Search operation in Tamil suburb

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 August 2001, 13:28 GMT]
All private boarding houses and lodges in the Wellawatte police area were searched by special police teams Wednesday night. All inmates were closely questioned and documents in their possession were thoroughly examined. The search operation, which commenced around 9 p.m. ended by midnight, Wellawatte police sources said. Wellawatte is a Tamil dominated suburb in the southern sector of Colombo city.
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Kumaratunga impervious to power sharing -legal expert

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 August 2001, 15:41 GMT]
"The prorogation of the Parliament was legal but it was used to foist an unconstitutional action on the people," said Dr.Rohan Edirisingha, a legal and constitutional expert with the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, speaking at seminar for Tamil journalists Monday. Responding to a question on the prospects of a national government Dr.Edirisingha said: "President Chandrika Kumaratunga is totally unaware of the implications of power sharing." The two-day seminar Media Freedom and Human Rights was organised by the Tamil Media Alliance and the Home for Human Rights in Colombo.
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Search operation in Dehiwala

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 August 2001, 15:18 GMT]
More than five hundred Tamils were arrested during a house-to-house search operation by Sri Lanka Army and Police personnel in Colombo's suburb of Dehiwala, in the early hours of Sunday. About one hundred of them were taken to local police station for interrogation, the Police said.
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Over 100 arrested in combined search

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 August 2001, 17:18 GMT]
More than one hundred Tamils were arrested during a major cordon and search operation in Kochchikade, about 50 km. north of Colombo Thursday morning. More than one thousand Army and Police personnel were deployed during the operation, police said.
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Buddhist monks protest in Colombo

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 August 2001, 19:47 GMT]
More than two thousand Buddhist monks demonstrated at the old Town Hall in Colombo Tuesday demanding that the government cancel the referendum. The monks are opposed to granting regional autonomy to the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Buddhist organisations say that referendum would pave the way for Tamil self rule and separation.
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Army, Police search TELO office

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 August 2001, 18:32 GMT]
The offices of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) in Vavuniya was searched by the Sri Lanka army and Police Monday, ahead of the public meeting by the Alliance of Eleven Tamil parties Wednesday in the border town. Soldiers and Policemen dug the floor of the office in several places, a local TELO official said.
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"Stop arms, promote peace", MP tells US officials

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 August 2001, 23:09 GMT]
"The war in Sri Lanka is escalating because countries that say that there should be a political solution to the island's ethnic conflict are providing arms and money to the government here. Some are even training the Sri Lankan army troops. These governments should stop giving military aid to Sri Lanka and exert pressure on it to seek a negotiated settlement to the problem", said Selvam Adaikalanathan, MP for the Vanni and the leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation, speaking to US embassy officials who called on him Friday at his official in Colombo.
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PA in fix over ally's demands

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 August 2001, 17:30 GMT]
The Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), a major constituent party of the Peoples' Alliance, told Tamilnet Friday it is awaiting the President's response to its two demands that "that Sri Lankan citizenship be granted to four hundred thousand Tamils in the island's plantation sector and that sixteen electorates should be carved out for them". The party's leader Mr. Arumugam Thondaman said that the CWC would not support the referendum if the PA does not meet its demands.
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TULF branches call on Tamils to oppose referendum

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 August 2001, 16:01 GMT]
The Batticaloa District Branch of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) Friday decided to request the Tamil people to vote against the August 21 referendum "to register their protest to the People's Government as it has failed to solve the ethnic problem during its seven year rule". A resolution to this effect was unanimously adopted at the committee meeting of the TULF district branch Friday with Batticaloa parliamentarian Mr.Joseph Pararajasingham in the chair.
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Sinhala nationalist party to support referendum

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 August 2001, 15:33 GMT]
The Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP), a constituent party of the ruling People's Alliance, decided to extend its "fullest support" to the government for the 21 August referendum following a pledge by the Sri Lankan President that the draft constitution withdrawn last year will not be reintroduced. A unanimous decision to this effect was taken at a meeting attended by MEP parliamentarians, provincial councillors and members of local authorities held Friday.
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Batticaloa workers said vulnerable to arrest, detention

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 August 2001, 15:50 GMT]
Ninety-three civilians in Batticaloa district arrested by the Sri Lankan security forces from January to 31 July this year are still in detention, according to Human Rights Commission officials in the eastern town Wednesday. Sixty-nine were arrested in Batticloa and twenty-four in other districts; the whereabouts of three persons arrested in Batticaloa is still not known, they said. Relatives said that the three have been presumed missing. Meanwhile Police sources in Colombo said that the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has arrested 20 Tamils so far in connection with the attack on the Katunayaka Sri Lanka Air Force base and international airport on 24 July.
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Vavuniya pilgrim and child detained by Police

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 July 2001, 21:01 GMT]
A Hindu pilgrim and his five year old child who were on their way to Kathirgamam were arrested and detained by the Police on 27 July at Nittambuwa, relatives told the Human Rights Commission office in Vavuniya Tuesday. Kathirgamam (Kataragama in Sinhala) is a pilgrimage centre in the in Sri Lankaís southern province. The shrine of the god Murugan here draws thousands of Tamil and Sinhala devotees.
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CWC undecided on Referendum

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 July 2001, 21:42 GMT]
The Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC), a constituent party in the ruling People's Alliance is to make a decision on the proposed referendum after meeting President Chandrika Kumaratunge next Monday, a leading member of the CWC said. He made this announcement soon after a delegation from the CWC, headed by Mr. Arumugam Thondaman, met with the President Friday morning.
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'Tigers should fight on until liberation'- TULF MP

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 July 2001, 19:10 GMT]
"The Liberation Tigers are fighting for the freedom of the Tamil people. They should continue their armed struggle until the Tamil people are liberated," said Mr. Mavai Senathirajah, Tamil United Liberation Front MP for Jaffna, addressing a meeting by the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) in Vavuniya Friday to commemorate its leaders who were massacred in the Welikada jail in Colombo in July 1983.
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Tigers attack Weli Oya FDL -radio

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 July 2001, 17:36 GMT]
The Voice of Tigers said in its night news broadcast that the Liberation Tigers attacked and destroyed the Forward Defence Lines of the Sri Lanka army between Mankindi Malai and Akkarai Weli in the Weli Oya region in the early hours of Friday morning around 2.30 a.m. The radio said ten bunkers on the FDL were overrun by Tiger troops and that four SLA soldiers were killed.
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Two SLA soldiers wounded

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 July 2001, 16:02 GMT]
Two Sri Lanka Army soldiers were wounded and another was reported missing when the Liberation Tigers attacked an army detachment at Mahindapura, at about 10.30 a.m. Wednesday morning, local army sources said.
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Rape protest shuts down North and East

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 July 2001, 09:47 GMT]
Shops, schools, offices, courts and banks were closed and streets were mostly deserted in Sri Lanka's northern province, in the Tamil, Muslim majority areas of the eastern province and in the Tamil towns of the central province Friday in response to a call for a general shut down by the alliance of eleven Tamil parties and by Tamil trade unions to protest against the rape of Tamil women by Sri Lankan security forces. The Tamil parties held a protest demonstration in downtown Colombo Friday.
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Rights watchdog releases torture camp account

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 June 2001, 15:50 GMT]
Asian Human Rights Commission said Thursday it is issuing an eyewitness account of extreme physical and psychological torture, overcrowding and hundreds of disappearances/ extrajudicial killings at an illegal military detention camp in Wehera, Kurunegala district, 25 miles from Kandy run by the man being appointed Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia, Major General Janaka Perera.
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Girl raped in Police checkpoint

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 June 2001, 15:23 GMT]
Three Policemen on duty at a checkpoint in downtown Colombo were arrested Monday for gang raping a girl in the early hours of the morning on Sunday. The girl was returning from work with a boy when she was stopped at the Police checkpoint near the Central Theatre in Maradana in downtown Colombo around 4.45 a.m. The Policemen had allegedly gang raped the girl after forcing her inside their checkpoint by threatening her that they would arrest and detain her on suspicion that she is a spy of the Liberation Tigers if she refused to get into the bunker. Any member of the Sri Lankan security forces regardless of his/her rank can arrest anyone if she/he has “reasonable ground” to suspect that the person has links with the Liberation Tigers under the provisions of the Emergency Regulations (18.1).
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Protests as Janaka Pereraís appointment proceeds

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 June 2001, 16:03 GMT]
(News Feature) Hundreds of Tamils protested outside Australia's Parliament Monday over the government's acceptance of a Sri Lanka Army General accused of human rights violations as Colombo's High Commissioner to Canberra. Amnesty International also voiced its opposition, but Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said his Sri Lankan counterpart, Lakshman Kadirgamar, had given his "personal assurance" that Major General Retd.) Janaka Perera is a "suitable and worthy appointment."
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