http://www.tamilnet.com Latest 10 TamilNet reports from Sri Lanka en Copyright (c) 1997-2026 TamilNet Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:29:35 GMT Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:29:35 GMT tamilnet@tamilnet.com http://www.tamilnet.com/img/feedlogo2.gif http://www.tamilnet.com 88 31 TamilNet logo http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=40008 18 May is not a day for empty remembrance. It is a day that tests whether Eezham Tamils will remain faithful to the political meaning of Mu'l'livaaykkaal and Vaddukkoaddai, or allow both to be folded back into a ‘safer’ language of accommodation. The issue is not whether formulas can be drafted. It is whether a people whose claim rests on homeland, sovereignty, and the insistence that Tamil political status was never validly surrendered should once again be pushed into recasting that claim as an internal arrangement within the very state whose legitimacy they dispute. That, in essence, is what lies behind the current push toward “maximum devolution” and similar formulas. Rather than opening a new path, it risks drawing Eezham Tamils back into the constitutional grammar of containment. Mon, 18 May 2026, 12:19 http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=40007 Fifty years after the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution articulated the restoration and reconstitution of Eezham Tamil sovereignty as the political objective of the nation of Eezham Tamils, the central challenge facing Tamil politics is no longer remembrance but action. The Resolution did not merely speak of abstract self-determination, improved internal arrangements or ‘maximum devolution’ within Sri Lanka. It explicitly called for the “Free, Sovereign, Secular, Socialist State of Tamil Eelam,” a position democratically endorsed by the 1977 TULF mandate. Yet today, while the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution is ceremonially commemorated, attempts persist to dilute its juridical and political meaning through federalist internalism, symbolic international lobbying and post-2009 narratives that detach Eezham Tamil nationhood from sovereignty. Thu, 14 May 2026, 14:14 http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=40006 The escalating confrontation involving the U.S., Israel and Iran, combined with the growing denial of operational access to American forces in the Persian Gulf, is rapidly elevating the strategic importance of the island of Sri Lanka within U.S. military calculations in the Indian Ocean, writes Norway-based Eezham Tamil political analyst and anthropology scholar Athithan Jayapalan. As Washington faces increasing difficulties in sustaining its naval and military presence in the Gulf due to Iranian missile capabilities, drone warfare and maritime interdiction strategies, the island’s geographical position, naval infrastructure and longstanding defence ties with the United States are once again assuming major geopolitical significance. Wed, 06 May 2026, 22:19 http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=40004 Intensifying rivalries between major powers are reshaping global geopolitics and elevating the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean. As the unipolar dominance of the United States faces increasing challenges from Russia and China, emerging fractures within the Western alliance system and expanding military confrontations across several regions are drawing renewed attention to the island of Sri Lanka. Situated at a critical maritime crossroads, the island is becoming increasingly significant within the evolving strategic calculations of competing global powers. Thu, 05 Mar 2026, 18:16 http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=99&artid=40003 The present moment in Tamil politics demands far more than tactical adjustment or rhetorical caution. It demands a fundamental reassessment of the assumptions that have gradually come to govern political engagement since the end of the genocidal war in 2009. What is at stake today is not merely the content of constitutional proposals, but whether the Tamil political project itself is being quietly stripped of its historical, legal, and moral foundations. This erosion has not occurred overnight. It has unfolded through a slow narrowing of political imagination, in which positions once regarded as foundational have been recast as impractical, excessive, or even dangerous. Mon, 19 Jan 2026, 14:44 http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=40000 The federal framework advanced by the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), rooted in the 2016 Tamil People’s Council (TPC) proposals, is presented in that section as preserving Tamil sovereignty and self-determination, while retaining the possibility of a referendum. A closer constitutional reading reveals the opposite. While employing the language of pre-constitutional agreement, inalienable self-determination, sovereignty, homeland, and claims of popular legitimacy through referendum, the framework systematically contracts each of these claims through clause design and enforcement logic. What emerges is not transition, but neutralisation by design. Sun, 11 Jan 2026, 15:02 http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=99&artid=39999 When the now-defunct Tamil People’s Council (TPC) released its federal proposals in 2016, TamilNet warned that the draft risked diluting the Tamil national question under Colombo-centric constitutionalism and externally driven “solutions.” Nearly a decade later, those warnings warrant renewed scrutiny for a clear and concrete reason. The All Ceylon Tamil Congress, also known as the Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF) and currently represented in Parliament by a single member, continues to uphold the TPC proposals as a valid political framework. At the same time, certain European institutions, often through externally funded initiatives, promote Belgian or Swiss models as templates for the island. This risks reframing the Tamil question within donor-driven containment strategies rather than addressing its political substance. Sat, 03 Jan 2026, 14:10 http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=39995 The JVP has recently lent itself to US efforts to consolidate the unitary state and realise its long-held ambition to capture state power in Colombo. In this regard, they have also engaged with a range of actors, from the IMF, Washington, and New Delhi, as well as attempted to woo Eezham Tamils and other Tamil-speaking people to opt for the NPP in the 2024 SL Presidential Elections. Norway-based Eezham Tamil anthropology scholar Dr Athithan Jayapalan writes that the NPP and Lionel Bopage speak of equality without addressing the right of an oppressed nation to secession in the face of national oppression and genocide. Instead, the NPP, aligned with the US position, vows to neutralise the Eezham Tamil political struggle for self-determination. Sat, 21 Sep 2024, 16:12 http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=39994 Russian revolutionary leader and theoretician Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) was highly critical of the interpretation of the Right of Self-Determination by his contemporary Marxist thinker Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919). While Luxemburg argued that national self-determination was a dangerous distraction from the desired system change towards a socialist state, Lenin defended the right to self-determination, including secession. Most Sinhala leftists have been opportunists who peddle Marxism like a pimp, especially concerning the national question. They are divergent from Lenin’s extremely well-articulated definition and clarification of the national right of self-determination. Wed, 18 Sep 2024, 21:30 http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=39993 Even though I first met Viraj Mendis in Geneva, his reputation as a fearless advocate for Tamil liberation preceded him. The movement respected Viraj, and many of our leaders in the diaspora and the homeland sought his clarity and insight. I consider myself fortunate to have worked with him and learned from him. Fri, 30 Aug 2024, 15:27