TERI University of India (The Energy and Resources Institute), which is a deemed university located in New Delhi, has conferred honorary doctorate on Norwegian Minister of Development Mr. Erik Solheim in its fourth convocation this year held on Wednesday. The deemed university, specialized in sustainable development, got accreditation in India in 1999. The university has affiliated centers in Japan, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, USA and UK, besides in some prominent Indian cities. Mr. Solheim is involved in international peace facilitation [...]

The acting Geneva Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch, Philippe Dam, has said in a statement issued by the HRW Thursday that justice and accountability will not come from the Sri Lankan government. “Only international action will address the suffering of victims,” Mr. Dam said urging the United Nations Human Rights Council to address the lack of accountability for wartime abuses during its March 2012 session. Sri Lanka has a long history of failed promises to prosecute serious human rights [...]

A.C.M. Asam, a member of the Kaaththaankudi Good Governance People Movement was abducted last Friday by an armed men who came in motorbikes when he was returning home after seeing his ailing mother in the Batticaloa Teaching Hospital. Mr. Asam was later released after four hours, according to M.M.Abdur Rahuman, Soora council member of the movement at a media briefing held this week. Mr. Asam had exposed the fraud to the tune of 150,000 rupees that took place in the [...]

A group of persons, arriving in a white van and identifying themselves as from the Sri Lankan ‘Terrorism Investigation Division’ (TID), arrested two Tamil fishermen in Mannaar on January 19th, sources in Mannaar said. The TID officers had later had informed relatives of the fishermen after inquiry that TID police had detained the fishermen on reports that they had helped he LTTE.

28 year-old newly married, Alex Thavaseelan of Pa’l’lmunai, and 48 year-old Joseph Gnanaseelan, father of five children of Amman [...]

Tamil Nadu State Assembly should press New Delhi to make arrangements for its participation in the UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva in March to present the case of war crimes against Eezham Tamils, said, Communist Party of India’s MLA for Sivagangai, Mr. S. Gunasekaran, during debate on Governor’s Address in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. He reminded the Assembly on its earlier resolution on this issue and said that a case should be filed in the International Court of [...]

Archaeological traces of heritage, preserved in 25 acres of land in Chuvaami-malai and Kevu’liya-madu villages in Paddippazhai DS division of Batticaloa district, are being destroyed by Sinhala encroachers, who are attempting to construct a Buddhist vihara at the occupied lands, civil sources Paddippazhai said. Condemning the move, Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) member R. Thurairatnam, said the destructive trend is opposed to any future ethnic harmony in the East. The historical evidences in the area were well preserved even during the [...]

Sri Wikrama Rajasinghe alias Ka’n’nuch-chaami, the last king of Kandy, from whom the British captured the sovereignty of the last remaining kingdom in the island then called Ceylon, was remembered by his heirs and relatives in Tamil Nadu at his memorial in Vealoor (Vellore) in Tamil Nadu on his 181st death anniversary on Monday. Those who claim and uphold ‘unitary’ sovereignty over the entire island today never care for the king, who fought against colonialism for native sovereignty last remaining [...]

Depriving the livelihood of resettled Tamils at 35th Colony, the Sri Lankan government authorities in Colombo have taken charge of the Tamil area, which comes under the Batticaloa district and the Eastern Provincial Council, aiming Sinhalicisation of the border village between the Batticaloa and Ampaa’rai district. The Tamil fishermen, who have been fishing in Navakkiri tank have now been denied access to the tank and only Sinhalese are allowed by the SL authorities to engage in fishing in the tank [...]

Two officials from the US State Department who met civil society of Jaffna last week categorically told them that the US would not take up war crimes/ human rights issues against Sri Lanka in the March HRC session, as there is no sufficient pressure or request from the affected people. Ruling out any outside intervention for political solution, the officials said that the US would only support the implementation of the LLRC report, which means annihilation of the nation of [...]

Nearly three years after the genocidal war and amidst speedily on-going structural genocide against the nation of Eezham Tamils, the Establishments of the US, India and the UN increasingly prove that they are the real culprits buttressing the genocidal state of Sri Lanka and the crimes-accused Rajapaksa regime. A few individuals sitting in these Establishments take the entire human civilisation for a ride in setting a criminal paradigm for international polity. But, despite the presence of a large number of [...]

Pointing to the recent investigative reports in media outlets noting US may possess crucial supporting material to incriminating evidence from senior military commanders of Colombo committing war-crimes, to exposures on Wikileaks of Colombo-based US Ambassadors’ reported knowledge of high level Sri Lanka officials’ complicity to war crimes, and to incriminating reports from the UN and NGOs on alleged war-crimes, Professor Boyle of University of Illinois, College of Law, said, in similar circumstances Secretary of State Eagleburger accused Radovan Karadzic [...]

Four Tamil residents of Vinaayagapuram, a suburb in Trincomalee town, were injured, including one with severe injuries, when a gang of Sinhalese attacked them on Saturday evening around 6 p.m, sources in Trincomalee said. Thurainayagam Sanjeevan, 32, an employee of the Trincomalee office of a leading Tamil daily Virakesari, is in critical condition and has been admitted to the Trincomalee General Hospital. Other injured Tamils were discharged from the hospital after treatment, hospital sources said. The attackers had threatened the [...]

In a classified memo written by US’s Sri Lanka Ambassador Robert Blake in October 2006 to Washington, ten months after the extra-judicial execution of five students at a Trincomalee beach, Basil Rajapakse, advisor to Sri Lanka’s President and brother Rajapakse, had told Ambassador Blake that Special Task Force (STF) was responsible for the killings, according a Wikileaks document. Father of Ragihar, one of the student killed, is one of the three plaintiffs who have filed a civil case against Sri [...]

While several members of the legislative branch of the US Government are pressing for independent international investigations into Sri Lanka’s war-crimes, the US executive branch, despite the presence of ardent advocates of human rights as President Obama’s group of advisers, guided by Ambassador Robert Blake architected policy that has wrought havoc to Tamil justice, appears to support white-washing of war-crimes, Tamil circles in the US said. Civil society groups in Sri Lanka, which met visiting US officials recently have [...]

New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), California-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), and Washington-based SPEAK, three premier Rights organizations which routinely use litigation to resolve constitutional issues and to indict violators of rights in a press release issued Thursday condemned the proposed appointment of Shavendra Silva – an ex-General of the Sri Lanka Army who is being charged for war-crimes in US Court – to the Special Advisory Group to advise UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on [...]