Vanni IDP detainees sent to Ampaa’rai detained again

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 14:01 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA), instructed by higher authorities, is constructing new detention centres to hold the Vanni Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) sent to Ampaa’rai district recently from Vavuniyaa SLA detention camps while the IDPs are being detained in the SLA camp located on Poththuvil road in Akkaraippattu, sources in Ampaa’rai said. The efforts made by Aalayadiveampu Pratheasa Chapai Secretary to handover the said IDPs to their relatives failed as the local SLA officer refused their release citing orders from above, the sources added.
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M K Narayanan declares war on Tamil diaspora

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 11:54 GMT]
Addressing Director Generals and Inspector Generals of Police Monday, India’s National Security Advisor and one of the architects of Indian Establishment’s policy towards Eezham Tamils, M K Narayanan, told them of the need to keep watch against Tamil diaspora reviving the LTTE and cautioned them to be prepared for any eventuality. “The funding lines of the LTTE are still intact and there is always a possibility that disgruntled elements in the Tamil diaspora across the globe could get together to help the terror outfit regroup and rearm,” said M K Narayanan, according to The Economic Times, Tuesday. His fear stems from his own policy 'haunting him back,' commented Tamil circles in the diaspora.
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Court further remands 4 returnees from Fiji

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 11:09 GMT]
Colombo Chief Magistrate Nishantha Hapuarachchi Tuesday ordered further remand till September 22 for three Tamils and a Sinhalese who were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officials at the Katunayake International Airport on their return from Fiji islands, rejecting their bail applications. CID told court said that the suspects had immigrated to the Fiji Islands for employment and the Fiji Islands authority had deported them.
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SL Government intends to detain IDPs in camps indefinitely

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 10:13 GMT]
Northern Province Governor, Major. Gen. G. A. Chandrasiri and Minister Douglas Devananda directed government officials in Jaffna to take immediate steps to bring Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Jaffna detained in Vavuniyaa camps to the detainment camps in Jaffna district and to send IDPs from Vanni detained Jaffna district to Vavuniyaa camps, according to the decision taken in the Jaffna District Coordination Committee held Tuesday in Jaffna Secretariat, sources in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, the IDPs from the islets of Jaffna brought to Kaarainakar and Veala’nai Monday, on the assurance that they will be settled in abandoned houses, are kept in school buildings and Saiva temples until new detainment camps are established for them to move in, the sources added.
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War and disregard make Tamils hard and determined

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 08:44 GMT]
“After looking at the people dying and dead bodies everywhere, it is like nothing threatens me any more, it is like I have had the hard time in my life and I think I am prepared to take up whatever happens in life now,” says Damilvany Gnanakumar, an Eezham Tamil of British citizenship, who witnessed war and internment camp in the island of Sri Lanka. "I'm not that old Vany that sits down and cries for little things. I'm stronger now after going through and seeing all that problem. My mind is clear now," she told Gethin Chamberlain of The Guardian in an interview Tuesday, asking at the same time, what have the people done wrong? Why are they going through this, why is the international government not speaking up for them?
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500 Vanni IDPs to be settled in the islets of Jaffna against their wish

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 September 2009, 05:05 GMT]
500 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) detained in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in Vaviniyaa were brought to Jaffna Monday and efforts are being made to settle them in the abandoned houses in the islets of Jaffna that are in the full control of Sri Lanka Navy (SLN), sources in Jaffna said. In the name of resettlement Vanni IDPs are being just relocated from the internment camps in Vavuniya against their wish to another area which is strictly controlled by another armed force, the SLN, civil society sources in Jaffna said.
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3 Tamil youths arrested in Mathavaachchi

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 September 2009, 13:19 GMT]
Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officers took into custody three Tamil youths in the last three days at the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Mathavaachchi checkpoint, sources in Vavuniyaa said. The youths were arrested for not being able to provide a valid reason for their travel to Colombo, the sources said.
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Documentation of Norwegian Tamil mandate released

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 September 2009, 07:49 GMT]
Comprehensive documentation of a referendum conducted among Eezham Tamils of Norway is now released in the form of a 48-page publication by Utrop newspaper, which conducted the poll on 10th of May this year. In the referendum, 99 percent of the voters endorsed the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution of 1976, calling for an independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam in the traditional homeland of Eezham Tamils in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka. 90 percent of eligible voters in Oslo, and an average 80 percent of them in entire Norway turned out for the voting, a first of its kind exercise in that country and among the world diaspora of Eezham Tamils. The documentation is widely seen inspiring global democratic efforts of Eezham Tamils for their liberation.
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Executions: Sri Lanka refuting processed video, not original

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 September 2009, 09:32 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s technological refutation of the authenticity of a video of Army (SLA) soldiers executing unarmed Tamil men broadcast by Channel 4 in August is based on a processed video-file taken from the broadcaster’s website, rather than the original mobile phone footage, experts said. An analysis commissioned by US-based pressure group Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) of the original video distributed by Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) and Sri Lanka’s subsequent technological refutation says Colombo’s experts looked “at a second generation transcoded video to derive erroneous conclusions.”
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"Sri Lanka, stop" says Le Monde

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 11:44 GMT]
"After winning the war, the Sri Lankan regime is in the process of losing the peace. Following the historic, but bloody and distasteful victory, against the armed struggle of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa could be magnanimous and reach out to the Tamil minority and open the way for national reconciliation. But Rajapakse has chosen another path, the path of domination...Under the tents of the refugee camps tomorrow's Tigers may already be rising to mount a future rebellion," warned France's popular daily, Le Monde in Thursday editorial.
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2 Tamil youths arrested in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 08:43 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers took into custody two Tamil youths in a search conducted Thursday night in Kohuwala, a suburb of Colombo city, according to complaints made by the youths’ relatives to Deputy Minister, R. Rathakrishnan.
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Emergency extended for another month, JVP walks out

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 05:19 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s parliament Thursday evening approved the motion to extend the State of Emergency for another year by a majority of eighty-seven votes. One hundred parliamentarians of the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and its constituent parties voted for the motion. Thirteen parliamentarians of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) voted against. The main opposition United National Party (UNP) parliamentarians were not present in the house during the debate, parliamentary sources said.
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Remove SLA camps, HSZ, checkpoints from NE - Sampanthan

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 05:19 GMT]
R. Sampanthan, parliamentary group leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), told parliament Thursday that the government could not cite any reason for the delay in resettling hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Tamils in their own places in Vanni region. "High Security Zones (HSZs) should be removed from the north and east. Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camps and check points should be dismantled immediately to restore normalcy in the provinces," Mr.Sampanthan said while speaking in parliament Thursday opposing the motion moved by the Government of Sri Lanka to extend the State of Emergency for another month.
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Western inaction the building blocks of Chinese vassal state - Former Australian Diplomat

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 00:22 GMT]
Nations operating behind the Sri Lankan Governments’ manipulation of the post 9-11 global climate in equating 'Tamil and terrorist' continue to ignore their humanitarian obligations to the point of complicity accused former Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh, referring to the imprisonment of 300,000 Tamil refugees in government camps. Speaking at a forum held at The University of Sydney last week, Haigh described the actions of the Sri Lankan Government as one of “pure vindictiveness…towards people who are totally dispossessed and totally powerless”, before warning that the island may become “a vassal state of China.. not averse to carrying out acts of terror and in the future that may be directed towards India in ways to be determined by the Chinese".
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Colombo opts for bravado than complying with Human Rights

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 00:22 GMT]
Challenging the impending EU move to cancel 1 billion pounds trade concession to Sri Lanka, the islands former foreign secretary and newly appointed permanent representative to UN, Palitha Kohona , Thursday said, that it is a “cynical approach” of the EU. "We can handle [the loss]. Western countries should remember that economic power has shifted from the west to the east. New markets open up in the east. Our friends China, India, Japan, Korea, Iran … a whole range of countries [can help]," he said. UK refused ‘five years multiple entry visa’ to Kohona this week. Palitha Kohonoa was earlier named in media reports as one of the actors of the ‘failed rescue’ of LTTE officials that could be considered a matter for war crimes investigation.
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No change in dire camp conditions - CAFOD

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 September 2009, 11:41 GMT]
As monsoon floods loom, CAFOD (Catholic Fund for Overseas Development) has called on Sri Lanka’s government “to end the forced confinement” of hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians. “Nothing has changed over the last three months for the people that are living in the camps. They are overcrowded with poor sanitary conditions and inadequate health care,” CAFOD’s head of international programmes said this week. Another CAFOD official who visited one of the barbed-wire ringed militarised camps told the BBC this week that “a potential crisis could brew there if the rains come through and those camps are still as congested as they are [now].”
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Chiththirameazhi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 September 2009, 22:42 GMT]
(The village of) the guild of agriculturists whose totem symbol was the 'magnificent plough'
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TNA's meeting with Rajapaksa fails to resolve IDP crisis

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 September 2009, 12:24 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians who held talks with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his ministers Monday evening at Temple Trees on the issue of resettling Vanni IDPs in their own places, said that the talks ended in failure as Mr. Rajapaksa evaded the main issue by saying resettlement of Vanni IDPs is not immediately possible as demining in Vanni has to be completed before resettlement. The urgent request to resettle the Vanni IDPs in Vavuniyaa internment camps before the monsoon rains was not given any due consideration by Rajapaksa and his ministers, TNA parliamentarians said.
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Colombo micromanages aid, bullies aid deliverers, says Guardian

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 September 2009, 11:40 GMT]
Noting that while Sri Lanka with the economy undermined by "[h]igh military spending, collapsed tourism revenues, disrupted agriculture, [and] reduced trade," Sri Lanka is "dependent on outside aid in its efforts to deal with the human consequences of the war," the Guardian said Wednesday, adding, but "Colombo is still severely restricting access to the north, particularly to the area of the final battles, and to the camps where an estimated 280,000 people displaced by the fighting are detained." The paper said that "[i]t is time that the donor nations and the agencies formed a united front to resist this unreasonable and ungrateful attitude."
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Fire damages Maantheevu leprosy hospital in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 September 2009, 11:23 GMT]
A major fire broke out at the leprosy hospital in Maanthivu Island in Batticaloa district around 6:00 a.m. in the morning of Tuesday. All thirteen patients warded in the hospital and employees were immediately evacuated in boats and helicopters by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF).
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