“Indian street play hits the American Palace Theater at Waterbury, CT
“Tamils create a landmark event in Connecticut.”
During July 4th weekend Waterbury, Connecticut is going to bristle with activities of glamour, grandeur and color. This is one of the biggest Tamil Conventions ever hosted by South Asian Tamils of North America in Connecticut history. FETNA is a non-profit, nonpartisan, literary, cultural organization and attracts nearly 2000 Tamils each year. Do you call this a Convention? Carnival? Cultural fare? Well everything. Everyone has something to look forward to.
Tamil, recognized as a classical language, is one of the ancient languages of the Dravidian Era with a recorded history going back 2 millennia, with rich cultural heritage and classical literature.
For the last 23 years Federation of Tamil Sangams (Associations) of North America called FETNA, an umbrella organization for nearly 35-40 local Organizations, presents a Mega event each year in a different state and city where Tamils of North America congregate, celebrate their culture, recognize community achievements, organize professional forums, enjoy Music, Dance, Literature and Theater performances, rejoice meeting Gollywood( South Indian movie) artists, film and music directors, eminent speakers/poets, soap opera stars from India. The locals also get to show case their talent in this 3-day-mega Event.
Even for a non Tamil, the language is not a barrier; there is so much for the eyes, the ears and the palate.
The main function starts on July3rd morning with a welcome for the chief guests with special music, and children’s procession followed by variety performances.
The stage is set to receive all the special guests from India. Those who are familiar with Tamil Literature and Art may like to know that famous cine director Bharathiraja, the famous movie star Vikram, Young ( and old?) boys’ dream girl movie star Trisha, Comedian Actor Santhanam, Tamil Poet Thamarai, Tamil professor Parveen Sultana , Tamil spiritual leader Marudhachala Adigalar have all consented to attend and participate in the mega Event..
Connecticut political dignitaries like Mr. Michael J.Jarijura, Mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, have kindly accepted the invitation and will honor the function with their presence. United States Congressman Chris Murphy is looking into participating in the event. Both the evenings are earmarked for special programs.
On Saturday, July 3rd evening, there is a special Tamil folk opera called Madhurai Veeran (the hero of a city namely Madurai, in Tamilnadu) or “Therukoothu”. This is a street play like a village theater with simple props and informal interaction with the audience that makes it very entertaining. The artists are from Chennai, India and are specially trained in this tradition of art. On Sunday, July 4th, evening, there is a light music program from Tamil Movies in the presence of famous Music director Harris Jeyaraj along with a group of singers from India.
Apart from these, there are other entertainment items presented by US based Tamil Chapters. There are parallel programs like Continuing Medical Education (CME), Entrepreneur forum, Single's Forum, Young Tamils Forum etc.
Those who are connoisseurs of good food also should attend this event. There is plenty of art, craft, food, local, national, international culture: what else could one ask for?
The entire convention is planned under the able and dynamic leadership of Dr. Pazhani Sundaram of Connecticut who is the Coordinator of the Convention. The president of FETNA, Dr. Muthuvel Chelliah, from Columbia, MD joins hands with Pazhani Sundaram by providing enormous support and guidance.
Hundreds of volunteers are working tirelessly to make this event a great success so that the Tamils earn a place in Connecticut history.
Please register before it becomes a sold out event.
Friday, June 18, 2010
FeTNA's 23rd Annual Tamil Convention
FeTNA's 23rd Annual Tamil Convention
July 3-5, 2010 - Palace Theater, Waterbury, CT, USA
Event Schedule - Tentative
Friday July 2nd, 6pm to 10pm - Dinner Reception for donors, invitees and artists
Saturday July 3rd, 8.30am to 11.30pm - Cultural programs, speeches, performances by member sangams and invited artists
Sunday July 4th, 8.30am to 11.30pm Cultural programs, speeches, performances by member sangams and invited artists
Parallel sessions, such as Enterpreneur Forum, Matrimonial Forum, Continuing Medical education, Alumni Meets etc will be going on in the side rooms.
For more information:
Dr. Pazhani Sundaram, Convention Coordinator - (203)494-6707
Dr. Muthuvel Chelliah, President, FeTNA - (443)538-5774
July 3-5, 2010 - Palace Theater, Waterbury, CT, USA
Event Schedule - Tentative
Friday July 2nd, 6pm to 10pm - Dinner Reception for donors, invitees and artists
Saturday July 3rd, 8.30am to 11.30pm - Cultural programs, speeches, performances by member sangams and invited artists
Sunday July 4th, 8.30am to 11.30pm Cultural programs, speeches, performances by member sangams and invited artists
Parallel sessions, such as Enterpreneur Forum, Matrimonial Forum, Continuing Medical education, Alumni Meets etc will be going on in the side rooms.
For more information:
Dr. Pazhani Sundaram, Convention Coordinator - (203)494-6707
Dr. Muthuvel Chelliah, President, FeTNA - (443)538-5774
Thursday, April 15, 2010
HRW: Letter to Australian Minister of Immigration Chris Evans on Processing New Asylum Claims from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan
Dear Mr. Evans,
We write to you to express our deep concerns that changes to Australia's asylum processing system announced on April 8, 2010 violate Australia's obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol not to discriminate in the treatment of refugees. As Article 3 of the Refugee Convention states: "The Contracting Parties shall apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin."
You announced on April 8 that Australia has suspended the processing of new asylum applications from Sri Lankan and Afghan nationals effective immediately because the situations in both Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are "evolving." Human Rights Watch closely monitors the human rights situation in both countries and our research shows that conditions in both countries are such that individuals returned will still be vulnerable to persecution and lack adequate protection. More fundamentally, this suspension deprives asylum seekers of their right to seek asylum from persecution, as guaranteed by article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
While it is accepted international practice in the event of mass influxes for host countries to suspend individual asylum adjudications for the purpose of providing temporary protection on a blanket basis to nationals of countries experiencing armed violence and other generalized conditions that make return dangerous, beneficiaries of temporary protection regimes are normally accorded rights and benefits consistent with their need for protection. Australia's suspension of asylum procedures purportedly because conditions in the country of origin have improved and because, according to the government announcement, "it is likely, in the future, more asylum claims from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan will be refused," is, as far as we know, unprecedented. It is quite astounding that a presumption about future refusals based on how the situation might evolve in their home countries, will result in extending mandatory detention for members of these two nationality groups who arrive irregularly by boat, and will prevent other refugees from these nationalities from enjoying their rights and benefits as refugees because of the failure of the government to recognize their status.
Even in those circumstances where governments decide to lift temporary protection regimes because of improvements in human rights conditions in countries of origin, they must still provide individual asylum seekers from such countries the opportunity to claim an ongoing need for protection and to examine those individual claims. To suspend asylum processing for two nationalities by suggesting that more of their refugee claims will be refused in the future while continuing to examine the claims of members of all other nationality groups is discriminatory on its face. While asylum procedures are suspended for Afghans and Sri Lankans because the situations in their countries are "evolving," asylum procedures will apparently keep apace for nationals of countries that are not evolving, including countries that have produced far fewer refugees than either Afghanistan or Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka
While your April 8 statement correctly identifies certain areas of progress with regards to return of displaced persons and conditions in the camps in northern Sri Lanka, it fails to recognize that certain groups in Sri Lanka remain extremely vulnerable to persecution and might have a valid claim for asylum. Since the January presidential elections, the authorities have arrested, harassed, and intimidated journalists and media workers, civil society activists and opposition party members and supporters. Journalists and opposition supporters have also been physically attacked and threatened. One journalist critical of the government remains missing after he disappeared two days before the election.
Another particularly vulnerable group is people suspected of having been involved with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Almost a year since the end of the conflict that resulted in the LTTE's defeat, the government still maintains a state of emergency, giving security forces broad powers to detain suspects without complying with due process guarantees. More than 9,000 people, whom the government detained from among the internally displaced, are being held in so-called rehabilitation centers on suspicion of involvement with the LTTE. Human Rights Watch research has shown that the government has deprived many of these detainees of their right to a lawyer and the right to have a court review the legality of their detention, giving rise to concerns that some detainees might have been ill-treated or subjected to enforced disappearance.
***
While we recognize the Australian government's desire to tackle the problem of "people smuggling," an asylum seeker's turn to a smuggler to escape persecution has no bearing over the validity of his or her refugee claim. As we show, the human rights conditions in both countries are far from stable, and in some cases asylum seekers may resort to being smuggled, taking great personal risk in doing so, in order to flee persecution. We find the government's April 8 announcement of the suspension of asylum procedures, jointly with the announcement of its enhanced measures to stop people smuggling, to insinuate criminality on the part of all asylum seekers. To imply that the suspension of asylum processing will in some way thwart people smuggling fundamentally confuses those who profit from-and in the case of human traffickers, prey upon-asylum seekers with asylum seekers themselves who need protection. Doing so tars the victims with the stigma of the crimes committed against them.
We also understand that irregular migration is a sensitive issue in Australia, particularly in an election year. When the Labor government came to power in 2007, it reversed some of the previous government's policies that undermined basic rights of refugees, such as ending the policy of mandatory detention of all asylum seekers, ending the "Pacific Solution" use of Nauru and Manus islands to detain asylum seekers, and replacing the temporary visa protection scheme with permanent protection for recognized refugees. This won your government immediate respect internationally by showing its commitment to uphold international human rights standards. However, current Australian policy states that all asylum seekers who arrive by boat remain subjected to mandatory detention and most are sent to Christmas Island. Because of the suspension of their asylum claims Afghans and Sri Lankans, including children, who newly and irregularly arrive by boat, will be made to endure the hardship of additional months of detention, regardless of the merits of their refugee claims. We ask you to maintain the standards your government pledged to uphold when it came into power by continuing to screen asylum seekers from any country where they may risk persecution.
UNHCR guidelines on detention of asylum seekers hold that as a general principle "asylum seekers should not be detained" and that "for detention of asylum seekers to be lawful and not arbitrary, it must comply not only with applicable national law, but with Article 31 of the Convention and international law. It must be exercised in a non-discriminatory manner and must be subject to judicial or administrative review." We are particularly concerned that Australia's mandatory detention of maritime asylum seekers arriving irregularly, in effect, penalizes them for their method of arrival in contravention of Article 31 of the Refugee Convention.
The mandatory detention of all new irregular boat arrivals from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka claiming asylum, including children, also violates Australia's responsibilities under the 2005 Migration Act and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which under article 37 permits the detention of children "only as a measure of last resort."
We strongly believe that in the Asia-Pacific region, where many countries have not even ratified the Refugee Convention, Australia should set a positive example by showing that it takes its human rights obligations seriously by upholding international standards rather than undermining them.
We look forward to your response and would be happy to discuss these matters further at your convenience.
We write to you to express our deep concerns that changes to Australia's asylum processing system announced on April 8, 2010 violate Australia's obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol not to discriminate in the treatment of refugees. As Article 3 of the Refugee Convention states: "The Contracting Parties shall apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin."
You announced on April 8 that Australia has suspended the processing of new asylum applications from Sri Lankan and Afghan nationals effective immediately because the situations in both Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are "evolving." Human Rights Watch closely monitors the human rights situation in both countries and our research shows that conditions in both countries are such that individuals returned will still be vulnerable to persecution and lack adequate protection. More fundamentally, this suspension deprives asylum seekers of their right to seek asylum from persecution, as guaranteed by article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
While it is accepted international practice in the event of mass influxes for host countries to suspend individual asylum adjudications for the purpose of providing temporary protection on a blanket basis to nationals of countries experiencing armed violence and other generalized conditions that make return dangerous, beneficiaries of temporary protection regimes are normally accorded rights and benefits consistent with their need for protection. Australia's suspension of asylum procedures purportedly because conditions in the country of origin have improved and because, according to the government announcement, "it is likely, in the future, more asylum claims from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan will be refused," is, as far as we know, unprecedented. It is quite astounding that a presumption about future refusals based on how the situation might evolve in their home countries, will result in extending mandatory detention for members of these two nationality groups who arrive irregularly by boat, and will prevent other refugees from these nationalities from enjoying their rights and benefits as refugees because of the failure of the government to recognize their status.
Even in those circumstances where governments decide to lift temporary protection regimes because of improvements in human rights conditions in countries of origin, they must still provide individual asylum seekers from such countries the opportunity to claim an ongoing need for protection and to examine those individual claims. To suspend asylum processing for two nationalities by suggesting that more of their refugee claims will be refused in the future while continuing to examine the claims of members of all other nationality groups is discriminatory on its face. While asylum procedures are suspended for Afghans and Sri Lankans because the situations in their countries are "evolving," asylum procedures will apparently keep apace for nationals of countries that are not evolving, including countries that have produced far fewer refugees than either Afghanistan or Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka
While your April 8 statement correctly identifies certain areas of progress with regards to return of displaced persons and conditions in the camps in northern Sri Lanka, it fails to recognize that certain groups in Sri Lanka remain extremely vulnerable to persecution and might have a valid claim for asylum. Since the January presidential elections, the authorities have arrested, harassed, and intimidated journalists and media workers, civil society activists and opposition party members and supporters. Journalists and opposition supporters have also been physically attacked and threatened. One journalist critical of the government remains missing after he disappeared two days before the election.
Another particularly vulnerable group is people suspected of having been involved with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Almost a year since the end of the conflict that resulted in the LTTE's defeat, the government still maintains a state of emergency, giving security forces broad powers to detain suspects without complying with due process guarantees. More than 9,000 people, whom the government detained from among the internally displaced, are being held in so-called rehabilitation centers on suspicion of involvement with the LTTE. Human Rights Watch research has shown that the government has deprived many of these detainees of their right to a lawyer and the right to have a court review the legality of their detention, giving rise to concerns that some detainees might have been ill-treated or subjected to enforced disappearance.
***
While we recognize the Australian government's desire to tackle the problem of "people smuggling," an asylum seeker's turn to a smuggler to escape persecution has no bearing over the validity of his or her refugee claim. As we show, the human rights conditions in both countries are far from stable, and in some cases asylum seekers may resort to being smuggled, taking great personal risk in doing so, in order to flee persecution. We find the government's April 8 announcement of the suspension of asylum procedures, jointly with the announcement of its enhanced measures to stop people smuggling, to insinuate criminality on the part of all asylum seekers. To imply that the suspension of asylum processing will in some way thwart people smuggling fundamentally confuses those who profit from-and in the case of human traffickers, prey upon-asylum seekers with asylum seekers themselves who need protection. Doing so tars the victims with the stigma of the crimes committed against them.
We also understand that irregular migration is a sensitive issue in Australia, particularly in an election year. When the Labor government came to power in 2007, it reversed some of the previous government's policies that undermined basic rights of refugees, such as ending the policy of mandatory detention of all asylum seekers, ending the "Pacific Solution" use of Nauru and Manus islands to detain asylum seekers, and replacing the temporary visa protection scheme with permanent protection for recognized refugees. This won your government immediate respect internationally by showing its commitment to uphold international human rights standards. However, current Australian policy states that all asylum seekers who arrive by boat remain subjected to mandatory detention and most are sent to Christmas Island. Because of the suspension of their asylum claims Afghans and Sri Lankans, including children, who newly and irregularly arrive by boat, will be made to endure the hardship of additional months of detention, regardless of the merits of their refugee claims. We ask you to maintain the standards your government pledged to uphold when it came into power by continuing to screen asylum seekers from any country where they may risk persecution.
UNHCR guidelines on detention of asylum seekers hold that as a general principle "asylum seekers should not be detained" and that "for detention of asylum seekers to be lawful and not arbitrary, it must comply not only with applicable national law, but with Article 31 of the Convention and international law. It must be exercised in a non-discriminatory manner and must be subject to judicial or administrative review." We are particularly concerned that Australia's mandatory detention of maritime asylum seekers arriving irregularly, in effect, penalizes them for their method of arrival in contravention of Article 31 of the Refugee Convention.
The mandatory detention of all new irregular boat arrivals from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka claiming asylum, including children, also violates Australia's responsibilities under the 2005 Migration Act and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which under article 37 permits the detention of children "only as a measure of last resort."
We strongly believe that in the Asia-Pacific region, where many countries have not even ratified the Refugee Convention, Australia should set a positive example by showing that it takes its human rights obligations seriously by upholding international standards rather than undermining them.
We look forward to your response and would be happy to discuss these matters further at your convenience.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
