GOSL pays compensation to Ma'nalaa'ru injured

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 February 2008, 13:18 GMT]
Rishad Bathiyutheen, Minister of Resettlement & Disaster Relief Services, on the directions of Mahinda Rajapakse, President of Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL), forwarded compensation funds Tuesday to senior officials for distribution to the victims of Monday bomb blast in Ma'nalaa'ru .
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Stop military aid to Sri Lanka: PDK submits one million signatures to Indian defence minister

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 February 2008, 19:57 GMT]
Several hundred activists of the Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam (PDK) marched towards the Indian Parliament Wednesday morning demanding the Indian Government to immediately stop military aid and assistance to the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL). As a part of the protest, the activists, including 100 women and children, dressed as wounded Tamils marched from Jantar Mantar to Parliament Street and submitted a memorandum at the Prime Minister's office. PDK leaders on Thursday met Indian Defence Minister A K Antony at his residence and submitted a petition signed by one million Indian Tamils demanding that India stop all military aid to Sri Lanka.
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GoSL, TMVP partnership complicates east elections- PAFFREL

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 February 2008, 14:25 GMT]
People's Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), a citizen-based Election watch organization in Sri Lanka, in a Press Communiqué issued Wednesday said that "[T]here was general agreement that the security situation had improved, particularly with reference to the levels of violence," but added that "[I]t is possible that violence and election malpractices will surface as the election campaign gathers momentum, as the armed groups have not been disarmed. PAFFREL noted that "further complicating factor is that the government has apparently decided that its partner in the east would be the TMVP, which is the breakaway LTTE group in the east and which retains its arms."
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Public Transport crisis looms in Jaffna peninsula

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 February 2008, 00:09 GMT]
Shortage of tires for buses operated by Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) in the North has reached a critical situation and may soon cripple the services on many routes in the peninsula, a high official of SLTB Point Pedro bus depot said Saturday.
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Hakeem doubtful of just, fair elections in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2008, 21:25 GMT]
Rauf Hakeem, leader of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and parliamentarian, addressing the party candidates contesting in the forthcoming local government elections in Batticaloa Friday afternoon in Daru Salaam Hall in Ea’raavoor, raised doubts whether fairness and justice will prevail during the elections, political sources in Batticaloa said.
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Thirumavalavan urges Center to hold referendum on extending LTTE ban

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2008, 20:18 GMT]
Viduthalai Chiruththaikal Kadchi (VCK, Liberation Panthers Party) President Thol. Thirumavalavan on Friday urged the Indian Government to conduct a referendum among the sixty five million people of Tamil Nadu on the extension of LTTE ban. He was speaking at a demonstration organized by his party to pressure the Indian Government to wage war against Sri Lanka for planting mines in the sea waters of Kadchatheevu and for arbitrarily arresting Tamil Nadu fishermen.
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Conflict headed for bloody, decisive phase- Uyangoda

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2008, 01:16 GMT]
"With the umbilical cord between Sri Lanka’s conflict-management process and the international community, in the form of the CFA, having been severed, both parties are now relatively free to conduct the war in the way they feel suitable, with no external pressures regarding human rights or humanitarian consequences. In the coming months, the conflict will become a war without checks or balances, a war without inhibition," Prof. Uyangoda says in a dispassionate analysis that appeared in a southasian monthly, Himal, on the reasons and aftermath of the formal abrogation of CeaseFire Agreement.
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Tamil Nadu Government warns against expressing moral support to LTTE

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 January 2008, 15:32 GMT]
Desperate to appease its key ally Congress in order to retain power, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government on Wednesday warned of stern action against those who expressed moral support to the Liberation Tigers. Meanwhile, Thol. Thirumavalavan, leader of the Viduthalai Chiruththaikal Kadchi (VCK, Liberation Panthers Party), on Wednesday called upon the Indian Government to wage war against Sri Lanka and said that he was prepared to face any legal action arising out of his exercising the freedom of expression.
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U.S. Group advocates for Tamil Statehood

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 January 2008, 13:52 GMT]
"Applying the 'self-evident' truths celebrated in the Declaration of Independence, the United States should recognize the right of Sri Lanka's long oppressed Tamil people to independent statehood from the racial supremacist Sinhalese," says Bruce Fein, the associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, and a lawyer for Tamils For Justice, a U.S. group of Tamil activists, in an opinion piece appearing Tuesday in Washington's conservative news paper, The Washington Times.
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GOSL to unveil monument for Indian soldiers

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 January 2008, 12:17 GMT]
A monument to soldiers of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) who lost their lives, while serving under the Indo-Sri Lanka peace accord in North East of Sri Lanka, is to be opened on February 4, Sri Lanka's Independence day, sources in Colombo said. The monument is located near the Sri Lanka Parliament Complex. Several Indian Military officials have previously made statements to the Indian media of the indifference Sri Lanka had shown towards casualties India suffered during the peace keeping operation.
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iTRO urges countries to allow diaspora help

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 January 2008, 00:02 GMT]
International Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, iTRO, based in U.K., in a press release issued this week following the unilateral abrogation of Cease Fire Agreement by the Government of Sri Lanka, appealed to the Governments of the West "to allow space for the Tamil Diaspora to provide much needed humanitarian assistance to their people. International organizations have been restricted in their ability to access the affected areas and deliver the necessary relief and the GoSL has restricted food, medicine, fuel and construction materials to the Vanni. As a result in many areas TRO is the only organization with access to the war and tsunami affected populations," the release said.
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Norwegian Tamils march against abrogation of CFA

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 January 2008, 21:56 GMT]
Abrogation of the CFA by the Government of Sri Lanka has removed the only reporting body of human rights and humanitarian law violations that take place in Sri Lanka, said K. Sivapalan, a senior attorney-at-law from Trincomalee, addressing four hundred participants, mainly members of the Tamil diaspora, who participated in a march carrying torches towards the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo, expressing solidarity with the Tamils in the homeland Wednesday evening.
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SLMM bids farewell

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 January 2008, 12:41 GMT]
In a press statement issued by the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), the Nordic Monitors whose functions were terminated by the unilateral termination of the CeaseFire Agreement (CFA) by Sri Lanka Government, Maj.Gen Solvberg, the Head of Mission, thanked the GOSL and the LTTE for inviting SLMM to serve them, and said "Future heroes in Sri Lanka will be those who recognize the complexity of the situation, and prove able to manage this complexity in a way that reduces rather than increases human pain, fear and hopelessness – those capable of respecting people with different perceptions, and bringing them together."
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British Group urges Tamils to boycott Sri Lankan Airlines

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 January 2008, 12:21 GMT]
British Tamil Forum (BTF), an umbrella community organization, in a press conference held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Central London to coincide with the Thai Pongal day Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. urged Tamils to boycott Sri Lankan Airlines, Sri Lanka's national carrier, claiming that its profits fund Colombo's war against Tamils. Ivan Pedropillai, chairing the meeting said, the abrogation of the CFA by the government of Sri Lanka is a precursor to an "unfettered and all out war on the Tamils living in the North of Sri Lanka. The Tamils from Sri Lanka cannot and will not continue to pay in Foreign Exchange for this deplorable war upon their own kith and kin."
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'Pathetically unenforceable' – Sri Lanka response to UN war crimes warning

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 January 2008, 23:44 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s militarist government reacted furiously Tuesday to warnings by UN Human Rights Chief, Louise Arbour, that human rights abuses in Sri Lanka left perpetrators and their commanders at risk of international war crimes charges. Rejecting Ms. Arbour’s comments as “pathetically unenforceable threats,” Sri Lanka’s embassy to the UN said the Colombo government “will not be deterred by thinly veiled threats attempting to undermine the morale of its military, deter its military campaigns and save separatist terrorism from elimination.” It also challenged the transparency of funding for Ms. Arbour’s office and the extent to which it represented the “world’s peoples.”
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Arbour: SL rights abuses risk war crimes charges

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 January 2008, 15:59 GMT]
A day before the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement in Sri Lanka is due to formally end, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, on Tuesday, reminded the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of their obligations under international law to respect human rights. She warned that rights abuses “by any party could entail individual criminal responsibility under international criminal law, including by those in positions of command.”
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Census officials escape claymore attack in Vadamaraadchi

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 January 2008, 18:06 GMT]
A team of officials involved in census work in Jaffna peninsula escaped injuries in a claymore attack targetted on them Sunday noon in Sampanthan Kadai area in Karaveddy as the device failed to explode completely, sources said.
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Indian Foreign Minister refuses to criticise Colombo for abrogating CFA

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 January 2008, 17:29 GMT]
Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, in an interview to CNN-IBN news channel, Sunday admitted that India had "scrupulously avoided" being a party to peace negotiations in Sri Lanka. The Indian FM who last week had ruled out any military solution to the ethnic strife in the war-torn island, on Sunday, failed to criticize Sri Lanka for abrogating the ceasefire. Questioned whether Colombo's decision to abrogate the ceasefire agreement was a "mistake," the minister replied that "any country that takes action against terrorists is free to do so within their legal system."
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Fonseka vows not to leave war to successor

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 January 2008, 06:27 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army Commander Lt. Gen. G.S.C Fonseka, due for retirement this year, has claimed that he would not leave the war to his succeeding commander, at a New Year party hosted by him Friday evening to select local and international journalists at his residence at Bauddhaloka Mawatha in Colombo. Fonseka was being tactfully upbeat as news of an explosion inside Fort Railway station threatened to dampen spirits at the cocktail party.
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Hakeem seeks legal redress for reduction in security personnel

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 January 2008, 16:47 GMT]
Rauf Hakeem, leader of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) filed a petition Friday in Colombo Supreme Court stating that reducing security for him is a violation of human rights, simultaneously claiming a compensation of 100 million Rupees from the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL).
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