000), https://sangam.org/dr-siva-chinnatamby-20-years-after-her-death/ Dr. Manorani Saravanamuttu (1930-2001), https://sangam.org/dr-manorani-saravanamuttu/ Prof. Mano Sabaratnam (1931-2014), https://sangam.org/professor-mano-sabaratnam-1931-2014/ and Dr…. Read more »
The Valvettithurai Massacre
Remembering India’s crimes against Tamils by People for Equality & Relief in Lanka, August 2, 2019 The information on this page was largely compiled from information put together by Nadarajah Anantharajah, the then-secretary of the Citizen Committee Valvettithurai and a survivor of the IPKF massacre. He was detained for two days and severely beaten by… Read more »
India’s My Lai
Published by Hind Mazdoor Kissan Panchayat, 204, Rajaram Roy Road, Bombay 400 004, India. (Courtesy TamilNation.org, accessed 04/19/21) “The IPKF were given strict instructions not to use tactics or weapons that could cause major casualties among the civilian population of Jaffna, who were hostages to the LTTE. The Indian Army have carried out these instructions… Read more »
UN Security Council Remains Paralyzed Battling a New Cold War
UN’s Most Powerful Political Body Remains Paralyzed Battling a New Cold War by Thalif Deen, IPS News, April 14, 2021 UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 2021 (IPS) – A new Cold War – this time, between the US and China —is threatening to paralyze the UN’s most powerful body, even as military conflicts and civil wars are… Read more »
TGTE Mourns Passing of Former US Attorney General Mr. Ramsey Clark
by Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, EINPresswire, April 14, 2021 He was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the TGTE & served as TGTE’s New York Election Commissioner for its first parliamentary elections in 2010 Mr. Clark served as lead counsel in representing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in its… Read more »
Marco Polo’s Visit to Medieval Eelam
by Sachi Sri Kantha, April 9, 2021 Front Note in April 2021 The following solicited essay was originally written in 2000, for publication in the 80th Birthday Felicitation volume of Eelam Tamil activist and barrister at law, Krishna Vaikunthavasan (1920-2005). Using the record left by Marco Polo’s of 13th century, I challenged the ‘Prof. K…. Read more »
Evident Truths
American women at war by Nimmi Gowrinathan, Los Angeles Review of Books, April 2, 2021 IN ONE OF CHINUA ACHEBE’s lesser-known short stories, “Girls at War,” an elder government official, Mr. Nwankwo, is shocked when he’s stopped at a checkpoint by Gladys, a young Nigerian woman holding an AK-47. “He simply could not sneer at the girls… Read more »
ITJP: Time for the UK to Sanction Sri Lanka’s Army Commander
by International Truth & Justice Project, South Africa, April 12, 2021 Johannesburg: The International Truth and Justice Project has compiled a 50-page dossier which it has submitted to the Sanctions Department of the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office on General Shavendra Silva. The Submission argues why Silva, who is Sri Lanka’s current Army Commander,… Read more »