Colombo rejects TNA’s ultimatum on non-existing devolution plan

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 August 2011, 11:54 GMT]
Rejecting outright the demands of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in a typical Sinhala hegemonic manner, the militaristic government of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday said that the demands set out in the TNA’s ultimatum for future talks have reflected the attitude of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
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TNA gives two weeks ultimatum to Colombo’s ‘devolution’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 August 2011, 21:12 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance in a press statement Thursday has said that it gives two weeks ultimatum to Rajapaksa government to come out with ‘devolution’ details on the structure of governance, the division of subjects and functions between centre and the devolved units and on fiscal and financial powers, to decide on carrying forward any future dialogue. As no response has been forthcoming for several months from Colombo’s side, no meaningful or purposeful discussion could be had on the discussion papers tendered by the TNA, said the statement released from the office of TNA’s nominated parliamentarian, Mr. MA Sumanthiran.
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Rights groups urge Swiss Attorney General to prosecute Dias for war-crimes

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 August 2011, 16:42 GMT]
Society for Threatened People and TRIAL, two advocacy groups based in Europe, requested the Swiss Attorney General today to pursue war crimes charges against Jegath Dias, SriLanka's deputy ambassador to Germany and former major general in Sri Lanka's armed forces. The groups allege that Dias's division was "responsible for massive bombing of civilians and hospitals," an AP report said. This action follows the filing of a complaint against the Federal Republic of Germany with the European Courts of Human Rights (ECHR) for violating the ‘European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, in accepting Dias as a Diplomat, by three Tamil organizations.
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Terrorism was the problem: Krishna; no need of solution now: Gotabhaya

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 August 2011, 15:02 GMT]
In a Suo Motu statement in the Indian parliament, Indian foreign minister SM Krishna viewed that Sri Lanka’s problem for three decades was ‘terrorism’. “Sri Lanka has borne the brunt of terrorism for nearly three-decades,” the minister said, adding that the highest priority for India now is welfare of the IDPs. Colombo’s assurances for building upon the 13th Amendment would meet the reconciliation, he contented. Meanwhile, speaking to Headlines Today this week, SL presidential sibling and defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has said that there was no need to talk about solution any more as they had ended terrorism. Headlines Today will be airing the exclusive interview with Gotabhaya on coming Monday.
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Colombo transfers Admin functions of East Tamil areas to Sinhala districts

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 August 2011, 11:21 GMT]
Sri Lanka government has been implementing a scheme to transfer administrative functions of Tamil districts in Eastern Province to the adjoining Sinhalese districts. As a first step the government has transferred the financial administration of Batticaloa District Coconut Development Board to Polonnaruwa located in the North Central Province. The government should immediately stop this transfer, said Mr.P. Selvarasa, Batticaloa District Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian.
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US urges Colombo to investigate assault on Uthayan news editor

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 August 2011, 13:12 GMT]
Condemning the assault on Gnanasundaram Kuganathan, the news editor of Uthayan newspaper in Jaffna, the US Embassy in Colombo on Wednesday urged the SL government to undertake a thorough investigation and to bring the perpetrators to justice.
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Indian PM rejects TN State assembly resolution for economic sanctions on SL

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 August 2011, 06:04 GMT]
Rejecting the resolution of the Tamil Nadu State assembly, Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Tuesday has said that India “cannot afford to restrict economic links with neighbouring Sri Lanka”, a move widely seen as giving a moral and diplomatic strength to the hawkish Rajapaksa government, which is under international pressure over wide-spread war crime allegations. According to the Delhi-based Hindustan Times report, the Indian Prime Minister has made his government’s policy with regard to Sri Lanka and to Eezham Tamils when he was met by the General Secreatry of Marumalarchi Dravida Munetra Kazhakam (MDMK) Vaiko on Tuesday.
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Media organisations in Colombo protest against attack on Tamil editor

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 August 2011, 10:46 GMT]
Five Colombo-based media organizations held a protest campaign at Lipton Circus, Colombo, Tuesday afternoon, against the assault of Uthayan newspaper's News Editor Gnanasundaram Kuhanathan in Jaffna. Meanwhile, Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa talking to foreign journalists on Tuesday said the attack on Kuhanathan was an 'isolated' incident and a 'petty' crime. Since year 2000, six employees of Uthayan newspaper including two journalists, Raji Varman and S.S.R. Sugirtharajan, have been killed. But the Sri Lankan authorities have not arrested a single person to date in connection with the killings.
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Colombo deprives livelihood of 2500 Tamil, Muslim families in Kuchchave'li

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 August 2011, 01:44 GMT]
Nearly two thousand five hundred Tamil and Muslim families in Periya-karaichchi village in the Kuchchave'li Divisional Secretariat division in Trincomalee district have been deprived of the their permanent livelihood following the construction of a saltern by a southern based firm with the permission of the Colombo government. The project is named Raigam Saltern employing Sinhalese from South. “Nearly 2000 families of Tamils and Muslims who were doing prawn farming on this Periya-karaichchi land and another five hundred families who benefited from the subsidiary employment related to prawn farming have been pushed out and some outsiders from other districts have come started a saltern. This is extremely unfair,” said R.Sampanthan, Trincomalee district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian in a letter to the Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
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Gotabhaya denies role in white flag surrender killings

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 August 2011, 12:55 GMT]
Rattled and ravaged by the widespread credible war crime allegations, Sri Lankan Presidential sibling and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on Monday denied his role and responsibility over the killing of LTTE’s political wing leaders, Nadesan and Puleedevan while surrendering to the 58 Division troops in the final days of the war in May 2009. In the meantime, a disinformation report released by his ministry has come with a comically low figure of major offences committed by Sri Lanka Army personnel between 2005 and 2010 in the North and East: 8 murders, 4 rapes and 1 sexual abuse. The only year with no major offenses by the SL Army was, according to its own report, none other than the year 2009, the year when SLA ironically adhered to the policy of Gotabhaya's “Zero Civilian Casualty”.
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Colombo unable to bury facts of ACF massacre

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 July 2011, 21:15 GMT]
Fifth anniversary of the massacre of seventeen staffers of the French NGO, Action Contre la Faim (ACF), by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers falls on the 4th of August. Later investigations established that the workers, trapped inside their Moothoor branch office residence of ACF located close to Moothoor Cultural Centre, were shot and killed at point blank range, by SLA soldiers. Colombo has continued to sabotage investigations, failed to provide protection for witnesses, and has failed to make public findings of the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) report on the ACF killings. Meanwhile, a former wife of slain ACF worker, Premas Anandarajah, has filed a civil suit in the District Court of District of Columbia, U.S., against Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse as responsible for the crime, claiming damages of $30m (all three plaintiffs).
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Stop treating Tamils as minority: Premachandran MP

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 July 2011, 20:37 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran on Sunday touched on an important conceptual issue related to the national question in the island that affects equality between Tamils and Sinhalese, when he criticized those who treat Tamils as a ‘minority’. “We will not allow the government or anyone else to treat the Tamils as a minority anymore. If the Sri Lankan government thinks the Sinhalese are the majority and the Tamils are the minority, then they are mistaken,” Mr. Premachandran told The Sunday Leader.
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Rajapaksa to visit China for fourth time since 2007

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 July 2011, 07:30 GMT]
Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa is scheduled to make another official visit to China in the second week of August, Colombo media reports. Rajapaksa's last visit to China was in November 2010 as a special guest to attend the Expo 2010 Exhibition in Shanghai. Since 2007 Mahinda Rajapakse had visited China thrice and the oncoming visit would be his fourth, Colombo media reported quoting foreign ministry sources.
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Nirupama, India’s ambassador-designate to US, meets Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 July 2011, 17:29 GMT]
India’s Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao who will be retiring on Sunday is on a three-day visit to Colombo. Arriving on Friday night she had a breakfast meeting with Mahinda Rajapaksa on Saturday. The Hindu, saying that the meeting was a result of spontaneous invitation from Rajapaksa, cited officials describing the meeting as a “farewell” Rajapaksa had wanted to accord her because of the special relationship she shared with the country. But political observers said Nirupama’s fascination with Colombo on the eve of her retirement is connected to her new assignment as India’s ambassador to the US.
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Attack on news editor exposes post-war state of media freedom: SLTMA

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 July 2011, 13:02 GMT]
Sri Lanka Tamil Media Alliance (SLTMA), a Colombo based Tamil journalists association on Saturday condemned the attack on Gnanasundaram Kuhanathan, the news editor of Uthayan Tamil Daily in Jaffna, and said that the attack reported within 6 days after the conclusion of the civic elections has cast severe doubts. The government of Sri Lanka claims that it has has brought media democracy and freedom of expression to Jaffna, but the journalists are continuously harassed and threatened, the media watchdog said.
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Colonization to engulf Thiriyaay as Colombo allocates 3000 acres for Buddhist vihare

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 July 2011, 12:14 GMT]
Nearly three thousand acres in Thiriyaay, a traditional Tamil village, located about 42 km off north of Trincomalee town have been earmarked to be declared as sacred area for a Buddhist Vihare called Girihandu Seya. The Vihare caters exclusively for Sinhala Buddhists from the south of Sri Lanka.
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Colombo targeting Tamil civil service is more than revenge

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 July 2011, 18:02 GMT]
Orders have been issued by Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa and by his sibling Basil Rajapaksa to colonial governor Maj. Gen. Chandrasri for immediate and full-swing replacement of Tamil civil service in the north. The act may superficially look as a revenge for the defeat in the civic elections, but it is actually aimed to make any political solution that will be ‘accounted’ to the outside world completely meaningless to Eezham Tamils, and is a part of a long-contemplated agenda of structural genocide, political observers said. Meanwhile, knowing what is happening and what will happen in demography, political representation, civil administration, militarisation and in all other respects, why should the TNA commit to seek solutions under a ‘united Sri Lanka’ just because the powers that abetted the genocide want it, ask non TNA Tamil nationalists.
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News Editor attacked in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 July 2011, 15:08 GMT]
Two unidentified men who came in a motorbike attacked the Chief News Editor of Uthayan Daily in Jaffna, Gnanasundaram Kuganathan, Friday around 7:45 p.m., causing serious injuries to the 59-year-old news editor. Till the end of war, Mr. Kuganathan was living inside the paper office for 3 years as the news paper had come under attacks by occupying SL Army-backed operatives in May 2006 and in March 2009. The staff at the paper office have been threatened by the EPDP paramilitary on several occasions. The timing of the attack signals that it was a ‘punishment’ by the SL military intelligence not favouring the ruling UPFA alliance during the campaign for civic elections.
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Puththa'lam HR activist body exhumed in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 July 2011, 10:40 GMT]
The body of a human rights activist Pattani Razik, 55, who was reported disappeared 18 months ago was exhumed from a half built private house in Kaavathumunai in the presence of Vaazhaich-cheanai Magistrate Thursday. At that time of disappearance Razik was the Director of the Puththalam Social Trust Fund. Razik, head of the Community Trust Fund (CTF), a Sri Lankan NGO based in the town of Puththa'lam disappeared since February 11, 2010, while travelling to Polonnaruwa from Puththa'lam.
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CEB workers in North, East protest demanding salary arrears

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 July 2011, 20:15 GMT]
Ceylon Electricity Board workers in Trincomalee and Jaffna on Tuesday and Wednesday staged protests demanding immediate payment of salary arrears for 10 months. While the Sri Lankan government has been waging a propaganda inviting foreign countries to invest money in a “developing Sri Lanka”, the State is unable to pay salary arrears for more than 10 months, CEB workers in Jaffna said Wednesday. For the first time after several years, electricity board workers from North and South joined in the protest that took place in front of CEP office situated on KKS Road.
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