TamilNet reports that uprooted Tamils in Champoor, whose lands were taken away by the Sri Lankan government for India’s thermal power project, depopulating the Tamil villages and declaring the area as High Security Zone, have asked that they should be allowed to resettle without further delay in their home villages and in their houses in Champoor area.
The majority of four thousand uprooted Tamils currently sheltered in camps located at Ki’liveddi, Ma’natcheanai, Paddiththidal and Kaddai-pa’richchaan have expressed their resolve for resettlement in their land.
Meanwhile, sections of the Sri Lankan establishment are advocating to shift the proposed coal power plant from the location identified earlier in 2002 near Veppankuda, above the Marble Beach, to Sampoor region on the opposite side of Koddiyar Bay.
Villages Champoor, Choodaik-kudaa, Navaratnapuram, Koonith-theevu and Kadatka’raich-cheanai are in the Sri Lanka Army occupied High Security Zone.
Champoor is a large and populous fishing village overlooking Trincomalee port.
The Sri Lanka military seized Champoor from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after heavy fighting that left at least 350 civilians dead and hundreds injured and depopulated the area.
Later, Colombo declared Champoor a High Security Zone, making it out of bounds for civilians, most of whom were forced to live in refugee camps in the neighbouring district of Batticaloa and later sheltered in so-called welfare centres in Ki’liveddi, Ma’natcheanai, Paddiththidal and Kaddaipa’richchaan.
These uprooted Tamils now live in temporary huts.
These ‘welfare centres’ are not provided with adequate water supply and sanitary facilities.
Hence the inmates undergo immense suffering in running their day to day life.
Meanwhile, the coastal port town Valveddiththu’rai in the northern coast of Jaffna, the birthplace of the LTTE leader V Prabakharan, remains a targeted place for harassment by the genocidal Sri Lanka Army occupying Jaffna.
On Sunday, the Army stopped an annual sports-meet event organised by the sports associations of the town and also ordered the removal of the flags of the sports associations displayed for the event.
At the involvement of the Sri Lanka police later, the Army conceded to the conduct of the event, but said that such events should get prior approval from the occupying Army not from anybody else.
The occupying Army has a special grudge against the sports associations of Valveddiththu’rai, as a few months ago the associations displayed flags in half-mast for the demise of Parvathi Amma, the mother of the LTTE leader.
The Army at that time ordered against the half-mast display, but the sports associations didn’t care.
The Army later removed the flags on half-mast and the posters pasted on the walls paying homage to Parvathi Amma.
Sunday’s incident was a planned retaliation by the Army, local people said.
The sports meet on Sunday, an annual event for the sports associations of the town, was organised at a locality called Koththiyaaladi near the Ka’li Temple in Valveddiththu’rai.
The occupying military that entered the grounds at the commencement of the event, ordered the immediate cancellation of the event and removal of the flags.
Tension prevailed as the youth of the sports associations refused to remove their flags.
The occupying Army relented at the arrival of the SL police to the scene and said that they would permit the event on the understanding that in future such events should get prior permission from the SL Army.
The people of Valveddiththu’rai face immense day-to-day harassment from the Army occupying the town.
A particular agenda of the occupying Army in Valveddiththu’rai is to harass the supporters of MK Sivajilingam who is contesting for the Town Council and whose election manifesto is to shift the occupying Army out of the town, local people said.
Meanwhile, even though the occupying Army has demolished the house of Prabakharan, every day several hundreds from the south come to see the premises and the SL Army turns them back, news sources said.
• The British, the Europeans and the great powers played a dubious role in the massacre and disappearance of Tamils, said Dr Andrew Higginbottom, the Principal Lecturer in Politics/Human Rights at Kingston University in London, taking part in the Mu’l’livaaykkaal Remembrance event in London on May 18.
There was a peace process. But, visas were banned and the political status was denied to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, he added.
They were branded as a terrorist organisation by the European Union under the prompting of Britain and United States and they (the EU, UK and US) deliberately broke the peace process, which had its horrible termination in the killing fields of Rajapaksa.
So, there is co-responsibility. This was not just any genocide; this was a genocide planned, including by the international powers, who knew what was going on, Higginbottom said.
Recalling that Diaspora Tamils did their part by alerting through their massive protests three years ago, the Kingston academic said that the world powers knowingly did nothing: ‘They have satellites, they have telecommunications, they created the political conditions for this massacre and genocide and they knew operationally what was exactly going on and they did nothing to stop it.’
He continued: ‘I honour the cause of Tamil Eelam. I am British.
‘But, we are standing here at Trafalgar Square that celebrates the British Empire. Look at the statue over there.
‘It is of General Henry Havelock. It celebrates the massacre of Indian people in 1857 when, the history books would truly reveal, at least 10 million people were massacred by that man.’
‘The proud people of Vanni showed resistance to their very end. We have to continue. The struggle continues. Long Live Tamil Eelam,’ Dr Higginbottom said.
Another speaker, John Rees of Stop the War Coalition said the activists of the coalition were horrified by Sri Lankan government’s attack on the Tamil people in 2009.
Horrified too, because the International Community and the major powers failed to intervene, failed to condemn and failed to act when mass murders were being carried out against the Tamil people, John Rees said adding that ‘But, we were not surprised,’ because we had seen what these same governments did in Afghanistan and Iraq.
He said: ‘We stand with you in demanding now that the very least these governments that proclaim as friends of democracy, freedom and justice, can do is to open an international inquiry so that the whole world can know what the Sri Lankan government did to the Tamil people.
‘Because, if we know that, then we can return, knowing that the right is on our side for the struggle for self-determination and the freedom of Tamils.’
Criminal barrister Hugo Charlton representing Campaign Against Criminalising Communities in his speech said, what had happened in Vanni is a matter for the UN Security Council to refer to the International Criminal Court for appropriate action.