Ten youths from UNICEF list sent to Kilinochchi Transit Center

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 January 2004, 18:04 GMT]
A Committee, appointed by the Liberation Tigers (LTTE), while reviewing the UNICEF underage list has so far found four boys and six girls to be under 18 years old, LTTE's media co-ordinator, Daya Master, told TamilNet. The youths are being sent to the Kilinochchi Children Transit Camp today. They were all found to have feigned their ages by submitting false papers when they joined the movement, Daya Master added.
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Peace gives no light to Vakarai

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 January 2004, 00:32 GMT]
Vakarai is a large backwater on Sri Lanka’s east coast. It is an area with large fertile fields, lagoons and virgin forests in the northern part of the Batticaloa district. Vakarai was subjected to more than fifteen years of a brutal counter insurgency campaign by the Sri Lanka army. It has seen hardly any development even after the war stopped two years ago. Electricity is still a luxury here. “I have never seen electricity used in Vakarai since I was born,” N.Loganathan, a resident of Panichchankerni, told TamilNet.


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Tamil fishermen to fly black flags on Sri Lanka’s Independence Day

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 January 2004, 10:35 GMT]
Fishermen in Jaffna will fly black flags on their boats, homes and union offices on Sri Lanka’s Independence Day next week, the spokesman for the Federation of Jaffna District Co-operative Fishermen’s Unions told TamilNet, Friday. “February 4th is not Independence Day for Tamils. We want to show the world how we are still being denied our basic freedoms”, he said. Britain gave Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) independence on 4 February 1948.


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Protesting parents want school back from military

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 January 2004, 12:23 GMT]
Parents protested in front of the Thenmaradchi Zonal Education office in Chavakachcheri Thursday urging the authorities to re-open the Eluthumadduval North Government Tamil Mixed School (GTMS), which is occupied by the Sri Lanka army now. The protestors say their children face numerous problems because the school remains closed. Children from five hamlets in Eluthumadduval north were studying in the school before it was occupied by the SLA in 2000.
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LTTE expresses 'serious concern' over Indo-Lanka defence pact

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 January 2004, 14:31 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has expressed serious concern over the envisaged Indo-Sri Lankan Defence Agreement (DCA) arguing that it could have far-reaching negative consequences for the current peace process, sources told TamilNet Monday.
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JVP-SLFP alliance seriously jeopardizes Peace Process - American Academics

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 January 2004, 17:42 GMT]
North American academics expressed pessimism about the future of the peace process after the JVP-SLFP alliance. Prof.Oberst of Nebraska Weslyan University said, "it has complicated the peace process...LTTE leadership [will be] hesitant to agree to anything until after the next general election." Prof Mia Bloom from McGill University said the alliance "seriously jeopardizes the peace process since it provides legitimization of the SLFP shifting even further to the right."
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UNICEF underage list under review - LTTE

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 January 2004, 20:12 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), responding to a report released by UNICEF which expressed concern in the use of "children as soldiers," said that only about 10% of the individuals listed by the UNICEF as below 18 years have birth certificates and that a 3-person committee is reviewing UNICEF's list, taking steps to ascertain the ages of the rest of the individuals.


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JVP-SLFP pact threatens peace and is set to provoke ethnic war- LTTE

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 January 2004, 10:01 GMT]
“The Memorandum of Understanding signed by the JVP and the SLFP after a year of intense dialogue fails to produce any concrete, realistic formula for a negotiated settlement of the Tamil national question. Rather, this anti-peace political pact articulating an incoherent, confused and mutually contradictory position on a serious national issue might create objective conditions for the resumption of ethnic war," Mr. Anton Balasingham, the chief negotiator and political strategist of the LTTE told TamilNet Wednesday.
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JVP leader says totally opposed to SLFP’s power sharing policy

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 January 2004, 13:46 GMT]
Mr. Somawansa Amarasingha, the secretive leader of the JVP said that his party is totally against the SLFP policy of sharing power despite the alliance both parties have formed. In a wide-ranging interview with an online publication before his departure from an unnamed western country to Sri Lanka on Monday, Mr. Amarasingha castigated Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for behaving like an American puppet and for “speaking like a ruler of a land occupied by the US”. He asserted that the India - Sri Lanka Defence Pact should be made a cornerstone of the island’s foreign policy.
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Cannot delay basic needs of NE accede donors

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 January 2004, 11:43 GMT]
"It has been accepted at this conference that the people of the northeast cannot wait for their basic needs until a political solution to the ethnic conflict is found," said Mr. Daya Master, the media co-ordinator of the Liberation Tigers speaking to the press at the conclusion of the northeast donor conference Monday. "People in the northeast have many needs. They cannot be expected to wait until there is a solution to the conflict," a Dutch diplomat who took part in the conference said.
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Thamilchelvan deplores Sri Lanka President's 'arbitrary action'

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 January 2004, 10:40 GMT]
The Sri Lankan "governing apparatus that should take forward the peace process with commitment and sufficient strength is in shambles. This no doubt is an imminent threat to the maintenance of the ceasefire with due integrity," said Mr. S. P Thamilchelvan, head of the LTTE’s political division addressing the conference of northeast donors Monday in Kilinochchi. He said that "the arbitrary action" of Sri Lanka’s President "has created problems of vast magnitude vis-à-vis the integrity of the CFA and the progress of the political negotiations."
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Indian Coast Guard, trawlers enter Jaffna seas

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 January 2004, 08:51 GMT]
More than a hundred Indian trawlers escorted by Indian coast guard vessels entered the seas off Jaffna's Vadamaradchi coast Sunday night, fishermen in Pt. Pedro told TamilNet. There were about sixty smaller Indian fishing craft with the trawlers they said.
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Northeast donor conference begins in Kilinochchi

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 January 2004, 06:25 GMT]
The donor conference on northeast development and rehabilitation began as scheduled at the Planning Secretariat of the Liberation Tigers in Kilinochchi at 11.30 a.m. Monday, LTTE officials said. Diplomats and officials from Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, UK, Germany, France European Union, ADB, World Bank, JICA, JBIC, UNDP, UNICEF and CIDA are taking part in the meeting. Mr. S. P Thamilchelvan, the head of political division, is leading the LTTE team at the conference, officials in Kilinochchi told TamilNet.
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UNICEF reinducts school-dropouts back to education

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 January 2004, 19:21 GMT]
UNICEF is providing funds to the Kalkuda educational region in Batticaloa district to setup special classes in 14 centers to reinduct children who dropped out of school due to poverty and war back into the educational stream, officials said.
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Tigers await Colombo outcome, vow to observe truce

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 January 2004, 00:07 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers have given a solemn pledge to the Norwegian facilitators of the peace process in Sri Lanka that their organization would abide by the terms and conditions of the two year old cease-fire agreement and maintain peace, irrespective of the continuing turmoil in Colombo.
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Sri Lanka PM commits to implement possible provisions of truce

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 January 2004, 12:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said Wednesday that his government would continue to implement the provisions of the cease fire agreement with the Liberation Tigers for restoring normalcy in the northeast. He was addressing a forum for peace and democracy at the Sr Lanka Foundation Institute in Colombo Wednesday.
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Sri Lanka President sets hurdle for stateless Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 January 2004, 15:07 GMT]
The Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga Tuesday ordered that the granting of citizenship to stateless Tamils in the island “should not be done in a manner that would provide political advantage to one party." The order refers to the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC), the Tamil trade union and political party that lobbied for and succeeded in passing legislation to grant citizenship to thousands of stateless Tamils in Sri Lanka last year. The CWC was recently involved in a program by the UNHCR to help stateless Tamils apply for citizenship.
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Batticaloa villagers live under SLA death threats

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 January 2004, 12:51 GMT]
Residents of Vembu, Kiran, Palaiyavettai and other villages that lie close to the Kumburumoolai Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp live in constant fear amidst death threats by the soldiers of the SLA camp, residents told TamilNet. Kumburumoolai SLA camp is located about 29kilometers North of Batticaloa town.
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Will fast to death says Jaffna refugee

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 January 2004, 11:28 GMT]
Mr.Sellakili Anandaraja, a refugee in Jaffna whose home and fields are occupied by the Sri Lanka amy said Sunday he would fast to death if he and more than 600 diplaced families in the Thenmaradchi divison of Jaffna are not permitted resettle in their villages before the end of January 2004.
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Tigers launch drive to stop drug abuse in Mannar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 January 2004, 13:45 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers have launched a concerted campaign against drug abuse and AIDS in the Mannar District, Mr. S. Thangan, deputy leader of the political division of the Liberation Tigers, said Thursday. “Drug abuse has been on the increase in this district in recent times. It will ruin the moral fabric of our society. The problem is acute here because Mannar has become a key transit point for drug smuggling between India and Sri Lanka”, Mr. Thangan told TamilNet. He is currently in Mannar to expedite the campaign.
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