SLA occupies more Jaffna homes

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 June 2002, 11:13 GMT]
The Sri Lankan armed forces are expanding and bolstering a chain of sentry posts along the Jaffna coastline, the largest circulating daily in the peninsula, the Uthayan, reported Thursday. Meanwhile, in Nunavil East, the SLA has taken over more than ten homes for their camp, and is constructing bunkers, residents told TamilNet.
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'Just solution will end armed struggle'

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 June 2002, 14:10 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers are committed to the ceasefire agreement with the Sri Lankan government and will honour its terms and conditions, but must remain strong until the rights of the Tamil people have been secured, a senior LTTE commander said Monday.
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Navy blocks resettlement of Tamil families in Thiriyai

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 June 2002, 21:41 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Navy Wednesday refused permission to a group of displaced Tamil families to enter their destroyed village, Thiriyai- a Tamil village about 42 km north of Trincomalee town- to make preliminary arrangements for their resettlement.
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General shut down in Jaffna, Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 June 2002, 13:49 GMT]
School, government offices, shops and business establishments were closed Wednesday in the Jaffna and Batticaloa districts in response to a call by the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA) in Jaffna. The Jaffna CHA called the general shut down to protest against fishing restriction, destruction of coconut and palmyra farms in the northeast province and setting up of new camps in the northern peninsula.
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Quit notices on Linganagar Tamil families withdrawn

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 June 2002, 05:13 GMT]
The Trincomalee Divisional Secretary (DS) has decided to withdraw ejectment applications filed in the magistrateís court under the State Lands (Recovery of Possession) Act against several Tamil residents who live on state lands in the Linganagar area, a suburb in Trincomalee, when the defense counsel submitted that the affidavits of the prosecution were bad in law and not in conformity with the land.
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SLMM denies commenting on gazette

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 June 2002, 02:44 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission Sunday denied a report by the Daily Mirror that Hagrup Haukland, Deputy head of the SLMM, had stated that the Sri Lankan government’s gazette notification of fishing restrictions issued last month conflicts with the provisions of the ceasefire agreement the government signed with the Liberation Tigers.
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SLA positions bar temple access

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 June 2002, 02:27 GMT]
Claims by the Sri Lanka Army that its troops have moved out from temples and schools occupied Kommanthurai, located on the Valaichenai road between Vantharumoolai and Chenkalady is a sham since the sentries, roadblocks and restrictions on access to the area continues, local civil society leaders said.
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Jaffna fishermen's protests set to continue

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 June 2002, 14:41 GMT]
Fishermen continued their picketing campaign for the second day on Friday in Jaffna in front of the Secretariat (Kachcheri) and the Divisional Secretariat, demanding their freedom to fish without restriction in the northern waters. Since even the Friday protest failed to produce any result, the Federation of Fishermenís Unions said it has decided to continue with the protests on Monday.
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Police ordered to halt temple withdrawals

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 June 2002, 18:36 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Police in Batticaloa said Saturday that it has stopped work on vacating four of its camps in the district situated in places of religious worship on orders from the Inspector General of Police (IGP). "We just got the orders and stopped dismantling the defences. We do not know the reason," said the Officer in Charge of the Maamangam Pillaiyar Temple Police camp Saturday.
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Prohibition on unauthorised felling of treess

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 June 2002, 09:29 GMT]
A notice prohibiting the unauthorized felling of trees in the north and east of Sri Lanka was issued by the Tamil Eelam Forest Conservation Unit of the Liberation Tigers on June 5, to coincide with World Environment Day (WED). Disciplinary action would be taken against violators, a notice published in the Vanni Wednesday said.
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Thamilchelvan, Tigers pay homage to 'Siva'

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 June 2002, 16:44 GMT]
The body of Mr. Murugesu Sivasithambaram, the leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front, was taken to Kilinochchi Friday afternoon. The head of the LTTE's political division Mr.S.P.Thamilchelvan and other members of the organisation paid their last respects to 'Siva' at the Thooyavan College for Political Studies where the cortege lay this afternoon for homage by the public.
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Jaffna court seeks EPDP's weapons list

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 June 2002, 12:26 GMT]
The Jaffna magistrate Mr. R. T Vignarajah Friday directed the Sri Lanka Police to serve notice on the Eelam People's Democratic Party's (EPDP) deputy organiser for Jaffna, Mr. K. Manipallavarajan, to appear in court on Monday, 10 May with the list of weapons the paramilitary group had in its possession when the journalist, Mylvaganam Nimalarajan, was murdered. Mr. Nimalarajan, Jaffna correspondent for the BBC, the Tamil daily, Virakesari and the TamilNet was killed at his home on 19 October 2000 by gunmen suspected to be members of the EPDP, a key ally of President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
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Tamil students' rallies, protests in Northeast

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 June 2002, 13:27 GMT]
Thousands of students in Jaffna, Vavuniya, Mannar, Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Amparai held rallies Thursday to observe the Tamil Students’ Upsurge Day, protesting against decades of discrimination by Colombo, bombing of schools, chronic dearth of teachers, classrooms, teaching and science equipment, arrest and detention of schoolchildren, and the presence of Sri Lankan security forces in their schools. Student leaders who addressed the rallies demanded that Tamil students too be granted equal opportunities in education by Colombo, denied them for more than three decades under partisan education schemes.
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STF disruptions continue in southeast

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 June 2002, 19:28 GMT]
Commandos of the Special Task Force, the elite counter insurgency arm of the Sri Lankan security forces, harassed and tortured a youth who went to get medicine in the Thirukkovil District Hospital in the Amparai district, according to a complaint taken up the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) this week. The STF has been encamped in the premises of the district hospital in Thirukkovil, the large Tamil village on Sri Lankaís southeastern coast, for more than 17 years, despite protests by residents and local human rights activists.
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SLA bars IDPs returning by sea

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 June 2002, 19:42 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army Tuesday refused to permit more than 32 fishermen and their families who came by sea from the Mullaithivu coast to land in Sakkottai, a fishing village near Pt. Pedro in Jaffna, from which they were displaced by the war in 1995. "The fishermen have come with their gear and other belongings to resettle in their village. It is too expensive for them to bring their boats, out board motors and fishing gear by road to Jaffna. They are stranded in mid sea with women and children because of the SLA is refusing to consider their plight", an official of the Federation of Fisheries Societies in Vadamaradchi told TamilNet.
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Sri Lanka's conditions for talks create an 'impasse' - Balasingham

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 June 2002, 12:42 GMT]
The Norwegian peace initiative in Sri Lanka has been delayed by the government’s failure to implement the terms of the permanent ceasefire with the Liberation Tigers and is threatened by the hostile intervention of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, the LTTE’s chief negotiator and political advisor, Mr. Anton Balasingham, told the Tamil Guardian this week.
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Truce monitors protest military conduct

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 June 2002, 10:38 GMT]
(News Feature) Tensions between the Sri Lankan armed forces and local residents increased this weekend in the Batticaloa and Amparai districts following new incidents of violence and harassment by the military, reports said Saturday. The vicious assaults of four fishermen by police commandos prompted the head of the local ceasefire monitors' head to plead with the security forces "to desist from violating the ceasefire and arresting and torturing innocent youths under various pretexts," press reports said.
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"Rules for islands humiliating, wont enter" - LTTE

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 May 2002, 21:43 GMT]
"We will not enter the islands of Jaffna in compliance with the conditions that the Sri Lanka Navy has imposed on us now. The Navy's action is aimed at further subverting the peace process and creating a fear psychosis among the people of the islands," said Mr. Ilamparithi, the head of the political office of the Liberation Tigers in Jaffna, responding Thursday to the 12 conditions stipulated by the Sri Lanka Navy for allowing his colleagues to engage in political work in the islands of the northern peninsula.
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US treaty seen encouraging subjugation of Tamils

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 May 2002, 18:34 GMT]
Mr. Joseph Pararajasingham, senior Tamil National Alliance MP for Batticaloa told a US official Wednesday that a proposed defence treaty between Washington and Colombo would support the majority Sinhalese "continue the discrimination and subjugation of the Tamil people." The US and the Sri Lankan government are scheduled to sign the Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement in July. Sinhala nationalists have welcomed the treaty.
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'S.L Security forces still in temples' - Hindu body

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 May 2002, 14:37 GMT]
The Federation of Hindu Temples in Batticaloa and Amparai said Sunday that the Sri Lankan security forces in the region continue to encompass more than 15 places of worship in the two districts within the defence perimeters of their camps. The trustee boards of fourteen Hindu temples in Batticaloa and Amparai complained to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) Saturday that their precincts and environs are still occupied by Sri Lankan security forces.
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