SLA Commander's deposition provides convincing evidence of war crimes- TAG

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 June 2010, 00:21 GMT]
Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group, claimed in a press release issued Saturday, that it has obtained a 100-page long sworn affidavit from a senior commander of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) who has fled Sri Lanka seeking asylum for himself and his family. Noting the sensitivity of the evidence, TAG said that the affidavit was recorded by a court reporter but declined to reveal the name of the commander or the modalities used in obtaining the affidavit. The sworn testimony contains "clear and convincing evidence" that Colombo committed war crimes, and this document can be made available to "other independent organizations which can demonstrate serious intent in pursuing legal action against Colombo officials," TAG spokesperson told TamilNet.
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Mahinda Rajapakse to hold talks with TNA, EPDP before leaving to India

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 June 2010, 20:20 GMT]
Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse has invited the representatives of Tamil National (TNA) for talks on the eve of his visit to India Tuesday, sources in Colombo said. The president has also invited representatives of Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) led by Minister Douglas Devananda for talks to be held following his meeting with TNA representatives Monday evening, the sources added. Meanwhile, the joint statement by Sri Lanka and India to be released following the meeting with the heads of both governments in India is expected to include the various development projects that are to be launched in Jaffna peninsula, the sources added.
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Sri Lanka's war, a corporate war, says Arundhati Roy

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 June 2010, 02:22 GMT]
The war in Sri Lanka was not just a war of the Sri Lankans against the Tamil people, according to writer-activist Arundhati Roy. "That was a corporate war. All the large Indian companies are now heading to Sri Lanka to make more money," Roy said on Friday speaking at a Chennai convention on attacks by India against tribal resistance movements, Times of India said. Roy has previously voiced her opposition openly on Sri Lanka's war against Tamils and had condemned India's silence on the humanitarian tragedy in Sri Lanka, calling the war "a racist war on Tamils."
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Boyle: Independent Eelam will be a bulwark for India

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 June 2010, 00:02 GMT]
Professor Francis A. Boyle, an expert in international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, said that an independent state of Tamil eelam south of the Indian border will add to India's security, and therefore, India should actively intervene in the Tamil struggle and facilitate the formation of Tamil eelam. Boyle was talking to the popular Tamil Nadu Tamil biweekly magazine Junior Vikatan in an exclusive interview given to the magazine's US correspondent Prakash M Swamy early part of May.
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Student Unions observe death anniversary of Pon. Sivakumaran in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 June 2010, 21:20 GMT]
Jaffna University Student Union (JUSU) and Jaffna Technical College Student Union (JTCSU) observed the death anniversary of Pon. Sivakumaran who was the pioneer in leading the Tamil youth into armed struggle to regain the robbed rights of Tamils marking this transition and setting its basic attributes such as sacrificing one's life by consuming cyanide. Only a few students participated in the event due to fear while Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Eelam People Democratic Party (EPDP) which vie with each other to observe the death anniversary of Pon. Sivakumaran did not show any interest in commemorating the day, sources in Jaffna said.
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Journalist Roopan remembered in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 June 2010, 20:54 GMT]
Media associations in Jaffna peninsula held an event Saturday in remembrance of Selvaratnam Roopan, sub-editor of ‘Yaazh Thinakrual’ Tamil daily, also known as ’Sakthi Thasan’ who passed away due to illness in Jaffna Teaching Hospital 25 April, in Jaffna Multi Purpose Society Hall. General Manager of Yaazh Thinakural, A. S. Nadarajan presided at the event attended by Professor. V. P. Sivananthan, Dr. M. Jamunanantha and many media persons of Jaffna peninsula. 32-year-old Roopan had been in the forefront in rescuing thousands of people caught in the clashes in Ma’ndaitheevu in the islets of Jaffna in 2006 and in admitting the injured among them in the hospitals in Jaffna.
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SLA soldiers harass resettled women during nights in Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 June 2010, 20:29 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldier who broke into a house in Thirunakar in Ki’linochchi Friday midnight and attempted to sexually harass a woman was chased away by neighbours, according to complaints made by the resettled families to Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, N. Siritharan. The soldier who tried to escape the chasing men accidentally fell into a well on the way and had to remain in the well until rescued by fellow soldiers who came that way in a tractor as the men who chased him did not pull him out.
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Alston: Domestic inquiries into extrajudicial killings insufficient

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 June 2010, 00:08 GMT]
United Nations special envoy, Prof. Philip Alston, stressed the need for international inquiries into serious allegations of extrajudicial executions in cases where national probes have been insufficient, citing Sri Lanka, among other nations. Mr. Alston also referred to the allegations that as many as 30,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka last year in the closing months of the conflict between Government forces and Tamil rebels and that grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law were committed. “In this case also there is a need for an independent international inquiry,” UN News Center reported, quoting Alston. Professor Francis A Boyle commented after Alston's statement that "U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon no longer has any excuse to delay appointing an International War Crimes Committee on Sri Lanka, which has been within his powers to do for the past year now."
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Tamil political prisoners appeal to TNA seeking amnesty

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 June 2010, 04:25 GMT]
Tamil political prisoners held in Welikada and Magazine prisons have appealed toTamil National Alliance (TNA) to move an adjournment motion in Parliament when it is scheduled to meet next week 8 June demanding general amnesty for them. More than one hundred and twenty Tamil political prisoners are held in these prisons and most of them are yet to be produced in court.
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TNLA to register as political party

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 June 2010, 04:16 GMT]
The new Tamil political party, Tamil National Liberation Alliance (TNLA), is to hand over an application to be registered as a political party in Sri Lanka as Sri Lanka Elections Department has begun to entertain newly formed political parties from 1 June, according to M. K. Sivajilingam, General Secretary of TNLA and former Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian of Jaffna district told media in Colombo.
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NYT corrects journalistic "error" on MIA article

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 June 2010, 03:46 GMT]
New York Times (NYT) in a correction published Thursday admitted that NYT journlalist Lynn Hirschberg used quotes from an interview with Jaffna born music phenom Maya Arulpragasam (known by popular name MIA) out of context to misrepresent her views on the Tamil conflict. Hirschberg also wrote "Maya taps into her rage at the persecution of Tamils in Sri Lanka to espouse violence," pointing to Maya's lyrics "You wanna win a war?/Like P.L.O. I don’t surrender.” A media outlet commented "within the context of the song, there’s no way to interpret the lyrics this way, unless you’re coming into it with a certain agenda."
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Unintended consequences and deeper dynamic of the IIFA in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 June 2010, 00:24 GMT]
“The decision to hold this year’s International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards in Colombo was clearly a political, even geopolitical, calculation. Whereas the previous award ceremonies … were meant to bring India ‘to the world’, this year’s event was intended instead to bring the world to Sri Lanka – or, more precisely, to the Sinhala south. It has done that, but in ways unintended. …The clumsy rush to whitewash the regime in Colombo has thus, perversely, served to focus attention on, and further highlight, Sri Lanka’s grotesque past and present,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper said this week. “[Moreover] the hosting of IIFA event in Colombo is symbolic of a much deeper dynamic: … while the Sinhala south is showcased and touts for economic inflows, the Northeast is isolated, hidden and scorched. This is not a mere legacy of protracted war, but of a long institutionalised, racial logic.”
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Father of victim in Channel 4 photo identifies son as LTTE member

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 June 2010, 16:15 GMT]
The father of a victim in the photos released by Channel- 4 in mid May identified one of them as his son as a member of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), arrested by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Mu'l'livaaykkaal between 18 and 19 May 2009. The father told TamilNet that the LTTE combatants could not have been arrested in April 2009 as it was reported earlier as he had met his son on 11 May in 2009. A mother and her daughter have earlier identified another victim in the photo as 40-year-old Thuraichamy Harikrishanan, a native of Vavuniyaa, an ex-member of LTTE. Meanwhile, close relatives living in the diaspora of another LTTE member also claimed the same person as their relative. Efforts are under way to clarify the identity of the victim, a Tamil group working on genocide documentation told TamilNet Friday.
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Protests against controversial IIFA event draw attention on Tamil genocide

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 June 2010, 01:15 GMT]
As protests gathered momentum in Tamil Nadu and Mumbai, with the support of South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce (SIFCC), against holding International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards weekend in Colombo, big stars from the Indian film industry have decided to avoid participation, media reports from Mumbai said. Hindustan Times reported that the event was turning out to be IIFAs most controversial, even before it has been held. The protests in South India have also brought media attention in New Delhi. The NDTV has timed a documentary, titled ‘Blood on Water,’ accommodating Tamil perspectives and an Indian doctor who was part of an Indian paramedic team present in Vavuniyaa last year, during the final phase of the war in Vanni, has spoken out on the scale of the slaughter as "massive casualties" among the civilian population.
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STF, Police arrest 4 Tamils in Puththalam, Pottuvil

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 June 2010, 15:37 GMT]
Two Tamil civilians were taken into custody by the Special Task Force (STF) at Arugam Bay in Pottuvil Tuesday. The police said that the two are suspected to have links with the LTTE. The arrested were handed over to the Terrorist Investigations Unit (TID) and are being interrogated, according to the Police.
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Samantar ruling portends legal danger to alleged foreign torturers

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 June 2010, 11:20 GMT]
In an unanimous ruling at the United States Supreme Court, the judges said that a federal law that protects foreign government officials from law suits filed in the U.S. does not cover individuals such as Mohamed Ali Samantar, who was a prime minister in the 1980s in the now ousted government of Siad Biarre. A group of Somalis who allege torture and killings by Samantar's government may pursue legal action against Samantar now living in Fairfax, Virginia, the court ruled.
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SLA hastens to destroy skeletal remains of victims killed in Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 June 2010, 16:18 GMT]
Following the disclosure of five male corpses in a toilet pit in Ki’linochchi Monday Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has ordered all skeletal remains of persons assassinated or killed in war lying visibly in Mullaiththeevu district in Vanni, an officer of a humanitarian de-mining organization who had personally seen some skeletal remains along the roads in Mullaiththeevu and the frantic efforts of SLA soldiers to burn them without any trace told TamilNet Tuesday. Colombo has sent in a team of Sinhalese officers from Vavuniyaa to survey the areas and evaluate the extent of de-mining that has to be done, with the assistance of SLA, sources in Vavuniyaa said.
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'Freedom Flotilla symbolises new dimension of humanitarian struggle'

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 June 2010, 12:48 GMT]
A project manager of the Vanni Mission ship of the Tamil diaspora has said the courage displayed by the organisers and activists of the Freedom Flotilla and the sacrifices made by the activists have brought a new dimension to the global humanitarian struggle, exclusively revealing to TamilNet how Tamil Nadu government was 'forced' to act in delivering the aid carried by the Tamil mission last year. S. Noel, the France based project manger of the Tamil diaspora project said humanitarian activists world over should not hesitate to initiate similar actions in future if the humanity is serious about changing the attitude of oppressors, who cause untold sufferings to innocent children in besieged situations of genocidal proportion, and urged Tamil diaspora to express solidarity with those affected in the tragedy.
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India wants TNA proposals submitted to Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 June 2010, 06:11 GMT]
Top officials of the Indian government have advised the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to consider submitting its devolution proposals to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa before he leaves to New Delhi on June 7, informed diplomatic sources in Colombo said. The move has come as the Indian Establishment, locked in a corporate race with China, has been pushing Colombo to finalise the bilateral Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), which New Delhi wants signed when Mahinda Rajapaksa visits India. In the meantime, the TNA leadership has invited Tamil parties, except Douglas Devananda, through Tamil channels, to join hands with the alliance before facing the provincial elections in the North. The invitation has also been extended to paramilitary-cum-political outfits aligned with India.
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UN Rights chief renews call for Sri Lanka war-crimes probe

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 May 2010, 10:41 GMT]
The United Nations human rights chief, Navaneetham Pillay Monday reiterated her call for an "independent international probe" into Sri Lanka Government's final offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during the final months of the war in 2009. While noting the appointment of "post-war reconciliation commission" by Colombo, Navi Pillay said, "based on previous experience and new information, I remain convinced that such objectives [looking into alleged human rights violations, and provide justice to victims] would be better served by establishing an independent international accountability mechanism that would enjoy public confidence, both in Sri Lanka and elsewhere," AFP reported.
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