Skirmish in Paasaiyoor seas, SLA recovers one body

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 August 2007, 12:35 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers and gunmen allegedly belonging to Liberation Tigers exchanged fire Wednesday around 11:30 p.m for more than 15 minutes in Kurunagar and Paasaiyoor waters of Jaffna lagoon, local residents said. SLA, through Jaffna Police, Thursday morning brought to the Jaffna Hospital a severely injured body of an identified youth claiming the body belonged to a suicide cadre of the LTTE who tried to infiltrate the SLA camp Wednesday night. LTTE did not comment on the claim.
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APRC is dead, says UNP

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 August 2007, 00:43 GMT]
After the Tuesday meeting of the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) on Constitutional Reforms was abruptly halted and adjourned indefinitely due to demands from Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) members, and failed to "finalise a draft report by today to keep to a deadline set by the United National Party UNP," the opposition UNP spokesperson said the "APRC process is dead in the water," the Morning Leader reported in the Wednesday edition.
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SLAF again bombs civilian settlements in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 August 2007, 17:38 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Mi-24 helicopter gunship bombed civilian settlements in Nedungkea'ni in Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) controlled territory in Vavuniyaa north from Tuesday midnight up to Wednesday noon, causing heavy damages schools, houses and cultivation, sources in Nedungkea'ni said. Residents of the villages bombed, scattering in panic, managed to save their lives, seeking shelter away from the exploding bombs.
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Sri Lanka: ‘Holmes is a terrorist’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 August 2007, 13:38 GMT]
Stung by a top UN official’s criticism that Sri Lanka has one of the worst records in the world for humanitarian aid worker safety, the Colombo government Wednesday condemned him as a “terrorist” and said he had been bribed by the Tamil Tigers to tarnish the country’s reputation. Meanwhile the head of the government's peace secretariat accused French aid group Action Contre la Faim of being responsible for the massacre of 17 of their own local staff last year through "negligence" and "irresponsibility". International monitors have blamed government troops for the killings.
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53 School girls killed in 2006 SLAF bombing, remembered

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 August 2007, 02:03 GMT]
The first anniversary of the death of fifty three school girls killed at Va'l'lipunam Chegnchoalai orphanage premises from an aerial raid by Kfir fast attack crafts belonging to the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) on 14 August 2006, was observed throughout Vannni in Ki'linochchi and Mullaitheevu districts at 10:00 a.m Tuesday, sources in Vanni said.
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Uddapu Tamil youths released

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 August 2007, 10:48 GMT]
The Chilaw (Chilaapam) Magistrate Monday released four Tamil youths who were arrested in April at Uddapu, a traditional Tamil village in the northwestern province alleging that they were members of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
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Woman killed, School destroyed in SLAF bombardment in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 August 2007, 15:00 GMT]
Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Monday morning bombed a civilian area in Maruthoadai, Nedungkea'ni Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) controlled territory in Vavuniyaa, killing a 20-year-old female. A government school, Maruthoadai Tamil Mixed School, was destroyed in the bombardment. A Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society building, a rice mill and two civilian houses were also damaged in the bombardment that took place twice between 6:40 and 7:10 a.m. A couple, owners of one of the houses, were seriously wounded in the air-attack.
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Heavy fighting in the seas off Pulmoaddai - LTTE

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 August 2007, 23:02 GMT]
Three Sri Lanka Navy Fast Attack Crafts (FACs) were damaged and more than 20 Dvora gunboats were chased away by the Sea Tigers, the naval force of the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE), towards Trincomalee port Sunday night after a fierce sea battle off Pulmoaddai that lasted from 10:00 p.m. till 2:30 a.m. Monday, according to Sea Tiger officials in Vanni. Six Sea Tiger fighters were killed in action in the battle, the Tigers said. Meanwhile Sri Lankan military sources claimed that they had sunk a Sea Tiger vessel in the clash.
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LTTE fires mortars towards Weli Oya, says SLA

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 August 2007, 21:18 GMT]
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam (LTTE) fired mortars targetted towards Wel Oya area in Polllanaruwa district, Sri Lanka Army (SLA) spokesperson Brigadier Prasanth Samarasinghe said Sunday. The attack began at 8:00 a.m. Sunday and claimed the life of a 65-year old man and injured five others, Brig. Samarasinghe said. A number of private residences are also said to have been damaged during the attack.
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Skirmishes reported in Ariyaalai, Kurunakar seas

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 August 2007, 17:10 GMT]
Residents of villages along the southern coastal of Jaffna report exchanges of gunfire between Liberation Tigers and Sri Lanka security forces intermittantly from Saturday night until Sunday morning, sources in Jaffna said. However, Sri Lanka military did not officially acknowledge that any incidents occured in the said area.
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Arafa Nagar declared HSZ, Muslim families expelled

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 August 2007, 11:37 GMT]
About two hundred Muslim families were forcibly moved from Arafa Nagar, a suburb located in Moothoor division in Trincomalee district by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) on Friday evening on the pretext that their village comes also under the high security zone. Arafa Nagar is located close to Moothoor east, which is declared a high security zone by the government after the completion of military operation, civil society sources said.
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One STF soldier killed, six injured in Kagnchikudichchaa'ru

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 August 2007, 16:47 GMT]
A Special Task Force (STF) soldier was killed and six others wounded when a combined team of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) troops and STF involved in deep penetration activity in Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)-controlled areas in Kagnchikudichchaa'ru area in Ampaa'rai District stepped on pressure mines Friday evening, Amparai police said.
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Youth reported dead in STF roundup in Akkaraippattu

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 August 2007, 11:06 GMT]
Sri Lankan Special Task Force commandos in Akkaraippattu cordoned off the house of a family that runs a foreign employment agency Friday around 11:30 a.m. and fired at a 28-year-old man who was visiting the house. The victim, identified as Gunaratnam Ranjan, 28, was reported dead by the Police who said the death occurred due to the intake of cyanide. The family that runs the business has fled the area and contacted Human Rights Commission officials in Batticaloa seeking protection as the Police alleged that the visitor was a Liberation Tigers of the Tamileelam (LTTE) cadres, initial reports said.
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Impunity reigns, rights record seriously deteriorates- HRW

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 August 2007, 02:31 GMT]
Qualifying the report as focusing primarily on abuses by the Sri Lankan government, the Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based rights organization, in a hard-hitting report released Monday said "the government's respect for international law has sharply declined, with it often appearing indifferent to the impact on civilians in the north and east...the main areas of concern [are], from violations of the laws of war and extrajudicial killings to unlawful restrictions on the media and nongovernmental organizations and the widespread impunity enjoyed by state security forces...Sri Lanka's defense establishment is particularly responsible for abuses."
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Right to Protect

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 August 2007, 01:01 GMT]
Gareth Evans, President, International Crisis Group, in the eighth Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture at International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) , Colombo, 29 July said "The State has a primary responsibility to protect the individuals within it. Where the state fails in that responsibility, through either incapacity or ill-will, a secondary responsibility to protect falls on the wider international community. That, in a nutshell, is the core of the responsibility to protect (R2P) idea" and that "Sri Lanka is anything but an R2P."
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Black July emblematic of Sinhala rule - paper

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 July 2007, 05:38 GMT]
In nearly a quarter century of conflict since the state-sponsored anti-Tamil riots of July 1983, despite the tens of thousands of lives that have been lost in the conflict, “there has not been an iota of change in the Sinhala leadership’s thinking – nor, for that matter, in the sentiments of the international community [on the ethnic question],” the Tamil Guardian newspaper argued in its editorial this week. Comparing the regimes of Presidents Junius Jayawardene, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapakse, the paper contends: “Black July is not just a historical event. Rather, it is an emblematic act of Sinhala rule."
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Australia Court grants bail to 3 arrested on terrorism charges

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 July 2007, 11:37 GMT]
Victoria state Supreme Court Judge Bernard Bongiorno, telling the court that if the "principle [normal presumption of innocence] is abandoned or even modified for political expediency, that risks the whole foundation of our criminal justice system," Tuesday released Aruran Vinayagamoorthy, 33, and Sivarajah Yathavan, 36, on bail, Associated Press reported. Bongiorno pointed out that the Australian government has not declared the Tamil Tigers a terrorist group. The two were arrested in May charged with "raising money for Liberation Tigers."
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Sri Lanka and International Community

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 June 2007, 18:05 GMT]
Nation, nation-state and nationalism are manifestations of a psychological phenomenon, experienced collectively by a group of people. It is a feeling of attachment and identity that comes naturally. Nationalism cannot be dictated to unwilling sections of the peoples of a country, whoever may come forward guaranteeing the territorial integrity of that country. Such guarantees may be meaningful when one nation invades others, but not when there is a genuine struggle for freedom within a country.
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India: Sri Lankan Navy attacking Tamil Nadu fishermen

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 May 2007, 12:11 GMT]
The Indian government said Wednesday that it “is aware that a number of fishermen from Tamil Nadu are being attacked and killed by Sri Lankan Navy.” In a written response to a query in Parliament, India’s Defence Minister, Shri AK Antony, noted: there have been incidents of firing on Indian fishing boats in Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar area and recently slight increase in such incidents has been noticed.” The Defence Minister did not comment on recent accusations by Tamil Nadu Police that Tamil Tigers had also fired on fishermen.


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JVP MPs demonstrate outside British High Commission

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 May 2007, 07:02 GMT]
A group of JVP parliamentarians led by Wimal Weerawansa, the propaganda secretary, with hundreds of supporters and district organizers of Jathika Viumukithi Peramuna (JVP), demonstrated Wednesday afternoon outside the British High Commission in Colombo. The protest voiced opposition for interference by Britain and condemned the debate held in the House of Commons in London regarding the internal affairs of Sri Lanka, sources in Colombo said.
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