Arrangements are underway to obtain over 1,400 acre of land in Kilinochchi, stated the government in Parliament on Thursday, as land grabbing by the state continues. 1,406.94 acres of land in Kilinochchi are to be seized, and distributed amongst 10 government organisations and to at least 3 private companies on long-term leases. The land to be given to the private companies has been evaluated at Rs. 17 million, stated the Land Development Ministry. However, the rest of the area is yet to be valued, with the government claiming that landowners will be compensated. The latest move comes amid...
Sri Lankan Minister Mervyn Silva has called on the Sinhalese people to reproduce as much as possible, in order to increase population numbers. Silva, Sri Lanka’s Public Relations Minister, was reportedly addressing a government function in Wattala, and stated , "The Sinhala race is rapidly becoming a minority and my only only request to the Sinhalese is to produce children as much as possible to avoid extinction of their race". The Sri Lankan government already offers cash incentives for the Sri Lankan Army, almost exclusively Sinhalese, to have extra children, having awarded over Rs. 700 million in payments so far. See more here . The Minister then went on to offer his services to the Sinhala people, adding, "There is no point in lamenting over this problem… If any woman has a problem in having children, I kindly request her to contact me for further assistance".
In the last game for the team at this tournament, Tamil Eelam defeated a weakened Darfur United by ten goals to nil. The Darfurians, all of whom live in a refugee camp in eastern Chad, started the game with 10 players, and as expected, Tamil Eelam controlled the game from the start.
The Sri Lankan government should abolish the 13th Amendment, said, a committee member of one of the two major Buddhist monasteries, the Asgiriya Chapter, reports Ceylon Today . “It (the 13th Amendment) has instead precipitated international pressure particularly form India, though force applied by South India. It has also given birth to the money guzzling Provincial Council system and caused disharmony among the different ethnic communities. We must as a country remain independent,” said the Buddisht monk Medagama Dhammanda Thera.
Work towards representing the Tamil community would not stop until there are international guarantees that the root causes of the conflict in Sri Lanka were addressed, concluded the spokesman of the Global Tamil Forum in a statement to The Island . “We believe only when justice is served and root causes for the military conflict are addressed permanently with international guarantees can the affected begin to consider moving on and a sustainable peace for all the island can be achieved,” he concluded. Surendiran added that there should be no reason for the government not to cooperate with the...
A court case regarding the disappearance of Ezhilan, the missing husband TNA councillor Ananthy Sasitharan, and 5 other men who surrendered to the Sri Lankan Army, has been postponed yet again after the government lawyer had failed to appear at the session. Families of the disappeared first filed this case in 2009, but since then it has been postponed several times, including being transferred from the Vavuniya High Court to a court in Mullaitivu. Also see our earlier posts: Families coerced into registering disappeared as dead (21 January 2014) Desperate search for disappeared continues (16...
The Sri Lankan Army has declared it has discovered ancient Buddhist ruins in Kilinochchi, with the area now closed off as a “sacred archaeological site”. Troops from the Sri Lanka Light Infantry (SLLI) troops of the 662 Brigade allegedly came across the site “by accident”, according to the Army website . After an inspection from Major General Sudantha Ranasinghe, Commander of the Security Forces in Kilinochchi, government archaeologists were called in, who stated that the site held a Buddhist temple from the Polonnaruwa period and needed “further excavations, extensive research and...
The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) has condemned the release of Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan government at their central committee meeting this week, reported Colombo Gazette . JVP MP Sunil Handunetti criticised the move stating that the Sri Lankan government was not concerned with any fishermen that India was holding in custody. Their condemnation comes as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa wrote to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling for a “strong and robust” response to continued attacks and arrests on Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy. See our earlier post: Sri...
A much criticised Sri Lankan government commission into disappearances has received over 18,000 submissions regarding missing people, in just three hearings across the North-East of the island. The probe, declared open by the government just weeks before it faced a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council, has been dismissed as a farce by NPC member Ananthy Sasitharan and NPC Deputy Chairman Antony Jeganathan . Yet, in three sittings across the Tamil homeland, in Killinochchi, Jaffna and Batticaloa, thousands of desperate relatives have submitted 18,590 complaints, in hope of finding their...
The death of Pon Sivakumaran, marked as Student Uprising Day, was commemorated in Sweden by the members of the Tamil Eelam Football Association. The team was attending celebrations of the Swedish National Day, where the Global Tamil Youth League hosted an exhibition, bringing awareness about the ongoing genocide in Sri Lanka.