TNA parliamentarians to study present political situation

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 November 2010, 16:40 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentary group is to meet Saturday and Sunday in its party office in Colombo to study the latest development in regard to finding a political solution and to the problems now faced by Tamil people in the North and East after the war. Meanwhile, the leader of the TNA and Trincomalee district parliamentarian R .Sampanthan has sent a congratulatory message to Mahinda Rajapaksa who was sworn in as Sri Lanka President for second term on Friday morning.
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British Tamil journalist arrested in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 November 2010, 13:32 GMT]
Sri Lanka State Intelligence officers arrested a London based Tamil journalist Wednesday at the Colombo Airport, while the journalist was on his way to visit his family, Journalist for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), a dissident exciled journalist group that first released the Channel-4 execution video said in an urgent alert.
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China urged to respect Tamil place names

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 November 2010, 09:13 GMT]
The thermal power plant China builds in the Puththa’lam district is located at a Tamil village called Nuraichchoalai that simply means the grove of Nurai fruit trees (Nephelium longanum). But a corrupted and Sinhalicised form Norocholai is the one followed by Chinese official records. Even the media in India, including the media in Tamil Nadu, mutilate the name joining with Sinhalese and Chinese. Norocholai has no meaning in Sinhala or Tamil. Sri Lanka comes out with a new set of colonial names for places in the land of Tamil nation. China and India, which have cared to bring back the names of their cities such as Beijing and Mumbai from the colonial renderings Peking and Bombay should be sensitive enough for the sentiments of Eezham Tamils, urged a Tamil academic in Colombo.
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Rural dispensaries in Batticaloa district closed

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 November 2010, 08:34 GMT]
Rural dispensaries in Thiraaymadu, Paalameenmadu, Naavatkudaa, Vavu'natheevu, Koaddaimunai, Maiyilaveddavaanan and Unnichchai in the Batticaloa district have been closed due to acute shortage of physical resources. Some of them are located in the resettled villages, Unnichchai, Mailavedduwan and Vavu'natheevu, Vaakarai, Karadiyanaa'ru and Maavadichchenai rural hospitals in the district are also likely to be closed due to lack of physical resources, medical sources said.
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Fonseka admitted to prison hospital

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 November 2010, 12:19 GMT]
Sarath Fonseka, former Commander of the Sri Lanka Army and currently serving a prison sentence of thirty months was admitted to Welikada prison hospital Tuesday night on his return from attending the “white flag” case against him in the High Court. Commissioner General of Prisons Major General (retired) V.R.de Silva told media sources that medical officers had confirmed that Fonseka was suffering from an illness.
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Tamil journalist attacked in Colombo

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 November 2010, 10:17 GMT]
Unidentified gang of eight persons severely assaulted a Tamil journalist Lenin Raja, 28 in Wattala area in Colombo when he was returning home after duty at Vetri FM electronic media operating from Colombo Tuesday night around 11:00 p.m. Lenin Rajah rushed with the injuries to Wattala Police Station made a complaint in this regard.
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SL government begins income tax collection in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 November 2010, 11:06 GMT]
Sri Lanka government’s Income Tax Department officials have begun collecting income tax from the traders in Mannaar after twenty years, sources in Mannaar said. The officials arriving from Colombo made searches in more than 60 traders’ business places as well as in their houses in A’n’naa Nakar areas in Mannaar on 11 November and collected income tax from them. The traders who had experienced great losses due to war in the past twenty years had to pay sums ranging from 150,000 to 250,000 rupees, the sources added.
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Major General Shavendra Silva gives evidence in “white flag” case

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 November 2010, 10:39 GMT]
Major General Shavendra Silva, now posted as Sri Lanka’s Deputy Permanent Representative in the United Nations Monda, gave evidence before a three-member bench of the Colombo High Court in a case in which the former Commander of the Sri Lanka Army Sarath Fonseka has been charged for causing disrepute to the government by an alleged interview to the English weekly Sunday Leader. Sarath Fonseka is reported to have alleged in that interview that the Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa had ordered Major General Shavendra Silva to shoot all LTTE cadres dead who come forward to surrender holding white flags.
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CaFFE, CHR condemn intimidation at LLRC session in Kayts Island

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 November 2010, 10:35 GMT]
The Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE), and Centre for Human Rights - Sri Lanka (CHR) in a statement issued Monday condemned the alleged systematic intimidation of those who wanted to make submissions at the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation (LLRC) sessions at Kayts Island in Jaffna district on Sunday.
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Military fortresses and colonisation in Jaffna choke Tamils, threaten India

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 November 2010, 10:26 GMT]
The selection of locations for building new military fortresses and for colonising Sinhalese in the Jaffna peninsula is sinisterly schemed by colonial Sri Lanka to permanently squeeze the Tamil heartland. Casual visitors don’t perceive it. Tamils of collaborative politics helplessly defend it. Indian policy planners of habitual bungling compare it with what they do in Kashmir, tribal belt and northeast India and agree with it. They think that if the nation of Eezham Tamils is permanently erased and if they get one or two harbours there that is enough for the security of India. The military cum colonisation complexes come up with the full blessings of India and with Chinese material help. But eventually they are going to be trained on India, said an academic in Jaffna, citing the complexes that squeeze the peninsula at strategic locations.
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Paramilitary-employed Daya master says ex Tiger members unable to secure jobs

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 November 2010, 17:23 GMT]
“All the former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) combatants detained should be released under general amnesty and steps should be taken to reunite them with their families enabling them to lead a normal life,” V. Thayanithy, who was once an employed media coordinator of the movement, said while 'witnessing' at a session before Mahinda Rajapaksa's 'Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Commission' (LLRC) in Oorkaavattu’rai St. Henry’s Church, in the islets of Jaffna on Sunday. 'Employers are reluctant to give jobs to the rehabilitated and released former LTTE combatants. They are unable to lead a normal life and they should be assisted to rejoin the society, Mr. Thayanithy said.
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SLN, EPDP intimidate LLRC witnesses in Jaffna islets

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 November 2010, 10:57 GMT]
Members of the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) Intelligence Unit and of the Eealam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) Sunday intimidated many potential witnesses who were planning to appear before the Lesson Learnt & Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) during its sessions in the SLN controlled islets of Jaffna, persons present at the sessions said. Some government officials too are alleged to have assisted the intimidators. A press reporter who had filmed a man intimidating one of complainants had threatened the reporter with death and when this was brought to the attention of the head of LLRC with the assistance of the officials of American and Norway officials present at the site, the man was arrested by the police who recorded his statement and let him free, the sources added.
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Indian intelligence think-tank studying China to meet in Chennai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 November 2010, 08:31 GMT]
“China’s relations with neighbouring countries having territorial disputes including India have somewhat come under strain. It has become important for the latter to factor the reasons behind China’s apparent assertiveness in their formulations of policies towards Beijing,” says the concept paper of a national seminar “Rise of China: Implications for Asian Neighbours,” convened on 17 December at Hotel Savera by three academic-intelligence outfits of India based in Chennai. One of them was founded a year ago to ‘sensitise the people of South India to the complex political, economic and security problems facing India and its South Asian neighbours’. Many of the participants of the seminar, addressed as renowned Sinologists, were actively involved in blunting the national question of Eezham Tamils.
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US, Norwegian Embassy officials observe LLRC proceedings in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 November 2010, 07:05 GMT]
In the context of international media agencies being not permitted to enter Jaffna, officials of the Embassies of America and Norway in Sri Lanka are in Jaffna observing the proceedings of the Lesson Learnt & Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) in Jaffna peninsula at various places. The complaints made to LLRC by many parents about the disappearance of their daughters after arrest by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Vanni and Oamanthai during the last days of the war are directly observed with interest and recorded by the officials of American and Norway Embassies, the sources added. In the meantime, three leading Human Rights groups have slammed LLRC accusing Colombo's commission of failing to “meet basic international standards for independent and impartial inquiries.”
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Colombo's commissions have failed to do any good to victimized persons: HR activist

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 November 2010, 06:13 GMT]
“Various commissions and committees appointed by alternating Sri Lanka governments have stopped with issuing reports and their reports have been slighted by all the governments,” the President of the Association for the Protection of Disappeared persons arrested by Sri Lanka Army in Jaffna peninsula, N. Vijayakumar said Saturday witnessing before the Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) session in Nelliyadi in Vadamaraadchi. LLRC is authorized to record statements related only to the past ten years but this period should be extended to cover the last thirty years, he said. The president of LLRC in response said that LLRC had already made this request in its interim report submitted to the SL government.
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Colombo reinstates visa to Al Jazeera TV crew

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 November 2010, 18:21 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse Saturday instructed the Immigration and Emigration Department to issue visas to a media group of Al-Jazeera television to cover his swearing-in event for a second term on November 19, Colombo electronic media reported quoting Presidential Secretariat sources.
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War crimes and the responsibility of Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 13 November 2010, 04:04 GMT]
Eezham Tamils have made a strategic blunder two decades back in not internationally indicting the Indian Establishment for the war crimes committed by the IPKF. On one hand they allowed the indictment to sink under the din of Rajiv Gandhi assassination and on the other hand sections of them thought that the Indian Establishment should be spared for future benefits. Yet some others thought that it was not as important as Tamils acquiring military strength. The failure, in two decades of time, resulted in those who were a party to the crimes – from politics to military and from diplomacy to media – to boldly commit further crimes on a massive scale in proxy ways. Tamils should not fail again. Now it should be comprehensive indictment that needs own initiation and institutions coming from Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet political comentator in Colombo.
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Al Jazeera staff denied visa over Sri Lanka war crimes broadcast

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 November 2010, 20:29 GMT]
Three journalists from Al Jazeera, the international news network headquartered in Qatar, were denied visa to enter Sri Lanka, after the station broadcast photographs that provided additional prima facie evidence of widespread war crimes committed by Sri Lanka security forces during the final stages of war with Liberation Tigers, media reports from Colombo said.
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STF arrests 5 Tamils in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 November 2010, 06:40 GMT]
Sri Lanka police Special Task Force (STF) arrested Thursday around 3:00 a.m five Tamils including a male teacher, two family men and two youths in Peasaalai in Mannaar district, sources in Mannaar said. STF commanders who arrived in a white van dressed in civil clothes took the arrestees to the Prevention of Terrorism office in Vavuniyaa after handing over receipts for the arrests to the family members. They were brought back to Mannaar between 4:30 p.m and 6:00 p.m and a search was conducted in their houses in which their documents and other properties were confiscated by the police, the family members of the arrestees said. They had seen assault injuries on the arrestees, they said.
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Witnesses before LLRC accuse SLA for disappearances in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 November 2010, 06:04 GMT]
All the persons who witnessed before the Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Committee (LLRC) in Ariyaalai and Neerveali in Jaffna Thursday accused Sri Lanka Amy (SLA) Intelligence Unit and soldiers for taking away their family members who had disappeared without trace after arrest, sources in Jaffna said. Hundreds of mothers, fathers and wives of the disappeared persons witnessed before the LLRC in Neerveali where the session continued even after midnight Thursday. The wife of Rangasamy Mahintharaj alias Reka who is said to be the former head of the Medical Wing of the LTTE too witnessed before the Committee in Neerveali, the sources added. Many witnessed directly while others submitted statements and appeals to the LLRC which is to continue sittings Friday and Saturday in Jaffna peninsula.
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