Tamil engineer arrested in Katunayake

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 September 2009, 09:34 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s State Intelligence Service (SIS) Sunday morning arrested a Tamil engineer who arrived in Katunayake International Airport (KIA) from Singapore. He has been identified as Ratnasekaram, a resident of Point Pedro in Jaffna district, sources in Colombo said.
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Trinco Tamil youth abducted in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 September 2009, 18:06 GMT]
R.Manotharan, 26, a native of Naranayapuram in Moothoor east and later residing in Nochchimunai in Kaaththankudy police division was abducted by unidentified persons on Friday, according to complaints lodged with the Kaathankudy Police by his parents. The youth returned to Sri Lanka in August, returned after working in Qatar in Middle East since 2006.
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Welikade Tamil prisoners continue hunger strike

[TamilNet, Sunday, 20 September 2009, 01:55 GMT]
135 Tamil political prisoners out of a total of 600 Tamil political prisoners in maximum security Central Jail in Welikada, Colombo, continued their fast unto death campaign demanding the state to expedite their cases, release the prisoners who have no charges filed against them, and to allow others charged with less serious offenses to undergo rehabilitation.
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Vaddukkoaddai and Thimphu

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 September 2009, 13:04 GMT]
Calling for the creation of independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam, based on Vaddukkoadai Resolution (VR) was the last spontaneous and definite mandate by Eezham Tamils in a totally free and democratic atmosphere. As the need for democratic political organisation unfolds afresh, Tamils have to take up the thread directly from the VR. The Thimphu principles and all the other formulas put forward subsequently under the duress of powers, and failed as negotiation models, do not get precedence over the VR as bases for political organization. Mu’l’livaaykkaal was not the real defeat. The defeat comes only when Tamils are made to politically denounce their heart-felt aspirations. The diaspora needs to peruse and correct course of any proposal that stops just at self-determination. In UN charter and in international law it is just an empty phrase that doesn’t protect nations or ethnicities.
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Two Up-Country Tamil girls reported missing in Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 September 2009, 12:43 GMT]
Two Up-Country Tamil girls who were brought to Colombo from Maskeliya in Nuwara Eliya district as domestic aids are reported missing. The parents of the two girls have lodged a complaint with P. Radakrishnan, deputy vocational and technical training minister, who represents the Upcountry People’s Front (UPF).
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‘From one prison to another’: Sri Lanka’s ‘resettlement’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 September 2009, 08:31 GMT]
Under international pressure as the monsoon looms, the Sri Lanka government is hastily engaged in relocating some of the displaced Tamils being held in militarised internment camps in Vavuniyaa. However, the inmates are being moved from Vavuniyaa’s barbed-wire ringed camps to similar overcrowded enclosures without facilities in other districts, sources in Jaffna said. Moreover these camps are also located in low-lying terrain in the path of oncoming floods, NGO workers say. “There is no resettlement. This is like being sent from one prison to another prison," Mavai Senathiraja, a parliamentarian from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) said.
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Passports of Indian traders in Kalmunai confiscated

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 September 2009, 07:34 GMT]
A special team of the Sri Lanka’s Immigration and Emigration Department Friday raided houses and lodges in Kalmunai town in the eastern province where Indian traders were staying and engaged in the sale of textiles with tourist visa. The team confiscated passports and other travel documents from eighty-two Indian citizens, all Tamils of Tamil Nadu, who had entered the island on tourist visa. They were ordered to appear before the Controller of Immigration and Emigration in Colombo for further action.
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Court directs CID to expedite inquiry against detained Tamil civilians

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 September 2009, 04:08 GMT]
Colombo Chief Magistrate Nishantha Hapuarachchi Friday directed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to expedite the investigation into the cases against twenty-seven Tamil civilians arrested in connection with alleged terrorist activities and to report to the court on the progress made so far, on September 29. The order was made following Defence Counsel claiming that the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) was acting unfairly in its investigations.
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Prison guards assault hunger striking detainees in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 September 2009, 10:00 GMT]
At least 36 Tamil political prisoners who were part of a fast unto death hunger strike at the central jail in Welikada Colombo are alleged to have been severely assaulted by guards and jailers on early Friday, informed sources told TamilNet. 32 of the political prisoners who were being held in Cell Block G were transferred to the Block M, and some of them had sustained injuries in the episode, according to the sources. The detainees have been forced to stop their hunger strike.
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Video investigation by Colombo not impartial - Alston

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 September 2009, 02:17 GMT]
Noting that two of the four experts cited by the government were full-time government employees, another had previously acted on behalf of the government, "and the basis on which the fourth was identified and selected as an expert remains unclear," Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said Thursday, that studies could not be characterized as impartial. "The only way to do this [authenticate the video] is for an independent and impartial investigation to take place,'' Alston said. The video clip, aired in British Channel-4 TV, allegedly showing Sri Lankan troops executing Tamil prisoners stripped naked and hands tied behind backs, has shocked the world community, and re-ignited calls for investigations of war-crimes against Sri Lanka military.
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Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs meets Tamil Diaspora group

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 23:35 GMT]
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hon. Stephen Smith, participated in a meeting organised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) with representatives of several Australian Tamil organisations and individuals, chaired by Mr. David Holly, the Assistant Secretary, South and West Asia Branch of the DFAT, sources in Australia said. Minister Smith explained his government’s approach to handling the conflict in Sri Lanka.
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Tamil political prisoners in Colombo on hunger strike

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 16:05 GMT]
Tamil political prisoners arrested on suspicion under Emergency Regulations (ER) and Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), languishing in Magazine Prison and Colombo Remand Prison (CPR) for many years without being produced in the courts, launched a hunger strike from 6:00 a.m Thursday as their requests placed in previous hunger strikes had not been taken into consideration despite promises by legal authorities that their cases will be taken for trial in two months time, sources in Colombo said. The fasting prisoners said the President of Sri Lanka has granted general amnesty to the soldiers who had deserted their posts during the war, in the past few months and hence it would be an easy matter for the President to use his executive powers at least to order to take up our cases immediately for trial as we had only been arrested on suspicion.
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'Business can’t escape responsibility'

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 12:37 GMT]
Britain as a country bears a big responsibility to the plight of Tamils in the internment camps of Sri Lanka. Because it was one of the major powers that had repeatedly asked the Tamil civilians of Vanni to go to the side of the Colombo government, knowing very well what awaited them were barbed-wire camps. The British business cannot shun its responsibility of freeing them through economic measures. British Retail Consortium sympathising Colombo government and campaigning against EU sanctions amounts to only encouraging the method of concentration camp as an effective tool of structural genocide in the island, blame Tamil activists in UK.
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3 Tamil youths arrested in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 10:32 GMT]
Special Task Force (STF) commandos arrested Wednesday morning three Tamil youths in a search conducted in Cheddiku'lam in Vavuniyaa district, sources in Vavuniyaa said. Many persons in the area were subjected to interrogation and checking during the search. The arrested youths are detained in Vavuniyaa police station.
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Body of Tamil woman recovered in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 10:20 GMT]
Vavuniyaa police recovered the decomposed body of an eighteen-year-old Tamil married woman from a closed shop located along 10th Lane in Vairavapu’liyangku’lam in Vavuniyaa. A Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp is located in front of the shop where building materials are sold, sources in Vavuniyaa said. Police had been notified by the public that an offensive smell was emanating from the said shop and they had to break in to recover the body.
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Two Up-Country Tamil girls molested by Sri Lankan policeman, businessmen

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 09:52 GMT]
A 14-year-old Tamil girl from a leading girl’s convent in Hatton was allegedly raped by a Sri Lankan policeman attached to the same area, and a court on Wednesday ordered the immediate arrest of the suspect, who has been transferred to the north barely a day after the incident is alleged to have taken place. Meanwhile, another under-age girl in the same division was abducted by three businessmen who forced her to perform sexual acts and filmed her inside a privately-owned studio.
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Jaffna youths disinterested in joining police force

[TamilNet, Thursday, 17 September 2009, 05:23 GMT]
Despite efforts made by Minister Douglas Devananda to recruit Tamil young men and women from Jaffna district to serve in the police stations in Jaffna district only a few of them have shown interest, sources in Jaffna said. The minister made a public request in the media again Wednesday calling the Tamil youths to join the police force. Meanwhile, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) including its parliamentary leader R. Sampanthan and civil society representatives in Jaffna expressed strong protest against this scheme pointing out that the government, without placing a just political solution for the Tamils, is using this as a ploy to deceive the Tamils showing that it is sharing police powers with the Tamils in Jaffna.
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Tamil national aspirations, TNA and transnational governance

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 23:36 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) or any other political party claiming that they represent Tamils have no right to proclaim that they have moved away from the 1977 mandate for independence and sovereignty of the Eezham Tamil nation, to satisfy India, Mahinda Rajapaksa or any other power. They may negotiate but without dropping the fundamentals, until any acceptable formula is freshly mandated by all Tamils including those who are now in the diaspora. Meanwhile, the emerging novel concept of transnational governance will be misled if it is orientated merely with an idea of negotiation. It is not just a negotiation platform. There is no need to show Tamils have ‘democratically’ dropped their aspiration just because some powers want it as a pre-requisite for negotiation.
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Sanctions compel people to change their government’s conduct - paper

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 20:28 GMT]
Noting that “the logic of sanctions is simple: economic isolation of a state compels its discomforted people to pressure their leadership to change its behaviour and adhere to sought after international principles,” and that “it is especially on ultra-nationalist leaderships that rely on popular support, like President Mahinda Rajapsksa's government in Sri Lanka or former President Slobodan Milosevic's in Serbia, that sanctions can be most effective,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper this week said: “The international community can support the Sinhala state and hope for lasting peace or it can act to constrain Sinhala chauvinism and bring about one.”
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M K Narayanan declares war on Tamil diaspora

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 September 2009, 11:54 GMT]
Addressing Director Generals and Inspector Generals of Police Monday, India’s National Security Advisor and one of the architects of Indian Establishment’s policy towards Eezham Tamils, M K Narayanan, told them of the need to keep watch against Tamil diaspora reviving the LTTE and cautioned them to be prepared for any eventuality. “The funding lines of the LTTE are still intact and there is always a possibility that disgruntled elements in the Tamil diaspora across the globe could get together to help the terror outfit regroup and rearm,” said M K Narayanan, according to The Economic Times, Tuesday. His fear stems from his own policy 'haunting him back,' commented Tamil circles in the diaspora.
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