Photograph Tamilwin

Speaking at a press conference in Jaffna on Friday, the leader of the Tamil National People's Front (TNPF), Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam expressed "grave disappointment" on the UNHRC resolution 22/1, and asserted that the call for a "local investigatory process has to be outright rejected". 

Commenting on the resolution, he went on to say that the TNPF wished to "unreservedly distance" itself from it, citing three reasons: the call to use local mechanisms in order to carry out investigations, the resolution's emphasis on the LLRC, and the inclusion of the government's pledge to hold Northern provincial council elections.

See here for audio clip on TamilNet. Transcribed verbatim below:

Rejecting the UNHRC Resolution 22/1, Mahinda Rajapaksa said,

"This attack would not surprise us at all. These attacks would not subdue us either, nor would they defeat or intimidate us in any way,"

Defending bilateral ties between India and Sri Lanka, the High Commissioner of Sri Lank to India, Prasad Kariyawasam, said told The Week that the resolution was brought about by "LTTE lobbies from the west".

He added:

“There is no dispute between India and Sri Lanka. Our bilateral ties are not at all affected,”

A spokesperson for the Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma has said that Sri Lanka will not be on the agenda at the forthcoming Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group.

Several countries have tried to include Sri Lanka on the agenda, especially due to November’s controversial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, hosted by Colombo.

After demands by Tamil Nadu students that the IPL bars cricket players from Sri Lanka, reports have emerged that teams of the Indian Premier League have told the Indian cricket board to drop Chennai as a venue for matches.

Commenting on the UNHRC's resolution on Sri Lanka, the US Tamil Political Action Council (USTPAC) said that “strong international action on Sri Lanka is well overdue”.

USTPAC spokesperson, Dhamy Rajendra said:

A piece in The Economist examines the military’s role in Sri Lanka.

See extracts below, for full article click here.

JOSEPH STALIN is unhappy. The boss of a Sri Lankan teachers’ union claims that the country’s schools are losing their independence. Last month, unions say, nearly 4,000 headteachers were invited to interviews at the National Cadet Corps. Successful applicants will get 45 days of training, and then full military titles. The idea, supposedly, is to improve discipline in schools.

The army’s grip is spreading across Sri Lankan society. Activists talk of a general effort to promote military culture among the young, especially among the ethnic Sinhalese majority.

A Sri Lankan organisation has said they will attack Indian Tamils who visit Sri Lanka as revenge for attacks on Singhalese in Tamil Nadu.

Leader of the Ravana Balaya, Saddhatissa Thera, said the Indian government was scared of political parties in Tamil Nadu and said unless the safety of Sri Lankans in Tamil Nadu is assured by the Indian High Commission in Colombo, it will “have to think of a system to protect people who visit Sri Lanka from Tamil Nadu”.

“It’s enough that we have waited like cowards,” he said.

Tamil groups across the world held protests, hunger strikes and awareness events in solidarity with the demonstrating students in Tamil Nadu earlier this week.

Hundreds of primary school students in Idinthakarai and Kanchipurum marched through the streets of Tamil Nadu wearing masks of 12-year-old Balachandran Prabhakaran, who was executed by Sri Lankan Army soldiers.

The UNHRC resolution passed Thursday highlights past and ongoing human rights violations in Sri Lanka, but regrettably fails to establish an independent and international investigation into alleged crimes under international law, Amnesty International said.

Human Rights Watch similarly criticised the UNHRC resolution, saying: