Boy reported missing in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 09:34 GMT]
A 13-year-old boy from Oottuppu'lam, a hamlet situated south of Puthumu'rippu ku'lam, 5 km south-west of Ki'linochchi town, who went herding the cows of his family on Thursday has been reported missing. One of the cows was found killed, according to the villagers who went searching for the boy. The boy had lost his mother in Vanni war and was living with his uncle. At a time when young boys were being abducted by uniformed men occupying Vanni, the disappearance of the 13-year-old boy has created a fear-psychosis among the villagers of Oottuppu'lam.
Full story >>

Terror in Jaffna is only a hair in elephant’s tail: SL prime minister

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 09:20 GMT]
“Crimes are taking place everywhere in the world. […] If you compare the crimes in the whole country to an elephant, what is happening in Jaffna is only a hair of that elephant’s tail,” said Sri Lanka Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne in the SL parliament Thursday, answering accusations brought out by Tamil National Alliance (TNA). Dismissing allegations, and explaining that alleged killings and abductions are suicides and elopements, Leader of the House, Nimal Siripala de Silva charged TNA that it was deliberately trying to draw a grim picture of the situation in Jaffna, to fulfil the vested interests of the Tamil Diaspora, Daily Mirror in Colombo reported Friday.
Full story >>

SLN blamed for murder of female teacher

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 January 2011, 12:51 GMT]
The dead body of a woman recovered earlier this week from a well at Munaippulam located near Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) base in Pungkudutheevu, an island off Jaffna, was identified Thursday as that of Uththamakumari Thurairajasingham, a teacher at Ariyaalai Anantha Viththiyaalayam, who was reported missing since 16 November 2010, more than 30 km away from the island. The body of 40-year-old teacher had cut injuries in neck, medical sources said. Her clothes, bound to a stone, were located at the bottom of the same well, where her naked body was found. The SLN base in Pungkudutheevu, the largest base for the occupying military in the islands, gained notoriety after villagers accused SLN soldiers for the gang-rape and brutal murder of 29-year-old Sarathambal, the wife of Saiva priest Saravanabavanatha Kurukkal, 10 years ago, in December 1999.
Full story >>

Rajapakse, a war-criminal in hiding

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 January 2011, 00:47 GMT]
Sri Lanka's President, Mahinda Rajapakse, purportedly on a private visit to the U.S. is likely to remain in hiding with his physical whereabouts kept secret from the public to avoid another embarrassing battle with diaspora Tamils. While, as a matter of jurisprudential fairness, US Ambassador Butenis's acknowledgment that Rajapaksas have committed possible war-crimes in Sri Lanka should trigger a Justice Department investigation, Rajapakse would not have attempted to enter U.S. absent assurance from the State Department that he will not be subjected to any legal procedures. Rajapakse will also be aware that, unlike in the UK, in the US private citizens cannot apply for an arrest warrant.
Full story >>

Amitabh Bachchan hurt by IIFA awards in Sri Lanka: Times of India

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 January 2011, 09:19 GMT]
Amitabh Bachchan’s recent exclusion from the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) was because he was hurt by the IIFA decision to hold awards last year in Sri Lanka, Times of India said Thursday. Amitabh was the founder-initiator of the IIFA. Without taking Bachchan's opinion, they not only held the event in Sri Lanka but also signed up Salman Khan to host it. These awards were Bachchan's baby, and hence he was terribly hurt, Times of India said. At the height of arrogance, establishments in strategic partnership abuse art and peoples media, but the boomerang will come when the creative world rises against those who were responsible for it, commented a Tamil writer in Colombo, who was also hurt not only by the Indian show but also by the so-called international writers meets in the island held to boost the image of the genocidal regime.
Full story >>

SL military, southern traders, encourage child labour in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 January 2011, 07:57 GMT]
Children have become scavengers of scrap metal for their livelihood in the war ravaged Vanni and this ‘economic activity’ finds the blessings of occupying military and re-cycling metal traders coming from the south. Damaged and abandoned vehicles, fittings of un-resettled houses and other buildings, and other vestiges of war are targeted for this trade that actively deploys children to collect the metal. Such conditions of child abuse is a direct result of international community conceding a nation ‘conquered’ in a civil war to the genocidal conquerors and its military. None of those who were talking of ‘child soldiers’ earlier come forward to help the situation now, commented an NGO worker in Vanni. He made a particular note of UNICEF inaction.
Full story >>

Dead body of young woman found near Pungkudutheevu military camp

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 January 2011, 07:52 GMT]
Dead body of a young woman was found in a well Tuesday in an abandoned area called Munaip-pulam, near the military camp in the island of Pungkudutheevu, off Jaffna. It was not identified until Wednesday. It is suspected that the victim was abducted from some other place and was killed. Sometimes back a local girl was raped, killed and dumped into a well near the same military camp and when people protested against suspected military personal, they were fired at by the military. This month, the occupying SL Army in Jaffna announced the take over of islands sector from the SL Navy and it is currently engaged in making Pungkudutheevu as the largest base for the occupying Army in the islands.
Full story >>

Chomsky, Arundhati, lead protest to writers meet in Galle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 23:37 GMT]
“This is not the right time for prominent international writers like you to give legitimacy to the Sri Lankan government’s suppression of free speech by attending a conference that does not in any way push for greater freedom of expression inside that country,” said an appeal made by leading intellectuals, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka and Reporters without Borders, against writers participating the ‘Fifth Galle Literary Festival’ scheduled to take place in the southern city Galle in the island of Sri Lanka, 26 - 30 January 2011. Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy were the leading signatories of the appeal. In the great tradition of solidarity that binds writers together everywhere, the appeal urged them to send a clear message by their actions that until there is a real improvement in the climate for free expression in Sri Lanka, one cannot celebrate writing and the arts in Galle.
Full story >>

Indian-partnered gala in Jaffna to follow Rajapaksa-Pongkal with Sinhala anthem

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 07:08 GMT]
Sri Lanka anthem was sung in Sinhala by the school children of Jaffna at the Rajapaksa Pongkal in Jaffna on Monday. A large number of the participants to the event were school students and their teachers, forcibly brought to the occasion. Around a hundred students were lured by the EPDP with promises of laptop computers from the SL president. Meanwhile, another gala, an ‘International Trade Fair’ in Jaffna, has been fixed to take place between Jan 21- 23 in the municipal grounds of Jaffna, with the partnership of India, and Basil Rajapaksa as its chief guest, Colombo media reported. Indian High Commissioner Ashok K. Kantha, Indonesian Ambassador Jafar Hussain and SL minister Rishard Bathiudeen are special guests for the occasion that is going to have ‘entertainment’ as well amidst business.
Full story >>

Rajapaksa skips 're-reopening' of Vasaavi'laan Central College

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 01:19 GMT]
Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa skipped 're-reopening' Vasaavi'laan Central College Sunday. The plaque had his name, the invitation was in his name, but the renovated hall of Vasaavi'laan Central College was again re-opened by SL minister Douglas Devananda and SL colonial governor Chandrasiri. They were the people who re-opened it in September last year. Earlier, Mr. Rajapaksa reportedly expressed his dissatisfaction of their act of re-opening the school in a hurry as the conditions were not conducive. Only a part of the college uprooted to Urumpiraay in the last two decades has been shifted back to the locality.
Full story >>

News reports irk Rajapaksa in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 January 2011, 00:05 GMT]
SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa visiting Jaffna and ‘celebrating’ Pongkal on Monday reacted to media reports that pointed out his ‘conspicuous silence’ about an aid he was politically capitalising. Meanwhile, the SL president who is coupling a terror campaign with his campaign for a colonial polity, ‘celebrating’ a Tamil agrarian festival in military occupied Jaffna, spending millions of rupees and intimidating people to attend it, while the agricultural lands of the Tamil country are seriously deluged in the floods making hundreds of thousands homeless, was nauseating to the public, media sources in Jaffna said. But addressing along with Rajapaksa, the SL minister and the ‘host’ of the event, Douglas Devananda declared that “today the polity of collaboration is on its victorious march.”
Full story >>

Gunmen open fire at priest's house, wife seriously injured in Maanippaay, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 January 2011, 16:13 GMT]
Armed men who came in a motorbike opened fire on the family of a Saiva (Hindu) priest on Maanippaay Hospital Road causing serious injuries to 31-year-old Nimesha, the wife of the priest Sribalasundarakkurukka'l. Maanippaay is situated near Changkaanai, where a Chief Priest was shot and succumbed to his wounds two months ago. The shooting, which has taken place on the day when SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa visited Jaffna to celebrate Pongkal has caused tension in the entire peninsula. Ms. Nimesha is struggling for her life at the intensive care unit of Jaffna Teaching Hospital, according to medical sources.
Full story >>

'Pentagon blighting Tamil cause may turn counter-productive to US interests'

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 January 2011, 00:39 GMT]
“The Sri Lankan government does have supporters in the U.S., particularly in military circles. Senior officials told me that their government owed much to a Pentagon official named James Clad, ‘a great friend of Sri Lanka.’ Clad was the Bush Administration’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia, in charge of the Pentagon’s dealings with India and Sri Lanka, until he was replaced by the Obama Administration in January, 2009,” wrote John Lee Anderson in Newyorker.com last week, adding that in order to reform Sri Lanka’s public image, Clad, who recently retired from the Pentagon’s National Defense University, recommended to Gotabaya Rajapaksa that he host a meeting on maritime-security concerns in the Indian Ocean to “get out of its box as a ‘single-issue country’ and reconnect it with an earlier maritime heritage,” Anderson cited Clad, advising Gotabhaya.
Full story >>

Rajapaksa claims credit for British-aided causeway and bridge to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 January 2011, 20:00 GMT]
“The foundation for this causeway and bridge was laid down 7 times since 1940's, but it was only my government that managed to complete the project,” claimed Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in opening a causeway and bridge in the SL military-occupied Tamil country in the island, between Keara-theevu of the Jaffna peninsula and Changkup-piddi in Poonakari of the main island on Sunday. The causeway as used to be called Mahadeva Thaampoathi was first built in British times and the present bridge, doing away with the ferry route in between points of the causeway, has been built by British Steel Corporation, aiding the island. Mr. Rajapaksa made no mention of the British aid at the inauguration and the obscured British officials were found seated only among the audience.
Full story >>

UN ambivalent on Advisory Panel's agenda

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 January 2011, 14:16 GMT]
United Nation's Secretary General (UNSG), Ban Ki Moon, told the Inner City Press that the members of the Advisory Panel on Sri Lanka "are now working very seriously on finalizing the dates of visiting Sri Lanka," and responding to a question that the panel cannot investigate anything [on Sri Lanka's war crimes], Ban replied, "[t]hey will be able to...They are now discussing that." ICP's Matthew Lee notes that "[t]his again in contradictory to what the Sri Lankan government has said, and even to what Ban's spokespeople have said. Ban's acting Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq, bypassing Inner City Press' outstanding questions, told BBC's Sinhala service that the Panel might only meet the LLRC outside Sri Lanka."
Full story >>

Queen Elizabeth honours three Tamils this year

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 January 2011, 18:52 GMT]
Queen Elizabeth II honoured three Tamils this year at New Year’s awards in New Zealand and in UK. Significantly, The Queen’s Service Medal (QSM) to 77-year-old Eezham Tamil, Mr. Arumugam Thevarajan from New Zealand was in specific recognition for his services to the Tamil community in New Zealand. Another Eezham Tamil who received Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) was Mr. Chelliah Yogamoorthy, an old student of Jaffna Hindu College, who was honoured for his outstanding service to the Department of Transport. Mr. Yogamoorthy is also a trustee of a Tamil school in Birmingham. The MBE honour for Lakshmi Holmstrom, alumna of Madras and Oxford universities, was for her services to literature. She translated a number of Tamil literary masterpieces into English. In 2007, Canadian Tamils also honoured her with an award.
Full story >>

SLA soldier on rape attempt attacked by Neerveali villagers

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 January 2011, 17:21 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Army soldier who attempted to rape a young Tamil woman in Neerveali in Jaffna district in the early hours of Friday was caught and severely beaten by the villagers,who heard the woman shout. The soldier, from a camp belonging to Achchuvea'li section of the SLA, was handed over to Koappaay Police by the villagers. The police has not produced the soldier in the courts, but admitted that a soldier was heavily beaten by the villagers was taken for medical treatment.
Full story >>

Spill water from reservoirs deluge villages in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 January 2011, 09:40 GMT]
With the opening of the floodgates of hundreds of reservoirs, the second largest river in the island, Aruviyaa’ru in spate has deluged many villages in the Mannaar district. Three villages in Madu division, Kugnchukku’lam, Maathaa-kiraamam and Periya-mu’rippu are completely cut off, marooning nearly 1230 villagers of 300 families. A cable-bridge, the only link of the villages with outside is completely inundated in the floodwaters. This never happened before in the last 50 years, people in Mannaar said. The new Government Agent for Mannaar arranged supplies to reach the village through a jungle track, but the crew was yet to reach the villages at the time of this report Thursday night.
Full story >>

SL military stops resettlement by Douglas Devananda in Ariyaalai East

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 January 2011, 00:23 GMT]
The much publicised resettlement effort by SL minister Douglas Devananda in the Poompukaar locality of Ariyaalai East was stopped by SL military Thursday. Hundreds of families that accompanied Mr. Douglas Devananda with much anticipation to resettle in their houses and lands from where they were uprooted 15 years ago were disappointed. Meanwhile, on resettlement in the ‘High Security Zone’ (HSZ) of Valikaamam, the SL minister told people who were uprooted for the last 20 years to observe more patience. The Sri Lanka government agent in Jaffna, Mrs. Imelda Sugumar also recently said that it could take more than ten years for the removal of land mines and re-settlement of people in the HSZ.
Full story >>

Kudumpi Malai, Kudimbi Kanda

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 21:41 GMT]
The hill having a summit resembling a traditional hair-knot on the head
The hill having a pointed top
The hill having a crown-like top
Full story >>