SLA erects Buddhist temples in Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 September 2010, 05:01 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) authorities in Vanni are actively engaged in erecting Buddhist temples in the surroundings of Saiva temples in Vanni, sources in Ki’linochchi said. The construction of a Buddhist temple in the precincts of Mu'rika’ndi Pi’l’laiyaar temple located on Kandy road by SLA has been suspended by the Local Government Body of the area. A case filed by a private person in Colombo High Court claiming that Mu'rika’ndi Pi’l’laiyaar temple belongs to him is being taken up for inquiry, the sources said.
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High Court begins inquiry against Fonseka on ‘white flag issue’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 September 2010, 04:31 GMT]
The Trial-at-Bar inquiry in the Colombo High Court against Sarath Fonseka, former Commander of the Sri Lanka Army, began Monday. But the court comprising Deepali Wijesundera, H. N.P. B. Warawewa and Zurfick Raseen re-fixed the inquiry for Tuesday on receipt of a report that Fonseka was indisposed. Army Legal Officer Major Karunaratne further informed court that Fonseka had fallen ill Monday morning and was later examined by SL Navy doctors.
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Keeping TGTE transnational

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 September 2010, 00:25 GMT]
The TGTE should be true to the transnational spirit and need. It has to function independently and transnationally. Parallel secretariats in federal spirit, in feasible locations across the world, and members meeting in those different locations are important to its image and spirit. Another major issue the members of the TGTE may have to consider is guarding TGTE against one-person leadership or one-time democracy. The apex leadership being collective has some advantages in formative or transition situations. Contrary to the propaganda of oppressors and defeatism of pessimists, spirited people among ordinary folk and serious elite expect a lot from TGTE. But polity and leadership don’t come from the blues. They manifest only from the realities of the structure and capacity of a society.
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Batticaloa district ignored in post-war 'development'

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 September 2010, 11:38 GMT]
“Colombo Central authority is taking steps to issue water from Unnichchai Tank in Batticaloa district to Sinhala people disregarding appeal made on behalf of Tamil people to the authority concerned. Colombo government has begun suspending 'development' works in Paduvaankarai area and plans to allocate lands in the area to foreign companies and the resources entitled for Tamil people are being given to the Sinhala community. The Chief Minister of the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) and its Governor are answerable and should bear responsibility for the injustice done to Tamil people in the area,” R. Thurairatnam, member of the EPC said.
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ICJ blames Colombo for world's largest detention, cautions donors against complicity

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 September 2010, 10:18 GMT]
The International Commission of Jurists in a latest report has urged the International Community and the United Nations to extend 'rehabilitation' donor support only on condition of compliance with international law and standards, given the current legal vacuum and uncertain conditions under which at least 8,000 ‘surrendees’ are being detained by Colombo. Otherwise, those who provide support to Colombo's detention programme risk complicity in a policy of systematic mass arbitrary detention, the ICJ warned, in an in-depth report titled "Beyond Lawful Constraints: Sri Lanka’s Mass Detention of LTTE Suspects". In the report, the ICJ has characterised the detention as the largest mass administrative detention anywhere in the world. "[T]he mass detention has the character of collective punishment, which is prohibited in any circumstances under international law," the report said.
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India's reasons for banning LTTE false, fabricated: Vaiko tells Tribunal

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 September 2010, 14:55 GMT]
MDMK leader Vaiko on Friday appeared before New Delhi’s Tribunal set to hear petitions against the ban of the LTTE in India, to argue that he should be involved in the hearing and to plead that the ban extended by the Central Government on 14 May 2010 should not be confirmed by the Tribunal. The very first reason given by GOI for the ban that the Tamil Eelam objective of the LTTE includes Tamil Nadu, falls to the ground to pieces as the LTTE never wanted to annex an inch of land of Tamil Nadu, Vaiko said, adding that GOI’s reasons are totally fabricated with falsehood. The Tribunal judge Vikramjit Sen was specific in raising the question “Don’t they [the LTTE] want to annex Tamil Nadu or part of India with Tamil Eelam?”
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Buddhist prelates to talk to Mahinda Rajapakse on Fonseka release

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 September 2010, 09:10 GMT]
Mahanayake Theras of two Chapters Malwatte and Asgiriya are reported to have assured Anoma Fonseka, wife of the detained former commander of the Sri Lanka Army that they would take up the issue of release of her husband with Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse when he returns from New York on Monday. Both Mahanayake Theras are said to have given the assurance to Anoma Fonseka when she met them and pleaded for the release of her husband, Sunday in Kandy.
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Colombo bans explosives to Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 September 2010, 08:45 GMT]
Amidst suspicions arising about circumstances leading to dynamite blast at Karadiyan-aa’ru police station that killed around 62 and injured more than a hundred, the Colombo government has banned explosives reaching Batticaloa district for blasting rocks for road construction, reports from Batticaloa said. Meanwhile, eyewitness accounts confirm that a big number of dead bodies were taken away by SL armed forces that reached the spot shortly after the blast. Colombo maintains that only 21 killed and around 70 injured.
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'EU should coordinate powers to bring justice to Eezham Tamils'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 September 2010, 05:08 GMT]
While powers and countries like Norway, preoccupied with geo-strategy and ‘development’, ignore the fundamentals of the crisis in the island, the European Union should work towards convincing and coordinating them in bringing political justice to Eezham Tamils, said 62-year-old Jegatheeswaran Arunachalam, an Australian national who witnessed the war in Vanni to its end. The EU, consisting of old nations that have gone through the gravity of national question in history, is in a better position to grasp appropriate solutions, he said. “As an immediate action, the EU should send a fact finding mission that includes members of the diaspora, and it should work for an internationally guaranteed situation for the diaspora to independently reach out its kith and kin in the island”, Jegatheeswaran, now on a Walk for Justice mission across Europe with two fellow activists, told TamilNet Friday.
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US University calls for Sri Lanka war crimes investigations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 September 2010, 02:10 GMT]
The Human Rights law clinic at the Washington D.C.-based American University, in a report released to the media Friday, proposed that the United Nations should establish a War Crimes Tribunal for Sri Lanka. "The Tamil community's need for truth, justice, and redress will continue to be marginalized without outside intervention. Marginalization and impunity for human rights violations may once again lead to unrest in the country and will impede justice and accountability," the report said.
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Armed men in police uniform rob 70 million in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 September 2010, 14:09 GMT]
Three armed men in Sri Lanka police uniform riding motorcycles ambushed and robbed 70 million rupees from a van transporting money to a private bank in Wanawasala in Kelaniya police division in Colombo Friday early morning, sources in Colombo said. The men had ambushed the bank vehicle near Thorana junction in Kandy road in Peliyagoda and had taken the vehicle at gun point to Wanawasala Station road.
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Indian Mumbai private contractor company officials visit North

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 September 2010, 04:43 GMT]
A team of a Mumbai private contractor company officials on a two-day visit to North Sri Lanka participated in a meeting Thursday in Jaffna Secretariat presided by Jaffna Government Agent, Ms. Imelda Sukumar, and discussed the project of constructing 50,000 houses in the war affected Vanni and Jaffna peninsula. The team, accompanied by officials of Colombo Indian High Commission, visited many places in Vanni before coming to Jaffna. The Mumbai private contractors are in Sri Lanka to finalize the contract of constructing 50,000 houses in the war affected North. Meanwhile, local contractors have raised objection to Mumbai Company’s reported intention to bring 20,000 workers from India. Jaffna Government Secretariat officials, however, said that this issue was not discussed in the meeting.
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Colombo Crime Division arrests press owner in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 September 2010, 18:25 GMT]
A special team of Colombo Crime Division arrested the owner of Churapi Achchakam (printing press), C. Kuruthev, in Jaffna Tuesday and took him to Colombo for inquiry, sources in Jaffna said. Kuruthev’s brother, the General Manager of the Tamil daily Namathu Eezhanaadu, C. Sivamaharajah, had been assassinated at his house in Thellippazhai in August 2006. Sri Lanka Minister Douglas Devananda, the head of Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), had sought to acquire Churapi Achchakam to print a Tamil Daily in the name of Thinamurasu to which Kuruthev had not consented, media circles in Jaffna said.
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‘Norway wrongs by cooperating with Colombo’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 September 2010, 11:32 GMT]
The Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is naive if he believes normalisation of relations with Colombo will lay the basis for reconciliation. It is wrong to normalise relations with a regime that uses the army to expel Tamils from their land and settle Sinhalese there. Before normalising diplomatic ties Stoltenberg should demand Rajapaksa to accept UN investigation, said Norwegian Red Party deputy leader Bjørnar Moxnes, Wednesday, responding to media reports that Stoltenberg is the first Western head of government to meet Rajapaksa with a cooperation agenda after the civil war. Meanwhile, Mr. Majoran Vivekananthan, managing editor of Utrop said “it is unwise to let Solheim set the terms for Norway's relationship with Sri Lanka until a thorough evaluation of Norwegian and Solheim's role in the failed peace process is carried out.”
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Two teenagers killed in train accident in Wattala

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 September 2010, 10:18 GMT]
Two Tamil teenagers were killed in a train accident Thursday around 7:00 a.m. at Hunupitiya railway track in Wattala, Police said. The victims had failed to hear the train as they were using earphones of their mobile phones while walking in the rail track.
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Colombo plans to settle Sinhala people in Thiryaay in Trincomalee district

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 September 2010, 18:02 GMT]
Due to pressure from the Buddhist priests of Kirihandu Seya Buddhist temple situated in the traditional Tamil village of Thiriyaay in Trincomalee district, the Government Agent of Trincomalee, Major Gen. (Retd) Ranjit de Silva has stopped the restoration of Neelappa’nikkan tank in Thiriyaay which feeds about 3,000 acres of paddy fields of the residents evicted by Sri Lanka Army (SLA), sources in Trincomalee said. Sri Lanka Minister of Irrigation and Road Development M. S. Uthumalebbe had recently inaugurated the restoration of the tank on the requests of the people of Thiriyaay. Meanwhile, the residents of Thiriyaay said that this is part of a subtle move by the chauvinist elements in Sri Lanka government to attach more lands to the Buddhist temple in order to settle Sinhalese from South.
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Colombo hurriedly readies military colony in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 September 2010, 07:34 GMT]
One hundred houses in the military occupation scheme consisting twelve thousand houses by the Sri Lanka government in Ki’linochchi district to colonize the Tamil land of Vanni with Sinhala families of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) are being hurriedly prepared for occupation. Families of one hundred SLA officers will take possession of them in an event to be held shortly, informed sources in Ki’linochchi said. Arrangements are under way for the event in which key persons of Sri Lanka Defence Ministry will take part. Meanwhile, the owners of the land, all of them Tamils, their properties encroached by Sri Lanka government for colonisation, are not allowed even to go to their places where the military colony is being constructed. Informed Tamil officials in Vanni also said that Colombo is using foreign funds donated in the name of resettlement of uprooted families of Vanni.
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Polgolla

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 22:25 GMT]
The coconut-palm grove
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LTTE's Elilan surrendered to SLA on 18 May, wife tells BBC

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 16:21 GMT]
Ananthi Sasitharan, wife of Elilan, former Trincomalee political head of the LTTE, told BBC Tamil service that she and her three daughters witnessed her husband and hundreds of other LTTE members surrendering to the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers on 18th May 2009, after the war has come to an end. "I have been trying to trace my husband and has not been successful to locate his whereabouts. I have no doubt that Sri Lanka's president knows where my husband and others who surrendered are being held," she told the BBC.
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TID torture Tamil detainees held under PTA

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 07:07 GMT]
The Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) of Sri Lanka government continues to torture hundreds of Tamil youths arrested and detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) without trial, a journalist who had met the detainees said, under conditions of anonymity. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka government intends to keep the Tamil youths who were combatants of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in detention for five more years, sources close to Sri Lanka prison authorities said.
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