London protesters want international action, not words, over Sri Lankan humanitarian crisis

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 May 2009, 11:26 GMT]
British Tamils demonstrating outside Parliament are demanding the UK government takes concrete action immediately “to end the humanitarian crisis engulfing the Tamils in Vanni and in the military-run concentration camps.” In a statement to media, Tamil students leading the protests said: “What is needed right now is action by the international community, not merely words of sympathy. Humanitarian intervention has taken place in many parts of the world to save people who have been subject to state violence, ethnic cleansing, and starvation by blockade. Powerful liberal states have acted to save populations being brutalized by their own states, despite the objections and obstructions of other powerful states. The Tamils of Sri Lanka are human beings too.”
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Green light to rid Tigers while 50,000 lives at risk, Boyle faults US, UK

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 May 2009, 04:33 GMT]
"US. UK, France and India appear to have given green light to Sri Lanka to get rid of the Tigers no matter what the cost is to the 50,000 lives of innocent Tamils at risk now. Let's get back to the need to change that green light to a red light, and let's solve the humanitarian crisis first, and then talk about some sort of solution," said Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, during an interview with Aljazeera network Wednesday. Eric Solheim, key architect of the 2002 peace process in Sri Lanka, and Nirj Deva, a Member of European Parliament and of Sri Lankan origin also participated in the discussions.
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US should think of ‘gunboat diplomacy’

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 May 2009, 03:31 GMT]
It is the last chance for US to strike a political balance in the island, if it is really keen in seeing meaningful ‘post-conflict’ process, said TamilNet’s political commentator in Colombo. Neither the present Indian Establishment, which by its role played as a war partner irredeemably lost its positive leverage on the affairs of the island, nor the UN bogged down with Security Council deliberations may able to act swiftly to respond to the emergency, he said. Colombo is on one hand aiming at creating a political and military vacuum for Tamils and on the other hand is aiming at the incarceration of all Tamils either in internment camps or in open prisons. The balance disturbed by US has to be set right by US itself by a timely action such as sending the fleet without waiting for political changes in India, the commentator said.
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Why information sabotage, UN questioned

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 May 2009, 01:52 GMT]
Why the UN withheld casualty figures and satellite information on the no-fire zone in Sri Lanka, while it released such information on Gaza was the question put to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Tuesday, by the Inner City Press (ICP). The Secretary General’s reply not touching the question reflected his continued hopes in private deal with the Colombo government. Tamil circles find it strange, that a UN that accepts its inability to send its team or life-saving food cum medicine supply to the no-fire zone, and unable to guarantee the human rights of the civilians already moved, is showing keenness only in further ‘evacuation’ of civilians and in helping Colombo in ‘any post-conflict facilitations’. While the ICP hints at hidden Indian hands behind the UN, the Tamil circles wonder whether the UN stand is the stand of the US also.
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Canadian academics support self-determination, ask direct US action

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 May 2009, 19:53 GMT]
Stressing on the recognition of the self-determination of Tamils as the basis for any solution to the crisis in the island of Sri Lanka, Canadian Academics for Tamil Rights in a press conference Wednesday in Toronto said that the proscription of the LTTE had affected the peace initiatives and Canada was a party to be blamed. “As an immediate remedy to the grave situation at the moment, the IC and UN should take food and medicine directly to Vanni and if not possible they should pressure the US to do it. It may look strange, but it is the only option if any one wants to save the lives of the people in Vanni”, was the opinion expressed in the press conference, citing the urgency.
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UNP also against Tamils: Mano Ganeshan

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 May 2009, 10:43 GMT]
Mano Ganeshan, Colombo district parliamentarian and the leader of Western People’s Front (WPF) condemned United National Party (UNP) Puththa’lam district parliamentarian, Palitharanga Bandara’s statement that heavy weapons should be used on the ‘safe zone’ to destroy the Liberation Tigers, in a media release Wednesday in Colombo. Palitharanga praised the Sri Lankan Armed Forces for their victories against the war on Tamils besides expressing views revealing racism in the press meet held Monday in the official residence of the Opposition Leader and this shows that UNP too is a political party that is against the Tamils,” Mano Ganeshan said in the press release.
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Minister Chandrasegaran condemns effort to tax plantation workers

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 May 2009, 08:59 GMT]
”Efforts to have deducted a day’s pay from innocent Tamil plantation workers to help people affected by war will only assist the government in its war against the Tamils,” Up-country Peoples’ Front (UPF) leader and Sri Lanka Minister, P. Chandrasegaran said in a press report, condemning demands made by certain trade unions and voluntary organizations on the plantation workers to give a day’s wage to help war affected people, sources in Colombo said.
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Slow-motion genocide to exceed horrors of Srebrenica, warns Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 May 2009, 18:52 GMT]
Professor Boyle of University of Illinois College of Law, an international expert on Boznia and crimes of Genocide said Tuesday, "[s]ince the outset of this latest crisis in January, the GOSL has exterminated about 7000 Tamils in Vanni, certainly a "substantial part" of the Tamil population in Vanni and Sri Lanka. If not stopped now, the GOSL's toll of genocide against the Tamils could far exceed the recent horrors of Srebrenica." Prof. Boyle's call for urgent food drop to the civilians close to starvation in the Safe Zone, has gathered momentum, and international media are seeking his comment on the urgency of humanitarian support.
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US responsible, least humanitarian is dropping food: Vanni civilians

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 May 2009, 17:07 GMT]
If there is any meaning for the word humanitarian, the minimum humanitarian act right now is to drop food to the civilians of Vanni without wasting a minute, repeatedly appealed health officials in Vanni on Tuesday, as an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe caused by Sri Lankan government enforced starvation engulfs the civilians of Vanni. “The US government and the world should realise that the situation culminating in the most inhuman act of Colombo calculatedly inflicting starvation death on civilians is ultimately a consequence of the lopsided application of a US policy, and the US has every responsibility to remedy it. Failure amounts to connivance to the crime. US has to immediately airdrop food”, said a relief official in Vanni.
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Police arrest 8 Tamils in Polonaruwa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 May 2009, 05:01 GMT]
Sri Lanka police arrested Saturday night eight Tamil civilians including two women in a cordon and search operation conducted in Kaduruwela area in Polanaruwa district in North Central Province, sources in Polanaruwa said. Most of the arrested are from Batticaloa, Ka’luvaangnchchikkudi, Nawalapitiya and Hatton, employed in the rice mills in the area searched.
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Sri Lanka’s conflict has ancient roots – UK minister, Bishop

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 May 2009, 22:25 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict is ““obviously … a quarrel that has ancient roots. It is also an extremely violent quarrel, with appalling things being done by both sides,” Britain’s Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown said Monday. He was agreeing in the House of Lords with the Bishop of Portsmouth who objected to the President of Sri Lanka describing the island’s conflict as part of the “war on terror,” the website Religious Intelligence reported.
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Ocampo urged to investigate Sri Lanka's war crimes

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 May 2009, 22:12 GMT]
Bruce Fein, counsel for a US-based Tamil activist group, in a letter sent to Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) Hon. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, and made public Monday, urged him to open investigations for war crimes, crimes against humanity and war crimes against four high-level officials of the Sri Lanka Government. Fein said he had sent copies of the Model Indictment for Genocide currently being reviewed at the U.S. Department of Justice, to Ocampo's office.
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India obligated to bring Sri Lanka's genocide to UN Security Council - Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 May 2009, 21:36 GMT]
Pointing to India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh's statement that the lack of peace and stability in Sri Lanka can also" affect security situation in our country [India]", as reported in the Press Trust of India Monday, Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at University of Illinois College of Law said that "[i]n light of this latest statement by the Prime Minister of India, the Government of India must immediately bring the Government of Sri Lanka's genocide against the Tamils to the attention of the United Nations Security Council for remedial action," as allowed by the Article 35(1) of UN charter.
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160 Tamils arrested in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Monday, 04 May 2009, 18:08 GMT]
Special Task Force (STF) commandos and police took into custody Monday 160 Tamils in Chammaanththu’rai in Ampaa’rai district in a large scale joint cordon and search operation, sources in Ampaa’rai said. Though Sinhalese and Muslim civilians were subjected to interrogation during the search only Tamils have been arrested and detained in the police stations in Ampaa’rai district, the sources added.
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Japan’s aid for Tamils’ rehabilitation will not reach them – TNA tells Yasuhi Akashi

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 May 2009, 10:02 GMT]
”Japan’s 480 million aid to Sri Lanka government to rehabilitate displaced Tamils will only help the government’s aims to segregate the traditional home lands of the Tamils converting Vanni into a military zone”, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP, Suresh Premachandran told Japanese Ambassador, Yasushi Akashi when the TNA delegation led by Iraa. Sampanthan, TNA parliamentary group’s leader, met the Ambassador Saturday, TNA sources said. Yasushi Akashi, in response said that the Sri Lanka government which was elected by the people of Sri Lanka has pledged to him that the displaced Tamils will be gradually resettled and was told by Iraa. Sampanthan that Sri Lanka government will never keep to its pledge, the sources added.
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Sinhalese colonization of Tamil village in Eastern Province

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 May 2009, 04:37 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Eastern Province parliamentarians accused the government of colonizing traditional Tamil villages in the border area between the districts of Batticaloa and Ampaa’rai districts with Sinhalese families, sources in Batticaloa said. Encroachment by Sinhalese families of paddy fields of Tamils in Keviliyaamadu village in Paddippazhai Divisional Secretariat in Batticaloa district takes place with government assistance, they further said.
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RSF campaigns for release of three women journalists

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 May 2009, 01:38 GMT]
Reporters sans frontiers (RSF), a Paris-based media watchdog, in a press release issued Saturday said it is mounting a campaign for the release of three women journalists, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who has been sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran on a charge of spying for the United States, and two American journalists employed by California-based Current TV, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who have been held in Pyongyang since 17 March. In the 2009 report released earlier in the year the RSF said in Sri Lanka, "[m]urders, physical assaults, kidnappings, threats and censorship are the lot of Sri Lanka's journalists. Top government officials, including the defence minister, are directly implicated in the serious press freedom violations that accompanied the military offensive against the Tamil Tiger (LTTE) rebels."
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Sri Lanka’s democratically mandated genocide

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 May 2009, 15:41 GMT]
"If Sri Lanka has reached the stage of having a 'democratically elected' government mandated for genocide by the ethnic majority, then that is the strongest reason why the country has to be democratically divided", writes TamilNet's political commentator in Colombo, responding to British envoy John Sawers' comment Thursday at UN that "Sri Lanka is a democratically elected government fighting a terrorist organization". Pointing out that this stand, worse than the fallacy of viewing an ethnic war as war on terrorism is not isolated in the IC, the commentator cautioned "as long as the IC, jaundiced in eyesight, fails to acknowledge that genocide and terrorism are 'democratically elected’ in Sri Lanka, they endanger democratic ideals globally” adding that "it is time for Tamil Nadu and the diaspora to demonstrate mandate for secession".
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'One-man hunt excuse to nullify a national question'

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 May 2009, 08:04 GMT]
Contrary to what is said outside, the real focus of the UN Security Council deliberations is not on the plight of the Tamil civilians, but using their plight as a shield and by manipulating it, the thrust is actually for the hunt or deposition of LTTE leader V. Pirapaharan, in order to blunt the Tamil struggle, news reports hinted Thursday. Inner City Press quoted a senior advisor of Ban Ki-moon saying that the UN Secretariat’s hope was to arrange amnesty to the remaining LTTE cadres in the conflict zone, except Mr. Pirapaharan. When asked about his son, the advisor said, “That’s what negotiations are for”. While Colombo’s ambassador at UN said the matter is being considered, according to the UN advisor cited above, the Three Brothers have shown little interest as they feel they are about to win. Tamil circles smell Indian hand in such a line of deliberations.
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Prof. Boyle calls for humanitarian airdrop to starving civilians in 'safety zone'

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 19:10 GMT]
Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, on Thursday called on India, the United States, Britain and France to fulfil their obligations under the Geneva Conventions and Protocol, and under the Genocide Convention by launching an immediate humanitarian air-drop relief operation for the starving Tamil civilians within the so-called safety zone, who are suffering without adequate humanitarian supplies for weeks. In a note sent to TamilNet, Prof. Boyle said starvation of civilians, as a method of warfare, can also constitute an act of genocide as defined by Article II (c) of the 1948 Genocide Convention.
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