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.
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Diplomats, defence chiefs hover around Colombo

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 07:05 GMT]
Former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had talks with SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa at the latter’s official residence Tuesday evening. The Pakistan Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani will be in Colombo Wednesday, on a three-day visit, meeting Mr. Rajapaksa, SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and the service chiefs. The Indian Air Chief Marshal, Pradeep Vasant Naik, arrived Colombo on Sunday was on a four-day visit. He also was scheduled to call on the SL president, Defence Secretary and the service chiefs.
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Batticaloa flood victims demand relief

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 02:16 GMT]
Flood affected people Tuesday morning held a demonstration blocking road traffic in Maanmunaipattu North division in Batticaloa district demanding immediate relief, sources in Batticaloa said. The refugees said they are suffering without even one meal a day due to the failure of the authorities to distribute assistance. The victims accuse Colombo for not making arrangement to supply cooked meals and dry rations through Divisional Secretariat offices in the districts that have been innundated with flood waters due to two week long torrential rains.
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Tamil, Muslim parties cannot use UNP's symbol in local elections

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 January 2011, 02:00 GMT]
The United National Party, during a working committee meeting held on 17th January, decided to prohibit members from several Muslim and Tamil parties to contest the forthcoming local government elections under the "elephant symbol," political sources in Colombo said. "The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and several Tamil politicians contested the last general election under the UNP banner and a few months later they crossed over to the SLFP-led government,” the UNP said in a statement, explaining the reason for UNP's decision.
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UN Relief official to visit Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 January 2011, 01:51 GMT]
The United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Ms. Catherine Bragg, is expected to arrive in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on 19 January 2011, on a 3-day mission, according to reports in Colombo. Ms Bragg will meet representatives from the Sri Lanka Government, donors, and aid agencies, and will visit flood-affected areas, as well as areas in the north, reports further said.
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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.”
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'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.
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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.
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Colombo fails to provide resettlement assistance to N-E families

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 January 2011, 14:59 GMT]
Majority of resettled families in the North and East have been waiting for the promised resettlement assistance from the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL). According to reports compiled by the authorities concerned that not every family has received assistance as promised. Under the resettlement package each family is entitled to a cash grant Rs.5000, Bank of Ceylon grant of Rs.20,000 and agricultural implements, kitchen utensils, bags of cement roofing sheets and tarpaulin. Each family is also promised a set of non-food items.
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Moothoor hospital lacks staff, Colombo apathetic to fill vacancies

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 January 2011, 14:43 GMT]
Severe shortage of doctors and nurses prevail in the Moothoor Base Hospital when hundreds of thousands of people who need urgent medical attention languish in camps due to displacement following flood and rain. Colombo health ministry has ignored several requests repeatedly made by the provincial health administrators to send more doctors to provide better services flood affected families who are prone epidemic, local health authorities said.
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Floods: Batticaloa hardest hit, EU, India, US pledge aid

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 January 2011, 14:45 GMT]
The European Union and the United States joined India in pledging emergency assistance following the massive flooding that has submerged large parts of Sri Lanka and displaced over a million people. The hardest hit region is the war-shattered Batticaloa district, officials said. The EU is providing $2.7m in assistance to be distributed through international aid agencies, AFP reported. India will provide $1m, including 34 tons of emergency supplies airlifted to Colombo Friday. The US is donating $300,000 for areas hardest-hit by the floods, including boats to local authorities in Batticaloa. The United Nations meanwhile, says it would make an emergency appeal in the coming days to seek millions of dollars to meet life-saving needs.
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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."
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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.
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Legality of Fonseka expulsion hinges on interpretation of Article 89

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 January 2011, 03:16 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Court of Appeal is to announce on January 25th the constitutional interpretation from the Supreme Court whether the phrase “any court” in Article 89/d of the Constitution emcompasses within its meaning the "court marshall." The thirty months rigorous imprisonment imposed by Court Martial on former Commander of the Sri Lanka Army Sarath Fonseka resulted in his expulsion from the parliament.
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Gotabhaya to 'witness' in white-flag case

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 22:06 GMT]
Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is to give evidence before the Trial-at-Bar of the Colombo High Court on January 25 in the white flag case. Mr. Rajapaksa is the fourth witness in this case against former commander of the Sri Lanka Army Sarath Fonseka who has been charged for causing 'disrepute' to the Colombo government by making a statement in an interview to the English weekly, the Sunday leader.
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Further oppression expected as SL Army takes over islands off Jaffna from SL Navy

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 21:23 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army occupying Jaffna will take over the islands off Jaffna from the occupying SL Navy, an Army spokesman announced in Jaffna Thursday. Since 1990s the control of the islands off the Jaffna Peninsula was vested with the occupying Navy of colonial Sri Lanka. Extensive new bases are now being built for the army next to the establishments of the SL Navy in the islands. Fear engulfs the people of the islands as the Army is insisting on fresh registration of people in addition to earlier registration of them with the SL Navy. Pungkudutheevu Island has become the new centre for the Army’s extensive establishment.
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SLN firing on fishermen: Delhi protests, Colombo denies

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 18:31 GMT]
India registered a ‘strong protest’ Thursday over the Sri Lanka Navy’s firing on Tamil Nadu fishermen, killing one, but Colombo flatly denied the accusation. Three fishermen, who put out to sea from Puthukkoaddai, came under indiscriminate fire from Sri Lankan Navy about 14 miles off the hamlet, Indian fisheries officials said. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi sent a telegraph to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, reports said.
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UN: Poor accessibility restricts assistance to victims affected by floods

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 12:05 GMT]
Relief missions continue to experience constraints due to poor accessibility in flood‐affected areas, said United Nations Colombo office Thursday citing initial findings as indicating the need for non-food items and drinking water. The UN's Humanitarian Coordinator Neil Buhne in a statement issued Thursday said: “We share the strong concern over the immediate requirements of over one million affected, especially the most vulnerable including children. He added that UN will also look at the longer term effects from damage to agriculture, infrastructure and housing. Batticaloa has reported the highest number of displaced persons, 165,494 (42,295 families) housed in 275 temporary relocation centers.
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Gotabhaya-led team responsible for killings, abductions in North

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 00:15 GMT]
An esoteric team of military intelligence led by Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is directly involved in the killings and abductions in the North, informed circles in Colombo said, citing a high-ranking military officer. The SL military in Jaffna is informed of any such operations of this team only when it is being carried out and it is instructed to provide only logistical support to those operations whenever required, the sources further said, adding that people who are targeted by this killer squad could hardly come back alive. The said squad reportedly maintains an operational unit in Vavuniyaa near the Oamanthai check post.
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Floods: Eezham Tamils need a government for them

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 January 2011, 15:43 GMT]
While the Eastern Province is 100 percent affected by the floods in the last two weeks, seriously harming and displacing hundreds of thousands, the SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa visited only the partially affected Polonnaruwa district in the North Central Province and returned to Colombo. The assistance that was meant for the East was diverted to the SL military at Kudumpimalai. Flood relief is totally politicised by Colombo’s factions led by the East chief minister Chandrakanthan, SL deputy minister Muralitharan and another SL deputy minister Hisbullah. Eezham Tamils are left without a government even in meeting natural disasters is the public feeling in the North and East. Meanwhile, Mr. Muralitharan calling the diaspora to send relief confirms once again that the SL government is not meant for Tamils, commented reports from the East.
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