SLA attacks kill 53 civilians inside 'safety zone' Sunday

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 March 2009, 14:34 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) continued artillery, mortar and long-distance gunfire throughout Sunday killing at least 53 civilians and causing injuries to around 119. At least 17 civilians were killed in Maaththa'lan, 18 in Pokka'nai, 15 in Valaignarmadam and 3 in Pachchaip-pulmoaddai, reports TamilNet correspondent from Vanni. Meanwhile, around 1,192 civilians including 275 children, belonging to 298 families have lost their shelters within last 5 days as their tarpaulin huts were completely destroyed in SLA attacks.
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ILO delegation visits Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 March 2009, 14:26 GMT]
A three-member delegation of International Labour Organization (ILO) visited Jaffna last week and participated in a meeting, related to the rehabilitation of persons whom SLA claims to have surrendered themselves to it, held in Jaffna District Secretariat with Additional Government Agent, S. Sivasamy, under the auspices of the government of Sri Lanka. Local NGO representatives who were invited to participate later said that the conference was but another attempt of the government to raise funds for maintaining the SLA detention centres in which the civilians fleeing war in Vanni are being held.
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Tamil journalists applaud “Women of Courage” award to Srinithy Nandasekaran

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 March 2009, 11:46 GMT]
Magistrate Srinithy Nandasekaran, who had served earlier in the courts of Vavuniyaa, Jaffna, and Oorkaavattu'rai (Kayts), and currently a Magistrate in the Colombo Juvenile Court, was recognized as a South Asia Regional Finalist for the US Secretary of State's Women of Courage Award by the U.S. Ambassador Blake in Colombo on 24th March. Commenting on the award, a senior journalist said: "Ms Nandasekaran took strong, legally admissible steps to reign in on the Sri Lankan military's attempts to encroach into basic freedom of movement and rights of Jaffna residents. She ruled that the military cannot wear black masks during duty, and was a staunch critic of the road blocks the military forces set up that created hardship to the normal life of civilians."
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Arundhati Roy: "Colossal humanitarian tragedy"

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 March 2009, 00:52 GMT]
Pointing an accusing finger at the Indian Government for silence on the unfolding tragedy in Sri Lanka, Arundhati Roy, writer and activisit, in an article appearing in Times of India says, "while the killing continues, while tens of thousands of people are being barricaded into concentration camps, while more than 200,000 face starvation, and a genocide waits to happen, there is dead silence from this great country [India]. It’s a colossal humanitarian tragedy. The world must step in. Now. Before it’s too late."
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7th SLA detention centre opened in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 March 2009, 05:49 GMT]
In addition to the existing six Sri Lanka Army (SLA) detention centres in Jaffna district SLA has established another in Kaithadi in Thenmaraadchi where there are already four centres, to detain civilians fleeing war in Vanni. Saturday alone more than 200 families arrived in Thenmaraadchi and were placed in temporary makeshift sheds erected in the building complex of Palmyra Development Board (PDB) in Kaithadi, Thenmaraadchi Divisional Secretariat officials said.
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6 STF commandos killed, 8 injured in 3 separate LTTE attacks in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 March 2009, 04:47 GMT]
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) launched attacks on Special Task Force (STF) commandos at three separate locations Friday and Saturday in Batticaloa district killing a commando and seriously injuring three in the first attack while killing two commandos and seriously injuring one in the second attack. The third attack was on the STF sentry post in Karadiyanaa’ru police division in which three STF commandos were killed and four seriously wounded, LTTE claimed in a media release Sunday. Meanwhile, two Sri Lankan home guards lost their legs caught in a booby trap set by the Tigers Saturday around 6:30 a.m in the 16th village in Ampaa’rai district, the Tigers said.
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'Global order' experiments with body and mind of Vanni civilians

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 March 2009, 01:17 GMT]
To what extent human beings can survive under extreme conditions was a Nazi research on the ‘dispensable Jews’ of the concentration camps, to find out the levels of extremity the human body and mind can withstand. Academic and professional circles raise an alarm that the Colombo government and the abetting powers, in experimenting political cum military effectiveness of their local and global order through a no-witness genocidal war, are probably at such a research with the Eezham Tamils. "Whether a humanitarian catastrophe faced by them is deliberately ignored by the international community and whether the instruments of humanitarian intervention have given up Vanni people for good," ask Dr. J. Sivamanoharan and S. Edmond Reginold, professionals of mental health working in Vanni.
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179 civilians including 76 children killed within 3 days inside 'safety zone'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 20:34 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) attacks have claimed the lives of 179 civilians within the three days of Thursday, Friday and Saturday, according to the casualty figures collected by TamilNet correspondent in Vanni. At least 76 of the slain victims were children below the age of 15. At least 16 pregnant mothers were among the slain. More than 109 children below the age of 15 have sustained injuries. Around 45% of the thousands of shells fired by the SLA have hit the safety zone. Meanwhile, a foreign staff of the ICRC, who came in the ship on Saturday to transport the wounded civilian had a narrow escape when the ship was hit by long distance gunfire by the SLA damaging a window of the ship. On Friday, a local ICRC worker, P. Satheeskumar, was reportedly injured in SLA shelling.
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5 Tamil youths arrested in Tangalle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 15:27 GMT]
Tangalle police in Hambantota district in the south arrested five Tamil youths Wednesday early morning in a house owned by a Sinhalese at Walsmulla-Kohulana area. The owner was also taken into custody for renting out his house to strangers, the police said. Three Tamil youths had fled from the house when the police raided the house.
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US Group notifies IMF, US Treasury of filing complaint

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 13:42 GMT]
Counsel for the US-based activist group, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), in a letter addressed to Secretary of the US Treasury, Timothy Geithner, and to the US Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Meg Lundsager, Friday, said that TAG will be filing a complaint Monday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia "to obtain a declaratory judgment that a failure of the United States to oppose Sri Lanka’s pending $1.9 billion IMF loan application would constitute a violation of 22 U.S.C. 262d."
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Reporter arrested for plundering computers, temple artifacts in Vanni

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 12:27 GMT]
A Sinhala TV reporter attached to the state-run Rupavahini Corporation and posted to cover the conflict in the Vanni was arrested on Thursday along with five laptops and ten digital cameras allegedly plundered from Tamil Tiger bases, police confirmed. Several artifacts allegedly removed from Hindu temples were also found on his possession, according to the investigators.
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Sydney protest draws more than 5,000

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 11:30 GMT]
More than 5,000 protesters took to the streets of Sydney Saturday demanding action against the Sri Lankan government and the atrocities being committed against Tamil civilians caught up in the war in the Vanni. Sydney's Central Business District suffered traffic congestion and delays as demonstrators took over major city roads as the protesters marched towards the city's Town Hall, participants in the rally said.
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Chilaw police arrest 13 Tamil civilians

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 06:26 GMT]
Chilaw police Thursday took into custody thirteen Tamil civilians in cordon and search operations conducted in town area to prevent strangeers from infiltrating the area, police sources said. Majority of the arrested are residents of North and Upcountry areas, and employed in business establishments and factories in Chilaw town, police added.
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257 Tamils arrested in outskirts of Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 05:41 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and police took into custody 301 persons including 257 Tamils in a joint search conducted in Gampaha, in the outskirts of Colombo city, from Thursday 6:00 p.m till Friday 6:00 a.m, according to police spokesman, Ranjith Gunasekara. 8,830 persons were interrogated in the search, he said. The relatives of the arrested Tamils have lodged complaints with Deputy Minister, P. Rathakrishnan and Mano Ganeshan, leader of Western Peoples’ Front (WPF) and Colombo district parliamentarian.
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4 Tamils arrested in Katunayake

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 04:24 GMT]
Four Tamil civilians who are residents of North and East were arrested by the Katunayake police and Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in a cordon and search operation conducted on Thursday. The owner of the house where they were boarders was also taken into custody for interrogation, police sources said.
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Tamil civilian arrested in Borella

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 March 2009, 02:22 GMT]
Western province Police Intelligence Unit Thursday arrested a Tamil civilian, who was resident of Jaffna, while he was waiting to board a bus to his destination at Borella bus stand in Colombo. The police said he was suspected to be involved in terrorist activity, according to information they received.
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Jesse Jackson calls for ceasefire

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 March 2009, 23:13 GMT]
Veteran American civil rights campaigner Reverend Jesse Jackson, who addressed the diaspora Tamil conference in London on Thursday said that "we [the global community] have a moral obligation to stop the killings" in Sri Lanka. The American civil rights activist also raised the need to increase the international awareness of the crisis and asked what his organisation, the Rainbow Push Coalition could do to help. Rev. Jackson stated that the crisis can only be resolved by "thinking it out, and not by shooting it out." He called for a commitment to a ceasefire because “we cannot negotiate to the sound of bullets whizzing over our heads.”
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Diaspora conference in London calls for immediate ceasefire

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 March 2009, 22:27 GMT]
45 Tamil dignitaries from 21 countries gathered in London on Wednesday and Thursday to resolve that an immediate ceasefire in Sri Lanka was essential and that humanitarian access to the Vanni should be permitted immediately. The delegates also said that the Eezham Tamils should determine their own destiny and emphasized that the people of the traditional Tamil homeland had not only given their democratic mandate to the homeland concept, but they also have reiterated that mandate at every juncture of their political discourse.
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Jaffna University Teachers urge immediate release of Selvarajah Raveendran

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 March 2009, 17:31 GMT]
Abducted Jaffna University lecturer Selvarajah Raveendran should be released immediately so as to enable the smooth function of Jaffna University and to expel the fear and anxiety that prevails among the tutorial staff of Jaffna University, Jaffna University Teachers’ Association (JUTA) urged in a press report released Friday.
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Grasping at straws leaving the tail: diaspora activist on Holmes' brief

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 March 2009, 16:21 GMT]
UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes, who briefed the UN Security Council for a second time on Thursday "didn’t say anything new in his latest briefing other than reflecting on the escalation of the crisis and the pathetic impotency of the UN in handling the situation," Roy Gardiner Wignarajah, a spokesman of the Canadian Tamil activist group, International Human Cultural Union (IHCU), told TamilNet Friday. He also referred to a recent statement by Professor Francis Boyle, a leading expert in International Law, who said that it seemed as if the UN is now repeating one of the 'most shameless and disgraceful debacles in its entire history in today's Vanni Pocket by becoming complicit in Sri Lanka's genocide.'
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