Mass graves fear prevents Colombo from seeking demining help - Sampanthan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 October 2009, 11:35 GMT]
"The Sri Lanka government fears that, if the international community gets involved in the de-mining, they may stumble on to mass graves of Tamil victims killed during the last stages of fighting between the Sri Lanka military and the Tamil Tigers," said Parliamentary Group Leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), R. Sampathan, on Thursday accusing the Sri Lankan government of refusing to accept foreign assistance towards the de-mining parliamentary sources in Colombo said.
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Tamils facing “cultural annihaliation” by SL Government: Australian Politician

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 October 2009, 05:10 GMT]
“It may be argued that the Tamil people have a legitimate right to self-determination but what is essential now is that we must see an end to the oppressive and discriminatory policies of the victorious Sri Lankan Government” urged Greens MLC Ian Cohen in an address to the Australian Parliament on September 24th. Highlighting the “potential humanitarian catastrophe” faced by almost 300,000 refugees who “despite their desire and capacity to return home they are being held prisoner”, Cohen described the Governments treatment of Tamils as “a litany of injustice, cultural annihilation and human rights atrocities”. Meanwhile, a Tamil NGO official in Vavuniyaa, while welcoming the interest of Australian politicians, said they should also come forward to "first address the question of double standards, employed by their government, between issues such as East Timor and Eezham.”
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'India follows Sri Lanka in waging civil war'

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 October 2009, 05:01 GMT]
India, in consultation with US counter-insurgency forces, is planning an unprecedented military offensive against ultra-Marxist rebels that is going to hit mainly the Adivasi (indigenous) peoples of India in the states of Andra Predesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Maharashtra, warns a protest document drafted by Arundhati Roy and a group of progressive intellectuals. India plans to deploy its paramilitary forces, anti-rebel militias organized and funded by government agencies and possibly Indian Armed Forces including the Air Force in this war, the stated objective of which is to ‘liberate’ areas under the influence of Maoist rebels, but the real aim is to exploit land and resources of the deprived people, the document points out.
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4 Tamil youths arrested in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 October 2009, 03:47 GMT]
Police and Special Task Force (STF) commandos took into custody Tuesday night four Tamil youths in a joint search conducted in the streets of Thirukkoayil in Ampaa’rai district, the relatives of the youths said.
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Colombo has plans to colonize North with Buddhist Sinhalese – Suresh Premachandran

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 October 2009, 17:06 GMT]
The government of Sri Lanka is actively engaged in colonizing Ki’linochchi, Mullaiththeevu and Jaffna district with Sinhalese Buddhists in order to crush the demand for Eelam in the traditional homelands of the Tamils in the North, Suresh Premachandran, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Jaffna parliamentarian, said in a press meet held Monday in his Jaffna office. He further accused the government for not accepting help from International Community in de-mining Vanni as it does not want the persons from foreign countries to see the mass graves of civilians killed by its armed forces in the Vanni during the war. The MP also said that though the government says that it had resettled 40,000 IDPs from Vavuniyaa internment camps, 95% of them have been again detained in new internment camps in their respective home districts under the direct control of Sri Lankan forces.
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Tamil youth arrested in Colombo

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 October 2009, 15:32 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and police arrested a Tamil youth travelling in a government transport bus Tuesday morning at Ediyawathe in Colombo in a joint search conducted from 7:00 a.m until 11:00 a.m, sources in Colombo said. The arrested youth is detained in Kotahena police station.
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250,000 Tamils in dire humanitarian need, says British Minister

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 October 2009, 04:56 GMT]
Mike Foster, a British international development minister, said after visiting Menik farm, the internment camp where Sri Lanka holds more than a quarter of million displaced Tamils, that the internees "are in dire humanitarian need of being allowed out of internment camps which face flash floods in Sri Lanka's monsoons," the British paper Guardian reported. "Although conditions have improved the tents are basically disintegrating. With the monsoons we will have sewage floating around – water-borne diseases will be rife," the paper said quoting Foster.
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CID arrests 3 Tamil youths at Medawachchiya

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 October 2009, 19:24 GMT]
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Sri Lanka has arrested three Tamil youths, two of them on Sunday and the third on Monday at Medawachchiya check point while they were on their way to Colombo from Vavuniyaa, according to their relatives.
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Boat people, no security risk - Australian Minister

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 October 2009, 12:25 GMT]
Australian Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor has "rejected claims some Sri Lankan boat people detained on Christmas Island are former Tamil Tigers who could pose a security risk," Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) reported Tuesday. The Minister was responding to Sri Lanka's high commissioner to Australia, Senaka Walgampaya's allegations that "former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels are among recent illegal boat arrivals," the newspaper said.
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Sri Lanka's internment camps for Tamils: experience of an inmate

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 October 2009, 09:37 GMT]
South Asia has never witnessed such a large scale, state-organized crime as one committed on Eezham Tamils by the government of Sri Lanka. Perhaps the world has never witnessed hitherto that such a crime of internment camps for civilians could be initiated collectively by all the powers of the world and the UN, and could be left like this without anyone being able to do anything about it. A civilian woman who was a captive in the Zone 3 of the internment camp of Menik Farm for four months, and managed to come out by ‘other means’ a month ago, writes on her experience in the camp – an indelible shame for the so-called civilised world.
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Bank officer released, wife under detention

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 October 2009, 03:58 GMT]
The wife of a Tamil State bank officer Mr. V. Gnanorathan is still being held in detention by the State Intelligence Unit of the Sri Lanka Army. Gnanorathan was released Saturday. Wellawatte police arrested both a few days ago from their residence in Wellawatte on information received following the arrest of medical specialist Dr. Maheswaran Umakanth serving in Vavuniyaa general hospital.
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EP Education Ministry administered by Sinhalese officers - CTU

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 October 2009, 03:48 GMT]
Ceylon Teachers’ Union (CTU) pointed out in a memorandum sent to the President Mahinda Rajapakse Saturday that the development of education in the Eastern Province where Tamil speaking people are in majority is in the hands of three Sinhalese officers who hold the three top posts in EP provincial education ministry. The provincial minister of education is also a Sinhalese, CTU said.
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JMC mayor, deputy to take oath before President

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 October 2009, 16:32 GMT]
Eealm People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) sources in Jaffna said that the successful candidates of the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) proposed to hold office as Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) will take the oath 12 October in front of Sri Lanka President, Mahinda Rajapakse at his official residence, Temple Trees, in Colombo. Tamil National Alliance (TNA) members of JMC had already taken the oath while the UPFA members will be taking the oath in front of the Mayor and Deputy Mayor after 12 October, the sources added.
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Duplicitous Colombo bereft of excuses on holding internees - ICG

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 October 2009, 22:25 GMT]
Andrew Stroehlein, International Crisis Group's Communications Director, during his testimony to the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights on the situation in Sri Lanka Thursday, noted the poor and deteriorating conditions in the internment camps where more than 264,000 Tamils are being held by Colombo, and said, "[t]he worst kind of duplicity was seen just a few weeks ago, when the [Sri Lanka] government announced it had released 10,000 displaced persons. In fact, we know at least 3,300 people had been moved from an internment camp to another detention facility," and added, "Sri Lankan government has run out of excuses for continuing to keep these hundreds of thousands of innocent people prisoner."
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Tissainayagam's wife accepts Mackler award

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 October 2009, 07:19 GMT]
Ronnate Tissainayagam, wife of Sri Lanka jailed journalist, Jayaprakash Tissainayagam, accepted the Peter Mackler Award for courageous and ethical journalism, named for a 30-year veteran of Agence France-Presse who died last year, at a ceremony at the National Press Club Friday, AFP reported. Tissainayagam was honored by the US branch of Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders and Global Media Forum, a company founded by Mackler to train journalists and non-profit organizations to use the media as a tool for social change, AFP report added.
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Former Tamil Director on hunger strike in Magazine prison

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 October 2009, 05:11 GMT]
Former Director of Sri Lanka National Film Corporation (SLNFC), S. Thevasan, presently detained in Colombo Magazine Prison, is on a hunger strike from Thursday morning demanding speedy inquiry into his case and release, his fellow prisoners informed Tamil Media Friday morning.
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5 Tamil youths arrested in Negombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 October 2009, 05:05 GMT]
Sri Lanka Police and Sri Lanka Air Force personnel took into custody five Tamil youths Friday morning in a search conducted in Negombo. The arrested youths are being detained in Negombo police station, the youths’ relatives said.
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Clinton's rape bombshell

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 October 2009, 00:17 GMT]
US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, chairing the United Nations Security Council meeting Wednesday, on the last day of US's turn of the rotating presidency of the 15-member body in September, on violence against women in warfare, dropped a bombshell on Sri Lanka by including Sri Lanka in the company of Congo, Sudan, and Mayanmar, saying Sri Lanka has used rape as a weapon of war [against Tamils], thereby adding another incriminating legal element to mounting woes of the Sri Lanka Government from allegations of war-crimes for slaughtering more than 20,000 Tamil civilians, and incarcerating more than 300,000 Tamils with little freedom of movement in military supervised internment camps.
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Eezham Tamil filmmaker’s debut reaches international film festival

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 October 2009, 18:46 GMT]
Vancouver International film Festival’s Canadian Images session this year opens with a Tamil film ‘1999', made by Lenin M. Sivam, an Eezham Tamil of Canada and a software architect by profession. The film, featuring violence-affected Eezham Tamils struggling to adjust their lives in Canada, is the first full-feature production of the largely self-made filmmaker. Sivam, 35, born in Jaffna and migrated to Canada in 1991, earlier produced successful short films in Tamil. His father V M L Sivam was playwright, director and actor in his home country.
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Protestors attack SL High Commission in New Delhi

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 October 2009, 12:28 GMT]
A group of Indian protesters, who were demonstrating against the Sri Lankan state Friday evening, attacked the Sri Lankan High Commission in New Delhi. The protesters were slanting slogans against the Rajapaksa government on Mahatma Gandhi's birthday. Indian Police said around 20 protesters broke through the barrier and caused damage to some property inside the high commission. Meanwhile, activists in Tamil Nadu staged widespread protests against the Sri Lankan government and the Indian government, which they alleged abetting the genocide in Sri Lanka.
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