SLA steps up attacks, civilian casualties mount amidst starvation, congested life

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 May 2009, 16:37 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) stepped up artillery, mortar and Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) fire on Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal, causing panic among civilians in a heavily congested village of Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal Friday from 9:30 a.m. Friday. Many civilians were killed as the shelling has continued for hours throughout the evening. Medical staff at the makeshift hospital were only able to report the deaths of those who succumbed to the injuries. 110 wounded civilians were admitted up to 4:30 p.m. at Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal hospital which came under attack on previous two days. 27 of the wounded have succumbed to their injuries. Many more, killed in the SLA barrage were buried or burnt by their kith and kin.
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Family man knifed to death in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 May 2009, 15:26 GMT]
Unidentified persons knifed to death a family man in Thurkkaapuram, a village close to Sri Lanka Army (SLA) High Security Zone (HSZ) in Thellippazhai Thursday night during curfew hours, sources in Jaffna said. The victim had been sleeping outside his house and his family members saw his body Friday early morning and informed Thellippazhai police.
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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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Miliband, Kouchner make progress in grasping the problem

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 May 2009, 02:15 GMT]
“What was positive about the visit of the foreign ministers of Britain and France to Colombo was the two showing much progress in grasping the nature of the crisis in the island”, said Tamil political circles in the diaspora, responding to a joint statement of the ministers, David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner Thursday. But how the belated realisation is going to be translated into timely action – first to come out of the shackles they were tricked putting onto themselves, and then to handle the Frankenstein monster before it is too late, is what really matters and is an acid test for the claimed changes if any in paradigm”, the diaspora circles said. Echoing a White House statement last week, pointing out slipping possibilities for reconciliation and a unified Sri Lanka, Miliband and Kouchner said Thursday that “chances of any kind of political settlement recede”.
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Tamils' massacre made possible by West's ideological blindness and hubris - paper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 17:19 GMT]
“Those who think that the LTTE will be destroyed in the coming weeks and that then it is a question of 'peace building' and 'development' for the next few years are gravely mistaken,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper’s editorial argues this week. “[Instead] the foundations for a cataclysmic civil war are being inexorably laid today. The kind of polarisation that sustain not decades, but generations of struggle has become widespread and embedded.”
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SLN, SLA step up confrontations, Tigers sink two SLN vessels

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 11:57 GMT]
Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) continued to attack Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal shore since Wednesday 4:00 p.m., killing and maiming many. Meanwhile, Liberation Tigers of Tamlieelam (LTTE) Sea Tigers confronted the SLN vessels sinking a water jet gun-boat and Dvora Fast Attack Craft (FAC) around 2:45 p.m. Thursday.
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7,000 Tamils in Vanni killed, 14,000 injured in 3 months, TNA tells David Miliband

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 11:53 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Trincomalee district MP and parliamentary group leader, R. Sampanthan, and parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran told the visiting British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, that 7,000 Tamils in Vanni have been killed and 14,000 injured in the last three months, but the International Community has remained inactive without taking any action to stop the killings, TNA sources said. The TNA parliamentarians also told Miliband that more than 300 Tamil youths in Vavuniyaa detention centre have been arrested by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and that the SLA has not revealed the whereabouts of the arrested youths to their parents.
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Satellite images reveal SLA shelling damages to Safe Zone

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 11:01 GMT]
A report by United Nations Institute for Training and Reseach (UNITAR) surfaced on April 27th confirmed the heavy use of artillery and aerial bombing of civilian safety zone (CSZ) by the Sri Lankan armed forces. The 10-page document, initially made public, was later blocked by UNITAR for preventing incriminating evidence of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) shelling of civilian areas. Several organizations, including Inner City Press, however, have archived a local copy of the now officially unavailable report.
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Events unfold typical of Nazi concentration camps

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 10:13 GMT]
Food parcels were thrown to people after making them run like dogs, and two children were killed in the melee in the barbed-wire camp at Menik Farm, Vavuniyaa. A 12-year-old boy on Monday and a 7-year-old boy on Tuesday were crushed to death in the melee, media sources in Vavuniyaa said. Meanwhile, around 300 Tamil youth from several camps in the area were forcefully taken by the Sri Lanka army, in the name of arrest, amidst protests of family members on Tuesday. Recently, 60 people have died of sickness in the camps, the sources further said. A total of 154,368 Vanni civilians are in captivity by the SLA up to Wednesday and out of them, 90, 181, were captured after 20 April.
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China's 'anti-people' stand handicaps UN action

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 03:45 GMT]
China’s anti-people stand to consider the war in Sri Lanka as internal matter, despite open massacre and imprisonment of the Colombo government of its own civilians using even prohibited weapons, will block formal discussions taking place in the UN Security Council Thursday, news reports indicate. The stand of China and Russia sitting on UN security Council, shielding Colombo’s genocide, exposes the ultimate results of the West's 'self-trap’ by tilting the military and diplomatic balance between Tamils and Sinhalese through twisting an ethnic war as war on terror, political observers said. The only possibility now for the West to save its credibility is revising its faulty policies and acting outside of the UN, they said.
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Rehabilitation symbols: How minds work in naming barbed-wire camps

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 02:25 GMT]
Four major internment camps meant for the civilians of Vanni and envisaged as long-term detention-villages as a part of Colombo’s structural genocide of Tamils, have been named after Sir Ponnampalam Ramanathan, Sir Ponnampalam Arunachalam, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Lakshman Kadirgamar. All four of them belonged to two aristocratic families of Jaffna that had settled in Colombo. They served more to Colombo than to Tamil homeland. Two of them never spoke Tamil, but all of them in some way served Sinhala interests. The message is subtle: Look upon the supremacy of the Colombo-centric system and be subservient, never think of your own system, writes TamilNet’s regular political commentator in Colombo.
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Youths held in Jaffna SLA detention centre escape

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 16:49 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Jaffna said that a number of youths held in the SLA detention centre in Nelliyadi Maththiya Mahaviththiyalayam escaped Monday and Tuesday into residential areas in Vadamarraadchi. SLA is engaged in announcing over loudspeakers fitted to vehicles instructing the escapees to surrender, informing that the escapees would be granted general amnesty, since Monday in Vadamaraadchi, sources in Jaffna said.
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300 feared killed, worst spurt of massacre imminent as UK, France fail

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 16:32 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army is expected to embark upon the worst phase of massacre any time soon in the narrow stretch of land, 5 km long and 1.5 km wide, remaining in the so-called safety zone congested with nearly 120,000 civilians, sources in Vanni said. SLA attacks normally begin in the early hours. Heavy 100 mm cannon fire and machine gun fire from naval craft of the Sri Lanka Navy already began around 4:00 p.m. A total of 300 are feared killed in the latest use of heavy weapons. Meanwhile, reports from Colombo indicate that 'ministerial diplomacy' of UK and France failed to bring in ceasefire or in sending international observers to the war front. The latest phase of Colombo's spree of carnage escalated after discussions with two Indian bureaucrats last Friday.
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Hospital attacked, SLN naval crafts fire artillery pieces

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 11:21 GMT]
Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) attack crafts fitted with 100 mm cannon began firing artillery pieces along the shore of Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal Wednesday around 4:00 p.m. Meanwhile, the makeshift hospital in Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal was hit by artillery shells. 9 patients were killed and 15 sustained injuries as many of the remaining patients had to seek shelter elsewhere, according to initial details. The attack comes after the ICRC visited the hospital in the morning and U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner were meeting Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo Wednesday. Both the ministers had urged for immediate ceasefire earlier in the day.
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Moothoor IDPs demand to be resettled in their own villages

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 10:50 GMT]
Hundreds of men, women and children displaced from Champoor East and West, Kooniththeevu and Kadatkaraicheanai Village Officer divisions in Trincomalee district gathered in Batticaloa Koaddaimunai Methodist Church premises Wednesday on completing the third year of their forced displacement due to Sri Lanka Army (SLA) offensives in 2206, to pray and fast from morning till evening in an effort to draw the authorities' attention to their plea to be resettled in their original villages, Moothoor East Internally Displaced Peoples’ Welfare Association, which organized the event said.
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SLA arrests 98 youths in Vavuniyaa detention centre

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 04:01 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) intelligence unit officers arrested and took away Tuesday 98 youths among the civilians from Vanni held in SLA Ne'lukku'lam detention centre in Vavuniyaa despite the strong protest of the detainees numbering more than 3,000, sources in Vavuniyaa said. The enraged detainees attacked the government and other offices and employees in the centre, the sources added. The SLA officer-in-charge of the detention centre said that he has no information of the 98 youths taken away, the sources further said.
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Abducted Jaffna SLIC officer released

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 17:22 GMT]
The abductors of a technical officer of Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation (SLIC) Jaffna office released him Monday night at his house in Moo’laay road in Vaddukkoaddai, according to information given by his family members to the head of the SLIC office. The officer, who had been abducted 22 April, had been held and interrogated in a Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp, the family members told the chief officer.
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15 Tamil civilians arrested in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 17:00 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and Police jointly conducted several cordon and search operations in the Tamil villages of Chaampalththeevu, Nilaave'li, Chelvanaayakapuram, and Kanniyaa in Trincomalee district Tuesday. Police said the operations were conducted to check infiltrators entering Trincomalee town and its suburbs.
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Students of schools used as SLA detention centres in Jaffna affected

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 14:34 GMT]
The students of the schools in Jaffna district, converted into Sri Lanka Army (SLA) detention centres, are forced to continue their studies in private education centres, private buildings and schools located near the SLA detention centres, sources in Jaffna said. The reopening of all schools in Jaffna district had been postponed for a week they being used by SLA to detain the civilians from Vanni. Though other schools reopened Monday for the second term the children of the schools used as SLA detention centres could find alternate places for studies only Tuesday, the sources added.
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SLA fired 5,600 shells within 15 hours: LTTE

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 14:22 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) fired at least 2,600 Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) rockets, more than 1,000 artillery shells and at least 2,000 heavy mortar shells from 6:00 p.m. Monday till 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, LTTE officials in Vanni told TamilNet. Most of the shells fired by the SLA hit civilian shelters in Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal, Thaazhampan, Ottaip-panaiyadi and Iraddai-vaaykkaal areas.The Tiger officials put civilian casualty figures at more than 200 killed and said three medical centres treated hundreds of wounded civilians throughout the day. Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) bombers attacked Ottaip-panai and iraddai-vaaykkaal areas by deploying cluster bombs, LTTE officials further said.
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