Colombo evicts UNICEF official

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 September 2009, 13:34 GMT]
Chief of Communications for UNICEF in Sri Lanka, James Elder's visa to continue to remain in Sri Lanka was refused by Sri Lanka's Department of Immigration, BBC reported Sunday. Mr Elder, a spokesman for the UN children's agency regularly spoke to the media on the plight of children caught up in the conflict, but Sri Lanka spokesperson was quoted by BBC as saying "James Elder's visa has been cancelled over his propaganda in support of the Tigers."
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Monthly 400 births in Vavuniyaa Menik IDP camp

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 September 2009, 08:04 GMT]
Four hundred babies are born every month in the internment camps at Menik Farm where nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians are held in Vavuniya district, and they are in need of considerable assistance and care, according to Sarvodaya leader Dr A. T. Ariyaretna. He presented the statistics when he was making a commemorative address in honour of Mother Theresa of Calcutta, at the SEDEC centre, Colombo Saturday.
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Sri Kantha meets fellow MP Kanagaretnam in detention

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 September 2009, 03:07 GMT]
N.Sri Kantha, Jaffna district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Friday met with the fellow parliamentarian Mr. Sathasivam Kanagaretnam who is currently being detained under the Emergency Regulations (ER) in the sixth floor of Sri Lanka's Criminal Investigation Department (CID), sources in Colombo said. Mr Kanagaretnam was arrested from a camp in Omanthai by CID officiers when the MP sought refuge after fleeing from Mullaitheivu in the last leg of military operation against LTTE. The TNA MP was trapped for several months in Mullaitheivu due to military operation.
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Police arrest suspect in killing of Sinhalese doctor in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 September 2009, 16:13 GMT]
Batticaloa police took into custody Friday a suspect involved in the killings of a Sinhalese Medical Officer and a Tamil civilian that took place in Naavatkudaa in Batticaloa district on 16 November 2008. Batticaloa court ordered the suspect to be detained in Ea’raavoor police station for further interrogation.
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Blackcaps cower in silence, says NZ peace group

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 September 2009, 12:49 GMT]
Global Peace and Justice in Auckland (GPJA), an activist group in New Zealand, said Saturday that New Zealand cricket team has "cowered in silence, complicit in the oppression of the Tamil population," for reneging on an agreement where "Blackcaps would publicly and symbolically facilitate the transfer of milk powder products from Fonterra in Sri Lanka to World Vision for the victims of war in the military camps." NZ Television channel TVnz said that GPJA's spokesperson John Minto told the station that the Blackcaps pulled out "after team manager Dave Currie refused to allow his team to take part in any humanitarian gesture."
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2 Up-Country Tamils found dead in Maskeliya

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 September 2009, 07:08 GMT]
A 24-year-old Tamil man from Maskeliya in Up-Country was found dead Friday hours after he had gone to collect firewood in the nearby jungle, Police said. Meanwhile, another Up-Country Tamil was found dead inside a public passenger coach in the same area on Saturday.
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Batticaloa Tamil resident arrested in Katunayake airport

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 September 2009, 07:03 GMT]
Sri Lankan Terrorist Intelligence Division (TID) officials Friday arrested a Tamil civilian at Katunayake International Airport when he was about to leave the country.
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2 Tamil journalists file FR petition

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 September 2009, 11:32 GMT]
Three -member bench of the Supreme Court Thursday fixed the inquiry into the fundamental rights violation petitions filed by S. Jaseeharan who is one of the co-directors of the ‘Outreach’ website and his fiancée V. Valarmathi for October 30. The Bench comprised Chief Justice Asoka de Silva, Justices N. G. Amaratunge and Chandra Ekanayake.
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Economist: EU report places Sri Lanka's GSP+ concession in jeopardy

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 September 2009, 02:06 GMT]
"Its [Sri Lanka's] alleged wartime and other abuses make a grim catalogue: thousands of Tamil civilians allegedly killed by army shelling during the rebels’ last stand; scores of Tamils disappeared; nearly 300,000 Tamil war-displaced callously interned; murder and intimidation of journalists—including J.S. Tissainayagam, sentenced to 20 years hard labour on August 31st for criticising the army’s tactics," says an editorial in The Economist in its 3rd September edition, and points to a damning 130-page report by the European Union which concludes that "Sri Lanka has failed to honour important human-rights commitments, and is ineligible for GSP Plus."
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Arrest Sri Lankan state racism to meet norms of International governance - paper

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 September 2009, 00:13 GMT]
A future peace in Sri Lanka rests on the international community being willing and able to contain and constrain the now rampant, but long-embedded, Sinhala chauvinism gripping the island, the Tamil Guardian said this week. “Racism, especially when entrenched thus [in the state], cannot be effaced by suasion and engagement, but by making it utterly impossible for it to hold sway,” the editorial said. “In short, as in the case of [past] racist regimes in other parts of the world, the international community must be prepared to isolate and exclude the Sri Lankan state until it is prepared to adhere, no matter how reluctantly, to international norms of governance.”
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Obama extolled Sri Lanka Journalist given prison term, says NYT

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 September 2009, 04:09 GMT]
Noting that J.S. Tissainayagam was picked by President Obama on World Press Freedom Day as a “symbol of oppression of the media,” the New York Times (NYT) Tuesday reported that this editor of a crusading magazine in SriLanka was sentenced by the island’s court for writing critical articles on the Sri Lanka government’s offensive against Tamils. The NYT, quoting two prominent staffers at the Colombo-based think-tank Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA), said that the sentence was a very serious blow [to journalism], that the law under which the sentence was passed “ is so vague that practically any speech could be prosecuted,” and that it is unacceptable that the Court would give maximum sentence to a journalist for simply doing his job.
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UK Tamils welcome Conservatives’ concern for Tamils in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 September 2009, 10:00 GMT]
Tamils in Britain have welcomed the statement last week by the main opposition Conservative Party highlighting the ongoing suffering of over 280,000 Tamils held in barbed-wire ringed, militarised detention camps in Sri Lanka. Noting the Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague’s expressions of “serious concern” over the confinement of Tamils in the camps, and those by the Shadow Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox, during his recent visit to Sri Lanka, the British Tamils Forum (BTF) said Wednesday it will continue to engage with all political parties and others in Britain to bring a permanent end to the suffering of the Tamil people in their traditional homeland.
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Tamil civilian reported missing in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 September 2009, 08:30 GMT]
A Tamil civilian from Saanthipuram in Mannaar is reported missing since 23 August, according to complaints made by his wife to the police and human rights organization in Mannar Tuesday.
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Return of 3,800 detained Tamils cancelled – TearFund

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 September 2009, 02:29 GMT]
TearFund, a Christian relief and development agency, this week renewed its call for hundreds of thousands of Tamils detained in Sri Lanka’s concentration camps to be allowed home. A scheduled return of 3,800 detained Tamils to a region being assisted by TearFund was cancelled two days ago - even after detainees had packed to return home, the agency said. TearFund also called for an international commission of inquiry into possible war crimes committed by both sides during the armed conflict in Sri Lanka after viewing Channel 4 video footage, allegedly showing Sri Lanka army soldiers executing Tamil men in January of this year.
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Ban under fire, Sri Lanka performance said key failure – Washington Post

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 September 2009, 18:22 GMT]
Amidst controversy surrounding Ban Ki Moon’s visit to Norway, Washington Post, in a critical article, published Tuesday, critiquing Ban’s performance, said, “halfway through his first term, Ban is facing a leadership crisis as U.N. civil servants and diplomats here increasingly portray him as an ineffective administrator whose reluctance to hold outlaw leaders to account for bad behavior has undercut the United Nations' moral authority.” Faulting Ban’s approach to quiet diplomacy with “despots and dictators,” the paper pointed to the engagement with Sri Lanka as a major failure of Ban’s tenure, for “not pressing hard enough to hold Sri Lanka accountable for its actions,” and for dropping “U.N. push for an independent investigation into war crimes, leaving it to Sri Lanka to determine whether its military was responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in the final offensive.”
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Boy dies in mine explosion, 2 children injured, in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 September 2009, 16:16 GMT]
A 12-year-old boy from Achchezhu in Jaffna died in an explosion Tuesday around 5:00 p.m when he tried to inspect a strange object found in a canal on the outer boundary of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Intelligence Unit base in Achchezhu. Two siblings, a boy and girl who stood watching close to the boy who died were seriously injured when the object exploded, sources in Jaffna said. The injured are admitted to the Emergency Unit in Jaffna Teaching Hospital where the girl is in a critical condition, hospital sources said.
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CPJ honors Tissainayagam with Press Freedom Award

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 September 2009, 11:35 GMT]
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based media watchdog, announced Monday that it will honor imprisoned Tamil journalist J.S. Tissainayagam with 2009 International Press Freedom Award. "We are announcing this award today to highlight the depth of outrage at this unjust sentence," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "Its harshness and the retroactive nature of the charges reflect vindictiveness and intolerance. We are calling today for Tissainayagam's release--an appeal we plan to repeat at our awards ceremony, when the world's leading journalists gather to demand press freedom for all of our colleagues," CPJ's press release said.
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Tamil woman arrested in Wellawatte

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 September 2009, 10:49 GMT]
Sri Lanka police arrested a Tamil woman in Wellawatte Monday while staying in a lodge making preparation to travel abroad. She is being detained by the police and interrogated by the Terrorist Investigation Unit, police sources said.
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Sri Lanka's cynical technique of rebuttal - Aussie Don

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 September 2009, 04:24 GMT]
Commenting on the recently exposed execution video, Professor Jake Lynch, Director, Centre for Peace and Conflict at Sydney University writes: "the Sri Lankan authorities assiduously kept journalists from international media away from the conflict zone, having, in the previous few years, terrorised local editors and reporters with arbitrary arrests, imprisonment and beatings, while many were mysteriously killed amid persistent rumours of official complicity. Now, the same authorities who have treated journalism with such contempt are seeking to keep information in the realm of contestability, through the cynical technique of rebuttal."
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Sentence to Tissainayagam extra-judicial: HR lawyer

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 August 2009, 23:42 GMT]
The sentence of 20-year rigorous imprisonment to J.S. Tissanayagam on Monday mark a sad day for journalists and those who believe in the ’freedom of expression’ all over the world, says Deputy Chairperson of Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR), K Sivapalan, an Atterney-at-Law from Trincomalee, in whose opinion this is an extra-judicial way to punish people. ”The provisions of the PTA are not in conformity with the International Criminal Law especially the ’confession’ being admitted in evidence agaist the accused and with regard to the burden of proof.UNHRC requested the GoSL to repeal or amend many of the provisions which were not in conformity. However this was not followed by them on the basis that it was an erosion of the sovereignty of Sri Lanka,” Mr. Sivapalan, now exiled in Norway, said.
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