SL occupation of hospitals, schools harm resettlement in Vanni - TNA MP

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 April 2011, 12:20 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian from Vanni, S. Sritharan, has blamed the occupying Sri Lanka Army in Vanni for continuing to occupy public buildings, including primary hospitals and schools, causing severe hardships to resettling civilians. The accusation by the TNA MP comes following District Development Committee (DDC) meeting held in Jaffna on Tuesday, when Medical Officers brought to the notice of the DDC that if the Poonakari primary hospital, now occupied by the Sri Lanka Army, is handed over to them, they would resume services to the resettled civilians.
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Rajapaksa uses SL military to distribute Indian aid

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 April 2011, 12:12 GMT]
Much controversy arose at the Jaffna District Development Committee (DDC) meeting held on Tuesday over the selection of the beneficiaries for the houses to be built by the Indians and the way the SL authorities were handling the distribution of tractors gifted by India. The SL Presidential Secretariat has instructed the Divisional Secretaries to send ‘recommendations’ through the area Brigade Officers of the SLA. The SL Government Agent, Imelda Sugumar, who denied knowledge of the housing project proposed by the Indian Government, said the SL Presidential Secretariat was handling the distribution of Indian aid.
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Sinhalese being settled in Tamil village in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 April 2011, 11:02 GMT]
Lands in abandoned traditional Tamil village Thennaimaravaadi in Trincomalee district are being allocated three acres each to members of ‘home guards’, now known as Civil defence Force (CVF), dominated by Sinhalese. Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Trincomalee is organizing the transfer of land on the instruction of the SLA headquarters in Colombo without the approval of local civil authority, Tamil sources allege.
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Petitions, complaints, warnings from Sri Lanka ahead of UN war crimes report

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 April 2011, 22:54 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s government has launched a petition campaign against the UN making public an expert panel’s report on war crimes committed during the final months of the island’s war. The campaign, launched Thursday by Sri Lanka’s Minister of Private Transport Services, C. B. Ratnayaka, aims to collect one million signatures. It comes two days after President Mahinda Rajapaksa called for annual May Day rallies to be directed against the UN report. Also on Thursday, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister G.L. Peiris claimed releasing the report will damage the UN, while Mass Media minister Keheliya Rambukwella claimed the experts had written the report in just two weeks. The UN said earlier it will be releasing the much anticipated report on Friday.
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Indian public opinion should take care of Russia meddling with Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 April 2011, 21:51 GMT]
Mahinda Rajapaksa is harping on Russia and China to escape international action on war crimes and to continue the well-planned genocide of Eezham Tamils unabated. Regrettably, Russia sees the current accelerated process of structural genocide and dismemberment of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island as ‘reconciliation’ that should not be disturbed by war crimes investigation. On Monday Russia raised a number of ‘procedural’ objections on UN discussing the panel report. According to Inner City Press Thursday, Colombo’s UN representative Palitha Kohona insisted that there was “no mechanism” to bring the matter to the Security Council and that “We have Friends”. Whether Russia is acting on own or at the behest of somebody else, public opinion in India should take care of Russia, writes a Tamil political activist in Colombo.
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UN experts took bribes from LTTE supporters – SL minister

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 April 2011, 15:05 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s minister for Construction, Engineering Services, Housing and Common Amenities, Wimal Weerawansa, accused the independent experts who authored a UN report on war crimes during the final months of Sri Lanka’s war, of having taken bribes from the Tamil Diaspora. His comments were reported in the state-run Daily News Thursday. Sinhala ultra-nationalist firebrand Weerawansa last July famously staged a fast-unto-death in front of the UN building in Colombo in response to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s appointment of the panel.
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Thalpitiya, Thaaligala, Thaazhaiyadi, Kaththaazhampiddi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 22:51 GMT]
The plain or high ground of palmyra palms
The rocky place of talipot palms
The locality of screw-pines
The high ground of aloe

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Colombo High Court postpones “White Flag” hearing

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 12:44 GMT]
The Colombo High Court Wednesday allowed an application by the accused Sarath Fonseka, retired Commander of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA), to reconsider his decision to give evidence on behalf of the defense in the controversial “white flag” case due to the current tense situation in the island following the release of a portion of the UN Experts Panel report to the UN Secretary General, legal sources in Colombo said.
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Eastern campus students continue boycott

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 10:18 GMT]
Undergrads of the Eastern University of Sri Lanka (EUSL) did not attend classes Tuesday following the arrest of the President and Secretary of the University Students Union (USU) on Monday night, according to the acting Vice Chancellor Mr.K.Premkumar. The EUSL re-opened Tuesday after the closure following the boycott of classes in protest to the assault on Tamil undergrads by the police that took place on March 29. But the Student Union through a media statement on April 18 wanted its members to continue the boycott till the removal of the police sentry point from varsity premises when the EUSL administration decided to reopen the varsity on April 19.
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‘Saving a state that refuses to be saved’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 02:40 GMT]
A perusal of the leaked UN report would show that the outlook is to ultimately save the Sri Lankan state by providing it with an escape avenue through a minimum penalty of accepting a ‘concurrent’ international mechanism to investigate the war crimes. But the reactions coming from Colombo only show that such an undue consideration on the part of the UN and the IC towards Sri Lanka is futile as state has never been orientated in the island for peaceful unity or for being genocide-free. Perhaps a chance has now been given especially to the Sinhala masses to demonstrate their choice between supporting a criminal regime that tries to save its skin by citing love to a genocidal `mother country´ and recognizing the love of both the Sinhalese and Eezham Tamils towards their mother countries in order to pave way for true reconciliation, writes A. Vijayshankar of Tamil Nadu who is now in Norway.
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Trade unions allege politically motivated teacher transfer scheme in East

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 April 2011, 08:57 GMT]
Teachers from the eastern province are being transferred contrary to the islandwide transfer policy but according to a political agenda of the Colombo government, the All Ceylon Teachers Union (ACTU) and All Ceylon Government Workers Union (ACGWU) have alleged. ACTU President Joseph Stalin said transfer of teachers in the eastern and western provinces are carried out according to the Mahinda Chinthanaya policy.
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UN Panel gives Colombo a lesson on "Theory of Justice"

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 April 2011, 21:12 GMT]
The three-member UN panel rejected Sri Lanka's two-pronged notion of accountability that focussed on the responsibility of past Governments and of the LTTE, saying that the approach "does not envisage a serious examination of the Government’s decisions and conduct in prosecuting the final stages of the war or the aftermath, nor of the violations of law that may have occurred as a result." International standards mandate that any approach to accountability should "place the rights and dignity of the victims of the conflict at the centre," the panel said, and explained to Colombo that "[a]ccountability for serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law is not a matter of choice or policy; it is a duty under domestic and international law."
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Panel’s report ‘cannot erase the stain on the UN’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 17 April 2011, 15:10 GMT]
The damning UN report on Sri Lanka’s mass killings of Tamil civilians in 2009 submitted last week to Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon by a panel he appointed last year, “cannot erase the stain on the UN over its silence” during the bloodletting, The Times newspaper’s writer who first comprehensively reported on the violence said in a comment Friday. Catherine Philp recalling UN officials saying how the Ban’s chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, had ordered UN staff in Colombo to cover up the mass casualties being inflicted on Tamil civilians by Sri Lankan forces in 2009, so as not to “rock the boat” by criticising the Sri Lankan Government during its onslaught.
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"Prepared to go to gallows to save Motherland" - Rajapakse

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 April 2011, 20:01 GMT]
Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa, during a meeting held at Temple Trees today with electoral officers, declared that he is willing to go even to gallows to safeguard his motherland. "Certain groups with vested interest are still hell bent on bringing disrepute to Sri Lanka, almost two years after the war was ended," Rajapakse said according to political sources in Colombo. Rajapakse made these statements in reference to the UN-panels report on Sri Lanka war crimes which was submitted to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Sri Lanka-based paper Island leaked the executive summary of the report in an attempt to soften the damages before the UN releases the full report, a political observer in Colombo said.
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UN panel admits international failure in Vanni war, calls for investigations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 April 2011, 08:22 GMT]
"During the final stages of the war, the United Nations political organs and bodies failed to take actions that might have protected civilians," said the United Nations Panel on Sri Lanka in its final report to Secretary General Ban-ki Moon. The report has also admitted that the UN system knowingly failed to release the casualty figures of the civilians. Although the report didn't touch the hot topic of serious allegations against the role the UN officials and certain responsible personalities associated with world powers, it said: The Secretary-General should conduct a comprehensive review of actions by the United Nations system during the war in Sri Lanka and the aftermath, regarding the implementation of its humanitarian and protection mandates.
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58 Tamils languish in Magazine prison for more than 12 years

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 April 2011, 10:52 GMT]
Information smuggled out of the notorious Magazine Prison in Borella, Colombo, reveal that 58 Tamil prisoners, 44 of them with no charges filed or charged without any viable court case or witnesses to prove guilt, are being held under the Island's Emergency Regulations in the prison for more than 12 years. One of the inmates told TamilNet that except two of the Tamil inmates who have relatives visiting them, most of the others have no visitor and are inflicted with illnesses arising from torture.
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Colombo dismisses UN report as "biased, flawed"

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 April 2011, 02:47 GMT]
Sri Lanka's External Ministry Wednesday dismissed the report submitted to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon by his specially appointed 3-member panel of experts as "fundamentally flawed," and added that the report dealing with possible war crimes is based on "patently biased material which is presented without any verification." UN Office said Moon will Colombo the opportunity to review the report first, before making the report public. Meanwhile, human rights organizations exerted pressure on the UN for public release of the report, while expressing concern that UN is capable of "just burying the report."
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SLA soldiers, para military attack local Tamil traders in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 April 2011, 11:19 GMT]
Local Tamil traders from Vadamunai, Pendugalseanai, Oothuchcheanai, Poththanai, Tharavai and Kudumpimalai areas in Chiththa'ndy division who had gone to collect milk from dairy farms in Paduwankarai area came under attack by soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and cadres of para military groups. SLA soldiers and para military cadres had attacked them asking them to show the hide outs of LTTE in the area, according to affected traders.
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Remembering Mu’l’livaaykkaal to focus on injustice of powers

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 April 2011, 05:16 GMT]
With all recent revelations, the most crucial question the Eezham Tamils have to now openly ask Washington and New Delhi is that like their understanding on the elimination of the LTTE, whether they have already decided that dismemberment of the Eezham Tamil nation is the ‘lasting solution’ for the national crisis in the island – whether they have already entered into an agreement with the Rajapaksa regime on this. It is folly on the part of a section of Tamil political circles to think that they should not confront the powers on this crucial question of life and death of their nation. Remembering Mu’l’livaaykkaal in the month of May should mobilise Eezham Tamils of all political shades to rise up in unison and boldly ask justice for what Washington and New Delhi had done to them. Tamils have seen enough of the ‘reconciliation and development’ hoodwink.
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World Bank helps Colombo’s colonialism of Tamil country

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 April 2011, 05:06 GMT]
When the effective link between northern and eastern parts of the country of Eezham Tamils are systematically neglected to disrupt the contiguity and to prevent the integration of Eezham Tamils, the World Bank on Tuesday has approved 100 million US dollar additional financing for road link of the east with the west to strengthen Colombo’s colonialism and the Colombo-centric subordination of Eezham Tamils. “Connecting people to prosperity between the East and West will be critical for Sri Lanka to realize its ambitious development goals,” said Diarietou Gaye, World Bank Country Director for Sri Lanka.
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