2 Chinese key military officers on secret visit to Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 August 2010, 20:33 GMT]
Two key officers of China military paid a sudden and secret visit to Vanni where they met the occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) top officers in the important bases in Vanni, sources in Vanni said. Even the key SLA officers based in Vanni had not been informed of the sudden visit of the Chinese military officials who arrived in a convoy of vehicles heavily guarded by Sri Lanka President's Special Security Force, the sources added.
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SLA exploits Chinese funds meant for resettlement of uprooted Vanni civilians

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 August 2010, 07:27 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) occupying Vanni is exploiting funds donated by China for the resettlement of uprooted Vanni people to construct permanent housing schemes for its personnel, in Kokkaavil, located west of A9 road in Vanni, civil society organizations in K'linochchi said. Uprooted civilians forcibly taken by SLA soldiers to work in the constructions said that even two storey buildings are under construction in an area where new roads have been laid. Meanwhile, around 3,000 uprooted families, brought to be resettled in Vanni by Sri Lanka government, continue to live under trees left abandoned while Sri Lanka government exploits international assistance meant for them to settle Sinhalese families from South, Suresh Premachandran, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian said.
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Tutu: Persecution, disappearances in Sri Lanka, truely terrifying

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 August 2010, 01:09 GMT]
Cautioning that "the international response to Sri Lanka’s worrying approach to human rights, good governance and accountability as a ‘deafening global silence’ that may encourage other states to act in a similar way," Elders, an independent group of eminent global leaders, said Tuesday that "Sri Lankan government’s domestic conduct, as well as its recent unacceptable treatment of the United Nations in Sri Lanka warrants a firm, public response from its most influential friends – particularly China, India, Japan and the United States as well as the non-aligned group of countries."
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SLA claims Kurunakar HSZ removed

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 August 2010, 23:46 GMT]
Acting Military spokesman, Colonel Duminda Gamage, talking to the Colombo media Tuesday, claimed that the High Security Zone (HSZ) in the Kurunakar area in Jaffna has been removed. He further said that this step has been taken to facilitate the resettlement of civilian, and added HSZ is gradually being dismantled since Monday and civilians are being allowed to reoccupy their former dwellings.
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Valikaamam uprooted families abandon protest demonstration due to death threats

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 August 2010, 07:21 GMT]
Welfare organizations of Valikaamam North residents expelled by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) from their properties twenty years ago cancelled a human chain protest demanding resettlement in their places due to death threats to the key persons of the organizations, sources in Jaffna said. The persons threatened wish anonymity as they fear for their lives. Meanwhile, conflicts between the SLA Jaffna Commander, Major Gen. Mahinda Kathurusinghe and Sri Lanka Minister Douglas Devanda on the issue of resettlement in the outskirts of SLA High Security Zone (HSZ) in Valikaamam are causes for the delay in resettlement, the sources further said.
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New Delhi academic comments in Colombo on diaspora transnationalism

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 August 2010, 06:31 GMT]
“Nationals settled in distant lands often nurture identities that may well be historically untenable and outdated in the culture of the home country. But they are a source of solace to the migrant in an alien culture and underline a claim to connectedness. Such identities frequently deny the plurality of South Asian civilisation and the intersections within it. The replacement of these becomes a problem of transnationalism,” said Romila Thapar, emeritus professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, delivering on Sunday Neelan Thiruchelvam Memorial Lecture of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo. Responding, an academic in Jaffna said, the Eezham Tamil diaspora is not settled but forced, carrying contemporary historical memories to which India was a party.
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Landmines explode in 3 Vanni school surroundings

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 August 2010, 04:09 GMT]
Three landmines went off Sunday morning in the surroundings of schools in three separate schools in Ki’linochchi district in Vanni where uprooted families were resettled in Vanni on Sri Lanka Army (SLA) assurance that the areas had been completely de-mined. The landmines exploded when students set fire to waste heaped after cleaning the surrounding area of their schools, sources in Ki’linochchi said.
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Assert Eezham Tamil identity in international arena: Es Po

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 August 2010, 01:18 GMT]
“The identity of Tamils in the island is not Sri Lankan. For over half a century the Sinhala chauvinists constantly staging devil dance tell that the identity belongs only to the Sinhalese. A Tamil who has ancestry in the island has no choice other than claiming for the identity Eezhath-thamizhan in the international arena. If that identity is not there he has neither face nor name,” says veteran Eezham Tamil creative writer S. Ponnuthurai (Es Po), in writing a forward to a poetry collection a few months ago. Meanwhile, veteran academic Prof K Sivathamby in an interview to Frontline last month regretted that “we did not have a situation in which all our people could join as Sri Lankans”, but added, “ Now we realise... The Sinhalese people also should realise that we are part of the landscape, and Tamils also should realise that this is the only country where the Sinhalese live”.
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Resettled families in Vanni left abandoned in deserted places

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 August 2010, 13:54 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Vanni has refused permission to the uprooted families of Kumaarasaamipuram and Mayilvaakanapuram in Ki’linochchi district to resettle in their lands claiming that the area is infested with landmines, sources in Ki’linochchi said. These people were brought from Vavuniyaa SLA Menik Farm camp by Sri Lanka government authorities promising resettlement in their own villages. But now they are left abandoned in deserted places without sufficient food, water, hygienic facilities and safety, the affected civilians said.
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Indian national arrested at Oamanthai

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 August 2010, 13:04 GMT]
The Vavuniyaa Magistrate Friday ordered remand till August 10 for an Indian citizen who was arrested by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) at Oamanthai check point as he failed to produce Sri Lankan defense ministry clearance on his way to Jaffna in a state run bus, according to Police spokesman Preshantha Jayakody to Colombo media.
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SLA reinstalls checkpoint at Elephant Pass

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 August 2010, 04:59 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has reinstalled its checkpoint in Yaanaiyi’ravu (Elephant Pass) at the gateway to Jaffna peninsula where all vehicles passing through A9 land route are instructed to register their entry and exit, sources in Jaffna said. A similar SLA checkpoint at Oamanthai is already in existence. Persons entering Vanni who are not in possession of Sri Lanka National Identity Card of Passport are sent back to obtain Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence (MoD) permission to enter Vanni through Oamanthai SLA checkpoint, the sources added.
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Fate of teenage students disappeared during war on Vanni remains unknown

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 July 2010, 05:20 GMT]
At least a thousand of the persons disappeared during Sri Lanka government’s war on Vanni are students below the age of eighteen and their families, mostly mothers, have begun a desperate search for their children gone missing after arrest by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) at the end of the war, Education Department sources in Ki’linochchi said. Sri Lanka government has failed to disclose the particulars of the teenage students who had either surrendered or been arrested while humanitarian organizations responsible for tracing persons disappeared have no information on them, the sources added.
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SLA appropriates uprooted civilians’ villages in Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 July 2010, 04:43 GMT]
Occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Vanni has declared the villages of Mayilvaakanapuram and Kumarasaamipuram in Ki’linochchi district not allowed for resettlement as they had been reserved for SLA use, sources in Ki’linochchi said. 140 uprooted families of the two villages brought to be resettled two months back after detention in Vavuniyaa SLA camp by Sri Lankan civil authorities have not been allowed to resettle in their properties.
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Development crimes, Norway and Tamil diaspora

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 July 2010, 23:52 GMT]
“While the West is hoodwinking Tamils with war crimes investigations, what takes place in the island in full swing with the abetment of those who abetted the war are development crimes, demographic crimes and cultural crimes to complete genocide. The balance tilted by the international community has now placed Eezham Tamils to face several armies: an occupying army, settlement army, a retrogressive cultural army and the ‘development army’. Meanwhile, some Tamil individuals argue that diaspora should stop prioritising politics, but should ‘reconcile’ to subordination and engage in ‘rehabilitation’, without realising that it is they who have imperceptibly fallen into a vicious political agenda of the oppressors”, commented a social activist responding to ‘development’ circles in Norway advocating the diaspora to engage in ‘development’ accepting a questionable Sinhala NGO as the ‘monitor’.
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Malwatte Chapter Chief Incumbent visits newly erected Buddhist temples in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 July 2010, 17:34 GMT]
The Chief Incumbent of Malwatte Chapter, Most Venerable Thippaduwaave Sri Sumangala thera, accompanied by Buddhist priests visited Vanni Wednesday where he worshiped in the Buddhist temples newly erected by occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA), sources in Vanni said. Thursday, the Chief Incumbent participated in an event in Nelliyadi Maththiya Makaa Viththiyaalayam in Vadamaraadchi and distributed learning materials to the children of war affected areas of Vadamaraadchi and Thenmaraadchi. This visit is counted as the first by a Chief Incumbent of Malwatte Chapter to Jaffna after many years, sources in Jaffna said.
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Tamil hunger striker wins libel claim against Daily Mail, Sun

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 July 2010, 09:36 GMT]
British newspapers Sun and Daily Mail, represented by their Counsel at the Royal Court of Justice in London on Thursday, apologised sincerely and unreservedly for untrue and highly defamatory allegations against Parameswaran Subramanyam, who was on a 23-day hunger strike April, last year, demanding international community to stop Colombo’s war on Tamils. The newspapers also agreed to pay substantial damages and legal costs, according to Carter-Ruck solicitors. “The false allegations about Parameswaran were not just hurtful but clearly aimed at undermining Parameswaran’s credibility and the credibility of the whole Tamil protest,” commented Liberal Democrats' Deputy Parliamentary Leader Simon Hughes. According to Labour MP, Siobhain McDonagh, the ‘authorities’ who gave the information to the newspapers, “did it to undermine and shame the Tamil demonstrators in Parliament Square”.
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SLA interrogates resettled people in K’linochchi following JVP delegation’s visit

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 July 2010, 15:14 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers interrogated the residents of Kavuthaarimunai in Poonakari in Ki’linochchi Friday immediately after a delegation of Sinhala Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) had visited them, Socialist Youth Association (SYA), a front organization of the JVP, claimed in a media statement. The delegation met the resettled people to learn first hand about the true conditions under which they were living.
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Tissamaharama potsherd evidences ordinary early Tamils among population

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 July 2010, 03:18 GMT]
A potsherd inscription in Tamil Brahmi found some times back in an archaeological excavation by a German team at Tissamaharama in the Hambantota district of the Southern Province of Sri Lanka can be interpreted as meaning an equipment to measure, and thus evidences the presence of ordinary Tamil speaking people in the population of that region as early as at 2200 years before present, says archaeologist and epigraphist, Ponnampalam Ragupathy. The identification of the script of the legend as Tamil Brahmi and the decipherment getting the reading Thira’li Mu’ri in Tamil by veteran epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan in an article last month in The Hindu, has stirred interest of the archaeological circles in the island to unearth this old find from obscurity to limelight.
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Resettled couple in Vanni attempt suicide, husband dies

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 July 2010, 16:39 GMT]
A young couple, recently resettled in Ki’linochchi district in Vanni, attempted to kill themselves Sunday. The neighbours rushed them to Ki’linochchi government hospital where the husband died and the wife, transferred to Jaffna Teaching Hospital, is admitted in the Intensive Care Unit. The couple had lost all four of their children during the war in Puthumaaththa’lan, killed in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) shelling on civilians, sources in Ki’linochchi said. Frustration over their children’s death and the loss of all their belongings had driven the couple to attempt suicide, the neighbours said.
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SLA conducts search operation in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 July 2010, 16:04 GMT]
Atleast six hundred soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) conducted a house to house search in Onththachchimadam in Batticaloa district from Sunday morning for several hours. Tension prevailed among residents of the village when the soldiers surrounded the village without allowing any one to leave their houses, sources in Batticaloa said.
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