Day: 5 February 2017

JAFFNA: The Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province, C.V.Wigneswaran, boycotted the 69 th. Sri Lankan Independence Day function here on Saturday, and instead attended protest meetings held at Keppapilavu and Puthukudiyiruppu in Mullaitivu district. The Governor of the Northern Province, Reginold Cooray, hoisted the national flag, but the Chief Minister chose not to be present. A small section of radical Tamil nationalists led by Northern Provincial Council members M.K.Shivajilingam and Ananthy Sasitharan, observed the day as a “Black Day” for the Tamils. Wearing black bands and scarves and…

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[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 February 2017, 18:36 GMT] The occupying Colombo was staging a parade for the first time in front of Jaffna District Secretariat to mark the so-called independence day of genocidal Sri Lanka in Jaffna this year. NPC Councillors M.K. Shivajilingam and Ananthy Sasitharan organised a protest with the participation of fellow struggle-centric NPC councillors, civic members and families of enforced-disappeared after 18 May 2009. The SL Police came with a stay order from Jaffna Magistrate S. Satheestharan, who had written in Tamil that the stay order was about…

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By P.K.Balachandran Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has dubbed those “opportunistic forces” which are campaigning against the on-going ethnic and religious reconciliation process as enemies of the country. “The government’s endeavor for reconciliation and communal harmony has been praised locally as well as internationally. The opportunistic forces that are against the on-going reconciliation process are against the country,” the President said in his address to the nation at the 69 th.Independence Day military parade here on Saturday. “We are a nation that deserves to live a prosperous life in a…

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By P.K.Balachandran The Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province, C.V.Wigneswaran, boycotted the 69 th. Sri Lankan Independence Day function here on Saturday, and instead attended protest meetings held at Keppapilavu and Puthukudiyiruppu in Mullaitivu district. The Governor of the Northern Province, Reginold Cooray, hoisted the national flag, but the Chief Minister chose not to be present. A small section of radical Tamil nationalists led by Northern Provincial Council members M.K.Shivajilingam and Ananthy Sasitharan, observed the day as a “Black Day” for the Tamils. Wearing black bands and scarves…

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By Amit Baruah Sri Lanka was forced into making a deal with India as its own armed forces had twice refused to “take Jaffna”, then President J.R. Jayewardene has been quoted as saying in a declassified document, nearly 30 years after the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was deployed in the island nation. Jayewardene told visiting American diplomat Peter Galbraith that he had twice ordered his troops to take Jaffna — “burn the place to the ground” — and they had talked him out of it on grounds of unacceptably high…

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By D.B.S.Jeyaraj “What was your first military operation”? was a question posed to Veluppillai Prabhakaran in a media interview many years ago. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam(LTTE) Leader replied ” Alfred Durayappah”. Prabhakaran was of course referring to the popular former mayor and ex-MP for Jaffna Alfred Thangarajah Durayappah who was gunned down within the Jaffna peninsula on July 27th 1975. Prabhakaran and three others Kalapathy, Kirubakaran and Satkunam were responsible for the cold blooded murder which took place opposite the Ponnaalai Varadarajapperumaal temple. An assassination of an unarmed…

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‘Gunning’ for Sumanthiran By Manekshaw Plans to assassinate Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian Mathiaparanam Abraham Sumanthiran, who is a confidant of TNA Leader and Leader of the Opposition R. Sampanthan, have been unearthed by the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) with the arrest of five suspects. The preliminary investigation carried out by the TID has brought to light that the assassination plot was hatched with the involvement of certain pro-LTTE activists abroad. In a vacuum state, where only a handful of intellectually sound politicians remain in the present Tamil political scene…

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