LTTE welcomes appointment of British Special Envoy

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 February 2009, 19:03 GMT]
Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) has welcomed the appointment of Des Browne as Special Envoy to Sri Lanka by the British Prime Minister on Thursday. In a letter addressed to Mr. Des Browne, LTTE's Head of International Diplomatic Relations S. Pathmanathan said the British government had a moral responsibility to intervene to stop the genocide being committed by the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) on Tamil civilians in the island of Sri Lanka.
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Youths placed in Jaffna Prison to be issued with new NIC

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 February 2009, 19:01 GMT]
Jaffna magistrate court is making arrangements to help the youths who sought protection to their lives with Jaffna Human Rights Commission (HRC) and placed in the protective custody of Jaffna Prison, to get new National Identity Cards (NICs), as their NICs had been confiscated by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers, Jaffna sources said. The youths had sought protection as they were ordered to report at the SLA camp in their areas to get their NICs back, the sources added.
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Herding people by terror: Intense shelling, dead bodies on roadside in Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 February 2009, 13:50 GMT]
More than 150 civilians were feared killed Thursday alone and around 90 in the preceding two days in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) shelling in Mullaiththeevu district. Most of the casualties are reported along the sides of two roads through which the civilians are forced to flee in yet another mass exodus to a new 'safety zone' unilaterally announced by Colombo. Dead bodies were lying along the roadside from Theavipuram to Puthukkudiyiruppu and the fleeing civilians were forced to bury their dead along the roadside amid intense shelling, initial reports from Vanni said. The new 'safety zone' declared by Colombo is nothing but an assembling ground to herd 300,000 civilians in a small stretch of land along the lagoon and the sea coast, north of Mullaiththeevu.
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Sri Lanka rejects Britain’s appointing of Special Envoy

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 20:57 GMT]
Sri Lanka swiftly rejected as “an intrusion into internal affairs” Britain’s appointment Thursday of a Special Envoy to help settle the island’s protracted conflict. Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama was quoted by the AFP as saying that the British move was tantamount to "an intrusion into Sri Lanka's internal affairs" and was "disrespectful to the country's statehood. Earlier Thursday, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a parliamentary committee that he had asked former defence secretary, Des Browne, to be an envoy for Sri Lanka.
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British ex-defence secretary appointed special envoy to Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 15:44 GMT]
Britain named a special envoy to Sri Lanka on Thursday to help bring about a political solution to the island’s long-running conflict and to ease hardships to Tamil civilians trapped in the Vanni warzone, UK press reports said. "I've asked Des Browne, our former defence secretary, to be an envoy for Sri Lanka," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a parliamentary committee. Brown said the priorities were to achieve a ceasefire and to get a political settlement, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Robert Blake was quoted by the Washington Post as saying the Sri Lankan military’s capture of the Vanni region – which he expects within weeks – will not end the LTTE’s armed struggle and that Colombo must reach a political settlement with the Tamils.
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Clashes reported on Vadamaraadchi sea

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 15:12 GMT]
Residents on the coast of Vadamaraadchi said that they heard sudden artillery and gunfire on Vadamaraadchi sea Thursday around 7:30 indicating clashes. Gun boats from Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) from Kaangkeasanthu’rai base were seen rushing towards the place where the clash erupted while artillery shells were fired from the Sri Lanka Amy (SLA) bases in Point Pedro Munai, they said.
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Singapore Tamils protest newspaper misreporting

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 13:57 GMT]
Singapore Tamils have protested misreporting of a news in the headlines of the country's Tamil daily Tamil Murasu last Thursday, which read that the LTTE had claimed they would even attack Tamil Nadu, media circles in Singapore said.
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Civilian refugees imprisoned in internment camps in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 11:55 GMT]
The civilian refugees who either fled the war zone or caught by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) are denied not only the freedom of movement to go out of the buildings in which they are detained under 'near-prison' conditions, but are also denied freedom of movement inside the camp itself after 6:00 p.m. by the SLA, even for the call of nature, on grounds of condemnation that they were linked to the LTTE, said NGO activists on condition of anonymity.
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SLA shoots dead 2 youths in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 11:14 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers engaged in road patrol opened fire on two youths as they were cycling along Aadiyapaatham Road near Thirunelveali junction in Jaffna, killing them on the spot, Thursday around 11:30 a.m, sources in Jaffna said. One of the youths killed is from Nainaatheevu who had come to see his bride-to-be in Thirunelveali but SLA claimed that they gunned down the two youths because they opened fire on the soldiers, seriously injuring one of them.
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'Tamil Nadu needs to go beyond demonstrations'

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 08:49 GMT]
If at all there is any positive impact of the unprecedented uprising and demonstrations, staged spontaneously by the masses of Tamil Nadu and the diaspora, it is the inward awakening of global Tamils to the forces of oppression and to the defiance of the oppressors, whether domestic or international. A historic responsibility lies on the leaders of Tamil Nadu and on those who uphold the struggle of the oppressed, to channel the positive energy generated from the uprising to achieve its goals rather than allowing it to be carried away by the machinations of the oppressors, writes opinion columnist Chivanadi.
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Jaffna people's resilience will trump current atmosphere of fear, says US diplomat

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 February 2009, 00:34 GMT]
“Though the people of Jaffna peninsula live in an atmosphere of fear and difficulties they are looked upon as a people who successfully overcome them by everyone,” James R. Moore, the Deputy Chief of Mission attached to US Embassy in Sri Lanka, said in an event held in the office of the Regional Director of Health Service (RDHS) in Jaffna Wednesday, sources in Jaffna said. Jaffna Government Agent, K. Ganesh, Regional Health Service Director, Dr. Ketheeswaran and other Government officials participated in the event where a new system of ambulance service was inaugurated.
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SLA launch large scale cordon, search in Vadamaraadchi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 17:20 GMT]
Hundreds of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers conducted a large scale cordon and search from early morning Wednesday till evening in Karaveddi area in Vadamaraadchi, sources in Vadamaraadchi said. The religious rites for the local ICRC employee killed recently which took place at his house in Karaveddi Wednesday where many people had gathered may have triggered the SLA search, the sources said.
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'Good old game of Sinhala chauvinism'

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 03:37 GMT]
The tactics that are played at every juncture during the last several decades by Sinhala chauvinism against Tamil emancipation in the island of Sri Lanka were re-enacted in Colombo Tuesday when Patriotic National Movement (PNM), an outfit of Rajapaksa circle, staged a demonstration against ICRC, USA and Britain, even for their minimal engagement and token gestures to the sufferings of Tamils, journalistic circles in Colombo commented. "It is but only a taste of what to follow for those who envisage a political solution of lasting peace within the state system of Sri Lanka," said a senior journalist.
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World socialists condemn war as Co-chairs’ machination

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 02:32 GMT]
The Co-Chairs have not been helpless, passive bystanders, but active participants who bear political responsibility for the Sri Lankan government's war and the humanitarian disaster now unfolding in northern Sri Lanka, writes K.Ratnayake, tracing the history of Co-chairs involvement in the island, in an article ‘The end of the Sri Lankan Peace Process’, appeared in World Socialist Web Site, Monday.
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IDPs in SLA detention camps lack sufficient food in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 01:35 GMT]
Jaffna Government Agent (GA) made an urgent appeal Tuesday to local and international non-government organizations in Jaffna to provide food materials to the 2400 detainees held in three Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camps as the arrangement of supplying cooked food to them has been suspended by the SLA authorities in Jaffna, sources in Jaffna said. The dry food items given to them under the World Food Programme (WFP) are hardly sufficient to meet the food requirements of the civilians detained in the SLA detention centres in Kurunakar, Koaappay and Mirusuvil, Jaffna Secretariat sources added.
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Tigers deny firing at civilians, accuse SLA, urge for international monitors

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 February 2009, 01:15 GMT]
Categorically denying reports by the Sri Lankan military officials in Colombo that the Tigers had fired at the fleeing civilians in Vanni, Puthukkudiyiruppu Divisional Political Head of the LTTE, C. Ilamparithy told TamilNet Wednesday that Sri Lanka Army (SLA) commando teams had entered the 'safety zone' in Udaiyaarkaddu and Chuthanthirapuram and had opened fire killing civilians and causing injuries to many in their attempt to forcibly move the civilians into the hands of the SLA. "Sri Lankan military machinery, which has relentlessly killed and maimed thousands of civilians during the past four weeks, is now engaged in a propaganda drive to divert the mounting pressure on the Colombo government by the International Community," Mr. Ilamparithy charged.
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Demonstration in Delhi to release victims of India’s Intelligence Agency

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 22:22 GMT]
42 political activists of Myanmar landed in the Windfall Island of India’s Andaman Islands in 1998, allegedly lured by a promise of getting a base for them there. On arrival, 6 of them were killed and 36 arrested reportedly by an Indian intelligence officer LT. Col. Grewal. Two of the arrested have gone missing. A book titled ‘Rogue Agent’ authored by Nandita Haksar and published by Penguin India is released in Delhi, Wednesday, along with a protest demonstration demanding the release of the 34, languishing in Indian prison for 11 years and requesting the UNHCR to grant them refugee status, Burma Centre in Delhi said.
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250 patients evacuated, return of ICRC to Vanni urged

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 15:21 GMT]
Two foreign officials of the ICRC officials left Vanni Tuesday around 5:00 p.m. in a ship transporting 250 seriously wounded patients, including 50 children, all wounded in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) artillery and Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) fire. The patients were taken on board the ship at LTTE controlled Puthumaaththa'lan in Mullaiththeevu to Trincomalee. The two ICRC officials who were remaining in Vanni had received instructions to be present in Trincomalee and it is not known whether they would return to Vanni, according to informed government officials.
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Land mine blast kills 3 SLA soldiers in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 14:19 GMT]
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) triggered a landmine killing 3 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers and seriously injuring 2 soldiers Tuesday around 1:45 p.m when they were engaged in road patrol at Pannalakamam area in Ampaa’rai district, LTTE sources in Ampaa’rai district said. Meanwhile, a policeman was killed and a home guard injured in a grenade attack on the sentry post located at Veeramunai junction Tuesday around 3:30 p.m in Chammaanththu’rai, the sources added.
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Relentless shelling expels civilians from 'safety zone'

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 05:56 GMT]
Thousands of civilians were seen Monday fleeing in all directions from the 'safety zone' as mortar, artillery and Multi Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) rockets hit the entire area demarcated by the Colombo government as safety zone. At least 36 civilians were killed and 76 wounded throughout the day in Va'l'lipunam, Chuthanthirapuram and in Maaththa'lan. The entire 100-houses-scheme located in Chuthanthirapuram was burning following MBRL attack with shells that caused immediate fire.
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