West decides to buttress Colombo

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 July 2009, 11:01 GMT]
After weeks of deliberations the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has ultimately decided to release 2.5 billion dollar loan to Colombo on a 20-month stand-by basis. 133 million dollars will be made available immediately. The conditionality of the loan is due to be finalised on 24th July. Inside circles said that while the loan will relieve Colombo from acute financial crisis and pressure on external liquidity, it is going to be hooked with external obligations. But to what extent the external obligations are related to relief and political solutions to Tamils is not specified. Meanwhile insiders also said that the Indian Establishment was successful in convincing the visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the ‘inevitable need’ of saving the regime in Colombo. "If the UN shields the war criminals, the IMF rewards them," Tamil circles responded to the IMF move.
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Opening A9 route, an election gimmick – Mudiyappu Remedias

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 July 2009, 19:23 GMT]
“Though the Government of Sri Lanka had control of the A9 land route to Jaffna eight months ago it had kept it closed until now when it opens the route for public use as an election gimmick to lure voters in but no one can fool the people of Jaffna, Mudiyappu Remedias, the chief candidate of Tamil National Alliance (TNA), contesting Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election, said in an interview to TamilNet Wednesday
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French university conference on Tamils flawed in perspectives - Tamil academic

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 July 2009, 09:28 GMT]
Organisers from two French universities have embarked upon an international pluridisciplinary conference on ‘Tamil communities and the Sri Lankan conflict’, based on presumptions that the LTTE has ‘surrendered’ and what exists is only Tamil ‘minority rights’ issues, as though the question of Eezham Tamil nation doesn't exist. One of the conference themes is the role of religious communities in seeking solutions to “the traditional Tamil society founded mainly upon the importance of caste and religious solidarity.” A Tamil academic in Colombo, responding to the conference scheme said the current task of the Eezham Tamils is to prove their status of nationhood since the agenda of priority for Colombo, New Delhi and the IC that orchestrate media and universities, is to nullify Eezham Tamil nationalism.
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Galle MC opposition leader shot dead

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 July 2009, 08:34 GMT]
Unknown gunmen riding on a motor cycle shot and killed Galle Municipal Council opposition leader (UNP) Dushantha Senaviratne Wednesday morning around 7:00 a.m. while he was on his way to a shop nearby his residence at Bellgaha Kandiya in Galle town, Police said. The UNP had selected Mr. Seneviratne to contest in the forthcoming Southern Provincial Council election, party sources told TamilNet.
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Colombo denies visa extension to AP's Sri Lanka bureau chief

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 July 2009, 00:17 GMT]
Associated Press reported Tuesday that AP's bureau chief in Sri Lanka, Ravi Nessman, left Sri Lanka Monday after Colombo refused to extend Nessman's journalist visa. "We find this failure to renew Ravi's visa disturbing," John Daniszewski, AP's senior managing editor for international news, was quoted as saying in media reports. Colombo reports said that Nessman broke news of private U.N. reports outlining civilian death tolls, and also revealed the "first word of a government document from January outlining a plan to keep hundreds of thousands of displaced" Tamil civilians in the camps for up to three years.
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Colombo should end the farce, free doctors - New York Times

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 July 2009, 17:43 GMT]
In a devastatingly incriminating article on Sri Lanka's conduct of war and the holding of 300,000 Tamil civilians in internment camps, New York Times in an op-ed piece Tuesday said, the doctors who "worked heroically to save lives and alert the world to the humanitarian disaster endured by civilians trapped in the fighting," should be freed. Also, noting that "[t]he army was indiscriminately launching artillery shells and air strikes into mixed areas of insurgents and innocents and the Tigers shot at people who tried to escape," the paper added, "Sri Lankan government now risks losing the peace with its approach toward ethnic Tamils displaced by the conflict. Colombo needs to alter course if the country is to begin overcoming years of animosity and avoid having old hatreds and current antipathy turn into the next Tamil rebellion."
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New political formation of LTTE claimed

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 July 2009, 16:42 GMT]
Addressed as originating from the headquarters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, an Executive Committee on Tuesday, announced restructure of the organization and the leadership of Selvarasa Pathmanathan in taking up the future course of the movement. “We have set up a head office for our liberation movement and formulated various sector-based working groups and an executive committee," a press release on behalf of the Executive Committee said adding that the details will be shared in due course. Meanwhile, LTTE watchers said that the new formation has the burden to prove its credibility with the grass root at home and among the diaspora that aspire not incumbencies but a strong mass organisation to address the national cause.
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Prayers held in Keerimalai for the souls of Vanni victims

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 July 2009, 15:42 GMT]
The Federation of Saiva organizations in Jaffna peninsula observed the annual Aadi Amaavaasai Day, the day on which children perform religious rituals to pacify the souls of their late fathers, in Keerimalai Nakuleasvaram temple in Jaffna peninsula Tuesday, in memory of all the people who lost their lives in the war on Vanni Tamils waged by the Sri Lanka government, sources in Jaffna said.
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Altogether 4 bodies washed ashore in the islets of Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 July 2009, 15:11 GMT]
Oorkaavattu’rai police recovered a male body washed ashore each in Pungkudutheevu and Ezhuvaitheevu beaches in the islets of Jaffna Tuesday in addition to a male body washed ashore each in Pungkudutheevu and Ezhuvaitheevu Sunday, sources in Jaffna said. The four recovered bodies may belong to the fishermen from Raameasvaram in Tamil Nadu gone missing on the seas recently, police said. Oorkaavattu’rai magistrate, Ms. Joy Mahatheva, has directed the police to inform the Indian High Commission in Colombo and the fisheries societies in India and Sri Lanka to take necessary action to find whether the dead bodies belong to Indian fishermen.
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3 Tamil youths, travel agent arrested in Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 July 2009, 11:26 GMT]
Two Tamil youths who were waiting to take a flight to Cairo, capital of Egypt Thursday morning and another Tamil youth who arrived in Friday morning from Dubai were taken into custody at Katunayake International Airport by the Katunayake police. Police said they are being detained and are suspected to be LTTE cadres, sources in Colombo said.
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Castes, religions and Eezham Tamil nationalism

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 2009, 23:34 GMT]
“Tamil nationalism needs to realise its potentialities and weaknesses in making it progressive, benevolent and an internationally recognised culture in the future world,” writes Opinion Columnist Ampalam. “The secular linguistic identity of Tamil nationalism, based on a classical language in which more than two millennia of human experience and discourses both spiritual and temporal are recorded, and its inclusiveness cum plurality are strong points in making criteria for nationalism and in contributing to the paradigm ‘culture and development’. But jingoism of religions, which soon will be used as cards by imperialisms regional as well as international, and castes cum hierarchies old as well as new, are the liabilities,” he further writes.
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Air of martial triumph unbefitting while controversy surrounds Tamil civilian deaths - NY Times

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 2009, 16:07 GMT]
Noting that "[t]he Tamil minority has suffered discrimination and violence at the hands of various Sinhalese-dominated governments through the decades. Tamils have sought, first peacefully, then violently, the right to a measure of self-rule in Tamil-dominated areas," the New York Times in a Sunday article said, "[m]any Sri Lankans see these soldiers as heroes, but given the controversy that remains over how many Tamil civilians were killed in the last weeks of the fighting, some people find the air of martial triumph unseemly."
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Free election in Jaffna improbable – Manickasothy

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 July 2009, 04:31 GMT]
Abimanasingham Manickasothy, the chief candidate of the Independent Group II contesting Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election, told TamilNet Saturday that with the paramilitary groups operating with the government blatantly breaching election regulations with the blessing of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and the police by intimidating and issuing death threats voters will not be free to cast their votes to the candidates of their choice. Despite the promise of Jaffna district Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) to remove all wall posters, paramilitaries, alleged to be allied with the government, paste election campaign posters of the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) during curfew hours in places where the SLA is present, flouting election regulations, Manickasothy added.
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People in Jaffna live in fear – Suresh Premachandra

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 July 2009, 07:32 GMT]
“The people in Jaffna live in fear of the government armed forces and the paramilitary groups operating with them. They are scared to air their views or to openly participate in election related activities,” Suresh Premachandran, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Jaffna district parliamentarian, told TamilNet in a special interview Friday in Jaffna. “Though government ministers invading Jaffna continue to offer promises to the people of Jaffna they cannot be deceived as they fully well know that the promises will not be kept because the government does not have the money to fulfill the promises,” he further said.
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Policy on Tamils haunts India

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 July 2009, 05:20 GMT]
Setting the parameters based on 13 plus and ruling out federal, the Colombo – Chennai – New Delhi axis is learnt to be pressurising Tamil political circles to come out with a political formula, as early as possible, to hastily close the file on Tamil nationalism and to hide all skeletons under the cupboard. The haste in the Indian Establishment is said to be arising from the fear of China’s growing influence in the island resulted from India’s folly of not maintaining balance in the ethnic war. “Grasping geopolitics and aspirations of people, the Tamil political circles need to play the cards with dexterity,” said TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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Tissainayagam judgement fixed for August 31

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 July 2009, 02:30 GMT]
The Colombo High Court judge Ms. Deepali Wijesundara Friday fixed the judgment for August 31 on the case against senior journalist Mr.J.S.Tissanayagam who was indicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and Emergency Regulations (ER), legal sources in Colombo said. Mr. Tissainayagam was charged on three counts including printing and distributing the publication North Eastern Monthly magazine, and the offences was stated to have been committed during the period between June 1, 2006 and June 1, 2007.
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US Congress places Rights barriers on Sri Lanka IMF loan

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 July 2009, 01:41 GMT]
The language inserted in the Department of State Appropriations bill S.1434 soon to be passed in the United States Senate, has virtually blocked U.S. Treasury Secretary from authorizing the projected $1.9B IMF loan to Sri Lanka, unless Secretary of State Hilary Clinton certifies that Sri Lanka "is treating internally displaced persons in accordance with international standards, including by guaranteeing their freedom of movement, providing access to conflict-affected areas and populations by humanitarian organizations and journalists, and accounting for persons detained in the conflict," and Sri Lanka is promoting "reconciliation and justice including devolution of power to provincial councils in the north and east as provided for in the Constitution of Sri Lanka."
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United Sri Lanka is the steadfast aim of UNP – Tissa Athanayake, in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 July 2009, 10:32 GMT]
General Secretary of United National Party (UNP), the main opposition party, Tissa Athanayake, said that the UNP believes in one country with equal rights to all its people, in a press meet held Thursday in Jaffna City Hotel. Tissa Athanayake, accompanied by Dr. Jayalath Jayawardene, UNP parliamentarian and UNP principal candidate in Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election, A. S. Sathiyendra, explained the policy of his party to the media. “One of the main functions of the ICRC is family reunion of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and Rajapakse’s government’s decision to stop ICRC’s functions and to expel it from the country needs to be vehemently condemned,” Dr. Jayalath Jayawardne said.
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Police, SLA partial to UPFA in JMC election

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 July 2009, 04:39 GMT]
Political parties and Independent groups contesting the forthcoming Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) elections accused the police and Sri Lanka Army (SLA) for being partial to United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) in the issue of campaign wall posters, sources in Jaffna said. Though the police authorities had banned all wall posters and had ordered the removal of the posters, the police and the SLA had only torn and tarred the posters of Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi (TAK) political parties, leaving the UPFA posters untouched, the sources added.
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10 IDPs die daily inside barbed wire camps in Vavuniyaa - JVP

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 July 2009, 03:53 GMT]
The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) said Wednesday it has been receiving reports that due to scarcity of essential needs such as food, water and medicine, on the average, ten internally displaced people die every day inside the camps located in Vavuniyaa. "These people too are citizens of Sri Lanka. Those who are languishing inside the barbed wire camps are our fellow citizens. We call upon the Government not to forget the fact that they tjere arrived on the invitation of the government. It is disgusting to hear of the way the government treats them now,” said JVP leader Mr.Somawanse Amarasinghe addressing a press briefing Wednesday at the JVP head office in Battaramulla.
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