{"id":51875,"date":"2016-02-07T22:22:46","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T04:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=51875"},"modified":"2016-02-07T14:34:42","modified_gmt":"2016-02-07T21:34:42","slug":"february-4th-observed-as-a-black-day-in-the-north-and-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/02\/07\/february-4th-observed-as-a-black-day-in-the-north-and-east\/","title":{"rendered":"February 4th observed as a \u201cBlack Day\u201d in the North and East."},"content":{"rendered":"

By A.A.M.Nizam \u2013 Matara<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Although the government boasted celebrating the 68th<\/sup> Independence Day on Februiary 4th <\/sup>on a grand scale unitedly with the participation of all communities in the country including with the participation of the so-called leader of the opposition R.Sambandan, the TNA lrader for the first time in the history of this country and singing the National Anthem in Tamil for the first time despite it being unconstitutional reports from the Northern and the Eastern provinces claim that the Tamil community in the North and East completely ignored the Independence Day and observed this day as a Black Day\u201d hoisting black flags throughout the area on a district wise basis.<\/p>\n

The tiger terrorist website TamilNet\u201d quoting from Youth Wing leaders of the Ilangkai Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (ITAK) said that the day of February 04 marked the number of years that have elapsed in the enslavement of Tamils at the hands of the Sinhala majoritarian State, which has been refusing to respect Tamils\u2019 distinct right to their traditional homeland, their self-determination and nationhood. \u00a0It said that Tamils joined the district wise protests marking the so-called Independence Day of Ceylon, which has later become genocidal \u2018Sri Lanka\u2019, as a Black Day.<\/p>\n

The aforementioned demands are what the Tamils demanded at the Thimpu talks in the 1980s and this shows that they are adamant on these demands for over 4 decades now.<\/p>\n

The website also stated that the kith and kin of forcibly disappeared Tamils voluntarily and on organized basismobilised in large numbers in all the districts marking the day as a Black Day of Tamils.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Tiger terrorist website publiched from London The Tamil Guardian\u201d said that Sri Lanka\u2019s Independence Day was marked by acts of Tamil protest across the North-East and families of the disappeared held marches and demonstrations demanding for the whereabouts of their loved ones. The website also stated that the Tamil message of ignoring the Sri Lanka Independence Day was clearly visible everywhere in the Tamil dominated areas of the North and East.<\/p>\n

At the same time the terrorist outfit the Global Tamil Forum, the proscription of which was relaxed by the government along with several other tiger terrorist outfits,going further has urged India to urgently engage with Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora groups.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Indian daily, The New Indian Express, spokesperson of the London-based Global Tamil Forum, Suren Surendiran has said that India should urgently open a formal dialogue with Lankan Tamil diaspora groups to strengthen moderate voices at this critical juncture in the reconciliation process.<\/p>\n

He has said that Indian foreign policy has course corrected from being subdued and reactionary to being proactively taking the regional leadership role. He has pointed out that the Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has made two separate visits to Sri Lanka within the past 12 months and Prime Minister Modi has visited once, which was the first bilateral visit to the country by an Indian premier in over 25 years and these facts show that the diplomatic engagement with Sri Lanka is now at a different scale than before.<\/p>\n

Surendran has said that he believes Prime Minister Modi had been firm with the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa in emphasising the need for a negotiated political settlement for the Tamil national question and since President Sirisena has taken over with a mandate to resolve the Tamil issue, India has been encouraging Sri Lanka to progress.<\/p>\n

He has also stated that India is the regional super power and the closest neighbor and India has a Tamil constituency of over seventy million people. In addition to this India still houses tens of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and therefore, India has legitimate reasons why she should encourage progress with all those issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By A.A.M.Nizam \u2013 Matara \u00a0Although the government boasted celebrating the 68th Independence Day on Februiary 4th on a grand scale unitedly with the participation of all communities in the country including with the participation of the so-called leader of the opposition R.Sambandan, the TNA lrader for the first time in the history of this country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aamnizam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}