Imprisonment of aid workers violates international law: UN Staff Union

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 July 2009, 20:15 GMT]
The Staff Union of the United Nations Secretariat (SUUNS) slammed the Sri Lankan Government for its illegal detainment of two aid workers and urged Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to demand for their release in a statement released Friday. Highlighting Sri Lankas responsibility “under international law to respect independence and work of UN Staff”, the statement labeled the “continuing detention and harassment” of UN staff as a violation of the “international instruments dealing with the privileges, immunities and independence of United Nations officials”.
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Time for silence is over - New York Times

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 July 2009, 15:41 GMT]
New York times in an editorial published Wednesday said that "[t]he [Sri Lanka] government's strict control on visits to the [internment] camps has also raised suspicions that it may be trying to block any investigation into possible government abuses committed in the last months of the war," and added, "[m]ost [donor countries and international organizations] have kept quiet so far about the Tamils' plight, evidently fearful that criticizing conditions in the camps could get them thrown out of the camps. The time for silence is over. The best way to help the Tamils is by demanding their freedom and an end to their long ordeal."
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Campaign against free speech must end: CPJ

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 July 2009, 23:17 GMT]
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York based media rights group, slammed the Sri Lankan Government for its anti media policies and accused the current administration of “continuing to silence its critics through harassment and threats” in a press release on Tuesday. Responding to the recent blocking of independent news websites in Sri Lanka and “smear campaigns” against various publications and individuals engineered to incite public outrage hatred, CPJ Asia program coordinator Bob Dietz urged the Governement to lift its censorship and cease its campaign against free speech.
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Percival was not an apostate - Prof. Hoole

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 July 2009, 22:54 GMT]
“The late Rev. Dr. Kingsley Muthiah (former President of the Methodist Church of Sri Lanka) has told me of cowardly verbal claims that Percival turned apostate to undermine his efforts but this is the first time I have seen it being openly stated”, writes Professor Ratnajeevan Hoole responding to a statement appeared in a TamilNet feature that Percival deviated from evangelism and concentrated on education and accusing the article for adding another dimension to anti-Christian diatribes. Prof. Hoole says Jaffna Tamils have made an icon of Navalar as the translator of the Bible and as father of prose, but earliest Tamil prose may be traced to catechisms of the Roman Catholics.
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SL minister promises to fulfill President Rajapakse’s dream, in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 July 2009, 15:14 GMT]
”President Mahinda Rajapakse’s present dream is to make goods available to Jaffna people at reasonable Colombo prices”, Minister of Electricity and Energy, Aluthananda Gamage, said in an event held at Nalloor Divisional Secretariat Tuesday, sources in Jaffna said. The visiting minister, accompanied by Minister Douglas Devananda, further promised that steps would be taken before 1st August to fulfill President Rajapakse’s dream, the sources added.
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Tamil civilian reported missing in Kinniya

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 July 2009, 12:20 GMT]
A Tamil civilian, Sivasegaram Panchalingam, 35, a resident of Kinniya in Trincomalee district, has been reported missing since Monday morning after he left for work, according to a complaint lodged with the Kinniya Police by his wife.
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Death threats to Jaffna Uthayan daily continue

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 July 2009, 17:24 GMT]
Reporters, employees and agents of Uthayan Tamil daily published in Jaffna continue to be issued with death threats by post despite President Rajapakse’s recent assurance that he will not permit anyone to violate the freedom of the press, sources in Jaffna said. A group calling itself ‘Tamil Front Protecting the Country’ allegedly linked to a paramilitary group operating with Colombo had issued on 27 June a notice titled ‘Final Warning’ to Uthayan Tamil daily office in Jaffna warning that Uthayan staffers will be killed if they do not officially relinquish their posts with effect from 30 June 2009.
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UPFA involved in obvious breach of election regulations in Jaffna - TNA

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 July 2009, 05:07 GMT]
“The ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and its allied parties using great number of vehicles in election campaign in Jaffna and that too guarded by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and the police is an obvious breach of election regulations,” Mudiyappu Remedias, the chief contestant of Tamil National Alliance (TNA), said in a meeting held Sunday morning at Vembadi Girls’ College in Jaffna by SLA and police authorities with the representatives of the parties contesting the forthcoming Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) elections. The meeting was convened to discuss arrangements to offer protection to the contestants, sources in Jaffna said.
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Holding grounds is fundamental to everything

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 July 2009, 22:34 GMT]
Professing defeatism or surrendering the basic grounds are not the ways to begin or to sustain the struggle with the masses, even in ways anew, perhaps through democratic means. Talking on the need to continue the struggle is not to rule out the need to negotiate. But negotiation is not collaboration. Negotiators need a firm platform supported by the hearts of the masses on behalf of whom they negotiate. Negotiation cannot take place when the platform is surrendered. It is to safeguard the platform for struggle and negotiation the Tamil circles are now keen in re-affirming the democratically mandated Vaddukkoaddai Resolution of 1976 that upholds independence, sovereignty and self-determination of Eezham Tamils, at least where there is freedom of expression. Even after 2000 years the Jews were able to regain their land because they never lost their nationalism or the thought of Israel.
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Notorious commander appointed Governor of Northern Province

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 July 2009, 17:05 GMT]
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has appointed Chief-of-Staff of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Maj. Gen. G.A. Chandrasiri as the new Governor of the Northern Province. Maj. Gen. Chandrasiri was the former chief of the SLA in Jaffna, under whose command Jaffna witnessed hundreds of forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations in the period from 2006 to 2008. Tamil political circles in Colombo commented that Mr. Rajpaksa, who claims to have crushed the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam, has appointed his military men in key posts in the occupied Tamil homeland to head civil services with a 'colonial mindset'. Earlier, in April, Rajapaksa appointed Chandrasiri as the Competent Authority Officer in charge of resettlement of Tamils from Vanni in alleged barbed-wire 'internment camps' in Vavuniyaa.
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Seven Tamil youths reported missing in Batticoloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2009, 21:08 GMT]
Seven Tamil youths have gone missing in the Batticoloa district during June, and this has been reported by the relatives to the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC), Police and the Human Rights Commission, sources in Batticoloa said.
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Inclusion is effective nationalism

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2009, 10:01 GMT]
Ethnic identity is not genetic but of social origin caused by political action, argues Dr. A.R.M. Imtiyaz of Temple University, USA, explaining what made the Tamil speaking Muslims in the island of Sri Lanka opting for a separate identity seeking power. In a recent article ‘The Eastern Muslims of Sri Lanka: special problems and solutions,’ published in the Journal of Asian and African Studies, Dr. Imtiyaz emphasizes that the divide, a reality of today caused politically, has to be addressed by appropriate political models for the mutual benefit of Tamils and Muslims in their homeland. The academic, hailing from Colombo, rejects feasibility of power-sharing units for Muslims in such an inter-dependent landscape, but suggests consociationalism, i.e., proportional allocation of power.
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Rulings on NE merger, P-TOMS by his predecessor according to constitution – CJ

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2009, 08:11 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s new Chief Justice Asoka de Silva who succeeded controversial Sarath Silva has said he is going to bring radical changes in the judicial administration of the country. “I will announce reforms to the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) that controls transfers and disciplinary action with the judiciary within next few weeks”, Justice Asoka de Silva told media, responding to two recent international reports on Sri Lankan judiciary. He said rulings on NE merger and Tsunami P-TOMS by his predecessor were given according to constitution.
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Amnesty calls for war crimes probe after doctors paraded

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 July 2009, 00:29 GMT]
Amnesty International Friday called for “a systematic and independent investigation of allegations of war crimes” and said such an investigation “must include confidential interviews with witnesses - most of whom are currently detained in government internment camps.” Responding to Sri Lanka’s parading of five Tamil doctors this week in which the men retracted accounts of mass civilians casualties they had issued amid a Sri Lankan government offensive, Amnesty pointed out that “the Sri Lankan authorities have a long history of extracting confessions by force and compelling detainees to give media interviews that support the government's position.”
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Murder of Australian Tamil twins a “tragic incident” say Police

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 16:08 GMT]
A mother has been charged with murdering her seven-month-old twins after an apparent murder suicide attempt on Monday. Selvin Ariyaratnam called paramedics after discovering his wife unconscious at their home in Perth, with the infants lying nearby. The trio was rushed to hospital, where the babies were pronounced dead hours later despite frantic efforts to resuscitate them. Ms Ariyaratnam, an Australian of Thai heritage, was charged with murder on Friday amid an outpouring of grief from across the nation.
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Abducted youth released in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 15:13 GMT]
Unidentified armed men alleged to be men of a paramilitary group operating with Sri Lanka Intelligence Unit who abducted Wednesday a 26-year-old youth from his house in Kokkuvil in Jaffna had later demanded a large sum of money from his relatives as ransom to release him, sources in Jaffna said. The youth, however, was released later due to influential persons intervening in the matter, the sources added.
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The Times calls for world boycott of Sri Lanka over detainees

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 11:59 GMT]
Expressing outrage at Sri Lanka’s treatment of Tamil detainees, The Times of London called Friday for the world to boycott the island until the detainees are released. “Sri Lanka wants no witnesses to what is now being done in these modern concentration camps. … None of [the IMF] money should be paid until independent aid agencies are guaranteed access to the Tamil camps and until Sri Lanka starts to release those detained. Other world bodies — the Commonwealth, the United Nations and even world cricketing organisations — should boycott Colombo until reconciliation begins,” the paper said in its editorial.
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‘1,400 dying each week in Manik Farm camp’ – The Times

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 03:37 GMT]
About 1,400 people are dying every week at the giant Manik Farm internment camp set up in Sri Lanka to detain Tamil refugees from the nation’s bloody civil war, senior international aid sources have told The Times. The shocking toll lends credence to allegations that the Government, which has termed the internment sites “welfare villages”, has actually constructed concentration camps to house 300,000 people, the paper said. Most of the deaths are the result of water-borne diseases, particularly diarrhoea, a senior relief worker told The Times on condition of anonymity.
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Sri Lanka restricts aid visas, equates its camps with Italy’s

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 01:39 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe this week drew parallels between his government’s running of barbed-wire ringed militarized camps in which 300,000 Tamils are held with Italy’s management of camps for survivors of the L’Aquila earthquake. The state-owned Daily News also quoted Mr. Samarasinghe as saying Sri Lanka “would welcome all [foreign] help it can get if relevant organizations would fall in line with the national agenda.” On Thursday, the minister said future visa applications for foreign aid workers will be granted only if their work “could not be carried out by locals.”
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US concerned about IDPs, peace process: ambassador-designate to India

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 00:28 GMT]
The Ambassador-designate of Obama administration to India, Tim Roemer, appearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Wednesday, said the US is very concerned about the internally displaced people, resettlement, reconciliation and a peace process to go forward. “I think that’s something that would be important for the next ambassador, to continue to work with the Indian government on, to see that the Sri Lankan situation moves in a peaceful process, with reconciliation as a high goal”, he said in his testimony. While appreciating India’s role to US in Afghanistan, about Sri Lanka, the nominee was appreciative of India’s humanitarian aid.
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