Attend to Vanni IDPs’ problems first – Jaffna University Students Union

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 July 2009, 17:10 GMT]
“We strongly criticize the Tamil politicians who seek votes without attending to the problems faced by the Vanni people held in the internment camps in Vavuniyaa,” Jaffna University Students Union (JUSU) said in a press release Tuesday in Jaffna. “We are deeply dissatisfied with some Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians who do not attend to the immediate problems of the Vanni IDPs,” JUSU said in its press release.
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US ‘deeply concerned’ by Sri Lanka’s camps, wants resettlement

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 July 2009, 01:04 GMT]
A top United States official Monday visited the most presentable of the squalid, militarized camps in which Sri Lanka has interned three hundred thousand Tamils. “The United States remains deeply concerned about a range of issues where further progress is essential,” Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration from the US State Department Eric P. Schwartz said. “In particular, the vast majority of displaced persons remain confined to camps, and my visit to Manik Farm and my conversations with displaced persons underscored for me the hardships they are enduring,” he said.
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IMF takes charge in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 July 2009, 00:02 GMT]
Whilst Sri Lanka’s government hailed its securing of an IMF loan for $2.6bn last week as a ‘victory’ and as indication of international support for its political and economic policies, the reality is the reverse. Sri Lanka has been compelled to accept not only painful economic and quasi-political obligations, but also the kind of external supervision the ultra-Sinhala nationalist regime routinely rails against. Moreover, whilst the IMF loan is ostensibly to revive Sri Lanka’s economy, its first purpose is to ensure the government keeps up with repayments to prior foreign lenders. In short, Sri Lanka can borrow from the IMF to pay back its creditors but has to undertake harsh economic reforms - under IMF supervision - for the breathing space.
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Supreme Indiscretion

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 July 2009, 01:23 GMT]
While the U.S. voters closely followed the intense scrutiny at the recent Senate hearing to appoint Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court - the venerable institution that the U.S. public trusts will make decisions based on law to create a just society - Sri Lanka's Supreme Court and the judicial system where the justices are appointed at the whims of Sri Lanka's President, came under scathing attack by International Bar Association Human Rights Institute (‘IBAHRI’), and the International Crisis Group (ICG). IBAHRI report said, among other concerns, "[t]he lack of independent oversight and practice of executive presidential discretion over judicial appointments makes the judiciary vulnerable to executive interference and jeopardizes its independence."
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Genocide Studies Center holds Sri Lanka event in Minnesota campus

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 July 2009, 01:17 GMT]
During an event on Sri Lanka's civil war sponsored by Center of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Human Rights Center, and the Genocide Intervention Network-Minnesota, and held Wednesday at the College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota, Dr. Ellen Kennedy, the Interim Director for the Center of Holocaust and Genocide Studies spoke of the 25 million IDPs in 25 countries with 425,000 IDPs in Sri Lanka alone. "IDPs own country is responsible for the well being of the IDPs, but it is mainly the same country by its own action creates the IDPs," she said.
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US, UK, France abstain, IMF vote to approve Sri Lanka loan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 July 2009, 00:10 GMT]
Despite opposition from the US, UK, and France, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Friday approved a $2.6B loan to Sri Lanka, of which approximately $322m will be made available immediately, wire reports from Washington D.C. said. "The U.S. position was based on an assessment, in the current circumstances, of the ability and commitment of the government to carry out necessary policy adjustments during an IMF program," a U.S. Treasury spokesperson said. A British Government source said that that it was “not the right time to go forward” with the loan, because Sri Lanka is forcibly detaining nearly 300,000 mostly Tamil refugees in internment camps and spending a large proportion of its wealth on its military - even though the country’s bloody 26-year civil war ended in May, British daily, The Times reported.
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Grass root organisations form Global Tamil Forum

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 July 2009, 23:57 GMT]
A number of grass root Tamil organisations across the world on Thursday launched an initiative in forming Global Tamil Forum (GTF) said Suren Surendran of British Tamil Forum, which is one of the constituent organisations of the Forum. The Tamil diaspora is united in restoring the sovereignty of Eezham Tamils in their homeland and bring the perpetrators of crimes against humanity to justice, Mr. Surendran told TamilNet. The Forum will work for the benefit of Eelam Tamils based on the principles of the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution that recognises Self-Determination of Eezham Tamils in creating an independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam in the traditional homeland of Eezham Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka, said Dr. Sampavi Parimalanathan, a diaspora activist in Australia.
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Foreign aid fuels Sri Lanka’s ‘extortion economy’ - paper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 July 2009, 22:50 GMT]
As many international observers have recently outlined, Sri Lanka is simply not a responsible member of the international community and must not be treated by donors as such, the Tamil Guardian newspaper argued this week. Moreover, “unless donors are prepared to exploit Sri Lanka's vulnerability and deploy sanctions and conditionalities - rather than the ineffective incentives for reform as in the past - neither peace nor stability will emerge in the coming years, but the reverse,” the paper said.
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Sri Lanka’s policies contradict IMF loan’s goals - HRW

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 July 2009, 21:44 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government’s policies threaten post-conflict reconstruction, reconciliation, and stability and undermine the very purposes for which the IMF’s proposed loan is to be used, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday. The human rights pressure group said as “minimum benchmarks”, the IMF should make disbursement of funds conditional on Sri Lanka “allowing [diplaced] people to choose for themselves whether to stay in the [government] camps and full access for independent monitors.”
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West decides to buttress Colombo

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 July 2009, 11:01 GMT]
After weeks of deliberations the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has ultimately decided to release 2.5 billion dollar loan to Colombo on a 20-month stand-by basis. 133 million dollars will be made available immediately. The conditionality of the loan is due to be finalised on 24th July. Inside circles said that while the loan will relieve Colombo from acute financial crisis and pressure on external liquidity, it is going to be hooked with external obligations. But to what extent the external obligations are related to relief and political solutions to Tamils is not specified. Meanwhile insiders also said that the Indian Establishment was successful in convincing the visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the ‘inevitable need’ of saving the regime in Colombo. "If the UN shields the war criminals, the IMF rewards them," Tamil circles responded to the IMF move.
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Opening A9 route, an election gimmick – Mudiyappu Remedias

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 July 2009, 19:23 GMT]
“Though the Government of Sri Lanka had control of the A9 land route to Jaffna eight months ago it had kept it closed until now when it opens the route for public use as an election gimmick to lure voters in but no one can fool the people of Jaffna, Mudiyappu Remedias, the chief candidate of Tamil National Alliance (TNA), contesting Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election, said in an interview to TamilNet Wednesday
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French university conference on Tamils flawed in perspectives - Tamil academic

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 July 2009, 09:28 GMT]
Organisers from two French universities have embarked upon an international pluridisciplinary conference on ‘Tamil communities and the Sri Lankan conflict’, based on presumptions that the LTTE has ‘surrendered’ and what exists is only Tamil ‘minority rights’ issues, as though the question of Eezham Tamil nation doesn't exist. One of the conference themes is the role of religious communities in seeking solutions to “the traditional Tamil society founded mainly upon the importance of caste and religious solidarity.” A Tamil academic in Colombo, responding to the conference scheme said the current task of the Eezham Tamils is to prove their status of nationhood since the agenda of priority for Colombo, New Delhi and the IC that orchestrate media and universities, is to nullify Eezham Tamil nationalism.
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Colombo should end the farce, free doctors - New York Times

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 July 2009, 17:43 GMT]
In a devastatingly incriminating article on Sri Lanka's conduct of war and the holding of 300,000 Tamil civilians in internment camps, New York Times in an op-ed piece Tuesday said, the doctors who "worked heroically to save lives and alert the world to the humanitarian disaster endured by civilians trapped in the fighting," should be freed. Also, noting that "[t]he army was indiscriminately launching artillery shells and air strikes into mixed areas of insurgents and innocents and the Tigers shot at people who tried to escape," the paper added, "Sri Lankan government now risks losing the peace with its approach toward ethnic Tamils displaced by the conflict. Colombo needs to alter course if the country is to begin overcoming years of animosity and avoid having old hatreds and current antipathy turn into the next Tamil rebellion."
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Prayers held in Keerimalai for the souls of Vanni victims

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 July 2009, 15:42 GMT]
The Federation of Saiva organizations in Jaffna peninsula observed the annual Aadi Amaavaasai Day, the day on which children perform religious rituals to pacify the souls of their late fathers, in Keerimalai Nakuleasvaram temple in Jaffna peninsula Tuesday, in memory of all the people who lost their lives in the war on Vanni Tamils waged by the Sri Lanka government, sources in Jaffna said.
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3 Tamil youths, travel agent arrested in Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 July 2009, 11:26 GMT]
Two Tamil youths who were waiting to take a flight to Cairo, capital of Egypt Thursday morning and another Tamil youth who arrived in Friday morning from Dubai were taken into custody at Katunayake International Airport by the Katunayake police. Police said they are being detained and are suspected to be LTTE cadres, sources in Colombo said.
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Castes, religions and Eezham Tamil nationalism

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 2009, 23:34 GMT]
“Tamil nationalism needs to realise its potentialities and weaknesses in making it progressive, benevolent and an internationally recognised culture in the future world,” writes Opinion Columnist Ampalam. “The secular linguistic identity of Tamil nationalism, based on a classical language in which more than two millennia of human experience and discourses both spiritual and temporal are recorded, and its inclusiveness cum plurality are strong points in making criteria for nationalism and in contributing to the paradigm ‘culture and development’. But jingoism of religions, which soon will be used as cards by imperialisms regional as well as international, and castes cum hierarchies old as well as new, are the liabilities,” he further writes.
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Air of martial triumph unbefitting while controversy surrounds Tamil civilian deaths - NY Times

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 2009, 16:07 GMT]
Noting that "[t]he Tamil minority has suffered discrimination and violence at the hands of various Sinhalese-dominated governments through the decades. Tamils have sought, first peacefully, then violently, the right to a measure of self-rule in Tamil-dominated areas," the New York Times in a Sunday article said, "[m]any Sri Lankans see these soldiers as heroes, but given the controversy that remains over how many Tamil civilians were killed in the last weeks of the fighting, some people find the air of martial triumph unseemly."
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Policy on Tamils haunts India

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 July 2009, 05:20 GMT]
Setting the parameters based on 13 plus and ruling out federal, the Colombo – Chennai – New Delhi axis is learnt to be pressurising Tamil political circles to come out with a political formula, as early as possible, to hastily close the file on Tamil nationalism and to hide all skeletons under the cupboard. The haste in the Indian Establishment is said to be arising from the fear of China’s growing influence in the island resulted from India’s folly of not maintaining balance in the ethnic war. “Grasping geopolitics and aspirations of people, the Tamil political circles need to play the cards with dexterity,” said TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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US Congress places Rights barriers on Sri Lanka IMF loan

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 July 2009, 01:41 GMT]
The language inserted in the Department of State Appropriations bill S.1434 soon to be passed in the United States Senate, has virtually blocked U.S. Treasury Secretary from authorizing the projected $1.9B IMF loan to Sri Lanka, unless Secretary of State Hilary Clinton certifies that Sri Lanka "is treating internally displaced persons in accordance with international standards, including by guaranteeing their freedom of movement, providing access to conflict-affected areas and populations by humanitarian organizations and journalists, and accounting for persons detained in the conflict," and Sri Lanka is promoting "reconciliation and justice including devolution of power to provincial councils in the north and east as provided for in the Constitution of Sri Lanka."
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United Sri Lanka is the steadfast aim of UNP – Tissa Athanayake, in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 July 2009, 10:32 GMT]
General Secretary of United National Party (UNP), the main opposition party, Tissa Athanayake, said that the UNP believes in one country with equal rights to all its people, in a press meet held Thursday in Jaffna City Hotel. Tissa Athanayake, accompanied by Dr. Jayalath Jayawardene, UNP parliamentarian and UNP principal candidate in Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election, A. S. Sathiyendra, explained the policy of his party to the media. “One of the main functions of the ICRC is family reunion of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and Rajapakse’s government’s decision to stop ICRC’s functions and to expel it from the country needs to be vehemently condemned,” Dr. Jayalath Jayawardne said.
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