Delay in resettling Vanni IDPs lamentable – PCPG

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 July 2009, 04:41 GMT]
“No one is showing any interest at all in resettling the Vanni Internally Displaced Persons or consider their miserable lives, being detained in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps,” representatives of the Peoples’ Committee for Peace and Goodwill (PCPG) Jaffna, led by Jaffna Bishop Rt. Rev. Thomas Saundaranayagam, told Dr. Packiyasothy Saravanamuthu, the head of Colombo based Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), Sunday at Jaffna Bishop’s house. A team led by the head of CPA arrived in Jaffna to attend to matters related to the monitoring of the forthcoming Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election, sources in Jaffna said.
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Awakening North, an election gimmick? - Sunday Leader

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 2009, 11:37 GMT]
Noting that the loan scheme announced by the Sri Lanka Government to Northern small scale enterprises while soliciting donations for the diaspora for refugee relief, exposed the scarcity of funds to support Jaffna loans, an article in Sunday Leader, said that the loan announcement is likely an election ploy to woo Jaffna voters towards the ruling UPFA. Questioning the motives for recent actions by the Central Bank in not revealing the details of IMF Article IV consultation report, and suspending publication of weekly economic indicators, the article said the reluctance of the Government to set free the screened IDPs in the internment camps is likely driven by the need to mobilize "humanitarian aid from the donors and donations from the diaspora to bolster the foreign currency reserves of the government."
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Capturing Jaffna market, the sole intention of Southern Traders – JTU

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 July 2009, 16:31 GMT]
“The traders and ministers from the South invading Jaffna peninsula are only interested in capturing the market in Jaffna peninsula; their visits are not in anyway beneficial for the people here,” Jaffna Traders’ Union (JTU) sources said Friday participating in a meeting with the 45 members of the National Chamber of Commerce (NCC) visiting Jaffna to explore possibilities of market opportunities. JTU met the Minister of Industrial Development, Kumara Welgama, in a separate meeting Friday, also held in the JTU office on Maanipaay road in Jaffna, where JTU members requested the lorries of Jaffna traders to be allowed to transport goods through A9 road to Jaffna as their repeated requests to several government authorities had been ignored, JTU sources added.
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People in Jaffna live in fear – Suresh Premachandra

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 July 2009, 07:32 GMT]
“The people in Jaffna live in fear of the government armed forces and the paramilitary groups operating with them. They are scared to air their views or to openly participate in election related activities,” Suresh Premachandran, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Jaffna district parliamentarian, told TamilNet in a special interview Friday in Jaffna. “Though government ministers invading Jaffna continue to offer promises to the people of Jaffna they cannot be deceived as they fully well know that the promises will not be kept because the government does not have the money to fulfill the promises,” he further said.
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Court orders detained UN workers to be produced before Medical Officer

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 July 2009, 00:04 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court Thursday directed the State to produce, before the Judicial Medical Officer (JMO), the two workers of the United Nations agency now being detained by the Sri Lanka police, and to submit the medical report within two weeks. Two UN workers, Charles Ravindran Navaratnam, 45, and Kanthasamy Soundararajan, 35, were arrested on June 13 when they were fleeing into the government controlled area from Vanni. Since then they are being detained without appearence before a court of law or before the Judicial Medical Officer, legal sources in Colombo said.
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United Sri Lanka is the steadfast aim of UNP – Tissa Athanayake, in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 July 2009, 10:32 GMT]
General Secretary of United National Party (UNP), the main opposition party, Tissa Athanayake, said that the UNP believes in one country with equal rights to all its people, in a press meet held Thursday in Jaffna City Hotel. Tissa Athanayake, accompanied by Dr. Jayalath Jayawardene, UNP parliamentarian and UNP principal candidate in Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election, A. S. Sathiyendra, explained the policy of his party to the media. “One of the main functions of the ICRC is family reunion of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and Rajapakse’s government’s decision to stop ICRC’s functions and to expel it from the country needs to be vehemently condemned,” Dr. Jayalath Jayawardne said.
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Monks launch campaign against 13th Amendment

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 July 2009, 10:34 GMT]
The National Front of Buddhist Monks (NFBM) Tuesday launched a leaflet campaign to mobilize the masses against implementing the 13th Amendment at the Matara main bus stand in the south of Sri Lanka. The NFBM has planned to distribute one million leaflets in towns and villages across Sri Lanka. More than 30 Buddhist monks participated in the launching event.
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Mahanayake announces programme to renovate “destroyed” Buddhist sites in NE

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 July 2009, 08:28 GMT]
Malwatte Mahanayake Thera Venerable Tibbotuwawe Siddhartha Sri Sumagalabhidana Thera Sunday announced that a programme is to be launched shortly in the North and East to renovate Buddhist religious sites, according to him, destroyed or damaged during the war.
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Holding grounds is fundamental to everything

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 July 2009, 22:34 GMT]
Professing defeatism or surrendering the basic grounds are not the ways to begin or to sustain the struggle with the masses, even in ways anew, perhaps through democratic means. Talking on the need to continue the struggle is not to rule out the need to negotiate. But negotiation is not collaboration. Negotiators need a firm platform supported by the hearts of the masses on behalf of whom they negotiate. Negotiation cannot take place when the platform is surrendered. It is to safeguard the platform for struggle and negotiation the Tamil circles are now keen in re-affirming the democratically mandated Vaddukkoaddai Resolution of 1976 that upholds independence, sovereignty and self-determination of Eezham Tamils, at least where there is freedom of expression. Even after 2000 years the Jews were able to regain their land because they never lost their nationalism or the thought of Israel.
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Colombo doctors to investigate outbreak of meningitis, encephalitis in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 July 2009, 17:29 GMT]
Six medical officers from Colombo are scheduled to visit IDP camps which are described as internment camps by human rights agencies in Vavuniya tomorrow to investigate a suspected outbreak of meningitis and encephalitis, reported from the Vavuniyaa General Hospital. Meanwhile the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) has charged that a severe shortage of nurses and pharmacists in the Vavuniyaa camps is compounding health problems there.
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Notorious commander appointed Governor of Northern Province

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 July 2009, 17:05 GMT]
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has appointed Chief-of-Staff of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Maj. Gen. G.A. Chandrasiri as the new Governor of the Northern Province. Maj. Gen. Chandrasiri was the former chief of the SLA in Jaffna, under whose command Jaffna witnessed hundreds of forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations in the period from 2006 to 2008. Tamil political circles in Colombo commented that Mr. Rajpaksa, who claims to have crushed the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam, has appointed his military men in key posts in the occupied Tamil homeland to head civil services with a 'colonial mindset'. Earlier, in April, Rajapaksa appointed Chandrasiri as the Competent Authority Officer in charge of resettlement of Tamils from Vanni in alleged barbed-wire 'internment camps' in Vavuniyaa.
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AG to file response to FR petition on “internment “camps

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2009, 22:01 GMT]
Three member Bench of the Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court Friday directed the Attorney General (AG) to file objections within two weeks in respect of granting leave to proceed, and interim relief to the Petitioners, in a Fundament Rights (FR) Violation petition against the detention of nearly three hundred thousand Vanni IDPs in State controlled "welfare centres" which have been described by human rights activists and organizations as "internment camps," legal sources in Colombo said.
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PTF Permission necessary to enter former Vanni war zone

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 14:05 GMT]
The Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) has directed those who intend to enter the former conflict areas in the North to transport goods and conduct other activities should obtain permission from the Presidential Task Force (PTF). All local and foreign non-governmental organizations should also obtain permission from the PTF to enter former conflict areas in the North.
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Little foreign interest in Colombo port - report

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 02:43 GMT]
China Merchants Holdings, which operates ports in mainland China, together with a top Sri Lankan conglomerate, Aitken Spence, were the sole bidders for a container terminal concession at Sri Lanka's Colombo port, press reports said this week. Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH), the world's leading port investor, developer and operator, said this week it had refused to bid because elements of its original bid in 2007 had been included in the Sri Lankan government’s second request for proposals this year, putting HPH at a disadvantage. Meanwhile, Colombo port’s future is reportedly threatened by India’s plans to develop Vizhinjam in the southern state of Kerala.
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Abetting genocide for ‘conflict termination’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 July 2009, 15:36 GMT]
“Rwanda, Sudan and now Sri Lanka, it is another wake up call to the World”, says a blog-writer Richard Dixon, questioning why no world leader is declaring “War on Genocide”. The article in Independent Minds blog, Wednesday, said “An internal conflict in Sri Lanka has now been made worse by its greedy neighbours. They are now lining up with spanners and hammers to fix the problems in Sri Lanka. The ones that are now trying to fix Sri Lanka are helping the strong party to the conflict to destroy the weaker one completely. Arrogant voice from Sri Lanka in the recent times is to do with its close bonding with India and China. These two countries have both been involved in high level PR-campaigns to hide the war crimes committed by Sri Lanka. […] Such method can’t be called as conflict resolution but it is an unfair conflict termination by eliminating one party to the conflict.
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Do not weaken the goals and direction of Eelam struggle: Father S.J. Emmanuel

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 18:02 GMT]
"Let us not betray the struggle nor its goals as evolved, formulated and consolidated by the sacrifice of many thousands of combatants and civilians under the leadership of the LTTE," says Rev. Dr. S.J. Emmanuel, the former Vicar General of the Catholic diocese of Jaffna, in the second part of the open appeal to the Eelam Tamil diaspora. "Let the change of phase in the struggle from the last militant-cum-political phase to a political and international phase, not in any way weaken or water down the goals and directions of the struggle."
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Vanni doctors forced to give false statement

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 17:36 GMT]
5 Tamil doctors being held by the Sri Lankan authorities say they expect to be released, after being paraded to local and international media on Wednesday when they were made to claim that they had exaggerated civilian casualty figures in the final phases of the war at the request of the LTTE. Meanwhile, health workers who have escaped Vanni have slammed the international community for allowing the detainment of the doctors and questioned the validity of their statements in light of the 'precarious position' they face.
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SL parliament extends Emergency for another month

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 04:40 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s parliament Tuesday adopted a motion to extend the State of Emergency for another month by a majority of ninety two votes. One hundred and three parliamentarians voted for the motion. Only eleven members of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) voted against. The Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) and National Freedom Front (NFF), a splinter group of the JVP voted with ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA).
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Indian High Commissioner on pulse reading mission in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 July 2009, 15:10 GMT]
Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Mr. Alok Prasad, arrived at Palaali Military Airport Tuesday morning accompanied by his deputy and political wing head and held several meetings in Jaffna with the representatives of academic circles, political parties, interreligious associations and civil organizations in Jaffna peninsula in an effort to read the pulse of the people of the peninsula, sources in Jaffna said. “The Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka have faith only on China while the Tamils had absolute faith on India which had committed a historical blunder by betraying the Tamils in Sri Lanka,” one of the civil society representative participant said, commenting on Alok Prasad’s visit to Jaffna.
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Unclaimed 14 Vanni IDPs corpses to be buried at state cost

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 July 2009, 03:12 GMT]
Corpses of fourteen displaced Vanni Tamil civilians including three children brought from Puthumaathth’alan in Mullaiththeevu district two months ago to Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital are to be given a common burial at State costs as none had come forward to identify or to claim them, according to a decision taken by the hospital authority Sunday.
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