Channel-4 wins trophy for Sri Lanka's war-crimes documentary

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 February 2012, 05:51 GMT]
ITN for Channel 4 scooped the trophy for best international coverage for the documentary Sri Lanka's Killing Fields at the prestigious Royal Television Society (RTS) awards in UK, BBC reported. Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, a special one-hour investigation which features devastating video evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Sri Lankan government forces and the Tamil Tigers, was first broadcast on 2nd December 2010, edited versions were replayed on 4th and 5th December during Sri Lanka's President Rajapaksa's visit to London.
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Sri Lanka plans ‘foreign’ enclave to balance India in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 February 2012, 19:19 GMT]
While the uprooted Eezham Tamil civilians from Moothoor East of Troncomalee district are languishing in temporary shelters and with their relatives and friends, the colonial Colombo government has sent land surveying teams with a plan to grab the remaining lands in the vicinity of the already seized area for Indian coal power plant in Champoor. Informed sources in Trincomalee told TamilNet Monday that SL presidential sibling Basil Rajapaksa, who is the economic ‘development’ minister in Colombo, has allocated 6,500 acres of the occupied land to a foreign power for the construction of an ‘industrial zone’ surrounding the 1,500 acres of land already allocated to Indian coal power plant. Recently, the SL military was bragging in Jaffna about their ‘diplomacy’ in giving KKS harbour construction to India and giving rest of the northern coast to a Chinese corporate.
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Women groups protest against SL militarisation move in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 February 2012, 23:54 GMT]
The occupying Sri Lanka Army in Mannaar has been allocated a vast area of lands in Ezhuththoor GS division of Mannaar Piratheasa Chapai (PS), where uprooted families, most of them who had lost one of their parents in the war and are from Mullaiththeevu, Ki'linochchi, Vavuniyaa and Mannaar districts, have been provided lands to resettle. The families, mostly run by females, have come together and shown their objection to the move to construct SL military cantonment, obstructing the normalcy needed for the families. The resettled women have formed civil groups and urged the civil authorities at all levels to take immediate step to stop the move which would threaten the peace of life in their new village.
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Cambodia analogy

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 February 2012, 05:14 GMT]
The UN Secretary General is under attack by international legal experts and the media for a seriously bungled war-crimes prosecution in east asia- Cambodia's war tribunal (Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, ECCC). Two million civilians were killed by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and 35 years later, politics and finance, instead of law and evidence, appear to dictate the course of justice. But, here, now, Tamil political leaders point to the Cambodia model as reflecting the speed of international investigations, and assert that Tamils should not be impatient at the slow progress of international mechanisms. Western States, allegedly complicit in "crime against peace" in Sri Lanka, forward the same argument to avoid their own exposure and to buy the SL Government time so that 30-years into the future, prosecutions become largely irrelevant as is happening in Cambodia.
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SLAF fighter jet crashes in North Western Province

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 February 2012, 11:19 GMT]
A Russian-built MiG-27 fighter jet used by the Sri Lanka Air Force against civilian targets in the country of Eezham Tamils during the war, crashed Monday in the North Western Province. The SLAF deployed Russian built fighters to carry cluster bombs on LTTE and civilian targets in Vanni, committing war crimes and crimes against humanity throughout the war.
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Human skeletons recovered from well in Valikaamam North

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 February 2012, 16:40 GMT]
Recently resettled civilians in Kollangk-kaladdi of Valikaamam North in Jaffna have located human skeletons inside a well while clearing it for their use, sources in Valikaamam told TamilNet Sunday. A skull was located. But, the number of the recovered skeletons indicates that some of the victims had been decapitated, before they were dumped into the well, the sources said. It is believed that the victims were civilians abducted by the Sri Lanka Army operated squads and those who went to check their properties inside the SLA occupied territory after year 1992, when the SLA seized the village of Kollang-kaladdi.
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War crimes of ‘both sides’ or war crimes of all sides: Oslo film discussion stirs thoughts

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 February 2012, 17:01 GMT]
After a full house show of Beate Arnestad’s documentary on exiled Sinhala and Eezham Tamil journalists on Thursday in Oslo, Norwegian journalist Sverre Tom Radøy leading the discussion, prompted British journalist Frances Harrison talking on the sufferings of the civilians to elucidate on ‘war crimes of both sides’ and particularly those of the LTTE. Forced recruitment and preventing the civilians from going to the side of the Sri Lanka Army were the war crimes of the LTTE, Ms. Harrison specified. Confining the crimes to a paradigm ‘both sides’ is a tactic of the international architects of the war to circumvent their crimes and responsibility. Made to naively believe that justice would come from the very architects, the affected Tamils have failed in focussing their demand on the accountability of all sides that had committed the crimes, commented an observer to the show.
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US delegation visits Vanni on fact-finding mission

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 February 2012, 23:47 GMT]
Ahead of a scheduled visit by Robert O’ Blake, the US assistant secretary of state for the South and Central Asian affairs to Colombo, a team led by Stephen J Rapp, the ambassador-at-Large for war crimes at the US State Department, was on an official visit to the occupied Tamil homeland on Thursday and on Friday. The delegation was collecting witness testimonials from the war-crimes affected civilians in Mullaiththeevu and Ki'linochchi districts. Despite the heavy deployment of SL military intelligence operatives, the people were narrating how cluster and chemical munitions were deployed by the Sri Lankan military against civilian targets.
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Without truth, reconciliation not possible - paper

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 February 2012, 12:23 GMT]
Francis Harrison, former BBC foreign correspondent whose book of accounts of survivors from Sri Lanka’s civil war is to be published this summer, says in an article in the Dawn, that there are "signs that the international community is gearing up for action to hold Sri Lanka accountable for alleged war crimes committed by its forces at the end of the brutal civil war against the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009," and adds that "Tamil survivors also want the truth acknowledged before they can move on with their shattered lives. Without the truth, reconciliation and forgiveness are simply not possible and the grievances that led to conflict in the first place remain dangerously unresolved."
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US Court dismisses Shavendra case on grounds of immunity

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 February 2012, 20:15 GMT]
While acknowledging "the gravity of the allegations made by the plaintiffs," Judge J. Paul Oetken concluded that Silva's diplomatic immunity precluded the court from looking at the merits of the plaintiffs' claims, a press release issued by the attorneys of the Tamil plaintiffs who filed the case said. Despite serious allegations of war crimes, Silva has recently been "selected" as an advisor for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Senior Advisory Group, and Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in international law, has opined that "Ban Ki Moon to appoint a presumptive war criminal to his Staff would be ultra vires his powers under the terms of article 101(3) and thus a violation of the Charter itself."
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SL government will not deliver justice: HRW

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 February 2012, 23:59 GMT]
The acting Geneva Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch, Philippe Dam, has said in a statement issued by the HRW Thursday that justice and accountability will not come from the Sri Lankan government. “Only international action will address the suffering of victims,” Mr. Dam said urging the United Nations Human Rights Council to address the lack of accountability for wartime abuses during its March 2012 session. Sri Lanka has a long history of failed promises to prosecute serious human rights abuses, the statement by the HRC further said.
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USA pressurises civil society to accept genocide and to live with it

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 January 2012, 11:37 GMT]
Two officials from the US State Department who met civil society of Jaffna last week categorically told them that the US would not take up war crimes/ human rights issues against Sri Lanka in the March HRC session, as there is no sufficient pressure or request from the affected people. Ruling out any outside intervention for political solution, the officials said that the US would only support the implementation of the LLRC report, which means annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils and completion of structural genocide by 2020, as fixed by the report. The officials didn't listen to the civil group, but insisted only on passing the message. As genocidal Sri Lanka is going to be emboldened further by the stand of the USA and similar stand of India, what responses are going to come from Tamil Nadu and from those who pawned politics to the USA and India, ask the civil groups.
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US's dissonant positions boon to Sri Lanka's war-criminals

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 January 2012, 00:39 GMT]
While several members of the legislative branch of the US Government are pressing for independent international investigations into Sri Lanka's war-crimes, the US executive branch, despite the presence of ardent advocates of human rights as President Obama's group of advisers, guided by Ambassador Robert Blake architected policy that has wrought havoc to Tamil justice, appears to support white-washing of war-crimes, Tamil circles in the US said. Civil society groups in Sri Lanka, which met visiting US officials recently have also reported hearing a Rajapakse-centric position from the officials, and revealed that the officials have tried to persuade the civil society to engage with the Sri Lanka Government on development and reconciliation, and thereby, to remain opposed to Tamil diaspora activities, civil society sources in Jaffna said.
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Silva's proposed UN appointment elicits condemnation from Rights Groups

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 January 2012, 01:34 GMT]
New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), California-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), and Washington-based SPEAK, three premier Rights organizations which routinely use litigation in US Courts to resolve constitutional issues and to indict violators of rights, in a press release issued Thursday, condemned the proposed appointment of Shavendra Silva - an ex-General of the Sri Lanka Army who is being charged for war-crimes in US Court - to the Special Advisory Group to advise UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on Peacekeeping Operations.
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Sri Lanka genocide story draws 22m visitors, says Argentine paper

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 January 2012, 03:33 GMT]
The Spanish Language Diario La Tarde, an evening journal published by independent journalists in West Argentina said the recent web publication of the story "Genocidio: (Primera entrega) - La masacre de los Tamils en Sri Lanka," [Genocide: (First Delivery) The Slaughter of Tamils in Sri Lanka] drew 22 million visits in two days. The story appearing in Spanish covers history to the conflict, the slaughter at Mu'l'livaaykkaal, and asserts the post-conflict miliary aggression in Tamil areas as a form of structural genocide.
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Resettled Tamil woman's body recovered near SLA bund in Thenmaraadchi

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 January 2012, 23:55 GMT]
The skeleton of a recently slain 28-year-old unmarried Tamil woman has been recovered near an abandoned military bund used by the Sri Lanka Army in A'rukuve'li, located along Kearatheevu Road (Jaffna - Mannaar Road) in Thenmaraadchi on Wednesday. The victim, Atputhamalar Subramaniyam, who had resettled in Thanangki'lappu near Ma'ravanpulavu of Thenmaraadchi last year, has been missing since November 13. But, her family was receiving SMS messages for some time from her cell phone. The abductors have been sending the messages with the intention of making the family to believe that she was not abducted, relatives of the victim who came for the funeral on Thursday told media. Tension prevailed in the recently resettled area where the occupying SLA is still on random patrol.
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Award winning filmmaker presents documentary on exiled Sinhala, Tamil journalists

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 January 2012, 22:45 GMT]
‘Silenced Voices – Tales of Sri Lankan Journalists in Exile’, a new documentary by Norwegian filmmaker Beate Arnestad, who directed and produced the award winning documentary ‘My Daughter the Terrorist’ in 2007, is to be pre-premiered in Oslo, Norway, on 09 February. The screening of ‘Silenced Voices’, which is about journalists, who contributed to international exposure of the internationally abetted genocidal war without witnesses, will be followed by a debate featuring journalists Bashana Abeywardane, the former chief editor of Hiru weekly, Frances Harrison, the former BBC foreign correspondent to Sri Lanka and Sverre Tom Radøy, a Norwegian journalist. The film features Mr. Bashana Abeywardene, his wife Sharmila Logeswaram, Sonali Wickrematunge and A. Lokeesan, TamilNet wartime correspondent, who was reporting from 2005 to April 2009 from Vanni.
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Uprooted fisherman drowns in Thirukkoayil, wife commits suicide

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 January 2012, 23:57 GMT]
55-year-old Alagesvari Nadesan, mother of four committed suicide on Tuesday after hearing that her husband who gone for fishing in a tank in Kagnchi-kudichcha-aa'ru had drowned. The uprooted family, deprived of livelihood since displacement, was dependent on the fishing income generated by the 62-year-old father Sellaththurai Nadesan. Several deaths in recent times, categorized as accidents and suicides, are reported in places where families stricken by poverty are still denied of their lands and access to resume their livelihoods, sources in Ampaa'rai said.
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‘Structural genocide will be complete in Mullaiththeevu in 2 years if TNA fails to act’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 January 2012, 14:01 GMT]
Uprooted Tamils from the strategic Ma'nalaa'ru region in Vanni, bordering the Mullaiththeevu and Trincomalee districts, have complained that 1,500 acres of their fertile lands northwest of Kokku'laay lagoon, have not been handed over to them. The agricultural lands that belong to the Tamil civilians of Kokku'laay, Kokkuth-thoduvaay and Karainaadduk-kea’ni villages still remain occupied by the Sri Lankan military since December 1984 when the SLA forcibly expelled the Tamils from these villages. TNA parliamentarians Mavai Senathirajah and S. Sritharan visited the uprooted villagers on a fact finding mission on Friday. The occupation of the fertile lands, lying between the Kokku'laay lagoon in the east and Kent and Dollar Farms in the southwest, is one of the major threats of the territorial integrity of the Tamil country.
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UK disappointed with LLRC’s recommendations on accountability

[TamilNet, Friday, 13 January 2012, 10:35 GMT]
In an official response to the LLRC report, the Foreign Office Minister of Britain with responsibility for Sri Lanka, Alistair Burt, on Thursday criticized the report for not addressing or only partially answering “many credible allegations of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law, including from the UN Panel of Experts report” . Meanwhile Lee Scott, MP for Ilford North and Chairman of the All Party Group for Tamils, welcomed the statement “which recognised the important factor - that is justice for the innocent victims” and stated that he would pursue this until justice is delivered. In the meantime, Tamil political circles in Vanni and Jaffna said they were disappointed by the alleged pro-Sri Lankan line taken by a British Conservative MP, James Wharton, who visited Jaffna and Vanni with Sri Lankan High Commissioner recently.
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