Miliband, Kouchner make progress in grasping the problem

[TamilNet, Friday, 01 May 2009, 02:15 GMT]
“What was positive about the visit of the foreign ministers of Britain and France to Colombo was the two showing much progress in grasping the nature of the crisis in the island”, said Tamil political circles in the diaspora, responding to a joint statement of the ministers, David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner Thursday. But how the belated realisation is going to be translated into timely action – first to come out of the shackles they were tricked putting onto themselves, and then to handle the Frankenstein monster before it is too late, is what really matters and is an acid test for the claimed changes if any in paradigm”, the diaspora circles said. Echoing a White House statement last week, pointing out slipping possibilities for reconciliation and a unified Sri Lanka, Miliband and Kouchner said Thursday that “chances of any kind of political settlement recede”.
Full story >>

Prof. Boyle calls for humanitarian airdrop to starving civilians in 'safety zone'

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 19:10 GMT]
Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, on Thursday called on India, the United States, Britain and France to fulfil their obligations under the Geneva Conventions and Protocol, and under the Genocide Convention by launching an immediate humanitarian air-drop relief operation for the starving Tamil civilians within the so-called safety zone, who are suffering without adequate humanitarian supplies for weeks. In a note sent to TamilNet, Prof. Boyle said starvation of civilians, as a method of warfare, can also constitute an act of genocide as defined by Article II (c) of the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Full story >>

Tamils' massacre made possible by West's ideological blindness and hubris - paper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 17:19 GMT]
“Those who think that the LTTE will be destroyed in the coming weeks and that then it is a question of 'peace building' and 'development' for the next few years are gravely mistaken,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper’s editorial argues this week. “[Instead] the foundations for a cataclysmic civil war are being inexorably laid today. The kind of polarisation that sustain not decades, but generations of struggle has become widespread and embedded.”
Full story >>

7,000 Tamils in Vanni killed, 14,000 injured in 3 months, TNA tells David Miliband

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 11:53 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Trincomalee district MP and parliamentary group leader, R. Sampanthan, and parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran told the visiting British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, that 7,000 Tamils in Vanni have been killed and 14,000 injured in the last three months, but the International Community has remained inactive without taking any action to stop the killings, TNA sources said. The TNA parliamentarians also told Miliband that more than 300 Tamil youths in Vavuniyaa detention centre have been arrested by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and that the SLA has not revealed the whereabouts of the arrested youths to their parents.
Full story >>

Events unfold typical of Nazi concentration camps

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 10:13 GMT]
Food parcels were thrown to people after making them run like dogs, and two children were killed in the melee in the barbed-wire camp at Menik Farm, Vavuniyaa. A 12-year-old boy on Monday and a 7-year-old boy on Tuesday were crushed to death in the melee, media sources in Vavuniyaa said. Meanwhile, around 300 Tamil youth from several camps in the area were forcefully taken by the Sri Lanka army, in the name of arrest, amidst protests of family members on Tuesday. Recently, 60 people have died of sickness in the camps, the sources further said. A total of 154,368 Vanni civilians are in captivity by the SLA up to Wednesday and out of them, 90, 181, were captured after 20 April.
Full story >>

China's 'anti-people' stand handicaps UN action

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 03:45 GMT]
China’s anti-people stand to consider the war in Sri Lanka as internal matter, despite open massacre and imprisonment of the Colombo government of its own civilians using even prohibited weapons, will block formal discussions taking place in the UN Security Council Thursday, news reports indicate. The stand of China and Russia sitting on UN security Council, shielding Colombo’s genocide, exposes the ultimate results of the West's 'self-trap’ by tilting the military and diplomatic balance between Tamils and Sinhalese through twisting an ethnic war as war on terror, political observers said. The only possibility now for the West to save its credibility is revising its faulty policies and acting outside of the UN, they said.
Full story >>

Miliband's statement obligates UK to take immediate UN action - Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 03:42 GMT]
Pointing to the latest statement during the visit to Sri Lanka by British Foreign Minister, David Miliband that ""[t]his is a civil war that does have regional and wider ramifications...," Professor Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, said that Miliband's statement obligates Britain, as a Permanent Member of the Security Council, under U.N. Charter Article 35(1) to bring this "civil war" and genocide in Sri Lanka "to the attention of the Security Council" for the purpose of obtaining remedial action under Chapters VI and/or VII of the Charter."
Full story >>

Rehabilitation symbols: How minds work in naming barbed-wire camps

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 02:25 GMT]
Four major internment camps meant for the civilians of Vanni and envisaged as long-term detention-villages as a part of Colombo’s structural genocide of Tamils, have been named after Sir Ponnampalam Ramanathan, Sir Ponnampalam Arunachalam, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Lakshman Kadirgamar. All four of them belonged to two aristocratic families of Jaffna that had settled in Colombo. They served more to Colombo than to Tamil homeland. Two of them never spoke Tamil, but all of them in some way served Sinhala interests. The message is subtle: Look upon the supremacy of the Colombo-centric system and be subservient, never think of your own system, writes TamilNet’s regular political commentator in Colombo.
Full story >>

300 feared killed, worst spurt of massacre imminent as UK, France fail

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 16:32 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army is expected to embark upon the worst phase of massacre any time soon in the narrow stretch of land, 5 km long and 1.5 km wide, remaining in the so-called safety zone congested with nearly 120,000 civilians, sources in Vanni said. SLA attacks normally begin in the early hours. Heavy 100 mm cannon fire and machine gun fire from naval craft of the Sri Lanka Navy already began around 4:00 p.m. A total of 300 are feared killed in the latest use of heavy weapons. Meanwhile, reports from Colombo indicate that 'ministerial diplomacy' of UK and France failed to bring in ceasefire or in sending international observers to the war front. The latest phase of Colombo's spree of carnage escalated after discussions with two Indian bureaucrats last Friday.
Full story >>

U.S. behind move to stop IMF loan - French Ambassador

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 12:17 GMT]
When Inner City Press asked French Ambassador to UN, Jean-Maurice Ripert on the European Union's leverage over Sri Lanka on the "pending request for $1.9b loan from the IMF," the Ambassador replied, "[t]he Americans want to play with the question of the IMF loan....[US's] commitment is to get the [loan] commitment to stop." Meanwhile, Bruce Fein, counsel for a Tamil activist group that filed for a declarative judgment to block the US vote, said that he expects the US Treasury to respond to the law suit before a vote is taken, and the Treasury has not submitted a motion or answer to the law suit yet.
Full story >>

Ratnapura Saiva temple festival suspended due to threats

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 10:11 GMT]
The trustee board of the 200-year-old historical Rakkuvaanai Sri Muththumaariyamman temple in Ratnapura district has been forced to suspend the annual festival of the temple due to death threats by Sinhalese youths of the area who went to the houses of the trustee board members and warned them of severe consequences if they conduct the festival that was to be held from 28 April to 10 May, sources in Ratnapura said. Rakkuvaana police too had denied permission to conduct the festival as the Buddhist Vesak festival is to be celebrated from 4 May to 10 May, the sources said.
Full story >>

15 Tamil civilians arrested in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 17:00 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and Police jointly conducted several cordon and search operations in the Tamil villages of Chaampalththeevu, Nilaave'li, Chelvanaayakapuram, and Kanniyaa in Trincomalee district Tuesday. Police said the operations were conducted to check infiltrators entering Trincomalee town and its suburbs.
Full story >>

SLA fired 5,600 shells within 15 hours: LTTE

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 14:22 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) fired at least 2,600 Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) rockets, more than 1,000 artillery shells and at least 2,000 heavy mortar shells from 6:00 p.m. Monday till 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, LTTE officials in Vanni told TamilNet. Most of the shells fired by the SLA hit civilian shelters in Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal, Thaazhampan, Ottaip-panaiyadi and Iraddai-vaaykkaal areas.The Tiger officials put civilian casualty figures at more than 200 killed and said three medical centres treated hundreds of wounded civilians throughout the day. Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) bombers attacked Ottaip-panai and iraddai-vaaykkaal areas by deploying cluster bombs, LTTE officials further said.
Full story >>

Legal challenge to block IMF loan, charges UK's complicity in Genocide

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 13:35 GMT]
In a "letter before action" sent to high level British Government officials, Public Interest Lawyers, a group of attorneys representing a Tamil activist group in UK, charge that in light of the Sri Lankan Government's systematic and gross violations of international humanitarian and human rights law "the UK under international law has various obligations, namely, to denounce and not recognise the situation in Sri Lanka as lawful [and] not to render aid and assistance to Sri Lanka," the UK Government's response thus far has been "woefully inadequate and does not comply with its obligations under international law." The group will file legal action in the British High Court if the UK Government fails to respond satisfactorily to the charges.
Full story >>

IC makes history in experimenting ‘genocide bomb’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 10:14 GMT]
The international community accusing the LTTE all this time for ‘inventing’ human bomb is testing a premeditated ‘genocide bomb’ on Tamils and sets new ‘guidelines’ for global order, says a political commentator, who contributes regularly to TamilNet. “Even though there are many actors, the final responsibility for the experiment and deployment of this worst possible weapon of human civilization squarely falls on Obama’s US administration and on Ban Ki Moon’s UN,” he said adding that they will go down in history for “calculatedly allowing one of the worst ethnic genocides of contemporary history to take its toll in the island of Sri Lanka, in the cruellest and deceitful way.”
Full story >>

'Explicit international deceit on Tamils'

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 20:03 GMT]
“What is the limit of IC’s appeasement with Colombo and what is the limit of IC in cheating Tamils,” asks Sri Navaratnam, on the 8th day of his hunger strike in Oslo, furious at the news of Colombo’s all out attack on Tamil civilians Monday night. “To facilitate the international community to deceive Tamils, Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday announced the halt of the use of heavy weapons in the safety zone of more than 165,000 civilians. Everybody welcomed it as though killing the civilians by small weapons is acceptable. It was a joke, the UN begging ‘Sri Lanka must respect heavy weapons pledge’, as though they are prepared to act if Sri Lanka breaches it. Colombo, which was already aerial bombing the civilians started with intense barrage of heavy weapons Monday night”, he cited.
Full story >>

SLA suspends locating Vanni civilians in Vavuniyaa, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 17:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) key officials informed Jaffna Secretariat that the possibility of bringing civilians from Vanni to Jafnna peninsula for detention appears limited, Jaffna Secretariat (JS) sources said. Action is being taken to detain Vanni civilians instead in the SLA occupied areas like Ki’linochchi, Ka’ndaava’lai and other indentified places constructing big concentration villages, sources in Jaffna said. JS officials, recently taken by SLA to gather particulars of the civilians from Vanni held without being sent either to Vavuniyaa or Jaffna peninsula, refuse to reveal the information for security reasons.
Full story >>

IC has been duped by Colombo: Prof. Ramasamy

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 16:07 GMT]
The Tokyo-Co-chairs and other international actors have been duped in supporting the war aims of the Sri Lankan government, says Professor P. Ramasamy, Deputy Chief Minister of Penang, Malaysia, in an exclusive interview to TamilNet. “The LTTE is expression of Tamil discontent of the Sri Lankan government and the way the latter has dealt with the Tamil national question. In so far as the conflict in Aceh was concerned, the international community was much neutral in providing the political circumstances for peace to be achieved. However, in the Sri Lankan conflict, the international took a biased stand. The current issue is not one of positions between the warring parties, but one that re-focuses attention on the fallacy of the international community in searching for a just solution for Tamils in Sri Lanka”, he says.
Full story >>

Tamil youth shot dead in Monaragala

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 13:26 GMT]
An unidentified armed gang shot and killed Monday noon a Tamil youth employed in a hotel in Monaragala town, Monaragala police said.
Full story >>

Armed men gun down 5 Tamil fishermen in Ampaa’rai

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 12:53 GMT]
A gang of unidentified armed men entering the fishing harbour area in Paanama Ukanthai in Ampaa’rai district Sunday morning shot and killed five Tamil fishermen who had gone there Saturday night in their motor fishing boats, sources in Ampaa’rai said. Meanwhile, Special Task Force (STF) commandos arrested 12 Tamil youths including students in a search conducted in Thirukkoayil, Akkaraipattu and Nochchikku’lam in Ampaa’rai district Monday, the sources added.
Full story >>