Vigils and memorials to the tens of thousands massacred by the Sri Lankan state at Mullivaikkal have taken place across the Tamil homeland, despite an onslaught by the Sri Lankan state in recent days to prevent commemorations.
Sri Lankan army locks down Mullaitivu on eve of Tamil Genocide commemorations
Although the Sri Lankan army locked down several areas of Mullaitivu in order to prevent access to Mullivaikkal and the sites of the massacres, flames were lit on the beach and at the Nandikadal lagoon.
Tamil News
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French Tamils gathered in Place de la Bastille, Paris, to commemorate 12 passing since the end of the Mullivaikkal massacre.
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Marking 12 years since the end of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka, the US House Committee for Foreign Affairs has issued a statement highlighting the damning findings of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights which noted “ongoing impunity for human rights violations” and called on member states to...
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Vigils were held in Mannar to mark Tamil Genocide Day and to remember the victims of the massacres at Mullivaikkal.
The civil society group Thamil Thesiya Vaazhvurimai Iyakkam held a memorial service at its premises, attended by the organisation's members and locals.
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British politicians from across the political spectrum marked the 12th anniversary since the massacres at Mullivaikkal earlier today, with remarks from the UK foreign secretary and the Labour party leader Keir Starmer calling for sanctions on Sri Lankan officials accused of war crimes.
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A group of lawmakers from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) marked Tamil Genocide Day at the Sri Lankan parliament complex in Kotte this morning, before a parliamentary session was due to take place.
The parliamentarians dressed in black and lit candles by a red and yellow flag, before holding a moment of silence to commemorate the tens of...
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The Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) -UK and 24 Tamil university societies call on the UK government to recognise the Tamil genocide and refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In a joint statement, marking the 12th anniversary of the Mullivaikkal genocide, they said:
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As Tamil people, politicians and civil society remember and pay tribute to the victims of the Mullivaikkal massacre on its twelfth anniversary, local Tamil governments including divisional secretariats and municipal councils also hold vigils in memory of the massacre.
Jaffna Municipal Council
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Commemorating 12 years since the genocidal massacre at Mullivaikkal, People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) has issued a statement remembering the approximately 40,000 to 169,796 Tamils slaughtered and noting that despite the passage of time, Sri Lanka has failed to take “any genuine steps towards accountability and justice”.
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Marking 12 years since the Sri Lankan military onslaught that massacred tens of thousands of Tamils, we revisit the final days leading up to the 18th of May 2009 – a date remembered around the world as ‘Tamil Genocide Day’. The total number of Tamil civilians killed during the final months is widely contested.
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Despite bans imposed by the Sri Lankan government to commemorate the victims of the Mullivaikkal massacre on May 18, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) politicians including M.K. Shivajilingam and Peter Ilancheliyan defied those restrictions and remembered those who perished in the genocide.
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Parliamentarian and leader of Tamil Makkal Thesiya Kootani (TMTK) C.V. Wigneswaran commemorated the twelfth anniversary of the Mullivaikkal massacre at his party office earlier today.
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Special prayers were conducted this morning in the Vavuniya Karumari Amman temple in memory of those killed in the Mullivaikkal massacres, with devotees praying for their souls to rest in peace.
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The Tamil Youth Organisation in Germany served Mullivaikkal kanji to the homeless yesterday in Berlin, as Tamils across the world mark the 12th anniversary of the massacre at Mullivaikkal.
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A series of Sri Lankan government websites have been hacked today, with messages commemorating the Mullivaikkal genocide that was carried out by the state in May 2009. The websites hit by the hackers include Sri Lanka's Ministry of Health, the Embassy of Sri Lanka in People's Republic of China and the Rajarata University website.
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Tamils in Australia rallied in Melbourne and Sydney on Sunday to commemorate the 12th anniversary of Mullivaikkal genocide which saw the massacre of tens of thousands of Tamils in May 2009.
The protests, which were organised by the Tamil Refugee Council, had four key demands:
• End the military occupation...
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Former Northern Provincial Council member, M.K Shivajilingham marked the sixth day of Mullivaikkal remembrance week despite facing intimidation by Sri Lanka's security forces.
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Rights groups and activists have long complained that social media platforms are taking down content that is integral for human rights activism around the world. This has ranged from deleting evidence of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, to ...
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File photograph: Abbas meets Rajapaksa in 2014
Sri Lanka’s war crimes accused prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa released a statement in support of Palestine’s “legitimate right to statehood” and called for a ceasefire this morning, as Israel’s assault on Gaza continued.
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13 rights groups have called on Sri Lanka to immediately release Ahnaf Jazeem, who has been in detention for a year without charge "or promptly charge him with internationally recognisable criminal offences and try him in accordance with international fair trial standards."
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Former Northern Provincial Council (NPC) member, Thurairasa Ravikaran questioned why Mullaitivu police issued an order against him carrying out Mullivaikkal commemorations, despite them ignoring a Sinhala festival that violated COVID-19 guidelines earlier this week.
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Watch live as Tamil Youth Organisation UK (TYOUK) and UK Tamil societies come together to remember those killed in the genocide of Tamils by the Sri Lankan state in 2009.
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German Tamils joined mass protests in Berlin to express their condemnation of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and occupation of Palestine.Tamil Eelam flags were seen being carried by Tamil protesters, for whom the struggles against illegal state occupation and the fight for self-determination are not...
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German Tamils protested in one of Berlin’s busiest train stations, Hermannplatz, to raise awareness of the Tamil genocide ahead of the Tamil Genocide Day. -
A Tamil student from Neduntheevu, Jaffna was seriously injured and hospitalised after being hit by a Sri Lankan navy tank, last month.
15-year-old student Kavipriyan was admitted to Jaffna Teaching Hospital following the incident.
The accident occured on April 24th but the police have still not arrested the tank driver. The student's family said that the police investigation was not carried out properly, citing the lack of arrest and disappearance of Kavipriyan’s motorcycle...
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More than 30 Tamils in Vavuniya were arrested for allegedly not wearing masks with court cases already filed by Vavuniya police against them.
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The Sri Lankan Archaeological Department recently surveyed the forested Kodaliparichchan area in Nainamadu, Vavuniya District and has devised plans to commence excavations on spurious grounds that ancient Buddhist sites are buried in the site.
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Sri Lankan navy officers assaulted a group of Tamil fishermen, near the coast of Pallimunai beach in Mannar, last month.
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A Tamil man was assaulted while confronting illegal sand miners on his land, last month.
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Writing in Jacobin this week, Eelam Tamil filmmaker and member of the Tamil Refugee Council, Baranthan Vidhyapathy, said the Australian government has whitewashed the atrocities committed by Sri Lanka against Tamils and "helped equip Sri Lanka’s state security forces."
World News
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Palestinian casualties have sharply increased as Israel stepped up its bombardment of Gaza early on Friday as tanks and artillery massed at the border and joined aerial attacks.
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The Irob minority group in Ethiopia are facing an existential crisis in addition to the mass atrocities inflicted by ongoing conflict in the Tigray state.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched military forces in response to “traitorous” attacks on military camps that has since escalated to thousands of civilian casualties, hundreds of thousands of people who have been internally displaced within Tigray, and 63,000 refugees who have fled to Sudan since fighting broke out on...
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The Taliban has announced a three-day ceasefire to mark Eid al-Fitr following the bombing of a girls’ school in Dasht-e-Barchi, in which over 50 people, mostly young girls, were killed and over 100 were injured.
Afghanistan’s President, Ashraf Ghani, accused the Taliban of conducting the attack and declared Tuesday a day of national...
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Human Rights Watch (HRW) has reported that Israel’s policies constitute apartheid; with the intention to “maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied...
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Over 100 Palestinians and 20 Israeli police were injured in a far-right Israeli protest in occupied East Jerusalem.
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A group of UK charities and Human Rights Watch joined Palestine in condemning British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s letter to the Conservative Friends of Israel, in which he expressed the UK’s opposition to the ICC decision to investigate alleged war crimes in Palestine since June 2014.
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Joe Biden is the first US President to formally recognise the systematic killing of over a million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, as genocide.
In a statement marking Armenian Remembrance Day, Biden wrote:
"We remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and...
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The European Union (EU) imposed sanctions on eight Iranian militia officers and police chiefs over a deadly crackdown of protests in November 2019 by the Islamic Republic.
Hossein Salami, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was amongst those who were sanctioned.
“Hossein Salami took part in the sessions that resulted in the orders to use lethal force to suppress the November 2019 protests. Hossein Salami therefore bears responsibility for serious human rights...
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Photo of US troop in Afghanistan
Following the announcement of US President, Joe Biden, that America would withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by 11th September, Britain has similarly stated that it will withdraw nearly all of its approximately 750 soldiers.
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The British House of Lords has voted down the government’s proposed overseas operation bill which would establish “a presumption against prosecution” for service personnel accused of committing crimes overseas, except for sexual offences, if more than five years had passed since the alleged...
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A Turkish court has jailed for life 22 former soldiers for their involvement in a coup attempt that sought to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
A mass trial which concluded on Wednesday investigated nearly 500 soldiers and identified the ex-military personnel as guilty.
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Addressing the media today, Former Myanmar ambassador, Kyaw Zwar Minn, said that staff were forced to leave Myanmar’s embassy and he was dismissed as the country’s representative by Myanmar’s military attaché.
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Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, has announced further sanctions on Myanmar, targeting the military-linked conglomerate Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) following the military coup on the 1 February.
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The former United Nations Special Rapporteur on arbitrary executions and renowned human rights law professor Christof Heyns passed away this weekend.
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Tributes have flooded in around the world for Nawal El Saadawi, an Egyptian doctor, feminist and writer, who was a panel member in the 2010 Permanent People’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka which acknowledged the “importance of continuing investigation into the possibility of genocide”.
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Secretary-General of the UN António Guterres stressed the key role that the United Nationals plays in combating deteriorating human rights violations around the globe in his opening remarks at the 46th session of the UNHRC session in Geneva.
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The United Kingdom and Canada announced that they are imposing sanctions on individuals responsible for serious human rights violations against the people of Myanmar during the coup.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced that three Myanmar military generals will face travel bans and their assets will be frozen under the UK's sanctions regime.
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Photo of ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda
The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday determined that it has jurisdiction over the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, opening the way for the chief prosecutor to inquire into allegations of Israeli war crimes.
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Myanmar’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been detained by the country’s military following a military coup in which the top army commander, Min Aung Hlaing, seized total control.
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Indian riot police attempted to clear farmers from one of the farmer protest sites in Ghazipur by cutting off water and electricity supplies.
The protesters defiantly refused to leave the site and were joined by thousands of protesters, forcing the police to back down.
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Three British Sikh men of Indian origin have been arrested by the UK police in connection with the murder of Rulda Singh, a member of the Hindu-supremacist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in India in 2009.
In a series of dawn raids, Gursharanvir Singh Wahiwala and his brother Amritivir Singh aged 37 and 40 respectively were arrested in Coventry and Piara Singh Gill, 38, was arrested in Wolverhampton.
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As Israel spearheads a massively successful vaccination drive against the coronavirus, reports reveal that the Palestinian population residing in the occupied West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza strip is deliberately being left out of the programme by the Israeli government.
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A group of United Nations human rights experts have accused US president Donald Trump of violating international law after he pardoned four Blackwater private security contractors who were serving prison sentences for killing 14 innocent Iraqi civilians, including two children, in Baghdad in 2007.
According to the US Justice...
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The city of Detroit announced last month that it is countersuing Black Lives Matter protestors after a group of organizers sued the local government in late August.
After protests across the USA and around the world over the killing of George Floyd police in May, activists in Detroit sued the local...
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A cross-party statement by British MPs and peers in the House of Lords has condemned the ‘brute force’ the Indian government has used in responding to ‘hundreds of thousands of peacefully protesting farmers’.
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British banks have come under pressure from human rights groups after it was reported that more than $60 million has been lent to a company part-owned and used by the Myanmar military, as it carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.
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Trump supporters have stormed the Capitol to prevent Congress from confirming the victory of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Lawmakers have been rushed out of the building following the breach. It came as the representatives debated a move by Republicans to overturn November’s election results.
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The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has outlined “grave” concern over the government’s handling of people held in Australia’s immigration detention facilities, as it published a report looking into the immigration detention network last month.
The AHRC found that people were being detained for long periods of time – “orders of magnitude greater...
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In reflection of the Australia's grievous history with its Indigenous people, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the country's national anthem would be altered from January 1.
Australia will no longer be referred to as “young and free” in the anthem. Instead, people will sing “one and free,” in hopes it will create a “spirit of unity” among its inhabitants and acknowledge people who have lived in Australia tens of thousands of years before colonists.