Thenmaraadchi IDP families seek resettlement in their villages

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 July 2009, 05:10 GMT]
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS) welfare organizations in Jaffna peninsula sent an appeal Monday to Sri Lanka Government authorities and to several International Humanitarian Organizations requesting the immediate resettlement of the IDP families displaced from Thenmaraadchi due to Sri Lanka Army (SLA) offensives in 1999, in their own villages, sources in Jaffna said. SLA continues to deny permission for the resettlement though the villages have been cleared of landmines, claiming that the villages are within its High Security Zone (HSZ), the appeal said.
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Death threats to Jaffna Uthayan daily continue

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 July 2009, 17:24 GMT]
Reporters, employees and agents of Uthayan Tamil daily published in Jaffna continue to be issued with death threats by post despite President Rajapakse’s recent assurance that he will not permit anyone to violate the freedom of the press, sources in Jaffna said. A group calling itself ‘Tamil Front Protecting the Country’ allegedly linked to a paramilitary group operating with Colombo had issued on 27 June a notice titled ‘Final Warning’ to Uthayan Tamil daily office in Jaffna warning that Uthayan staffers will be killed if they do not officially relinquish their posts with effect from 30 June 2009.
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UPFA involved in obvious breach of election regulations in Jaffna - TNA

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 July 2009, 05:07 GMT]
“The ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and its allied parties using great number of vehicles in election campaign in Jaffna and that too guarded by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and the police is an obvious breach of election regulations,” Mudiyappu Remedias, the chief contestant of Tamil National Alliance (TNA), said in a meeting held Sunday morning at Vembadi Girls’ College in Jaffna by SLA and police authorities with the representatives of the parties contesting the forthcoming Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) elections. The meeting was convened to discuss arrangements to offer protection to the contestants, sources in Jaffna said.
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Holding grounds is fundamental to everything

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 July 2009, 22:34 GMT]
Professing defeatism or surrendering the basic grounds are not the ways to begin or to sustain the struggle with the masses, even in ways anew, perhaps through democratic means. Talking on the need to continue the struggle is not to rule out the need to negotiate. But negotiation is not collaboration. Negotiators need a firm platform supported by the hearts of the masses on behalf of whom they negotiate. Negotiation cannot take place when the platform is surrendered. It is to safeguard the platform for struggle and negotiation the Tamil circles are now keen in re-affirming the democratically mandated Vaddukkoaddai Resolution of 1976 that upholds independence, sovereignty and self-determination of Eezham Tamils, at least where there is freedom of expression. Even after 2000 years the Jews were able to regain their land because they never lost their nationalism or the thought of Israel.
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Notorious commander appointed Governor of Northern Province

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 July 2009, 17:05 GMT]
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has appointed Chief-of-Staff of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Maj. Gen. G.A. Chandrasiri as the new Governor of the Northern Province. Maj. Gen. Chandrasiri was the former chief of the SLA in Jaffna, under whose command Jaffna witnessed hundreds of forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations in the period from 2006 to 2008. Tamil political circles in Colombo commented that Mr. Rajpaksa, who claims to have crushed the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam, has appointed his military men in key posts in the occupied Tamil homeland to head civil services with a 'colonial mindset'. Earlier, in April, Rajapaksa appointed Chandrasiri as the Competent Authority Officer in charge of resettlement of Tamils from Vanni in alleged barbed-wire 'internment camps' in Vavuniyaa.
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SLA Intelligence Unit behind abduction, murder of Bank official

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2009, 21:24 GMT]
The Colombo Crime Division (CCD) arrested a captain and four soldiers from the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Intelligence Unit, Friday, in connection with the abduction and murder of Peoples' Bank Kollupitiya branch assistant manager, Mr Gunasinghe Premathilake, police said.
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Inclusion is effective nationalism

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2009, 10:01 GMT]
Ethnic identity is not genetic but of social origin caused by political action, argues Dr. A.R.M. Imtiyaz of Temple University, USA, explaining what made the Tamil speaking Muslims in the island of Sri Lanka opting for a separate identity seeking power. In a recent article ‘The Eastern Muslims of Sri Lanka: special problems and solutions,’ published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies, Dr. Imtiyaz emphasizes that the divide, a reality of today caused politically, has to be addressed by appropriate political models for the mutual benefit of Tamils and Muslims in their homeland. The academic, hailing from Colombo, rejects feasibility of power-sharing units for Muslims in such an inter-dependent landscape, but suggests consociationalism, i.e., proportional allocation of power.
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The Times calls for world boycott of Sri Lanka over detainees

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 11:59 GMT]
Expressing outrage at Sri Lanka’s treatment of Tamil detainees, The Times of London called Friday for the world to boycott the island until the detainees are released. “Sri Lanka wants no witnesses to what is now being done in these modern concentration camps. … None of [the IMF] money should be paid until independent aid agencies are guaranteed access to the Tamil camps and until Sri Lanka starts to release those detained. Other world bodies — the Commonwealth, the United Nations and even world cricketing organisations — should boycott Colombo until reconciliation begins,” the paper said in its editorial.
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Exorbitant charges by SLA to transport goods to Jaffna through A9 road

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 05:32 GMT]
Representatives of Jaffna Traders’ Union (JTU) accused the Government of charging excessively for the transport of goods by lorries from Colombo to Jaffna through A9 road and the consequent high price the people have to pay for the goods, in a meeting held Thursday at Jaffna Secretariat with a visiting team of Government Ministers, sources in Jaffna said. The Ministers, however, said that the extra charges have to be made in order to meet the expense of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) which has to inspect the goods and escort the lorries from Oamanthai SLA check post, the sources added.
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Sri Lanka restricts aid visas, equates its camps with Italy’s

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 01:39 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe this week drew parallels between his government’s running of barbed-wire ringed militarized camps in which 300,000 Tamils are held with Italy’s management of camps for survivors of the L’Aquila earthquake. The state-owned Daily News also quoted Mr. Samarasinghe as saying Sri Lanka “would welcome all [foreign] help it can get if relevant organizations would fall in line with the national agenda.” On Thursday, the minister said future visa applications for foreign aid workers will be granted only if their work “could not be carried out by locals.”
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US concerned about IDPs, peace process: ambassador-designate to India

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 00:28 GMT]
The Ambassador-designate of Obama administration to India, Tim Roemer, appearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Wednesday, said the US is very concerned about the internally displaced people, resettlement, reconciliation and a peace process to go forward. “I think that’s something that would be important for the next ambassador, to continue to work with the Indian government on, to see that the Sri Lankan situation moves in a peaceful process, with reconciliation as a high goal”, he said in his testimony. While appreciating India’s role to US in Afghanistan, about Sri Lanka, the nominee was appreciative of India’s humanitarian aid.
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Navaali St. Peter’s Church victims remembered

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 July 2009, 17:37 GMT]
More than a hundred family members and friends gathered in front of Navaali St. Peter’s Church in Jaffna in remembrance of the 141 civilians killed and 347 seriously injured when Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) bombed the church on 9 July 1995 where people had sought protection during the Sri Lanka government offensive on Jaffna, sources in Jaffna said. A boy who had been a year old when his father was killed in the Navaali Church bombing garlanded the memorial statue erected in front of Navaali St. Peter’s Church Thursday moving the people gathered to tears, the sources added.
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Sri Lanka bars Tea Board speaking to media

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 July 2009, 16:00 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Tea Board seems among the least likely of institutions to fall under a government campaign to control the free flow of information. But authorities have now barred its officials from speaking to the media, Reuters reported Thursday. Sri Lanka’s revenue from tea exports has fallen this year, despite world tea prices rocketing. Quoting official figures, AFP reported recently that Sri Lanka’s harvest had fallen more than 50 percent in the first three months of the year on the island’s drought-hit highlands. Tea is the country’s biggest foreign exchange earner after garments.
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Abetting genocide for ‘conflict termination’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 July 2009, 15:36 GMT]
“Rwanda, Sudan and now Sri Lanka, it is another wake up call to the World”, says a blog-writer Richard Dixon, questioning why no world leader is declaring “War on Genocide”. The article in Independent Minds blog, Wednesday, said “An internal conflict in Sri Lanka has now been made worse by its greedy neighbours. They are now lining up with spanners and hammers to fix the problems in Sri Lanka. The ones that are now trying to fix Sri Lanka are helping the strong party to the conflict to destroy the weaker one completely. Arrogant voice from Sri Lanka in the recent times is to do with its close bonding with India and China. These two countries have both been involved in high level PR-campaigns to hide the war crimes committed by Sri Lanka. […] Such method can’t be called as conflict resolution but it is an unfair conflict termination by eliminating one party to the conflict.
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Graves of Peter Percival, R B Foote, discovered at Yercaud

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 18:33 GMT]
A team of archaeologists located the graves of two illustrious scholars, Rev. Dr. Peter Percival (1803-1882) and his son-in-law Robert Bruce Foote (1834-1912), at Yercaud, a hill station near Salem in Tamil Nadu, reported The Hindu, Wednesday. Peter Percival was a former principal of Jaffna Central College, with whom Arumuga Navalar was associated with in his early days in translating the Bible into Tamil. The discovery was made when Prehistoric archaeologists Shanti Pappu, Kumar Akhilesh and V R Pappu set out on a mission to find the grave of Robert Bruce Foote (1834-1912), who is regarded as the pioneer of studies in Geology and Prehistory in India. Dr Shanti is working on a monograph on R B Foote, who first spotted evidence for Palaeolithic culture dating back to 500,000 years, in Tamil Nadu.
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Do not weaken the goals and direction of Eelam struggle: Father S.J. Emmanuel

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 18:02 GMT]
"Let us not betray the struggle nor its goals as evolved, formulated and consolidated by the sacrifice of many thousands of combatants and civilians under the leadership of the LTTE," says Rev. Dr. S.J. Emmanuel, the former Vicar General of the Catholic diocese of Jaffna, in the second part of the open appeal to the Eelam Tamil diaspora. "Let the change of phase in the struggle from the last militant-cum-political phase to a political and international phase, not in any way weaken or water down the goals and directions of the struggle."
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Vanni doctors forced to give false statement

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 17:36 GMT]
5 Tamil doctors being held by the Sri Lankan authorities say they expect to be released, after being paraded to local and international media on Wednesday when they were made to claim that they had exaggerated civilian casualty figures in the final phases of the war at the request of the LTTE. Meanwhile, health workers who have escaped Vanni have slammed the international community for allowing the detainment of the doctors and questioned the validity of their statements in light of the 'precarious position' they face.
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More Moothoor IDPs transferred to Ki’liveddi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 09:37 GMT]
Aaraiyampathi Vayiravar Koayil welfare centre in Batticaloa district was closed down Tuesday following the transfer of the final batch of 51 members of eighteen Tamil families displaced from Tamil villages located in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) High Security Zone (HSZ) in Moothoor east in Trincomalee district during 2006 April military operation. They were transported in three State sector buses via Vaakarai and Verukal to Ki’liveddi Tuesday morning. They would be sheltered in welfare centres located in Ki’liveddi, Paddiththidal and Thillaangkear’ni till alternative lands are found for them, civil authority sources said.
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Second election related violence reported in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 05:07 GMT]
Unidentified armed men on motorcycles followed the Thamizharasuk Kadchi party contestant in the forthcoming Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) elections and forcibly took away Tuesday the wall posters and handbills from him at gunpoint at Hospital Road-Old Railway Station Road junction in Jaffna, an area guarded by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers day and night, according to the complaint made to Jaffna Election Officer. Meanwhile, Sunday night, on ‘Black Tigers Day’, unknown persons had smashed the temporary election office of the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) located near Jaffna Bishop’s House in Kurunakar, sources in Jaffna said.
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Indian High Commissioner on pulse reading mission in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 July 2009, 15:10 GMT]
Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Mr. Alok Prasad, arrived at Palaali Military Airport Tuesday morning accompanied by his deputy and political wing head and held several meetings in Jaffna with the representatives of academic circles, political parties, interreligious associations and civil organizations in Jaffna peninsula in an effort to read the pulse of the people of the peninsula, sources in Jaffna said. “The Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka have faith only on China while the Tamils had absolute faith on India which had committed a historical blunder by betraying the Tamils in Sri Lanka,” one of the civil society representative participant said, commenting on Alok Prasad’s visit to Jaffna.
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