tamilweek.com

Tamil residents of Dharavi – in Mumbai, demonstrated and shouted slogans against the Sri Lanka military onslaught and forced eviction of Tamils from their homes on April 25th. They burned posters of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa during the protest.

[in Dharavi, Mumbai April 25, 2009-Reuters pic]

[Tamil residents of Dharavi, shout slogans during a protest against Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa]

[A Tamil resident of Dharavi, burns a poster of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa during a protest in Mumbai April 25, 2009]

According to A Ganesh Nadar of Rediff.com, “Dharavi’s main population consists of Tamilians who’ve migrated to Mumbai from their home state. These Tamilians have imported their village atmosphere into their new place of residence. Dharavi is a closed society. Even the non-Tamilians have learnt to speak Tamil to survive here. There are some Tamilians who have been here for years and still don’t know a single word of Hindi. They don’t need to know. They live and work in Dharavi where the national language is Tamil.”

“Tamil” is described as the “National language” of Dharavi, an urban slum ward in Mumbai.

by Sam Thambipillai

The exodus of Tamils from the so called “safe zone” is similar to that what was seen in Rwanda about 15 years ago, when Tutsis faced genocide in the hands of Hutus.

Sinhala soldiers are on a genocidal spree. They have murdered about 1000 Tamil civilians and injured about 2500 by breaching into the “safe zone”.

In Sri Lanka(SL), a Tamil is always held as a hostage by the Sinhala state. IDP’s are held as hostages in military concentration camps. Others face hostage taking, mostly daily, by the Sinhala soldiers in military check points.

[Tamil civilians who fled from Tamil Tiger-controlled areas gather to take food distributed at a government-controlled camp in Omantai, Vavuniya, about 230 kilometers (144 miles) north of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Wednesday, April 22, 2009.-AP pic]

But, Mahinda Rajapakse explained the mass exodus of Tamil civilians from the unsafe “safe zone”, because of military firing, as “the largest ever hostage rescue mission in history”. Tamil civilian killing is being covered up and Sinhala ego is being boosted by that unreal utterance.

Adolf Hitler also similarly engaged in similar utterances during genocide of Jews. The purpose is definitely to blame others, hoodwink the International community and carry on with the genocide. SL appears to be succeeding in its trickery.

The truth of what happened in the “safe zone” could be discovered easily from spy satelite photos in the area as done in Bosnia.

The UN should start to bring Rajapakse and other war criminals to the war crimes court in the Hague for the UN to justify its existence.

Rwanda is past. Sri Lanka is present. But the UN and the International Community are doing nothing whatsoever to rectify even happenings in the present.

Surely, Tamil Eelam is inevitable.

by T. Earakan

Violence has been occurring in Colombo all day. It started this morning at Gall Face, the long stretch of green between House of representatives and the sea where about 200 Tamils performed Satyagrha by merely sitting on the grass.

This appeared in The Times of UK, On June 5th, 1956.

…Decades have gone bay, but violence perpetrated by those with the Sinhala Sri Lanka supremacist agenda continues through today under various guises…

Today “War on Terror” and even a “Humanitarian rescue” are being carried out by the Sri Lankan to uproot Tamils.

HAF Seeks Immediate Cease-Fire in Sri Lanka to Avoid Massacre of Innocent Civilians

Washington, D.C. (April 22, 2009). The situation in Sri Lanka has become dire, as the two-decade old war between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils approaches a dangerous military endgame. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), designated as a terrorist organization by more than 30 countries, has been fighting for a separate Tamil homeland since 1976. The situation turned extremely dangerous for the 50,000 to 100,000 ethnic Tamils caught between the LTTE forces earlier this month, fighting a last ditch battle in a small area of the eastern seaboard, and the Sri Lankan army demanding an unconditional surrender from the LTTE. The LTTE has said it will never surrender, and in that bid is holding the civilian population hostage.

More than 4,500 people have died since January 2009, and news reports trickling in from Sri Lanka indicate that the civilian population has been brutalized: one in four children under 5 were malnourished, and one in four children had limbs amputated, according to UNICEF. The International Society of the Red Cross has termed the situation “catastrophic”. The Sri Lankan government has not paid heed to the calls from nations around the world to observe a cease-fire to enable evacuation of the civilian population. While the government paused fighting for two days, it ignored calls for cease-fire talks demanded by the LTTE.

Journalists have been barred from the area of conflict, and reports trickling out are therefore unreliable. While the LTTE have claimed that government forces have wounded 1,400 and killed 492 children, the government says that the LTTE is killing civilians for propaganda purposes.

The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) called for an immediate cease-fire to enable the evacuation of innocent civilians. “The gamesmanship displayed by the Sri Lankan army and the LTTE forces should be condemned, and international pressure should be brought to bring a peaceful end to this dangerous standoff,” said Suhag Shukla, Managing Director, HAF. “It is an ethnic war, not a religious war, that has gone on for too long, and such a standoff as we are seeing now could lead to a slaughter of innocent civilians on an unprecedented scale.”

HAF has condemned both the Sri Lankan army as well as the LTTE for the violence, for the loss and displacement of innocent civilians, and the destruction of Hindu temples and other places of worship. HAF believes there can be no military solution to the problem, and the conflict should be settled through a durable political solution.

Full Text of Press Release by HAF

A video of a protest at New York’s United Nations building in the U.S. Many of the Tamils present at the April 17 rally have family members in Sri Lanka:

The group is asking the U.N. to take charge of the Sri Lankan region where they say Tamil civilians are being killed.

Ellyn Shandler, a physician who worked in Vanni during post-tsunami recovery period, Rudrakumaran, legal advisor, and several others spoke at the rally.

Civilians pay the price in fighting between Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan military. CNN’s Ram Ramgopal reports:

Robert Wood, Acting Department Spokesman, Office of the Spokesman of the US State Department said on Thursday, April 16th:

“The United States calls upon the government of Sri Lanka to assist its Tamil citizens by halting shelling of the safe zone, permitting international monitors to ensure the safe exit of the civilians. The government of Sri Lanka should also enforce international humanitarian standards in IDP camps, grant visas to international aid groups and permit entry into Sri Lanka of international monitors and media access to those camps.

The Sri Lankan government, as the legitimate sovereign power, has before it an opportunity to put an end to this lengthy conflict. A durable and lasting peace will only be achieved through a political solution that addresses the legitimate aspirations of all Sri Lankan communities.”

Tamil humanitarian groups say Sri lanka has been uprooting Tamils from the island under various guises ever since Britain left in 1948. “War on terror” is a cover for ethnic cleansing, they point out.