The Indian authorities have to reconfirm that Prabhakaran is dead. It may require seeking assistance from Interpol and also involve the re-opening of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, and more so, the investigations, formally or otherwise, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
While earlier reports indicated the vessel was carrying 200 Sri Lankan migrants, unidentified Canadian sources say there are at least 500 people on board, including women and children. There are mixed reactions in Canada too. Some say the vessel should not be given nod to anchor on the country's shores, others say it is a ploy of the beleaguered Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to regroup outside of Sri Lanka.
The Lankans had to pay Indian human smugglers Rs 50,000 per head for the arduous and risky journey to Australia.
Canadian Conservative Member of Parliament Deepak Obhrai was in Sri Lanka July 5 to 7 on an official visit. The lawmaker discusses his Sri Lanka visit with Ajit Jain. The lawmaker, who is also the parliamentary secretary to the foreign affairs minister, visited refugee camps in Sri Lanka to monitor Canadian aid to the Tamil refugees. His mandate also was to locate Canadians, if there were any, in the IDP [Internally Displaced Persons] camps and get them back to Canada.
About 1,400 people die every week due to water-borne diseases, particularly diarrhoea, at the vast "internment camp" set up in northern Sri Lanka to house Tamil war refugees in an indication of the poor state of affairs of the displaced people, a media report said on Friday.
Now that the Canadian Immigration Refugee Board adjudicators have opened to the media hearings for the detention of the 492 Sri Lankan Tamils, who arrived in the Canadian waters on August 9 on board MV Sun Sea, a number of stories are coming out as to who these people are, more so of women and children, who are being kept in separate correctional facilities.
The petitioner's counsel said his client was facing threats of arrest and torture in his country as he was a former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam member, and that his wife and children had settled in India.
The Tamil Nadu assembly on Wednesday adopted a resolution urging the Centre to repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 to protect and ensure unity and communal harmony and uphold the secular principles enshrined in the Constitution.
On the night of July 5, the Tigers launched their first kamikaze operation. Miller took the wheels of the explosive-packed truck, smiled at everyone as he turned the ignition key and drove it slowly towards the Sri Lankan military camp. A few moments later all of Jaffna heard a thunderous explosion that brought the complex crashing down in clouds of dust. Miller had given birth to a deadly tactic that Prabhakaran would employ time and again with devastating consequences to Sri Lanka -- and India. A fascinating excerpt from M R Narayan Swamy's must read new book, The Rout Of Prabhakaran.
Speculation was rife at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday about whether the wife of Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam supremo V Prabhakaran arrived here, along with a group of Sri Lankan refugees, in the face of escalating violence between the Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan forces. Police and media personnel rushed to the Mandapam refugee camp in Rameswaram after rumours claimed that Prabhakaran's wife Madhivadhani had reached the camp early on Wednesday morning.
Australia on Monday said that the identity of 157 Tamil asylum seekers who were detained on a customs ship for a month will now be assessed by Indian consular officials in Melbourne.
The chief minister has said that anti-social elements must not be allowed in.
Sri Lanka claimed on Wednesday that an inquiry had found no truth in reports that military guards had traded sex for food in welfare camps set up for Tamil refugees during the final phase of the country's war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The Union Territory administration has conveyed to the government that foreigners from Myanmar, Bangladesh, Thailand and Sri Lanka often intrude into the archipelago.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets off on Tuesday on a five-day tour of Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka that is expected to give traction to the country's Indian Ocean outreach during which he also visit a former war zone and Tamil heartland of Jaffna.
If Muslims face trouble I will be the first person to raise voice for them, says the Tamil superstar.
Set in the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War, Santosh Sivan's Inam brings to light the plight of the thousands of hapless Lankan Tamils, who were caught in the crossfire between the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam) and the Sri Lankan government.
Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tigers have further compounded the fragile ceasefire in the island nation by resorting to heavy artillery fire in the rebel fronts of Jaffna and Trincomalee, which claimed at least four lives.
'Outsiders are the ones who have to make the biggest journey to realise themselves, to come back to some sense of normality.' Director Jacques Audiard and actor Jesuthasan Antonythasan discuss the human landscape behind the award-winning film, Dheepan, with Aseem Chhabra/Rediff.com
A major human trafficking racket at Mangalore port was busted on Saturday after 84 Sri Lankan refugees were rescued there. They were being trafficked to Australia by a group of 14 people. Inspector General of Police Pratap Reddy said the traffickers were posing as agents and had promised these Sri Lankan refugees better job opportunities in Australia.
The apex court, while noting that the petitioner intends to go back to Sri Lanka as and when he is released, directed that he shall be shifted to an appropriate transit camp as may be decided by the state.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Thursday said he has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide additional doses of COVID-19 vaccine to the state.
Niru's Rameswaram album is an enjoyable montage of musical moods and moments without any disturbing contemporary trimmings.
Murugan, along with Santhan, both Sri Lankan nationals, were taken in a police vehicle following their release to the special refugee camp in Tiruchirappalli in the state.
Professor V Suryanarayan is described as one of India's leading specialists in South and Southeast Asian Studies, especially on Sri Lanka speaks about the current situation in the island nation.
'Human trafficking from Bangladesh is a regular phenomenon and those people come here to work or in search of greener pastures. They are all over the country. We are giving them legal recognition and making them citizens so that they don't have to live in fear,' says R Nataraj, AIADMK MLA from Tamil Nadu.
'For the Tamil Nadu protestors to openly ask popular film actor Vijay Sethupathi not to don Murali in 800 is a travesty in every sense. It may have given them a cause to tell the world, and the governments in New Delhi, Colombo and Chennai, that the Sri Lankan ethnic issue was still alive in the state -- more so, during the current run-up to two major events in the first half of 2021,' says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The prime minister should have visited Sri Lanka, armed with a critique of the Rajapakse government based on nuance and fact, says Sreenivasan Jain
S C Chandrahasan, a Tamil leader, advocating a non-violent solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic war, speaks out.
Whichever way the verdict goes, it will be a win-win for Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa ahead of the assembly election next year. A favourable verdict, it will be a boost for her because she took the decision to release the convicts. She will once again try to usurp the Tamil card and use it to silence her political rivals. If the verdict goes against her, she can still claim the moral high ground. R Ramasubramanian explains.
LTTE leaders has been barred by SL court to travel out of the country
An Indian Christian priest, Father Alexis Prem Kumar, abducted in Afghanistan eight months back, has been released, PM Narendra Modi announced on Sunday.
An Australian senator has criticised the government's decision to allow the Indian consular officials to assess the identity of 157 asylum seekers currently being held in a detention centre in the country.
A Ganesh Nadar meets a community of Rohingya refugees on the outskirts of Chennai who are happy to have found a place where their lives are not in danger.
The motion takes note of the UNHCR statement last month, which described the CAA as 'fundamentally discriminatory in nature', and also of other United Nations as well as the EU guidelines on human rights as it calls on the Indian government to 'repeal the discriminatory amendments'.
He questioned why only migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan will be given citizenship under the amended law and not the Sri Lankan Tamils.
Indian Christian priest Father Alexis Prem Kumar who returned to India eight months after his abduction in Afghanistan, gave the credit of his return to Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying that it was because of him that he was here.
'We want to celebrate my brother's return in a big way, says Father Kumar's brother.
The priest said he was released with a warning that he would be killed if he returned to the country.
