UK Tamils gather at Cardiff protesting Sri Lankan cricket

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 June 2013, 16:12 GMT]
Hundreds of Eezham Tamils from the UK gathered near the cricket stadium in Cardiff on Thursday to protest the presence of the Sri Lankan cricket team on British soil, urging the UK for a complete boycott of sporting and cultural ties with the genocide-accused Sri Lankan state. This mass protest follows on the heels of a violent incident near the Oval stadium on Monday, where dozens of Tamil activists protesting on the occasion of the Sri Lanka-Australia cricket match were brutally attacked by Sinhala mobs.

[Photo courtesy: Philip Brown / Reuters]

In the protest in Cardiff, British Tamil youth also reportedly ran through the cricket grounds holding the Tamil Eelam national flag. Owing to Tamils joining the Cardiff protest in large numbers, the British police maintained a large presence.

[Photo: TamilNet]

The Cardiff protests in wake of the India-Sri Lanka cricket match also saw some minor clashes between Tamils and Sinhalese on Thursday. Sources said that this was largely owing to the latter provoking the Tamils with vulgar abuses.

The earlier protest in Oval stadium saw the elderly, women and children being attacked and harassed by Sinhala cricket fans who were leaving the match.

The attacks on peaceful protestors on Monday was strongly condemned by several Tamil student, youth and grassroots organizations.

Sources from Cardiff say that the crowds in the Tamil side, which was around 500 when the protest started, have been swelling over time.

[Photo courtesy: Adrian Dennis / AFP]

[Photo: TamilNet]

UK Tamils urged to boycott Conservative Party

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 May 2013, 06:17 GMT]
If the British Prime Minister David Cameron is not prepared to boycott CHOGM hosted by Sri Lanka setting a new global paradigm on genocide, then the UK Tamils should have the guts to demonstrate the same sentiments they had showed to Rajapaksa visiting London to the British Prime Minister too, commented new generation Tamils for alternative politics in the occupied country of Eezham Tamils. As a first step, Eezham Tamils in the Conservative Party should resign, activists ‘instructed’ by the Establishment outfits should come forward to boycott them and the message should go to the Labour Party as well that was in complicity with the genocide. The individuals who continue in vain to cling to the Establishments and the ‘lobbyists’ in their service who do most of the lobbying on their own people have to be identified and ostracized, the alternative activists further said.

David Cameron

David Cameron will defy boycott calls to attend Sri Lanka Commonwealth Summit, reported The Telegraph on Friday.

Eezham Tamils shouldn’t anymore plead with such leaders as such of UK, Australia etc., but leave them to get exposed in standing politically naked with Rajapaksa at the CHOGM, which will enlighten Tamils as well as 99 per cent of the world on the importance of isolating and targeting the one per cent that is treading on humanity, Tamils for alternative politics said.

* * *

Further comments from the Tamil political activists in the island follow:

The CHOGM issue has been hotly discussed for well over two years now. But, Tamils have to realise that the CHOGM issue is ultimately decided by the stand taken by the USA and India at Geneva in protecting the genocidal Sinhala State. The diaspora that failed in realising the importance of vigorously denouncing the US-initiated deception at Geneva in toto, is deemed to fail in the CHOGM issue as well.

Immediately after ending the war with calculated genocide, the main propaganda of the crisis outfits of the West was that the Tamil people are ‘tired’ of the struggle for independence and now they should drop it, but they may democratically continue their struggle for ‘rights’.

Sections of Tamils fell into the trap, started organising simulated struggles guided by the very adversaries, without realising that the agenda of the adversaries is to deviate struggles from targeting them, to get as much as benefits from Colombo by citing or managing the struggle and above all to make Tamils tired politically too.

If the struggle is not addressed in the right direction it will certainly be vain and tiring.

* * *

Certain sections of Tamils who had already been hijacked by the adversaries detracted the spontaneous uprising of the people in the diaspora during the last stages of the war and asked what was the use, in order to cast defeatism, to silence the people and to lure them towards a ‘tangent’ polity.

It is time for the Tamils to ask them back that what was the use in the tangent polity of theirs for four years, when what is happening today in the form of structural genocide permanently annihilating the identity of the entire nation of Eezham Tamils is worse than the genocide in the war.

The diaspora, not merely in the UK but all across the world, especially the younger generation, should realise that in their future struggles, addressing their own governments is more important than targeting the agent in Colombo.

* * *

A very significant development in this regard has come from the youth of Tamil Nadu.

The pre-Geneva media exposures have at least brought in an uprising in Tamil Nadu in the right direction, thus bringing in hope for the future and even making the Tamil Nadu State to officially commit to a stand aspired by Eezham Tamils.

But the tempo built up by the media exposures resulted in only disappointment, lethargy and mental tiredness in the diaspora that had sacrificed people’s politics for counting on the US agenda.

Much depends on who take up the articulation of the struggle.

* * *

Tamils should also realize that the future struggle is not simply confined to them alone. It is a struggle of humanity and mobilisation has to be in that direction. There are other Commonwealth countries – Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles etc., where the public has to be vigorously mobilised whether their Establishments listen or don’t listen.

Maldivians in the immediate neighbourhood have a special responsibility in telling their government to keep out of genocidal Colombo. Maldives will be vulnerably affected by any dangerous paradigm cropping up in the region. Intelligent Maldivians might have realised that as long as the LTTE was there, none of the bold advances of the powers that now intensely affect their country could take place, but they all now come due to the post-war disposition of the Sinhala State.

* * *

New Delhi Establishment keenly engineers in favour of genocidal Sri Lanka hosting CHOGM and getting the Commonwealth in its hands for the next two years –Vijay Nambiar in the UN then and Kamalesh Sharma in the Commonwealth now – diplomatic sources in the West cite. But that is no excuse for the treachery played on the part of the West. Tamils have been witnessing the game of passing the ball for ages.

Downing Street hopes that participation at Sri Lanka’s CHOGM would make that government to allow free provincial elections in September, The Telegraph said.

The Co-Chair countries that asked the people to go into the hands of the genocidal Sinhala State, washed their hands off once the Eezham Tamils herded into the barbed-wire camps were ‘released’ into open prisons and in jungle lands that were not their original villages. The IDP question has been successfully resolved amazingly at a short time, the culprits tell the world now. The deceptive provincial election will be another occasion to wash hands off and tell that the political solution too is over.

“Handing Sri Lanka the lead role for two years would “kill” the Commonwealth as a functioning diplomatic forum,” The Telegraph cited a Commonwealth diplomat.

The death of the Commonwealth is perhaps better than retaining it and providing a forum for the anti-people States to play ‘consensual’ villainy on humanity. Common humanity is not going to shed tears for the death of the Commonwealth. But the contrast between the geniuses of humanity and defaulters of civilisation – between those who started the UN, Commonwealth etc., and those who caused the death of them –would certainly get into history.

Chronology:

07.05.13  UK Tamils urged to boycott Conservative Party

03.05.13  Keith Locke questions New Zealand's silence on Sri..

02.05.13  Commonwealth SG upholds SL venue of CHOGM, meets C..

30.04.13  Australian Labor MP calls for CHOGM boycott

27.04.13  Fraser supports CHOGM boycott as CMAG ducks action

17.04.13  Cancel CHOGM, appeals Prof. Lynch

10.04.13  CHOGM heats up, Rae calls Sri Lanka a "Rogue Membe..

26.03.13  Queen to skip CHOGM - paper

16.03.13  Commonwealth's quandary over CHOGM in Sri Lanka

12.03.13  Commonwealth day brings to focus war crimes, Sri L..

11.03.13  Tutu, Robinson call for shift of CHOGM venue

03.03.13  Sri Lanka CHOGM boycott calls multiply

28.02.13  Australia should withdraw from CHOGM in Sri Lanka:..

10.02.13  CHOGM boycott calls for renewed action on Sri Lank..

Demonstrating UK Tamils expose India’s defiance of international refugee conventions

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 July 2012, 00:31 GMT]
Demonstrating outside the Indian High Commission at India Place, London, Tamils in the UK demanded the immediate release of the detained inmates of the Chengalpet (Chengkal-paddu) ‘special camp’ and for the closure of that facility. Separate petitions submitted by TCC-UK to the UNHCR and the Indian High Commission called for a revision in the Indian approach to Eezham Tamil refugees in India. “Right now our priority is to shut down these special camps. Apart from that we can't expect much from India but we need the various agencies of the UN to communicate with each other to clarify that the isolated incidents witnessed by each when seen together is actually facilitating the genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation,” Sivatharshan Sivakumaravel, an activist from TCC-UK told TamilNet.

Demonstrators at the protest organized by the TCC-UK, supporting the demands of the hunger strikers at Chengalpet, urged India to comply with the standards of the UNHCR.

The petition submitted to the Indian High Commission, addressed to the state government of Tamil Nadu, urged TN to “take brave measures in addressing Eelam Tamil refugees, beginning with the immediate closure of all ‘special camps’”, also suggesting the development of robust mechanisms to ensure Tamil refugees are gives rights as enshrined in the 1951 refugee convention and its 1967 protocol.

Likewise the petition submitted to the UNHCR, which noted India’s role in assisting Sri Lanka’s colonization of the Tamil homeland, called on the UN to ensure the shutting down of such detention camps in TN, free access of NGOs in all refugee camps, and to protect the fundamental human rights of the Eezham Tamil refugees.

• Petition handed over to the Indian High Commission in UK

Meanwhile, the remaining inmates of Chengalpet camp have also joined the hunger strikers owing to no positive response from the government. Though 4 of the illegally detained inmates have been released over Sunday and Monday, the fate of the remaining is still uncertain.

• Petition to the London office of UNHCR

Thirteen others may be released owing to pressures from the protests, in accordance with earlier promises, but the current hunger strike protest aims at nothing less than the closure of such illegal detention facilities and release of all inmates, informed sources from Chengalpet told TamilNet.

A prayer meeting for the hunger strikers is to be conducted tomorrow evening jointly by different Tamil Nadu political parties and civil society groups near Thiruvalluvar statue, at Mylapore.

* * *

The demonstration gains significance in the context of India that complicited a genocidal war and continue to abet the structural genocide against Eezham Tamils in the island, being elected to the UNHRC committee to monitor ‘progress’ in the island, commented Tamil diaspora activists.

The media in India, especially in Tamil Nadu, is calculatedly deviated to focus attention on dummy personalities in the island when the master culprits are within India, the activists further said.

India is not a signatory to the international conventions on refugees, even though it had made use of the issue of refugees in the secession of Bangladesh.

For more than half a century, and more than quarter a century respectively, the Tibetan and their inferior brethren, the Eezham Tamils in India, languish without any international status of refugees and no international remedy to their plights.

The demonstration is of a particular significance since India is never exposed to international screening of its dubious handling of the refugees issue, at a time when such issues have become transnational in questioning the global order machinated by the establishments of criminal record, the activists further said.

Chronology:

04.07.12  Demonstrating UK Tamils expose India’s defiance of..

01.07.12  Activists demonstrating at Chengalpet detained by ..

29.06.12  Tamils in Germany protest India’s ill-treatment of..

27.06.12  Condition of hunger strikers deteriorates in Cheng..

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