SLA soldier killed in truck accident

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 September 2009, 12:00 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldier was killed and four others reported injured Friday when the truck they were riding in skidded off in Middeniya road in Embilipitiya, Police said.
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Another batch of Vavuniyaa IDPs to be detained in the islets of Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 September 2009, 04:12 GMT]
Around 500 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) held in the internment camps in Vavuniyaa brought to Jaffna Thursday were handed over to Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) who took them to Kaarainakar, in the islets of Jaffna to be again detained in camps close to the SLN base. The IDPs are being held in Ma’raignanasampanthar Vithiyaalayam in Kaarainakar while the SLN is constructing new camps in the abandoned civilian settlements to detain them, sources in Jaffna said.
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Civilians clash with SLA in Vavuniyaa internment camp

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 September 2009, 12:09 GMT]
Additional police and Sri Lanka Army troops were brought into the College of Education internment camp in Vavuniyaa after clashes erupted between civilian inmates and Sri Lankan forces following the arrest and assault of a Tamil youth in the camp. Several civilians and armed personnel sustained minor injuries, sources in Vavuniyaa said.
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Tamils protest in New York, say Ban ineffective, lacks leadership

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 September 2009, 04:08 GMT]
Several dozen American Tamils assembled near the United Nations building between 1st Avenue and 47th Street Tuesday around noon and protested against UN inaction, particularly the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, for first failing to prevent the bloodbath in May when more than 20,000 Tamil civilians were allegedly killed by Sri Lanka Army using heavy weapons, and now for allowing Sri Lanka to continue to incarcerate nearly 300,000 in military supervised internment camps with little freedom of movement. Protesters urged the UN to take swift action to pressure Sri Lanka to allow civilians to return to their villages and resume normal life, attendees to the rally said.
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Kuppuzhaan

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 September 2009, 13:44 GMT]
The locality of Kuppuzhaay (Vernonia zeylanica) vegetation
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Colombo contemplates Malaysian model

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 September 2009, 22:36 GMT]
A participant in a study group that recently met in London cautioned that Colombo with the support of Asian powers is dreaming to follow Malaysian model of ethnic totalitarianism and related development model, ultimately aimed at erasing the territoriality of Eezham Tamil nation, bringing the entire island under Sinhala ethnic hegemony. “The Sri Lankan state has forgotten that even in the case with the 19th century Chinese migrants, after all the ethnic persecutions Malaysia had to finally concede secession of Singapore, to have peaceful development in the region. The Eezham Tamils who have right on the island ever since Sinhalese became Sinhalese need deserving justice and if Colombo thinks of Malaysia, who ever is going to support a Singapore in the island is going to have the say in the region,” commented another participant of the meet in London.
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UN envoy Kalin to arrive in Colombo Wednesday

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 September 2009, 17:30 GMT]
Mr. Walter Kalin, Human Rights envoy of the United Nations is scheduled to arrive in Colombo late Wednesday on a five-day visit that includes a tour to Vanni IDP camps holding tens of thousands of refugees. "Mr. Kalin will meet with senior government officials, international aid agencies, including UN staff, and also visit some sites holding internally displaced people (IDPs)," UN sources said.
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SLA refuses permission to Jaffna University students in camps to attend lectures

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 September 2009, 10:15 GMT]
Despite efforts made by Jaffna University Students’ Union (JUSU), University Administration and other interested parties, Sri Lanka Army (SLA) continues to detain 74 university students from Vanni districts held in the internment camps in Vavuniyaa and brought to Jaffna, in the SLA detention camp in Kaithadi, a press notice released by the JUSU said. JUSU accused the government for its continued reluctance to allow the detained undergrads to attend university, in the press notice.
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Vaddukkoaddai and Thimphu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 September 2009, 13:04 GMT]
Calling for the creation of independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam, based on Vaddukkoadai Resolution (VR) was the last spontaneous and definite mandate by Eezham Tamils in a totally free and democratic atmosphere. As the need for democratic political organisation unfolds afresh, Tamils have to take up the thread directly from the VR. The Thimphu principles and all the other formulas put forward subsequently under the duress of powers, and failed as negotiation models, do not get precedence over the VR as bases for political organization. Mu’l’livaaykkaal was not the real defeat. The defeat comes only when Tamils are made to politically denounce their heart-felt aspirations. The diaspora needs to peruse and correct course of any proposal that stops just at self-determination. In UN charter and in international law it is just an empty phrase that doesn’t protect nations or ethnicities.
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‘From one prison to another’: Sri Lanka’s ‘resettlement’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 September 2009, 08:31 GMT]
Under international pressure as the monsoon looms, the Sri Lanka government is hastily engaged in relocating some of the displaced Tamils being held in militarised internment camps in Vavuniyaa. However, the inmates are being moved from Vavuniyaa’s barbed-wire ringed camps to similar overcrowded enclosures without facilities in other districts, sources in Jaffna said. Moreover these camps are also located in low-lying terrain in the path of oncoming floods, NGO workers say. “There is no resettlement. This is like being sent from one prison to another prison," Mavai Senathiraja, a parliamentarian from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) said.
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Passports of Indian traders in Kalmunai confiscated

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 September 2009, 07:34 GMT]
A special team of the Sri Lanka’s Immigration and Emigration Department Friday raided houses and lodges in Kalmunai town in the eastern province where Indian traders were staying and engaged in the sale of textiles with tourist visa. The team confiscated passports and other travel documents from eighty-two Indian citizens, all Tamils of Tamil Nadu, who had entered the island on tourist visa. They were ordered to appear before the Controller of Immigration and Emigration in Colombo for further action.
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Court directs CID to expedite inquiry against detained Tamil civilians

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 September 2009, 04:08 GMT]
Colombo Chief Magistrate Nishantha Hapuarachchi Friday directed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to expedite the investigation into the cases against twenty-seven Tamil civilians arrested in connection with alleged terrorist activities and to report to the court on the progress made so far, on September 29. The order was made following Defence Counsel claiming that the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) was acting unfairly in its investigations.
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Video investigation by Colombo not impartial - Alston

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 September 2009, 02:17 GMT]
Noting that two of the four experts cited by the government were full-time government employees, another had previously acted on behalf of the government, "and the basis on which the fourth was identified and selected as an expert remains unclear," Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said Thursday, that studies could not be characterized as impartial. "The only way to do this [authenticate the video] is for an independent and impartial investigation to take place,'' Alston said. The video clip, aired in British Channel-4 TV, allegedly showing Sri Lankan troops executing Tamil prisoners stripped naked and hands tied behind backs, has shocked the world community, and re-ignited calls for investigations of war-crimes against Sri Lanka military.
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Lynn Pascoe visits IDP detention camps in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 16:47 GMT]
Mr. Lynn Pascoe, United Nations Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs, who was in Jaffna Thursday, visited the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) detention camps in Koapaay and Kaithadi, accompanied by Jaffna Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Commander, Major Gen. Mark and Jaffna Government Agent, K. Ganesh under heavy escort. Non-government organizations in Jaffna expressed concern that independent civil society representatives in the peninsula were not given an opportunity to meet the visiting UN envoy and inform him of the true situation in the peninsula.
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Tamil political prisoners in Colombo on hunger strike

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 16:05 GMT]
Tamil political prisoners arrested on suspicion under Emergency Regulations (ER) and Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), languishing in Magazine Prison and Colombo Remand Prison (CPR) for many years without being produced in the courts, launched a hunger strike from 6:00 a.m Thursday as their requests placed in previous hunger strikes had not been taken into consideration despite promises by legal authorities that their cases will be taken for trial in two months time, sources in Colombo said. The fasting prisoners said the President of Sri Lanka has granted general amnesty to the soldiers who had deserted their posts during the war, in the past few months and hence it would be an easy matter for the President to use his executive powers at least to order to take up our cases immediately for trial as we had only been arrested on suspicion.
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'Business can’t escape responsibility'

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 12:37 GMT]
Britain as a country bears a big responsibility to the plight of Tamils in the internment camps of Sri Lanka. Because it was one of the major powers that had repeatedly asked the Tamil civilians of Vanni to go to the side of the Colombo government, knowing very well what awaited them were barbed-wire camps. The British business cannot shun its responsibility of freeing them through economic measures. British Retail Consortium sympathising Colombo government and campaigning against EU sanctions amounts to only encouraging the method of concentration camp as an effective tool of structural genocide in the island, blame Tamil activists in UK.
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Body of Tamil woman recovered in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 10:20 GMT]
Vavuniyaa police recovered the decomposed body of an eighteen-year-old Tamil married woman from a closed shop located along 10th Lane in Vairavapu’liyangku’lam in Vavuniyaa. A Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp is located in front of the shop where building materials are sold, sources in Vavuniyaa said. Police had been notified by the public that an offensive smell was emanating from the said shop and they had to break in to recover the body.
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Butenis sworn in as new U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 08:23 GMT]
Patricia A. Butenis, a career member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Service, who served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from 2007-2009, presented to her credentials as U.S. Ambassador in Colombo Thursday, according to a press statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Colombo.
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Students detained in Vavuniyaa camps to be used as showpieces

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 05:55 GMT]
The students from Ki’linochchi, Mullaiththeevu, Vavuniyaa and Mannaar districts, now detained in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in Vavuniyaa, are to be taken like prisoners under military and police guard to participate in a Sports Meet that is to be held in Jaffna Alfred Duraippa Stadium from Friday for three days, sources in Jaffna said. The students thus brought to Jaffna will be taken back to the SLA internment camps in Vavuniyaa at the end of the sports meet, the sources added.
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Tamil national aspirations, TNA and transnational governance

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 23:36 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) or any other political party claiming that they represent Tamils have no right to proclaim that they have moved away from the 1977 mandate for independence and sovereignty of the Eezham Tamil nation, to satisfy India, Mahinda Rajapaksa or any other power. They may negotiate but without dropping the fundamentals, until any acceptable formula is freshly mandated by all Tamils including those who are now in the diaspora. Meanwhile, the emerging novel concept of transnational governance will be misled if it is orientated merely with an idea of negotiation. It is not just a negotiation platform. There is no need to show Tamils have ‘democratically’ dropped their aspiration just because some powers want it as a pre-requisite for negotiation.
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