SLA attacks kill 53 civilians inside 'safety zone' Sunday

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 March 2009, 14:34 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) continued artillery, mortar and long-distance gunfire throughout Sunday killing at least 53 civilians and causing injuries to around 119. At least 17 civilians were killed in Maaththa'lan, 18 in Pokka'nai, 15 in Valaignarmadam and 3 in Pachchaip-pulmoaddai, reports TamilNet correspondent from Vanni. Meanwhile, around 1,192 civilians including 275 children, belonging to 298 families have lost their shelters within last 5 days as their tarpaulin huts were completely destroyed in SLA attacks.
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ILO delegation visits Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 March 2009, 14:26 GMT]
A three-member delegation of International Labour Organization (ILO) visited Jaffna last week and participated in a meeting, related to the rehabilitation of persons whom SLA claims to have surrendered themselves to it, held in Jaffna District Secretariat with Additional Government Agent, S. Sivasamy, under the auspices of the government of Sri Lanka. Local NGO representatives who were invited to participate later said that the conference was but another attempt of the government to raise funds for maintaining the SLA detention centres in which the civilians fleeing war in Vanni are being held.
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Elderly detainee in SLA detention centre dies in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 March 2009, 09:01 GMT]
An elderly civilian held in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) detention centre in Mirusuvil in Thenmaraadchi died Saturday night in Jaffna Teaching Hospital (JTH) due to delayed medical treatment, sources in Jaffna said. Regional Health Service sources said that there is an acute scarcity for ambulances to transport patients in need of urgent treatment from the SLA detention centres to hospitals. Besides, SLA soldiers do not permit the civilians held in the detention centres to go out for early treatment when they are infected and sick and the life of the elderly man may have been saved had he had proper treatment in time, the sources added.
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7th SLA detention centre opened in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 March 2009, 05:49 GMT]
In addition to the existing six Sri Lanka Army (SLA) detention centres in Jaffna district SLA has established another in Kaithadi in Thenmaraadchi where there are already four centres, to detain civilians fleeing war in Vanni. Saturday alone more than 200 families arrived in Thenmaraadchi and were placed in temporary makeshift sheds erected in the building complex of Palmyra Development Board (PDB) in Kaithadi, Thenmaraadchi Divisional Secretariat officials said.
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'Global order' experiments with body and mind of Vanni civilians

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 March 2009, 01:17 GMT]
To what extent human beings can survive under extreme conditions was a Nazi research on the ‘dispensable Jews’ of the concentration camps, to find out the levels of extremity the human body and mind can withstand. Academic and professional circles raise an alarm that the Colombo government and the abetting powers, in experimenting political cum military effectiveness of their local and global order through a no-witness genocidal war, are probably at such a research with the Eezham Tamils. "Whether a humanitarian catastrophe faced by them is deliberately ignored by the international community and whether the instruments of humanitarian intervention have given up Vanni people for good," ask Dr. J. Sivamanoharan and S. Edmond Reginold, professionals of mental health working in Vanni.
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179 civilians including 76 children killed within 3 days inside 'safety zone'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 20:34 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) attacks have claimed the lives of 179 civilians within the three days of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, according to the casualty figures collected by TamilNet correspondent in Vanni. At least 76 of the slain victims were children below the age of 15. At least 16 pregnant mothers were among the slain. More than 109 children below the age of 15 have sustained injuries. Around 45% of the thousands of shells fired by the SLA have hit the safety zone. Meanwhile, a foreign staff of the ICRC, who came in the ship on Saturday to transport the wounded civilian had a narrow escape when the ship was hit by long distance gunfire by the SLA damaging a window of the ship. On Friday, a local ICRC worker, P. Satheeskumar, was reportedly injured in SLA shelling.
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Reporter arrested for plundering computers, temple artifacts in Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 12:27 GMT]
A Sinhala TV reporter attached to the state-run Rupavahini Corporation and posted to cover the conflict in the Vanni was arrested on Thursday along with five laptops and ten digital cameras allegedly plundered from Tamil Tiger bases, police confirmed. Several artifacts allegedly removed from Hindu temples were also found on his possession, according to the investigators.
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Sydney protest draws more than 5,000

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 11:30 GMT]
More than 5,000 protesters took to the streets of Sydney Saturday demanding action against the Sri Lankan government and the atrocities being committed against Tamil civilians caught up in the war in the Vanni. Sydney's Central Business District suffered traffic congestion and delays as demonstrators took over major city roads as the protesters marched towards the city's Town Hall, participants in the rally said.
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Jesse Jackson calls for ceasefire

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 March 2009, 23:13 GMT]
Veteran American civil rights campaigner Reverend Jesse Jackson, who addressed the diaspora Tamil conference in London on Thursday said that "we [the global community] have a moral obligation to stop the killings" in Sri Lanka. The American civil rights activist also raised the need to increase the international awareness of the crisis and asked what his organisation, the Rainbow Push Coalition could do to help. Rev. Jackson stated that the crisis can only be resolved by "thinking it out, and not by shooting it out." He called for a commitment to a ceasefire because “we cannot negotiate to the sound of bullets whizzing over our heads.”
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Diaspora conference in London calls for immediate ceasefire

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 March 2009, 22:27 GMT]
45 Tamil dignitaries from 21 countries gathered in London on Wednesday and Thursday to resolve that an immediate ceasefire in Sri Lanka was essential and that humanitarian access to the Vanni should be permitted immediately. The delegates also said that the Eezham Tamils should determine their own destiny and emphasized that the people of the traditional Tamil homeland had not only given their democratic mandate to the homeland concept, but they also have reiterated that mandate at every juncture of their political discourse.
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Grasping at straws leaving the tail: diaspora activist on Holmes' brief

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 March 2009, 16:21 GMT]
UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes, who briefed the UN Security Council for a second time on Thursday "didn’t say anything new in his latest briefing other than reflecting on the escalation of the crisis and the pathetic impotency of the UN in handling the situation," Roy Gardiner Wignarajah, a spokesman of the Canadian Tamil activist group, International Human Cultural Union (IHCU), told TamilNet Friday. He also referred to a recent statement by Professor Francis Boyle, a leading expert in International Law, who said that it seemed as if the UN is now repeating one of the 'most shameless and disgraceful debacles in its entire history in today's Vanni Pocket by becoming complicit in Sri Lanka's genocide.'
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SLA denies permission to Vanni IDP children to attend normal schools

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 March 2009, 04:36 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) authorities in Jaffna refuse permission to the children held in two SLA detainment centres in Kaithadi to attend normal schools near the centre despite efforts by educational officials and UNICEF readiness to offer financial assistance, sources in Jaffna said. The SLA authorities say that there are security problems in transporting the children to the schools and back, the sources added.
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'Coercion is not the beginning for a lasting solution'

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 March 2009, 01:17 GMT]
“Intimidation and coercion of Tamils and their political leaders can never be a good beginning for any lasting solution. The fundamental point is that the powers don’t want to see parity to Tamils in the negotiation. They want to confirm Colombo’s position that there is a post-LTTE phase and the Tamils to negotiate from a post-defeat position. Above all, they don’t want to recognize the national liberation perspectives of the Tamil struggle,” writes an independent commentator in Vanni, who has long been sharing his insight with TamilNet. “What the powers actually expect is TNA disowning the LTTE and joining Rajapaksa club in hoodwinking a solution. The Eezham Tamils were at the receiving end of political deceit for ages and they have a good sense of smelling it out, even if it is international."
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SLA attacks kill Mullai DS officials engaged in humanitarian work

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 March 2009, 19:37 GMT]
Two of the 131 civilians slain on Wednesday were District Secretariat officials engaged in humanitarian work, according to initial details from the civil sources in Vanni. A 52-year-old female, Mariyanayagam Deisyrany, attached to the registrar section of the Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat and a 27-year-old female, Janoja, engaged in the supply of World Food Program (WFP) delivered humanitarian aid.
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Immediate ceasefire, humanitarian access before political engagement - TNA MP

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 March 2009, 07:48 GMT]
S. Jeyananthamoorthy, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian from Batticaloa district on Thursday said that the TNA had decided not to engage in talks with the Sri Lankan President or anyone representing the SL state before a conducive environment for such political engagement is created by an immediate ceasefire and unhindered humanitarian access to the suffering people of Vanni. The TNA has clarified the reasons in detail in a press meet in Colombo, he said, condemning the abduction of the brother of Jaffna district MP Kajendran, barely 48 hours before the TNA was to decide its position on accepting an invitation for a meeting with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
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RSF "outraged" at grenade attack on Jaffna Uthayan HQ

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 March 2009, 14:26 GMT]
Reporters Without Borders (RF), a Paris-based media watchdog, expressed "outrage" at the grenade attack at the Uthayan Head Quarters building in Jaffna Tuesday night, and urged "the Sri Lankan authorities to carry out a thorough investigation with the aim of arresting those responsible and bringing them to trial." RSF noted that Senior Sri Lanka Government officials had recently told news organisations not to publish reports about civilian victims of the fighting in the northern district of Vanni or not to reproduce LTTE interviews, but that Uthayan and other newspaper, Valampuri, had nonetheless printed photos of children killed in Vanni.
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Uthayan office in Jaffna attacked

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 March 2009, 23:57 GMT]
The main office of Uthayan Tamil daily in Jaffna came under grenade attack Tuesday night around 11:10 p.m., the administration of the paper told media in Colombo. Tamil media circles added that the attack had come after verbal instructions by the top officials of Rajapaksa government not to publish stories related to civilian casualties in Vanni or reproduce the contents of interviews given by the LTTE officials to news agencies and media. Uthayan and Valampuri newspapers have recently printed photos of children being killed in the Sri Lankan attacks inside 'safety zone' in Vanni.
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Saiva delegation visits IDP detention camps in Jaffna peninsula

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 March 2009, 17:39 GMT]
A five member Saiva delegation group led by Nallai Aatheenam Chief Priest, Srila Siri Somansunthara Parmaachchaariya Suvaamika’l, visited the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) detention centres in Koappaay and Kurunakar Tuesday where it gave goods to the detained Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who had fled the war in Vanni to Jaffna peninsula, sources in Jaffna said. This is the first visit to the SLA detention centres in Jaffna by a Saiva organization and the members of the group expressed concern that many needs of the IDPs remain unfulfilled.
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SLN misappropriates outboard motors of Vanni IDPs in Vadamaraadchi

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 March 2009, 14:54 GMT]
Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) personnel in Vadamaraadchi are forcibly confiscating the boats with outboard motors in which civilians flee the war in Vanni to Vadamaraadchi from areas like Mullaiththeevu, fisheries society sources in Vadamaraadchi complained. Some SLN officials who had taken away the outboard motors in their vehicles had tried to sell them in the black market, the sources alleged.
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Colombo, New Delhi fall back on lure in fighting the diaspora

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 March 2009, 20:23 GMT]
Frustration arising from failure in the military annihilation of the Eezham Tamil struggle led by the LTTE, mounting global opinion in favour of the oppressed, determination of the diaspora and electoral urgency in India are impelling the war partners in Colombo and New Delhi to explore alternative tactics in achieving their goals. While conferences are planned in Singapore and Bangalore to hoodwink the diaspora and Indian public, a member of India’s national security advisory panel wants Colombo and the Tigers to be pressurised to declare a ceasefire. “They must be compelled to accept an international mechanism, so that the civilians are rescued from the war zones. And, what is more, these civilians should be settled in welfare centres, manned by the UN agencies”, he said.
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