Tsunami victims remembered in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 December 2009, 02:26 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Jaffna transported nearly a thousand people in vehicles to Thaazhaiyadi in Jaffna Saturday where a memorial event was held for the victims killed by tsunami tidal wave five years ago, sources in Jaffna said. Tsunami had claimed 956 lives in Uduththu'rai area, 76 in Ma'natkaadu and 16 in Maathakal in Jaffna district. Persons who participated in the event said that the tsunami memorial monument erected by Liberation Tigers and the graves of tsunami victims had been destructed by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) during the war.
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Sri Lanka’s tsunami aid: Over $1 billion missing or misappropriated

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 December 2009, 01:20 GMT]
Nearly half a billion dollars in tsunami aid for Sri Lanka is unaccounted for and over 600 million dollars has been spent on projects unrelated to the disaster, press reports quoted anti Transparency International as saying Saturday. The anti-corruption watchdog demanded an audit of the money received by the Sri Lankan government to help victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami which hit the island on December 26, 2004, killing 31,000 people, AFP said.
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SLA refuses permission for IDP resettlement in Thenmaraadchi

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 December 2009, 02:52 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) authorities denied permission for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to resettle in their villages in Thenmaraadchi earlier occupied by SLA during war. Though SLA has removed its bases and men from the lands of the IDPs permission is denied saying that the lands are infested with mines, the IDPs said.
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Copenhagen exhibits expose NorthEast environmental destruction

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 December 2009, 14:53 GMT]
Two environmentalists from Tamil Nadu, interrupted their world tour promoting environment preservation, to organize an exhibit in the hallways of the climate change conference in Copenhagen between 7th and 18th December, to highlight the irreversible deforestation in the Tamil homeland of North-East carried out by the Sri Lanka military. “Decades-long massive military operations and occupation of Tamil Eelam by Sri Lanka’s military have caused grave environmental destruction to the north and east of the island. Recovery is difficult as the Tamil homeland is in the dry and arid part of the island, depending on scanty and truant northeast monsoon,” the two activists said, echoing many eelam activists' sentiments.
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SLA, Police cordon, search Maligawatte housing schemes

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 December 2009, 12:36 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army and Police personnel conducted a search operation Wednesday afternoon in Colombo at Maligawatte Housing Scheme, causing tension among the residents in the area.
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SLA constructs Buddhist temple in Jaffna without Municipality Council permission

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 December 2009, 04:07 GMT]
More than a hundred Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers are engaged in building a Buddhist Vihara in Madaththadi Chanthi (Water Tank Junction) next to Jaffna holy Family Convent along A9 road, sources in Jaffna said. When the matter was brought to the notice of Minister Douglas Devananda he said that it was the SLA who is constructing the Buddhist Vihara and not the government. Civil society representatives in Jaffna, however, said that the SLA is building the Buddhist temple with the blessing of the government as it had already built several Buddhist places of worship with the statue of Buddha along A9 road in Vanni.
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Boston Tamils protest over Kerry report

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 December 2009, 01:04 GMT]
Tamils in Boston, U.S., protested in front of Senator John F. Kerry's office Monday against a report that Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations Committee released earlier this month that called for friendlier relations between the United States and Sri Lanka. "The protesters claimed that the report was biased towards the Sinhalese ethnic majority that rules Sri Lanka, and against the Tamil minority that has been fighting for a separate homeland for decades," Boston Globe reported in its Monday edition.
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Allegations of killing LTTE surrendees under UN probe

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 December 2009, 12:20 GMT]
Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary execution to Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations office at Geneva, in a letter to Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse, requested explanation for the allegations made by Sarath Fonseka on the extra-judicial executions of of three senior members of Liberation Tigers and their families when they tried surrender to the Sri Lanka military on the night of 17th May, Daily mirror reported. In the letter, Alston quotes Common Article 3 of Geneva Conventions of 1949 which prohibits killing of persons who have laid down their arms. These allegations, if proven, will amount to war-crimes.
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Passengers from Jaffna through A9 road subjected to inconvenience

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 December 2009, 07:53 GMT]
Though Sri Lanka government and its ministers say that all restrictions imposed on persons travelling from Jaffna to Vavuniyaa have been completely lifted they continue to experience undue delay and inconvenience, sources in Jaffna said. The buses carrying the passages from Jaffna have to wait at Jaffna esplande first and then allowed to go in convoys under military escort, the sources added.
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Third boycott protest held in Atlanta

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 December 2009, 03:30 GMT]
Tamil activists in Atlanta held a protest at the North Point Mall in the Atlanta's suburb of Alpharetta Saturday, urging ethical consumers to stop buying "made in Sri Lanka" products, especially the garments, for the 3rd time since this campaign started in September, an attendee to the protest said. North Point Mall is a super-regional shopping mall serving affluent part of the metropolitan Atlanta, according to the protesters.
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British Minister under fire for Lanka vacation

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 December 2009, 15:48 GMT]
"Ben Bradshaw will be free to travel in Sri Lanka in a way that 100,000 displaced Tamils cannot," said the British daily Independent, adding, "the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has raised eyebrows by taking a Christmas holiday in Sri Lanka days after the British government condemned the Colombo administration for its poor human rights record." Bradshaw's act follows a month after Gordon Brown blocked "Sri Lanka's attempt to host the next Commonwealth summit," and a week after last "David Miliband told the Commons that there remained ongoing concerns about the island's government after a crackdown on the Tamil population earlier this year," the paper said.
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IFJ report adds to Colombo's woes on war-crimes video

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 December 2009, 17:05 GMT]
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), in a report released Friday after a fact finding mission to Sri Lanka, notes that the current political rivalry between the two leading presidential contenders is exposing the "abuses suffered by the media during the years of war, especially in its final stages." On possible new flashpoints the report notes the "anxiety in Sri Lanka official circles" when a video footage "purporting to show summary executions by army troops of a group of men described as Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka’s north" was broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4 in August. Despite attempts by Sri Lanka to dismiss the video as fake, a Colorado firm in the U.S, and British Daily Times have independently verified that video is authentic, raising the spectre of renewed calls for charging the presidential contenders of war crimes.
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SLA officers enrich on scrap metal bribes, complain Jaffna traders

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 December 2009, 06:48 GMT]
Muslim traders in Jaffna alleged that they have to pay Sri Lanka Army (SLA) officers nearly 50,000 rupees as bribe to get the Ministry of Defence (MoD) permission to transport scrap iron to the South. Meanwhile, the SLA officers in Vanni are alleged to be making millions of rupees by sending thousands of metric ton scrap iron stored by Liberation Tigers in Vanni, sources in Vanni said.
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Vote Yes, Shander appeals to Canadian Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 December 2009, 05:53 GMT]
"These are extraordinary times requiring extraordinary solutions made by extraordinary people. You are those extraordinary people. Tamils of Eelam unite! Step forward and say YES to the referendum of creating a separate state called Tamil Eelam," appeals Dr Ellyn Shander, a Connecticut Psychiatrist, a humanitarian worker and a critic of the Sri Lanka Government, on the Saturday referendum where Tamils will vote across Canada on the question of independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam.
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World obliged to expose civilian slaughters, Arnestad tells CNN

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 December 2009, 02:15 GMT]
Beate Arnestad, the director an hour long documentary film, "My daughter the terrorist," in an interview with CNN Monday says that the lesson the world should learn from her film which follows two young, Catholic female LTTE fighters and the final end of the war when tens of thousands of unarmed civilians were killed by Sri Lanka military, is that the World has an obligation to expose the slaughter civilians by Governments for political reasons. The documentary made its World Premiere to a full house at Parkteatret in the Norwegian capital Oslo on the 12th March 2007.
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Buddhist monk accused of flogging a Vedda

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 December 2009, 19:08 GMT]
A Vedda aborigine of the island of Sri Lanka was allegedly flogged severely by a Sinhala Buddhist monk during a recent temple festival in Mahiyangane and the police refused to register a complaint, says Asian Human Rights Commission on Friday, requesting international public to intervene by sending urgent appeal to relevant authorities in Sri Lanka.
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Zurich, Vienna, war crimes and Tamil polity

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 December 2009, 07:28 GMT]
By concentrating in an undue way on the choice of a president between the two main candidates seen as war criminals, why should Eezham Tamils ultimately uphold the interests of any of the powers either committed or abetted those very war crimes but show no signs of mending their ways on the national question and are now backing those dummy candidates, argues TamilNet political commentator in Colombo. Instead, Tamil politicians and new political aspirants among Tamils should leave the matter to genuine and spontaneous decision of the Tamil people and should make the best use of the time to concentrate more on laying strong foundations to the emerging national polity of Eezham Tamils to face any eventuality that emerges after the presidential elections, he further said.
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Restrictions on travel through A9 road to Jaffna lifted

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 December 2009, 02:49 GMT]
All restrictions hitherto imposed on travel and transport between Jaffna and Vavuniyaa are lifted in keeping to a directive from Jaffna Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Commander, Jaffna Government Agent said in a media report Thursday night. The lorries transporting goods to Jaffna will, however, be permitted only in convoys with SLA escort as usual, the report said.
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More than 1000 families displaced due to floods in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 December 2009, 02:17 GMT]
More than a thousand people have sought refuge in churches and school buildings due to floods caused by relentless rain in Jaffna peninsula. 1329 persons of 374 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) families brought from Vavuniyaa camps and settled in the abandoned tsunami shelters in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) occupied Maruthangkea’ni area in Vadamaraadchi had to leave the shelters and seek refuge in churches and schools, according to Jaffna Government Agent, K. Ganesh.
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Referendum to speak for themselves - paper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 December 2009, 01:39 GMT]
Why after three decades once again a democratic mandate on independent Tamil Eelam? The answer is simple says Tamil Guardian in an editorial this week: The collective demand and popular mandate of 1977 has been studiously ignored and instead all kinds of voices - including the Sinhala state, marginal Tamil actors and important members of the international community - have simply asserted that 'the majority' of Tamils reject independence, whilst simultaneously lending tacit or overt support to the systematic and forcible denial of any space for the Tamil people to freely express their views on this core issue. On their assertion, a war was waged to devastate Tamils. The demand to conduct UN-run referendum was only met with silence. The referenda on Tamil Eelam now being organized by the Diaspora are an effort by Tamils to speak over those speaking for them, the editorial said.
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