Latest from Tamil News Network (TNN)

• Sri Lanka sets up new courts to try war suspects May 24, 2012
  Sri Lanka is setting up new courts to accelerate cases against hundreds of Tamil rebel suspects three years after the end of the island’s bloody ethnic war, a government spokesman said Thursday. Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena said the justice ministry would open three courts near the former war zone in the northeast of Sri Lanka to hear charges against more than […]
• Slaying of Tamil-Canadian underscores enduring ethnic violence in Sri Lanka May 24, 2012
  Andrew Mahendrarajah Antonipillai believed he was protected. Family and friends tried to warn him of the danger he faced returning to his native Sri Lanka. But Mr. Antonipillai, a man his Montreal neighbours knew as ready to help anyone in need, shrugged them off, saying his Canadian citizenship would keep him safe. “They can’t do anything to me,” he told fr […]
• Reconciliation: The Symbolic and the Substantive May 24, 2012
  Photo courtesy JDS Against the backdrop of grave planetary changes, Sarath Fonseka’s release, G.L. Peiris’s visit to Washington DC and the third anniversary of the defeat of the LTTE, an evaluation of the requirements of reconciliation are in order.  There is a need to distinguish between the symbolic and the substantive – both in turn playing their part in […]
• India’s Marxist Communist Party calls for withdrawal of Sri Lanka military May 24, 2012
  The Marxist Communist Party of India (CPI-M) in a press release on Wednesday called for immediate withdrawal of the Sri Lanka military stationed in Tamil areas of the island. In one of the five resolutions passed at the state committee meeting of the party held at Ealakiri in Tamil Nadu last Sunday, it was decided to urge the Indian government to diplomatica […]
• Tamils will never accept Sri Lanka constitution: Sivajilingam May 24, 2012
  Eezham Tamils were not a party and will never accept the one-sided constitutions Sri Lanka enacted either in 1972 or in 1978, said former TNA parliamentarian MK Sivajilingam speaking in Jaffna on the 40th anniversary of the 1972 republican constitution of Sri Lanka on Tuesday. The 1978 constitution not only continued the unitary concept but also made it more […]
• 1972 constitution reminds Tamils not to backtrack idea of nationhood May 24, 2012
  The 1972 republican constitution of Sri Lanka, which for the first time constitutionalised a unitary Sinhala-Buddhist state, was enacted without the participation or mandate of Eezham Tamils. Not only their political opposition was brushed aside but even the judiciary also played a game against legal challenges. The constitution forced the shift in Tamil pol […]
• Out of jail, Sri Lankan ex-general says government must go May 23, 2012
  He was pardoned by the president and released from jail, but Sri Lankan former army chief Sarath Fonseka had nothing but scorn for the government on his first day of freedom and vowed to fight for its downfall. The ex-general said it could take 5 to 10 years to change the political culture of the island nation but he was determined to join forces with opposi […]
• 40-year-old Sri Lanka constitution burnt at cremation ground of Parvathi Amma May 23, 2012
  The 1972 republican constitution of Sri Lanka, which for the first time constitutionalised the unitary Sinhala-Buddhist State and brought in the name ‘Sri Lanka’, against the wishes of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island, has been burnt on its 40th anniversary on Tuesday, 22 May 2012, at the spot where the LTTE leader Pirapharan’s mother was cremated b […]
• Remembering Mu’l’livaaykkaal is for edification of international community May 23, 2012
  Remembering Mu’l’livaaykkaal is not wailing for a tragedy. It is remembering the highest achievement of modern Tamil history, when Tamils decisively said no to an entire international community abetting a genocidal state. Mu’l’livaaykkaal is not an end of a journey. It calls for our massive re-commitment of collective political aspirations more than ever, as […]
• Release Tamil political prisoners-TNA May 22, 2012
  The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) today renewed its request for the release all ‘Tamil political prisoners’. Making a statement in parliament under Standing Orders 23-II, TNA leader R. Sampanthan said as many as 234 Tamil prisoners had been on a hunger strike for six consecutive days and their health condition had deteriorated. Mr. Sampanthan said the govern […]