Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Chavuinism, Civil War, Francis Boyle, Genocide, IDPS, Internment camps, Iran Elections, Lebensraum, LTTE, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Nation-State, Nationalism, Nazi, Nazism, Racism, Self-Determination, Sinhala, Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan Army, State Terror, Tamil Diaspora, Tamils
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30 June 2009
Source: Open Democracy
What kind of violence has the Sri Lankan state been committing against its Tamil civilian population as the island‘s civil war ended; on what scale and with what intentions? Martin Shaw explores the difficult terrain where war, atrocity and genocide meet.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in his “victory speech”, told Sri Lanka’s parliament that “our heroic forces have sacrificed their lives to protect Tamil civilians”, and he took “personal responsibility” for protecting Tamils. Yet his government is now scandalously confining this huge population – who have already suffered not only from the LTTE but from Sri Lankan bombardments which caused probably tens of thousands of deaths and injuries – in squalid conditions. The government has officially backtracked, under international pressure, on plans to hold the displaced, while screening them for potential “terrorists”, for up to three years; it now says that 80% will be resettled by the end of (more…)
Filed under: Europe, Middle East | Tags: British Petroleum, Colonialism, Genocide, Imperialism, Iraq, Iraqi Oil, Iraqi Oil Fields, Racism, White Supremacy
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1 July 2009
Source: Global Research
Iraq’s government today approved a BP-led consortium’s offer to develop a giant oil field in the south, moving forward with the only deal struck during a much-hyped but ultimately disappointing international oil auction.
Iraq, which is desperate for cash to fund its reconstruction efforts, had put six oil and two gas fields on offer to foreign firms yesterday in the country’s first international oil licensing round in over three decades. But the auction — opposed from the start by many of the country’s lawmakers — failed to elicit the kind of excitement or commitments Iraqi oil officials had anticipated.
BP and its Chinese consortium partner CNPC walked away from the auction with development rights for the 17.8 billion barrel Rumaila field. But their win came only after they agreed to take less money for the oil they produced.
Under the service contracts, the companies are paid a per barrel price for production over a minimum target level. BP and CNPC had bid $3.99 per barrel, but slashed their price to the $2 per barrel payment sought by the oil ministry. Their only rivals for the fields, a consortium led by US giant Exxon Mobil, refused to amend its offer of $4.80 per barrel on target production of 3.1 million barrels per day.
The Cabinet of ministers signed off on the (more…)
Filed under: Middle East, North America | Tags: Colonialism, Genocide, Imperialism, Iraq, Iraqi Oil, Oil, Oil Fields, Racism, US Imperialism
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30 June 2009
Source: World Socialist Website
It is fitting that today’s deadline for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq’s cities coincides with a meeting in Baghdad to auction off some of the country’s largest oil fields to companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and British Petroleum. It is a reminder of the real motives for the 2003 invasion and in whose interests over one million Iraqis and 4,634 American and other Western troops have been killed. The Iraq war was, and continues to be, an imperialist war waged by the American ruling elite for control of oil and geo-strategic advantage.
The contracts will facilitate the first large-scale exploitation of Iraq’s energy resources by US and other transnationals since the country’s oil industry was nationalised in 1972. On offer are 20-year rights over (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Ethnic Cleansing, Fascist, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Press, Genocide, Jaffna, LTTE, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lankan Army, Sri Lankan Government, State Terror
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[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2009, 01:36 GMT]
All the local newspapers of Jaffna that defied publishing an anonymous and defiling notice against the LTTE came under attack by an armed group in the early hours of Thursday. The notice was brought out in the name of ‘Tamil Front Protecting the Country’ allegedly linked to a paramilitary group operating with Colombo. Thousands of copies of the local newspapers, Valampuri, Uthayan and Thinakkural (Jaffna edition), were burnt down wholesale in huge flames by the armed group allegedly operated by (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Colombo, Genocide, Imperialism, LTTE, Mullaitivu, Racism, Sinhala, Sinhala Majoritarianism, Sinhalese, Sri Lanka, Tamil Civilians, Tamil National Alliance, Tamil Tigers, Trincomalee
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( Dated Piece | 26 May 2009 )
Source: The Daily Telegraph
The Sri Lankan government has been accused of launching a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” following its victory over the Tamil Tigers in the country’s 26 year civil war.
Aid officials, human rights campaigners and politicians claim Tamils have been driven out of areas in the north-east of the country by killings and kidnappings carried out by pro-government militias.
They say the government has simultaneously encouraged members of the Sinhalese majority in the south to relocate to the vacated villages.
One foreign charity worker told the Daily Telegraph the number of Tamils disappearing in and around Trincomalee, 50 miles south of the final conflict zone in Mullaitivu, had been increasing in the last three months.
He claimed to have known 15 of the disappeared, three of whom had been found dead. He said all three bodies showed signs of torture, while two were found with their hands tied behind their backs and single bullet wounds in their heads.
Another aid worker said the killings were part of a strategy to (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Colonialism, Genocide, IDP, IDPS, Imperialism, Internally Displaced Persons, Nation-State, Racism, Sinhala, Sinhala Chauvinism, Sri Lanka, State Terror, Tamil, Tamil Civilians, Tamil Diaspora, War
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( Dated Piece |03 June 2009 )
Source: Tamil Guardian
Desperation is rife among the 280,000 Tamil civilians imprisoned in internment camps in northern Sri Lanka with countless civilians unable to locate or contact relatives missing or separated during the bloody chaos that ensued during the final weeks of the Sri Lankan military onslaught.
Many clutched a razor wire fence, desperately searching the crowds on the other side for a familiar face as they tried to discover whether their loved ones were still alive and at liberty, or in another of the camps, a British newspaper reporter describing the plight of the civilians in one of the camps wrote.
Some are still hoping to find relatives amid the rows of tents that provide a temporary home.
But others say relatives were separated out by the military, suspected of being Tamil Tigers.
One refugee said that thousands of fleeing civilians were (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Chauvanism, Colombo, Colonial, Colonizer, Dictatorship, Fascism, Fascist, Genocide, Imperialism, Imperialist, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, Mahinda Rajapakse, Militarism, Military, Nationalism, Racist, Sri Lanka, Tamils, United National Party, United Peoples Freedom Alliance
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23 June 2009
Source: World Socialist Website
In an extraordinary, anti-democratic move, the ruling coalition in Sri Lanka—the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA)—has begun to sound out amending the constitution to allow President Mahinda Rajapakse to remain in office beyond his six-year term without facing a new election.
For weeks, the government has been whipping up a climate of communal triumphalism following the army’s victory over the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Now it is seeking to exploit the atmosphere to entrench Rajapakse in the powerful post of executive president.
Under the present constitution, presidents can serve (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: AIADMK, Anti-Tamil Pogroms, Armed Resistance, Bandaranayaka-Chelvanaagam, Britain, British Colonialism, Buddhist Clergy, Chemical Weapons, Colombo, Colonization, Congress Party, DMK, Ethnic Cleansing, Freedom Struggle, Genocide, Imperialism, Indian Imperialism, Insurgents, Internally Displaced Persons, Jaffna LIbrary, Karunanidhi, Lasantha Wickramatunga, Liberation, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Militarism, Military, Nationalism, PMK, Prabakaran, Racism, Resistance, Saddam, Self-Determination, Self-Governing Authority, Sinhala, Sinhala Chauvinism, Sinhalese Eelam, Sovereignty, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Sri Lankan Army, Sri Lankan Government, State Terror, Tamil Diaspora, Tamil Eelam, Tamil Nadu, Terrorism, United Nations, United States, War Criminal, War on Terror
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June 2009
Source: Liberation
On May 18 2009, the Sri Lankan Government declared its ‘final victory’ over the LTTE, by displaying the body of the slain LTTE chief Prabakaran. Since then, the Sri Lankan regime and its army have indulged in an obscene orgy of humiliation. The body of Prabakaran, an international icon for the Tamil movement for self-determination, was displayed by jeering soldiers as a trophy – reminiscent of the manner that Saddam’s capture and killing was displayed by the US. Not content with months of unremitting shelling and chemical assaults on thousands of Tamil civilians, nor with the extermination of the Tamil self-determination struggle’s leadership, the Sri Lankan government is determined now to humiliate the surviving Tamils and flaunt the victory of its racist war. Prabakaran is being slandered as a psychopath and a coward, and his body is being cast into a mass, unmarked grave – to obliterate and tarnish the very memory of the Tamil struggle. And the Sri Lankan State is sponsoring (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Anticolonial Nationalism, Azad, Bengal, Colonialism, Divide and Rule, Gandhi, Genocide, Hindu, Imperialism, Independence, India, Modernity, Muslim, Nation-State, National Liberation, Nationalism, Pakistan, Partition, Punjab, Racism, Self-Determination, Violence, White Supremacy
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Source: Sarai
Independence did not come to South Asia as a single, identifiable event in 1947, though that is way most South Asians like to remember it. The slow, painful process of dismantling British India began with the great Calcutta riots and ended with the genocide in Punjab.
I was (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Anticolonial Nationalism, Colonialism, Gandhi, Genocide, Hindu, Imperialism, Independence, India, Modernity, Muslim, Nation-State, National Liberation, Nationalism, Pakistan, Partition, Racism, Self-Determination, Violence, White Supremacy
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Source: Sanhati
A sketch of Ashis Nandy’s recent lecture at UC Berkeley. March 13, 2009
It was not hatred, but a strong undercurrent of humanity, that was the surprising finding of research on the traumatic bloodbath of the Partition, iconoclastic Indian researcher Ashis Nandy told an audience March 3 at the University of California.
Nandy made some unconventional points: Even in the terrible bloodbath that claimed the lives of millions, as many as one in four people among survivors said they were saved by the other community, and their fondest memories were still of (more…)
