Milk production drops 50% as flood destroys cattle in Battlicaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 February 2011, 03:36 GMT]
Milk production in Batticaloa district dropped by more than 50% as nearly 250,000 cattle were killed and owners of at least 28 cattle farms in the Batticaloa District were directly affected by the recent two major floods in December last year and in January this year, according to District Animal Production and Health Assistant Director Dr. Mallika Amirthalingam. Livelihood of those involved in rearing catte has been badly affected by the floods, the official added.
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Indian fishermen released, Indian Consul-General intimidates Tamil judge in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 February 2011, 18:40 GMT]
Following an urgent ‘instruction’ from the Sri Lankan Chief Justice in Colombo, the Indian fishermen held in remand in Jaffna, were released Friday without any inquiries and were set free to leave the island in their trawlers that had been seized by the local fishermen. The move comes following an ‘instruction’ from the Indian Foreign Minister S.M.Krishna to his Sri Lankan counterpart, G.L.Peiris, on Thursday. Meanwhile, the Indian Consul-General in Jaffna Mr. Mahalingam has been blamed of intimidating a prominent Judge of Point Pedro Courts, Srinidhi Nanthasekaran, by visiting her residence and insisting her to release the Indian fishermen. Mrs. Nanthasekaran, who was earlier transferred away from Jaffna for her stern actions against the Sri Lankan military, during the war, came with hard remarks on the interference by the Indian Consul-General in the legal affairs in Jaffna.
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Sinhala colonization in Vellaave'li discussed in Batticaloa DDC meeting

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 February 2011, 23:19 GMT]
The encroachment of lands belonging to Tamils in Vellaave'li division by Sinhalese and the establishment of a camp of the Sri Lanka Army in Punaanai area in Koa'ralaippattu South DS division were brought to discussion. A group of Sinhalese settlers from the 36th colony, with Police protection, has encroached into more than thirty acres of land belonging to twenty Tamil families located in 35th colony, south of Batticaloa district and north of Ampaa'rai district in the Vellaave'li DS division.
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India failed to provide alternatives to trawler fishing in the Palk Bay

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 February 2011, 07:51 GMT]
Commenting on the fishermen issue in the Palk Bay, an Eezham Tamil social worker in Jaffna, long covering the crisis, told TamiNet that the Governments in New Delhi and Chennai have failed to take initiatives in providing alternatives to Tamil Nadu’s trawler fishing that had saturated the sustainability of fishing in the Palk Bay. It is not an issue between the fishermen of Tamil Nadu and Eezham alone, but a long existing crisis between the trawler fishermen and country-boat fishermen of Tamil Nadu itself, the activist said. The TN trawlers captured Tuesday in Jaffna, were staying on the sea for two days without getting any catch, before moving towards Jaffna.
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UN falters over Sri Lanka journalist's disappearance

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 February 2011, 04:50 GMT]
Adding further fuel to the accusation that the United Nations under the current leadership has failed to take effective action on Sri Lanka's war, the UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky said Tuesday that UN's New York offices did not receiv a petition on disappeared journalist Prageeth Eknelygoda, thereby contradicting UN's Colombo office which said two weeks earlier that Colombo UN Resident Coordinator Neil Buhne received the petition from the journalist's wife and that the petition is being forwarded to Secretary General's office, the Innter City Press reported in its website.
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Eezham fishermen seize trawlers with 100 Indian fishermen in the seas off Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 February 2011, 11:56 GMT]
18 fishing trawlers operated by more than 112 fishermen from Naakappaddinam of Tamil Nadu state of India, destroying the livelihood of Eezham fishermen by bottom-trawling, have been seized by the local fishermen in the seas off Point Pedro Tuesday afternoon. The trawlers are being towed to Munai in Point Pedro by the fishermen, a fishing society representative told TamilNet. The latest development comes following repeated complaints by the local fishermen over a long period of time about the fishing trawlers destroying the fishing tools and the resources in the sea. The fishermen representatives further said around 100 Tamil Nadu fishermen were in their custody and they were being looked after well.
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Police arrest resettled ex-LTTE cadres in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 February 2011, 00:29 GMT]
Tamil youths who are reported to have left the LTTE and returned to normal life after marriage are being arrested by the Sri Lanka Police in the Batticaloa district. Such arrests are said to be on the increase in Paduvaangkarai region. Tamil residents are not coming forward to make complaints to higher authorities due to fear and reprisals, civil sources said.
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Don’t fuse truth seeking with criminal justice, reconciliation: Craig Scott

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 February 2011, 08:51 GMT]
In a paper published recently by Osgoode Hall Law School, York University of Canada on The Transnationalization of truth: A Meditation on Sri Lanka and Honduras, Craig Scott, Professor of Law, said “not to fuse truth-seeking processes with either criminal justice or reconciliation processes with special reference to the Sri Lanka context.” Meanwhile, commenting on the concerted efforts of some sitting and former US diplomats to save the Rajapaksa regime and the unitary character of the genocidal state of Sri Lanka, through vague solutions about which they themselves are not clear, and through continued ‘counterinsurgency approaches of ‘terrorising and tiring’ Eezham Tamils, the TamilNet political commentator in Colombo said that ‘pragmatic’ changes should first come from the US in recognizing the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island.
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Seek pragmatic changes, not focus entirely on war-crimes accountability, says Donald Camp

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 February 2011, 16:39 GMT]
Former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Camp, in a seminar held at the US think-tank, American Enterprise Institute, said while everyone was appalled at the events during the final stages of war, focusing entirely on accountability and prosecution will not be pragmatic, as the Rajapakse Government will not allow any investigations to take place. Instead, Camp advocates helping Rajapakse to "do the right thing." Camp, without saying how, mentioned "decentralization of powers," "co-ordinating with the UN Panel," and "reducing security presence in Jaffna," as possible actions that Rajapakse should be assisted to take to capitalize on the post war environment.
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Local elections likely to be postponed

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 February 2011, 23:44 GMT]
Sri Lankan Department of Elections has said it was considering requests made by political parties to postpone the local elections until hundreds of thousands of families displaced due to recent floods are resettled and resume their day to day normal life in their villages and towns.
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Colombo exploits Buddhism to consecrate genocide

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 February 2011, 22:49 GMT]
The political and military connotations with which a sapling of the Bo tree at Anuradhapura was paraded in Jaffna on Wednesday, before presenting it to Bodh Gaya in India to mark the 2600th year of the attainment of Buddhahood, alienated Eezham Tamils of the land, smacked of consecration of the genocide against them and involved India as a party, commented a Jaffna university academic. A modern ‘inscription’ erected at Maathakal, Jaffna, to mark the occasion read in corrupt Tamil, that the sapling was brought to Dambapanni (a wrong identification) for peace and to create goodwill among the ‘Buddhists’ of the island, before presenting it to Bodh Gaya in Damba-diva [India], under the guidance of president Mahinda Rajapaksa, of ‘Universal Acclaim,’ Lord of the Three ‘Sinhala’ Countries [the island], who routed out 30 years of ‘terrorism’ and united the island.
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Maalu-vaadi,
Paravan-vaadi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 February 2011, 20:43 GMT]
The fishing camp
The camp of the Paravar (maritime) community
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Genocidal Colombo unleashes new war on unarmed Tamils

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 February 2011, 07:49 GMT]
Sri Lanka is now waging a new genocidal war on unarmed and demographically weakened Tamils after converting their country imperceptibly into an open concentration camp. The new war is focussed on the Jaffna Peninsula. Many Tamils believe that by stressing on the negation of their independence, India and USA continue to encourage Colombo, smokescreen the current war by projecting it ‘reconciliation’ cum post-war ‘development’ and thus actually play a party to the war and genocide. All these decades India and USA competitively negotiating the national question by upholding the integrity of a fundamentally flawed state has brought in only untold misery. At least now, why shouldn’t they try in unison, a genuine reconciliation by the option of secession? Further delays will convert the island a bleeding spot of the region for ages, cautions a Jaffna university academic.
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HSZ lands in Jaffna sold to Sinhala businessmen

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 February 2011, 01:56 GMT]
Large stretches of lands in Jaffna Peninsula in the so-called High Security Zones and in other areas where people are not permitted to resettle in the guise of landmines are hurriedly sold to Sinhala businessmen ostensibly to start ‘industrial estates’. 100 acres of land near Ezhuthumadduvaa’l railway station along the A9 Highway has been recently sold to an influential Sinhala businessman. Another Sinhalese attempted buying 80 acres between Ki’laali and Puloappazhai. Occupying military officials are also said to be interested in buying lands. Industrial estates are a smokescreen, but Sinhala colonisation in that stretch to completely seal off the people of Jaffna within their own peninsula is the strategy, political circles in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, in Valikaamam HSZ, a Sinhalese is said to be running a farm at Vasaavi’laan and another indiscriminately quarry limestone near Keerimalai.
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DC Court to serve summons to Rajapakse

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 February 2011, 01:38 GMT]
Attorney for the three Tamil plaintiffs who are suing Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse in the District of Columbia Federal court for monetary damages under US's Torture Victims Protection Act (TVPA) said in a press release issued Tuesday that he will be requesting the Clerk of the United States District Court to send summons by mail to Rajapakse's residence "Temple Trees" in Colombo 3. Civil procedure rules normally require a properly served defendant 21days to file an answer.
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Mannaar severely affected by overflowing water from Anuradhapura tanks

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 February 2011, 23:32 GMT]
Mannaar district has been facing a severe natural calamity for the first time in its history due to recent rain and flood. Almost all the villages in the district are under water. 7,807 persons from 2,667 families have been displaced from areas that come under Mannaar Urban Council and Naanaaddaan Piratheasa Chapai (PS). People from Arippu and Maanthai have been trapped in their houses as they are marooned in the flood. The Government Agent of Mannaar, N.Vedhanayagam, has declared emergency situation in the district.
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Another former US envoy goes to Chennai to save Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 February 2011, 17:42 GMT]
Former US envoy to Sri Lanka Teresita Schaffer, speaking at a forum on ‘US perspective on security in South Asian region with special emphasis on Nepal and Sri Lanka’ in Chennai on Monday, ruled out American backing for Tamil Eelam, reported Express News Service, Tuesday. The ex envoy was harping on genuine reconciliation, focus on war crimes investigation and shared her apprehension that “If the reconciliation process is allowed to slide, then some new internal conflict may spring up,” but conceded that she had no idea of how to approach. “I don’t have any clear sense on how one can persuade the Sri Lankan leader on reconciliation,” the ex envoy said. Obviously the helplessness comes by refusing to recognize long-existing realities, commented a political observer in Chennai, long familiar with the competitive Indo-US deceit on Eezham Tamils.
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Resist to the end: US envoy tells Egyptian dictator

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 February 2011, 19:07 GMT]
‘Resist to the end,’ advised Obama-Clinton administration’s envoy to the Egyptian dictator Mubarak who is currently facing democracy uprising from the people of Egypt. "President Mubarak's continued leadership is critical: it's his opportunity to write his own legacy,” said Frank Wisner, a retired diplomat of the US State Department, now sent as an envoy by Obama to meet Mubarak, reports Robert Fisk writing in The Independent, Monday. In February 2009, when Eezham Tamils and their fighters were surrounded by the genocidal military of Sri Lanka, another former US State Department official Bennett Ramberg wanted the war to be ‘finished to the end.’ “Ethnic civil wars end more durably when there is a decisive military victory,” he said. Yet another former US diplomat Armitage recently went to Colombo reportedly to bail out Rajapaksa.
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Colombo plans selling Tamil land in the East

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 February 2011, 14:52 GMT]
500 acres of prime land at Kuchchave’li in the Trincomalee district of the Eastern Province are to be sold for 90 million US dollars (10 billion Sri Lankan rupees) by the tourism authority of the occupying Sri Lanka to 5-Star hotel entrepreneurs, according to media reports from Colombo. The one-off payment is for 99 years lease, at the rate of 20 million rupees per acre land, lankabusinessonline.com said Monday.
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Flood challenges ‘development’ theories applied to Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 February 2011, 08:42 GMT]
The helpless situation caused by floods in the country of Eezham Tamils challenges the ‘development’ theories of the West and India in approaching the post-war national question in the island of Sri Lanka with ‘development sans political solution.’ Neither the ‘corporate philanthropy’ nor the international infrastructure pouring money for ‘stability’ of Colombo could help the repeatedly affected people to face even natural disasters and manage their rehabilitation. When the genocidal State and its occupying military are busy in scheming subjugation and demographic changes, the flood exposes the bankruptcy of the ‘development imperialists’ who neither recognize national political organisation of Eezham Tamils nor arrange independent space for diaspora help, nor intervene directly, but leaves everything in the hands of genocidal Colombo, commented an academic of the Eastern University.
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