Protest against video-captured killing of Tamil youth

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 November 2009, 14:55 GMT]
The Democratic Peoples Front (DPF) led by Colombo district parliamentarian, Mano Ganeshan, is to hold a demonstration in front of the Fort Railway Station on November 4 at 12:00 noon condemning the assault and killing of a mentally ill Tamil youth by police and Sri Lanka Army soldiers in the sea of Bambalapitya on Thursday.
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Abysmal 90% fail rate of internee Tamil children in Year-5 exam

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 November 2009, 12:43 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Tamil cultural destruction continues at unabated speed with the latest results of the year-5 exams released by the Department of Examinations, after a 30-day unexplained delay, revealed that only 507 students out of 5413 children who sat the Year 5 examination-2009 from the internment camps located in Vavuniyaa have passed. The Department released the results of Year 5 examination for other provinces on October 2.
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US legal noose tightening around Fonseka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 October 2009, 22:02 GMT]
The audacious visit to the United States by Major General Sarath Fonseka soon after an incriminating US State Department report over war crimes, appears to have landed the Major in a legal bind with US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to a report in the Sunday Times. While the DHS has requested a "voluntary meeting," Fonseka's legal counsels are yet to determine if US has the authority to trump Fonseka's assumed diplomatic immunity and can force him to testify, or if Fonseka's immunity would grant him the option to refuse to testify and return to Sri Lanka.
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Absurd logic of seeking ‘moderates’ amid a genocide - paper

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 October 2009, 15:20 GMT]
While many international actors are coming to realise that the problem in Sri Lanka is in fact rooted in the character of the Sinhala-dominated state, the London-based policy nexus which theorised, argued for, and solicited international consensus around Colombo’s military slaughter is still insisting that their strategy was essentially right, the Tamil Guardian newspaper said this week. “These handmaidens of Sri Lanka’s bloodbath will be proven disastrously wrong again. But not before the Tamils endure much more suffering and further bloodletting.”
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Spectator video captures SL Police, SLA kill mentally ill Tamil youth

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 October 2009, 12:37 GMT]
Sri Lanka Police and Sri Lanka Army soldiers beat a mentally ill Tamil youth and forced the youth to drown near the sea near Bambalapitya, Colombo, railway station Thursday. The youth was identified as Balavarnam Sivakumar, 26, of Ratmalana, according to media reports in Colombo, which belatedly listed the youth's identity. "The entire country [Sri Lanka] watched in horror, as a group of heavily built men attacked the mentally unstable [Tamil] youth with wooden poles while he pleaded for mercy, when it was telecast on several news bulletins on Thursday night," Daily Mirror said.
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SLA imposes new restriction on travel from Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 October 2009, 18:48 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) civil administration in Jaffna has ordered that people who had traveled to Jaffna from Colombo and other outstations can return only by the same conveyance they had used to come to Jaffna, sources in Jaffna said. As it is extremely difficult to get seats on the buses plying through A9 road between Vavuniyaa and Jaffna people are forced to travel by plane or ship paying exorbitant prices. Meanwhile, civil society sources in Jaffna accused that this new restriction has been introduced by high officials of SLA and government as a tactic to make money as commission from air travel agencies.
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Amnesty, CPJ, RSF call for probe into Channel-4 video death threats

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 October 2009, 11:28 GMT]
New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Amnesty International, and Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF), three premier watchdogs on media freedom, independently called Sri Lanka to investigate into the death threats received by two senior editors of Sri Lanka's Sunday Leader for the editors' coverage of the Channel-4 broadcast video which showed armed Sri Lankan soldiers allegedly executing Tamil prisoners stripped naked and hands tied behind their backs. “The air of impunity surrounding violence against the media is having a chilling effect on journalists,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator.
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Muslim police inspector arrested for assisting LTTE

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 October 2009, 03:47 GMT]
A team of the Special Task Force (STF) arrested a Muslim police inspector for allegedly assisting the LTTE in earlier days to bring its cadres to reach their targets of attacks, said the Sri Lankan Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Colombo Additional Magistrate’s Court Monday when the suspect, Police Inspector Dawood Mohamed Aimeer, was produced.
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5 Tamils including two women arrested in East, West

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 October 2009, 11:00 GMT]
Sri Lanka Police arrested five Tamils including two women in three separate incidents Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the East and West of the country. Two persons including a third year undergraduate of South Eastern University were taken into custody on Friday in Kalmunai in the East. T. Vinorathan of Thambiluvil was taken into custody along with a woman suspected to be a cadre of LTTE, identified as Inthirarasa Pavarita, 26, at Aalayadiveampu in Ampaa’rai district. Undergrad, Vinorathan was assisting the LTTE woman cadre, police spokesman SSP Nimal Mediwake said.
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US rescinds invitation to Fonseka to attend Hawaii event

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 October 2009, 03:39 GMT]
The US government has withdrawn the invitation earlier extended to Major General Sarath Fonseka, former Commander of the Sri Lanka Army and currently holding the post of Chief of Defence Staff, to attend a farewill event to US Pacific Command (PACOM) Commander Admiral Timothy J.Keating at PACOM headquarters in Hawaii, Colombo’s English weekly, the Sunday Times reported in its political column quoting diplomatic sources.
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Sarath Fonseka’s stand on relations with Tamils, Muslims should be made public – Mano Ganeshan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 18:32 GMT]
“The persons who try to bring in former Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Commander, Sarath Fonseka as a prospective presidential candidate should first publicize his stand on his relations with the Tamils and Muslims of the country,” Mano Gnaeshan, Colombo district parliamentarian and the leader of Democratic Peoples’ Front (DPF) told media in Colombo after a discussion held with Ranil Wickremasinghe, the leader of the opposition and United National Party Friday evening, sources in Colombo said.. “We will not write ‘blank cheques’ in favour of any major political party candidate in the Presidential election,” he said. “We do not have any personal hard feelings either towards President Mahinda Rajapakse or Sarath Fonseka; whatever difference of opinion that exists is purely political,” he further said.
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Stop settling Sinhalese in Tamil, Muslim owned land - Sampanthan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 17:21 GMT]
Rajavarothaiam Sampanthan, parliamentary group leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), speaking on an adjournment submitted by him in Sri Lanka's parliament Friday, said that "encroachment of lands belonging to Tamils and Muslims and State has been on going in the eastern province on large scale with the support of government, and amid intimidation of minority communities by government security forces, and this should be stopped immediately," parliamentary sources in Colombo said.
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Tamil Nadu must recognize and support establishment of Tamil Eelam: Thirumavalavan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 13:38 GMT]
Stating that there was a total violation of human rights in the Sri Lankan Government's camps for Internally Displaced Persons, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi President Thol.Thirumavalavan, told TamilNet Friday in an exclusive interview of the "appalling conditions" prevalent in these "barbed-wire concentration camps" which he witnessed firsthand as one of the ten-member parliamentary delegation from Tamil Nadu. Pointing out that Tamil people could not become a "permanent slave society" and "live as second class citizens in Sri Lanka," Thirumavalavan sought to emphasize that Tamil Eelam was the only solution to a struggle that had claimed the lives of nearly fifteen hundred thousand Tamils civilians and more than thirty thousand Tamil Tiger fighters.
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Mercy Mission relief goods released by SL government nearing expiry dates

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 07:58 GMT]
Government of Sri Lanka which had turned away the Mercy Mission ship, ‘Captain Ali’, loaded with relief items donated by expatriate Tamils in Europe to help Tamils caught up in the war in Vanni in June has now, after purposely delaying for nearly five months, released 27 containers of the total 88 to the ICRC in Colombo Thursday, sources in Colombo said. Subsequently, the entire cargo was released and ICRC had to obtain a certificate from the Sri Lanka Standards Institute as most of the goods were nearing expiry dates, the sources added.
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Army colonel, wife arrested for plotting to kill Rajapakse

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 04:04 GMT]
Five suspects, including an Army Colonel, held under detention orders for their alleged involvement in plotting to assassinate President Mahinda Rajapakse, were handed over to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Friday for further investigations on the orders of Mount Lavinia Additional Magistrate Ruchira Weliwatte. The court made the order on an application by the Colombo Crimes Division (CCD).
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Court remands EPDP cadre in robbery case

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 04:00 GMT]
Colombo Additional Magistrate, Mr.Ruchira Weliwatte, Friday ordered remand till October 29 to a member of the Eelam Peoples Democratic Party (EPDP), legal sources said. The suspect, Sellathurai Mathialagan, was produced in court on a complaint that he was alleged to have grabbed a handbag from a woman passerby while riding a motorbike, court sources said.
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UN proposes Goldstone-type mission to investigate Sri Lanka war crimes

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 01:45 GMT]
Following the release of U.S. State Department's report that detailed alleged war-crimes committed by Sri Lanka's protagonists towards the end of war, conducted under Colombo imposed blackout, spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights, Rupert Colville, said Friday that an inquiry similar to one that looked into fighting in Gaza may be needed to determine if war crimes were committed in Sri Lanka in the final weeks of the war. Brad Adams of HRW had earlier said "[g]iven Sri Lanka's complete failure to investigate possible war crimes, the only hope for justice is an independent, international investigation." Sri Lanka rejected the report as "unsubstantiated and devoid of corroborative evidence."
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SL Police arrest 2 Tamil youths at Katunayake

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 October 2009, 03:40 GMT]
Sri Lanka police took two Tamil youths of the north into custody in two separate incidents while the youths were waiting at the Katunayake International Airport to go abroad for employment, according to complaints lodged by their elatives to the police and Missing Peoples Monitoring Committee (MPMC) in Colombo. The arrested youths had valid travel documents.
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U.S. forfeits international responsibility to Sri Lankan state

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 October 2009, 10:59 GMT]
"The United States looks to the Government of Sri Lanka to identify an appropriate and credible mechanism and initiate a process for accountability," read a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Colombo on Thursday, announcing that U.S. Department of State delivered a Congressional report Wednesday detailing the incidents that allegedly occurred during the final months of the war in Vanni that may constitute violations of international humanitarian law or crimes against humanity. While Eezham Tamils are expecting justice from international mechanisms on the genocidal war carried out by the Sri Lankan state against the Tamil nation, the U.S. statement attempts to make Colombo responsible for initiating a process for accountability within the anti-Tamil Sri Lankan system itself, commented Tamil circles blaming the statement as attempting to abet Colombo’s agenda of structural genocide.
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Vanni IDP students admitted to Ratmalana Hindu College

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 October 2009, 10:28 GMT]
A batch of 144 Tamil students including 81 boys and 63 girls studying in grades from seven to eleven and detained in Vavuniyaa internment camp were admitted to Ratmalana Hindu College in Colombo district Wednesday. After detention they were rehabilitated at the Poonthooddam Child Protection and Rehabilitation Centre in Vavuniyaa. They left Vavuniyaa around 6.30 a.m. Wednesday in four special buses arranged by the Sri Lanka Army.
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