Vanni IDPs loose hope of resettlement in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 November 2009, 03:54 GMT]
As immediate resettlement in their own villages in Vanni appears to be a remote possibility, Vanni Internally displaced Persons (IDPs) who are not originally from Jaffna district show interest in being brought to Jaffna, sources in Jaffna said. The government too, reluctant to commence immediate resettlement in Vanni, is actively encouraging Vanni IDPs to be sent to Jaffna with the aim of reducing the number of IDP camps in Jaffna, the sources added.
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SLA refuses fishing permission in Jaffna for IDPs from Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 November 2009, 17:57 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Jaffna does not permit Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) brought from SLA internment camps in Vavuniyaa to engage in fishing in Jaffna peninsula though their relatives and friends are ready to help them to buy the needed fishing equipments, Fishermen’s Societies in Jaffna raised concern. Many persons in Jaffna have taken responsibility of maintaining their relatives and friends, creating a scarcity of places and houses to lodge the IDPs, the sources added.
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Eezham Tamil mandate picks up global momentum

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 November 2009, 12:47 GMT]
Spontaneous and parallel efforts to effect a global mandate of Eezham Tamils in proclaiming the desire for the creation of an independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka are picking up momentum among the diaspora in several countries of the world, following a similar mandate in Norway last May. Eezham Tamils exercising their self-determination in democratically coming out with such a mandate is widely viewed in Tamil circles as a common basis for all shades of their national politics. This week, VN Music Dreams of Norway has released a song upholding the Tamil national mandate, in the music composed by Udhayaa and voiced by Krishnaraj for the lyrics of Vaseeharan.
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Fonseka demands summary justice for LTTE cadres

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 November 2009, 11:45 GMT]
"We must deploy enough troops to provide security for these [resettled] areas. We must in these areas, this virus, there are still 1000’s of terrorists in IDP camps. We must identify these terrorist and destroy them. We must take them into custody and then resettle them. We must provide security in strength to these areas. I will only be happy that we finished the war we ended when I see this," said General Sarath Fonseka during a talk in a Budhist Temple in Washington D.C., according a website's English translation, before the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked for a "voluntary meeting" with the General to discuss the war-crimes alleged to be committed by Sri Lanka's military officials.
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Adappara-gama

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 November 2009, 01:44 GMT]
The village of a headman of the pearl-diving community of Paravas.
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Tamil Eelam not a lost cause: Fr. Jegath Gaspar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 November 2009, 01:14 GMT]
“I don't think Tamil Eelam is a lost cause. If there was any point of time in history that Eelam was a possibility, I think it is now. Tamils all over the world are more determined than ever,” says Fr. Jegath Gaspar Raj, Chennai based Catholic priest and international broadcast journalist in an interview to TamilNet Sunday. “I believe that geopolitics or foreign policy or security policies are never static; they are ever dynamic, they will keep changing. I am confident that at some point of time India will come to realize that the only strategic leverage it has against the Chinese-Sri Lankan combine in the Indian Ocean is the Indo-Tamil combination,” he said, pinning the responsibility for the failure of Indian foreign policy to M K Narayanan Doctrine.
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Fonseka, Gotabhaya entangle in US legal net

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 November 2009, 00:54 GMT]
United States appears to be slowly moving to corral Major General Sarath Fonseka, an aspiring US citizen, and Gotabhaya Rajapakse, a US citizen with property and family living in the U.S., into the US Justice system to investigate the two Sri Lanka officials for criminal culpability for allegedly issuing commands to the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) to fire heavy weapons towards the SLA demarcated No Fire Zone (NFZ) in the final stages of war killing more than 20,000 Tamil civilians. Colombo dailies report that Gen. Fonseka, currently on a private visit to the US, has been asked by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to have a "voluntary meeting" to discuss matters related to the recently released war-crimes report, and if he would be willing to testify against Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary.
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Chomsky: West's self-interest reduces R2P to "noble rhetoric"

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 October 2009, 20:13 GMT]
During an invited lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of London University, Noam Chomsky, one of the world's well known intellectual and professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT, said on Sri Lanka, that although there's "a lot of noble rhetoric about Responsibility to Protect (R2P), there is no particular Western advantage in protecting people who are being slaughtered, and are being thrown into concentration camps. Somehow these didn't make it in the noble rhetoric," and added Sri Lanka was a "horror story, especially towards the end."
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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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IDPs brought to Jaffna from Vavuniyaa camps

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 October 2009, 06:26 GMT]
The number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in Vavuniyaa brought to Jaffna since 5 August, claiming that they will be resettled, has exceeded 41,000, sources in Jaffna said. The IDPs from Vanni district among the people brought have to stay in camps if they do not have any relatives to take charge of them, the sources added.
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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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Vanni medical student in Jaffna commits suicide due to mental stress

[TamilNet, Thursday, 29 October 2009, 18:49 GMT]
Jaffna University students paid homage Thursday to their fellow final year medical student from Ki’linochchi in Vanni who is suspected to have his taken his life Wednesday due to mental stress, sources in Jaffna said. Vignarajah Gowribalan, 26, who had been staying in a house in Aanaikkoadai in Jaffna, has been undergoing severe mental agony, being separated from his family detained in one of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in Vavuniyaa, Gowribalan’s fellow students said.
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TNA members boycott initial ceremonies of first JMC session

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 October 2009, 17:48 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) members of Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) who kept away from the initial ceremonies which preceded the inauguration of the first session of JMC Wednesday said that the vain ceremonies held by the ruling United People’s Front Alliance (UPFA) and allied political parties as propaganda is deplorable while the Vanni IDPs are suffering in the internment camps. “We will not allow exploitation of JMC and its activities for propaganda purposes of political parties, the leader of TNA opposition in JMC, Mudiyappu Remedias said.
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More IDPs transferred to transit camp in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 October 2009, 11:11 GMT]
147 members of 52 Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) families from Menikfarm internment camp in Vavuniyaa district were transferred to a transit camp located in Illupaikku’lam in Mannaar district before being resettled in their villages, from which they were forcibly vacated due to military operation by Sri Lanka Army (SLA). They would be screened by the army intelligence unit and would be allowed to leave the transit centre for their villages for resettlement, civil authority sources in Vavuniyaa said.
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Vanni IDPs in Jaffna not allowed to go to Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 October 2009, 04:17 GMT]
The Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) of Vanni origin detained in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) detention camp in Raamaavil in Thenmaraadchi have to stay in the camp if there are no relatives in Jaffna to take them over, according to Jaffna Secretariat sources. Though the government campaigns that Vanni IDPs will be resettled in their own villages, in reality they are not allowed to return to their homes, NGOs in Jaffna said.
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60 transferred IDPs arrested from transit centres in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 October 2009, 16:25 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army Intelligence personnel have been 'screening' the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who were being transferred in recent days from Vavuniyaa internment camps to transit centres in Trincomalee and have arrested 60 IDPs for interrogation and 'rehabilitation'.
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Tamil protection movement launches Four Directions March in Tamil Nadu

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 October 2009, 13:13 GMT]
Ilangkai Thamizhar Paathukaappu Iyakkam (ITPI) led by Pazha. Nedumaaran and consisting of PMK leader Dr. Ramadoss, MDMK leader Vaiko, CPI leaders in Tamil Nadu, R. Nallakannu and C. Mahendran are engaged in launching awareness marches from the four corners of Tamil Nadu highlighting the plight of Eelam Tamils and demanding the immediate release of more than 250,000 Tamils detained in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in the north of Sri Lanka.
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Sri Lanka editors receive death threats for Channel-4 video comments

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 October 2009, 03:26 GMT]
Sunday Leader, a weekend broadsheet in Sri Lanka, said in the latest edition that two of the paper's editors, Frederica Jansz, and Munza Mushtaq, received Thursday "hand written death threats by post." The threats relate to Sunday Leader news stories on the authenticity of the August Channel-4 video which showed armed Sri Lankan soldiers executing Tamil prisoners stripped naked and hands tied behind their backs. "This newspaper has consistently in the entire 15 years of its existence come under attack. We have been burnt, bombed, sealed, harassed and threatened, culminating in January this year with the brutal killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge," the paper said.
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2 SLA, civilian killed, Pillayan's vehicle meets with accident

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 October 2009, 03:05 GMT]
A civilian and two Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed Tuesday morning around 4:30 a.m. in Kurunegala district where a vehicle of Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan, the chief minister of Eastern province and a paramilitary leader, met with an accident, Police said.
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