India in duplicitous, murderous collaboration with genocidal regime - SA Post

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 February 2009, 15:00 GMT]
Noting that the "shelling of safe areas, the genocide massacre of the elderly, innocent women, and children," are war crimes "on a par with the worst of Nazism," an article in South Africa's popular daily, The Post, accuses India that it "has revealed a duplicitous and murderous collaboration with the genocidal regime in power in Colombo. Not only deaf to the pleas and cries of its own Tamil population to intervene in this murderous onslaught, it actively assists the regime in the supply of military hardware, the training of strike-aircraft pilots, the supply of military expertise, and the provision of military advisors on the ground."
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Journalist Sathiyamoorthy killed inside Safe Zone

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 February 2009, 19:08 GMT]
Puniyamoorthy Sathiyamoorthy, journalist and political analyst, well-known and highly respected by the Tamils in Eelam and among diaspora Tamils, sustained serious injuries in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) artillery barrage Thursday on Theavipuram in the 'safety zone' declared by Sri Lanka government in Mullaitheevu district in Vanni, and succumbed to his wounds. Lack of proper medical attention contributed to his death, according to relatives who cared for him after the incident.
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Trinco town security tightened after arrival of Vanni wounded

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 February 2009, 15:01 GMT]
Security of Trincomalee town has been strengthened by the government security forces since the admission of two groups of Vanni civilians in Trincomalee General Hospital. Vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians are being checked by police and Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers deployed at the sentry points along roads leading to the hospital.
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20 new police stations between Vavuniyaa, EPS - DIG

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 February 2009, 14:57 GMT]
Twenty new police stations are to be established between Oamanthai in Vavuniyaa district and Elephant Pass, and will be brought under new police command called "Vanni East Police Operation Unit," according to Deputy Inspector General of Police for Vavuniyaa district Nandana Munasinghe.
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Grand scale murder, rape of screened civilians feared, TNA MP alerts

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 February 2009, 14:34 GMT]
Around 190 males were murdered and 130 females were taken for sexual abuse among the thousands of civilians so far fled and screened by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA), accused Tamil National Alliance MP S. Gajendran Saturday, citing information he received from the inmates of internment camps and from his contacts in Vavuniyaa. The sources informed him that murdered were secretly buried in Anuradhapura. "Unless there is no immediate international supervision and international monitors, situation turning into another Yugoslavia cannot be prevented," the MP said.
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LTTE welcomes appointment of British Special Envoy

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 February 2009, 19:03 GMT]
Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) has welcomed the appointment of Des Browne as Special Envoy to Sri Lanka by the British Prime Minister on Thursday. In a letter addressed to Mr. Des Browne, LTTE's Head of International Diplomatic Relations S. Pathmanathan said the British government had a moral responsibility to intervene to stop the genocide being committed by the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) on Tamil civilians in the island of Sri Lanka.
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Herding people by terror: Intense shelling, dead bodies on roadside in Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 February 2009, 13:50 GMT]
More than 150 civilians were feared killed Thursday alone and around 90 in the preceding two days in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) shelling in Mullaiththeevu district. Most of the casualties are reported along the sides of two roads through which the civilians are forced to flee in yet another mass exodus to a new 'safety zone' unilaterally announced by Colombo. Dead bodies were lying along the roadside from Theavipuram to Puthukkudiyiruppu and the fleeing civilians were forced to bury their dead along the roadside amid intense shelling, initial reports from Vanni said. The new 'safety zone' declared by Colombo is nothing but an assembling ground to herd 300,000 civilians in a small stretch of land along the lagoon and the sea coast, north of Mullaiththeevu.
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Silent prayer, fast observed in Jaffna University, for the suffering Tamils in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 16:03 GMT]
“The people in Vanni are undergoing unprecedented suffering and pain without any food, medicine, clothes and places to seek shelter, in the unrelenting attacks on them and we urge the concerned parties and the International Community to help stop the war on the Tamils immediately,” Jaffna University Students Union (JUSU) said in a media report Thursday.
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British ex-defence secretary appointed special envoy to Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 15:44 GMT]
Britain named a special envoy to Sri Lanka on Thursday to help bring about a political solution to the island’s long-running conflict and to ease hardships to Tamil civilians trapped in the Vanni warzone, UK press reports said. "I've asked Des Browne, our former defence secretary, to be an envoy for Sri Lanka," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a parliamentary committee. Brown said the priorities were to achieve a ceasefire and to get a political settlement, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Robert Blake was quoted by the Washington Post as saying the Sri Lankan military’s capture of the Vanni region – which he expects within weeks – will not end the LTTE’s armed struggle and that Colombo must reach a political settlement with the Tamils.
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ICRC evacuates 360 more patients to Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 12:41 GMT]
The ICRC on Thursday evacuated second batch of 360 injured and sick patients from makeshift hospitals in Puthumaaththa'lan and Thaevipuram in Vanni to Trincomalee in chartered vessel 'Green Ocean', according to medical sources. The foreign officials of the ICRC who came to Vanni, have also returned in the ship, the sources further said. Meanwhile, informed sources in Colombo said that the ICRC was not allowed by the GoSL to have foreign officials to operate in Vanni as it would no longer guarantee their security. Colombo government is also pressing the remaining health workers to leave Vanni with ICRC escort.
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Civilian refugees imprisoned in internment camps in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 11:55 GMT]
The civilian refugees who either fled the war zone or caught by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) are denied not only the freedom of movement to go out of the buildings in which they are detained under 'near-prison' conditions, but are also denied freedom of movement inside the camp itself after 6:00 p.m. by the SLA, even for the call of nature, on grounds of condemnation that they were linked to the LTTE, said NGO activists on condition of anonymity.
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Sri Lanka engaged in deliberate, systematic act of genocide - LTTE

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 11:15 GMT]
The Tamil homeland is witnessing one of the worst human tragedies of the 21st century said the Political Division of the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) in a statement issued in Tamil on Wednesday. More than one-thousand civilians have been killed and four-thousand are struggling to recover from the injuries amid continuous artillery barrage, air attacks and cluster bombing by the Sinhala state, the LTTE statement said. The LTTE statement categorically denied the Sri Lankan claim that a Tiger human bomb had recently attacked civilians.
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Colombo orders all health workers to immediately leave Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 06:57 GMT]
Health ministry officials in Colombo issued Tuesday a 'final warning' to the 8 doctors and around one thousand medical and health workers of Mullaiththeevu and Ki'linochchi districts, now serving more than 250,000 civilians in the besieged Mullaiththeevu district, to immediately leave the LTTE controlled territory, according to the sources at the District Secretariat in Vavuniyaa. The move comes after military officials warned the medical staff of dire consequences.
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ICRC: Vanni dependent on outside aid, shelling killed 16 patients on Monday

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 06:08 GMT]
On Monday, Putumattalan was hit by shelling that killed at least 16 patients. "We are shocked that patients are not afforded the protection they are entitled to," said Paul Castella, head of the ICRC delegation in Colombo, in a press statement issued Tuesday. "Most of the population is now displaced and completely dependent on outside aid, yet none has reached the area since 29 January," the ICRC said adding that it remained extremely concerned about the plight of the civilians in Vanni. "It is imperative that both parties immediately allow food and other urgently needed items to reach those who are trapped."
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IDPs in SLA detention camps lack sufficient food in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 01:35 GMT]
Jaffna Government Agent (GA) made an urgent appeal Tuesday to local and international non-government organizations in Jaffna to provide food materials to the 2400 detainees held in three Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camps as the arrangement of supplying cooked food to them has been suspended by the SLA authorities in Jaffna, sources in Jaffna said. The dry food items given to them under the World Food Programme (WFP) are hardly sufficient to meet the food requirements of the civilians detained in the SLA detention centres in Kurunakar, Koaappay and Mirusuvil, Jaffna Secretariat sources added.
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Tigers deny firing at civilians, accuse SLA, urge for international monitors

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 01:15 GMT]
Categorically denying reports by the Sri Lankan military officials in Colombo that the Tigers had fired at the fleeing civilians in Vanni, Puthukkudiyiruppu Divisional Political Head of the LTTE, C. Ilamparithy told TamilNet Wednesday that Sri Lanka Army (SLA) commando teams had entered the 'safety zone' in Udaiyaarkaddu and Chuthanthirapuram and had opened fire killing civilians and causing injuries to many in their attempt to forcibly move the civilians into the hands of the SLA. "Sri Lankan military machinery, which has relentlessly killed and maimed thousands of civilians during the past four weeks, is now engaged in a propaganda drive to divert the mounting pressure on the Colombo government by the International Community," Mr. Ilamparithy charged.
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US Ambassador Robert Blake cancels visit to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 22:59 GMT]
Ambassador of United States of America in Sri Lanka, Robert Blake, who was expected to be the chief guest in the opening ceremony of the ‘Health Village’ constructed in Pa’n’nai in Jaffna Wednesday cancelled his visit to Jaffna, sources in Jaffna said. Deputy Chief of Mission of the US Embassy in Colombo, James R. Moore who arrived in Jaffna Tuesday is expected to fill the place of the US Ambassador, the sources added.
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250 patients evacuated, return of ICRC to Vanni urged

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 15:21 GMT]
Two foreign officials of the ICRC officials left Vanni Tuesday around 5:00 p.m. in a ship transporting 250 seriously wounded patients, including 50 children, all wounded in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) artillery and Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) fire. The patients were taken on board the ship at LTTE controlled Puthumaaththa'lan in Mullaiththeevu to Trincomalee. The two ICRC officials who were remaining in Vanni had received instructions to be present in Trincomalee and it is not known whether they would return to Vanni, according to informed government officials.
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Wounded civilians treated under trees, warded in bunkers

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 00:58 GMT]
The makeshift hospitals in Vanni that have been forced to relocate amidst artillery and aerial attacks that followed after Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa publicly claimed that the medical facilities outside the so-called 'no fire zone' would be regarded as legitimate military targets by his forces. The hospitals, struggling to treat the wounded, are operating under the trees and bunkers have been turned to wards to treat the seriously wounded.
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ICRC staff escape SLA shelling in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 February 2009, 23:29 GMT]
ICRC staff who went to Maaththa'lan coastal area located north of Mullaiththeevu town, came under Sri Lanka Army artillery fire around 11:00 a.m. Monday, media reports in Vanni said. The ICRC staff had gone there after informing the Sri Lankan defence authorities that they would be present there for the preparatory work to facilitate transportation of the wounded civilians.
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