A Sri Lanka Army officer has given Channel 4 his account of how, following orders from Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa , the commander of the 58 Division, Brigadier Shavendra Silva (now Major General) gathered his officers in the closing days of the war and ordered them to take no prisoners when capturing the remainder of the enclave in which thousands of Tamils civilians and fighters were surrounded. This is what Brig. Silva, now Sri Lanka’s representative to the UN in New York, told his gathered troops: “This is a very decisive day for us because last night I got a call from the...
Tamil youths in London, Paris and Sydney marked the anniversary of ‘ Black July ’ with activities to raise public awareness of the mass killings of Tamils in Sri Lanka. In recent days members of the Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) in Sydney and London handed out leaflets at central locations, while in Paris they organised blood donations and participated in a march. See report and photos here .
British Tamils held a candle light vigil Saturday evening opposite the Prime Minister’s official residence, 10 Downing Street, to remember victims of Sri Lanka’s 1983 ‘Black July’ anti-Tamil pogrom. See full report, photos here . A thousand people dressed in black and carrying black flags and Eelam national flags, held a vigil between 6 and 9 pm, with lit candles and banners commemorating the pogrom. For several hours before the vigil began, activists and supporters handed out leaflets in the surrounding Whitehall area. The events were organised by the British Tamil Forum (BTF).
" While Black July destroyed the Tamil economic base in the island, it created the now flourishing global Diasporic economic base. While it sought to silence Tamil political struggle ‘for once and for all’, it instead spread Tamil activism across the world. It sought to erase the Eelam Tamil cultural symbolism and identity, but instead rendered them globally recognised . The present is thus inextricably linked to the past. And the past will also define the future. Until there is accountability for the mass atrocities against the Tamil people, until justice – the bedrock for any lasting peace...
Based on a speech at the vigil in London on July 23, 2011 to remember the victims of Black July. Every year, for 28 years, the Tamil people and our friends across the world have come together in July to remember a crucial turning point in our history. Black July was the largest and most significant of Sri Lanka’s pogroms, more horrific and unrestrained in its violence than the Nazis’ Kristallnacht. In just six days starting on July 23, 1983, Sinhala mobs supported by police and troops attacked the Tamils in the island’s south, killing several thousand and driving the survivors into camps...
“The resounding victory consolidates the Tamil National Alliance's status as an authentic representative of ethnic Tamils in negotiations with Rajapaksa's ethnic majority Sinhalese-controlled government in sharing political power and postwar rehabilitation. The party had appealed to voters to give it a mandate to demand self-rule in the Tamil-majority areas .” - Associated Press , July 23, 2011. See the report here . See the election results here . "The military-intimidated elections that took place in the country of Eezham Tamils are a despicable way of exercising democracy or probing public...
Jaffna is still Sri Lanka's most militarised region. Photo AFP Extracts from a Reuters report from Jaffna Saturday: Tamils say President Mahinda Rajapaksa's post-war development and infrastructure projects in the former war zone in the island's north have yet to address their real concerns and have excluded their participation . Voting in Jaffna, as it did in war time, will take place with a heavy military presence . Tamils in Jaffna are reluctant to speak in public due to the presence of government intelligence officers and soldiers , and many Reuters approached gave a brusque "No comment...
From the Associated Press : Sri Lankan Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage told AP while campaigning in Kilinochchi: This election victory "is of value to the government. .. It will enable us to tell the world that we have won the confidence of the Tamil people after winning the war ." The Tamil National Alliance complained to the elections commissioner that a group [it] believes was military, in uniforms and carrying rifles, forcibly collected polling cards used to identify eligible voters in many parts of Kilinochchi on Friday night. From TamilNet : Causing panic and instilling maximum fear...
A ‘top official’ in Sri Lanka’s External Affairs ministry is quoted as saying the Clinton- Jayalalithaa meeting Wednesday had not been as consequential as Colombo had feared. “It is not as bad as we expected,” the official told the Daily Mirror. He said the ministry had been alert to any ‘negative fallout’ from the meeting in Chennai, and had expected a stronger statement than Ms. Clinton had made. He added the absence of a powerful outcome was testament to US’s lack of dominance in the region. Ms. Clinton’s “lukewarm remarks” on Sri Lanka underlined that even as the US was “pushing India to...
A charity dinner held last weekend by the Tamil Diaspora in Malaysia raised a whopping million Ringgit (US$330,000) to support the humanitarian efforts by the Tamil Forum Malaysia (TFM) for Tamils affected by Sri Lanka's war. See the report here .