by People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), March 27, 2020 (Washington D.C., March 27, 2020) On 26 March 2020, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa pardoned former Sri Lankan army Staff Sergeant Sunil Rathnayake, who was convicted in 2015 of participating in the December 2000 massacre of eight Tamil civilians, including a five-year old… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Diaspora
TGTE: Sri Lanka Pardons a Soldier Sentenced to Death for Killing Tamil Civilians
by Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, New York, March 27, 2020 Sri Lanka is the first country to take advantage of Coronavirus crisis to persecute a community.” — Visivanathan Rudrakumaran NEW YORK, USA, March 27, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ — While the World Reels from the Coronavirus, Sri Lankan President Instead Focuses on Perpetuating Immunity for Int’l… Read more »
The Securitization of Fear in Post-Tsunami Sri Lanka
[This article is very relevant to the current crisis. – Ed] The production of crises, including the fear and xenophobia they instill, remains a pressing concern because they legitimate grounds for exceptional interventions (Agamben 1998; Mountz 2004). States produce crisis and fear to obtain consent for securitization measures. Probing the ways in which fear is… Read more »
Biloela (பிலொ-ஈலா) Tamil Family Symbolizes Our Plight
by N. Malathy, March 16, 2020 We are ONE but We are Many From all the Lands on Earth We come We’ll share a dream and sing in one Voice I am, You are, WE are Australians A verse by a supporter of the Biloela family. Nades and Priya arrived by boats in Australia seeking… Read more »
Banning of Silva is a Small Victory for Tamils
by Visvajit Sriramranjan, The Hofstra Chronicle, NY, February 25, 2020 Last week, Shavendra Silva, the chief of the Sri Lankan Army, was banned from entering the United States. Silva is a known war criminal who spearheaded the genocide of the Tamil people, an ethnic minority group native to southern India as well as northern and… Read more »
Sangam’s Thai Pongal Festival
by Ilankai Tamil Sangam, New Jersey, USA, January 31, 2020
From Being Tortured in Sri Lanka to the U.S. Supreme Court
by Ashoka Mukpo, American Civil Liberties Union, February 24, 2020 On a frigid day in early February, Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam stands under an awning on a street corner in lower Manhattan along with one of his attorneys, Celso Perez of the ACLU. Both are bundled in heavy winter jackets. Perez is holding his phone up and… Read more »
PEARL welcomes US sanctions against Sri Lankan army chief
by People for Equality and Relief in Lanka, Washington, D.C., February 14, 2020 Today, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo banned Sri Lanka’s army chief Shavendra Silva from entering the US due to “credible information of his involvement, through command responsibility, in gross violations of human rights, namely extrajudicial killings, by the 58th Division of… Read more »
Question of Genocide in Sri Lanka
Justifying a Referral to International Court of Justice by Thambu Kanagasabai LLM [Lond.] Former Lecturer in Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, January 27, 2020 The International Court of Justice [ICJ] is the principal organ of the United Nations and was established in 1945 by the Charter of the United Nations. This Court is located… Read more »
PEARL Applauds World Court Decision Order to Prevent Rohingya Genocide
by People for Equality and Relief in Sri Lanka (PEARL) (Washington, D.C., January 23, 2020) Today, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Myanmar to enact measures to halt the ongoing genocide against the Rohingya in a case filed by The Gambia pursuant to the Genocide Convention. PEARL welcomes this legally binding ruling, which is… Read more »
Tamil Resistance & Resilience in the Face of Genocide
by People for Equality & Relief in Lanka (PEARL), date not specified, but probably 2019 https://pearlaction.org/inthefaceofgenocide/#swgkblyvtrgzeqbzcbmzscidvodmjwsbkpln
Sri Lanka’s New Government “Unleashing a Chilling Process of Repression”
by Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, January 13, 2020 ITJP-JDS Press – English ITJP-JDS Press – Tamil Credible Information gathered by the International Truth and Justice Project – Sri Lanka (ITJP) and JDS reveals how the new government of Sri Lanka under a majority Sinhala hardliner has embarked on its strategy to militarise… Read more »
Shouldering of Responsibility to Save Desperate Tamils in Sri Lanka
by Thambu Kanagasabai, LLM [Lond.] Former Lecturer in Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, January 11, 2020 There is no denying of the fact that Tamils in Sri Lanka have been at the receiving end since 1949, when power was transferred to the majority Sinhala Government. Successive Sinhala Governments continued and still continue the marginalisation… Read more »
Media under Fire
Tamil Guardian editorial, London, January 6, 2020 Several weeks into Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency, journalists on the island are coming under increasing threat. Whilst the island has always been a dangerous place for the press, and for Tamil journalists in particular, over the last month there has been a worrying rise in intimidation, harassment and even… Read more »
High Time to Act on Sri Lanka
By United Nations & international community by Thambu Kanagasabai, LLM [Lond]. Former Lecturer in Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has been in the limelight of UN and International Community for the last thirty years and more intensively during and after the genocidal war launched against the Tamil civilians and Liberation Tigers of… Read more »
Thirteenth Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution
This article is generally agreed to be the best discussion of the weakness of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, instituted after the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord to provide the ‘devolution’ the Tamils have requested to allow them to manage some of their own affairs within Sri Lanka. by Nadesan Satyendra, ‘TamilNation.org,’ March 1988,… Read more »
Speech by Nadesan Satyendra at Thimpu Talks 1985
posted by Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), February 12, 2012 Satyendra was the TELO representative at the Thimbu Talks We recognise that the Tamil national struggle is not taking place in some Himalayan stratosphere… At the outset, we would like to emphasise something which all of us amongst the Tamil delegation present here today, recognise… Read more »
Will the New President of Sri Lanka Guide the Country on the Correct Path?
by Kumarathasan Rasingam – Secretary, The Tamil Canadian Elders for Human Rights Org., December 16, 2019 The Singapore success is attributed to their leader LEE KUAN YEW developing a society where each race appreciate and respect that of others, encouraged to preserve its unique culture and traditions, let alone that of the majority. It’s fostering… Read more »
Sri Lanka Fast Becoming a Failed State
by Thambu Kanagasabai – LLM [Lond] Former Lecturer in Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, December 9, 2019 A Failed state is one which is failing to function properly regarding its responsibilities, including an inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community. Ethnic conflicts and tension, violation of human… Read more »
Sri Lanka’s Tamils Need Genocide Recognition and Innovative Justice Mechanisms
Emerging Voices by Anjali Manivannan, OpinioJuris, Geneva, August, 15, 2019 [Anji Manivannan is the Legal Director at People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) and a Senior Programs Officer at the World Federalist Movement – Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP).] Introduction May 18th marked the tenth anniversary of the end of the 26-year-long armed conflict between… Read more »