Bay Area Walk highlights "Tamil Genocide" in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 April 2011, 11:11 GMT]
For the first annual Bay Area Walk Against Genocide which involved a 3-mile walk conducted in Oakland, California on Sunday April 10th, 2011, nearly 500 protesters turned up, organizers of the event said. "Activities providing a unique opportunity to meet local genocide survivors and their families, hearing their stories, and learning to make a difference by getting involved," participants in the protest campaign said. Several groups including the Darfur Coalition, Enough Project and Coalition of Tamils Against Genocide took part.
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HRW demands accountability for wartime disappearances

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 April 2011, 05:19 GMT]
Human Rights Watch, a New York based rights organization, said in a press release issued Friday that "[t]hrough interviews with relatives of the missing and witnesses, published testimony, and media reports, Human Rights Watch found that more than 20 people who were taken into army custody between May 16 and 18, 2009, appear to have been forcibly disappeared. Most of them are known to have been detained in the Vadduvaakal area, just south of the strip of land in northeastern Sri Lanka where the final battle between the LTTE and government forces occurred. At the time, the area was controlled by the Sri Lankan army’s 59 Division," and demanded that Colombo "should account for everyone who was taken into custody."
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Book on India’s war crimes against Eezham Tamils released in New Delhi

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 April 2011, 20:33 GMT]
A new book on the war crimes committed by the ‘Indian Peace Keeping Force’ (IPKF) against Eezham Tamil civilians during 1987-1989 has been released at the Jawaharlal Nehru University Campus in New Delhi, Friday. The book, “In the Name of Peace: IPKF Massacres of Tamils in Sri Lanka” was documented by the Northeast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR) and was published by the Delhi Tamil Students Union. The book release organized by The Coordinating Committee for Oppressed Nationalities was followed by the screening of a documentary film, “Mullaiththeevu Saga” by Someetharan on the genocide of Eezham Tamils. Observers said that opinion prevailed among the panellists and audience favoured the Eezham Tamil right to secede.
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Tamil civilian reported missing in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 April 2011, 19:11 GMT]
Sivakuru Ganeshalingam, 47, resident of Periyakallaaru has been reported disappeared since March 23, according to complaints made by his relatives with the Batticaloa Police, sources in Batticaloa said. Ganeshalingam left Batticaloa to Colombo on that day and his relatives have lost contact with him, the complaint states.
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Rajapaksa's LLRC seeks Buddhist Prelates guidance to prepare final report

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 April 2011, 13:34 GMT]
Members of Rajapaksa appointed Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) had met the Mahanayaka Theras of the Malwatte and Asgiriya Chapters last week to seek guidance before preparing the final report scheduled to be presented by May 15, according to a news report published in English weekly Lakbima on Sunday. The Buddhist prelates exercise a dominant influence on the Sri Lankan regime.
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TYO extends ‘Boycott Sri Lanka’ campaign to sports

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 March 2011, 11:26 GMT]
Using as context the quarter final of the Cricket World Cup between co-hosts Sri Lanka and England, the TYO-UK (Tamil Youth Organisation) on Saturday conducted an awareness campaign on Sri Lanka in London, on a day marked by huge protest by the TUC (Trade Union Congress) against public spending cuts. As up to a reported 500,000 demonstrators marched through central London, TYO members on the periphery handed out leaflets and gathered signatures for a postcard campaign calling on the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to boycott Sri Lanka as a sporting partner. The effort is part of a wider campaign to encourage international boycott of Sri Lanka as a tourist destination and as a producer of goods, TYO said. The Sri Lankan cricket team is due to tour England this summer.
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TB affected on the increase among uprooted people of Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 March 2011, 06:10 GMT]
Several uprooted Tamil civilians from Vanni following Colombo's genocidal onslaught in Vanni and still kept in detention centres in Vavuniyaa have been diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis (TB), according to Dr.C.Jamunananda who is in charge of the TB control unit in Jaffna district.
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Dry rations to uprooted civilians in Jaffna stopped

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 March 2011, 23:51 GMT]
Sri Lankan government has stopped giving dry rations that has been issued to uprooted civilians in Jaffna peninsula until the end of 2010. Almost 30% of the people who were depending on these ration items, which were given to the Sri Lanka government under the World Food Programme to assist the affected people have been put into immense hardship by this action, civil organizations in Jaffna said.
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Amid Sinhala colonization, Dinamina claims SLA vacates Jaffna Town HSZ

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 March 2011, 12:50 GMT]
State run daily Dinamina claimed Friday that Sri Lanka military has vacated high security zones in Jaffna town after nearly twenty years of occupation. The announcement came after handing over of Subash Hotel, and the reopening of Jaffna's Victoria Road which links Jaffna-Palaly main road and the Clock Tower road, according to the daily. Large parts of Jaffna Peninsula still remains as prohibited zone for resettlement of evicted Tamil civilians, with Colombo selling large parcels of land to Sinhala businessmen for economic profiteering, civil society sources in Jaffna said.
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HRW calls for boycott of Colombo Defence Seminar

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 March 2011, 01:31 GMT]
Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based rights organization, called on countries worldwide to boycott a conference to be held in Colombo between 31 May to 02 June labelled "Defeating Terrorism Sri Lankan Experience” aimed at sharing Sri Lanka's war experience, BBC reported. “What we are telling the militaries around the world is that they should not attend a meeting to celebrate a military policy that involves killing so many civilians,” HRW Executive Director Brad Adams told BBC.
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US State Department official resigns over Wikileaks gaffe

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 March 2011, 23:58 GMT]
US state department spokesman PJ Crowley has resigned after calling the treatment of the man accused of leaking secret cables to Wikileaks "stupid," BBC reported. "It is with regret that I have accepted the resignation of Philip J. Crowley as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. PJ has served our nation with distinction for more than three decades, in uniform and as a civilian. His service to country is motivated by a deep devotion to public policy and public diplomacy, and I wish him the very best," Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said after accepting Mr Crawley's resignation.
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Resettled families in Valikaamam North lack infrastructure facilities

[TamilNet, Sunday, 13 March 2011, 10:23 GMT]
Unless infrastructure facilities are made available to the people, the resettlement could take place only at snail’s pace in Jaffna peninsula, Thellippazhai Divisional Secretary S.Muralitharan responded to reporters who questioned him on the restrictions prevailing there. Currently, the occupying Sri Lankan military is limiting the freedom of movement of civilians to their native villages by keeping the access roads to resettlement areas closed most of the time and is only allowing them to use the roads for few days in a week.
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Australian Prime Minister questioned on Kohona at UN

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 March 2011, 01:06 GMT]
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard when asked by Inner City Press at the UN press conference to comment on the filing to the International Criminal Court (ICC) against UN Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Dr. Palitha Kohona, for war-crimes, the Prime Minister replied, "I'm not personally aware of all details of that case. We are a supporter of the ICC and a supporter of proper legal procedure and practice, one rule... is that political leaders should not comment on legal matters that are underway.”
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Uprooted Tamils from Puthukkudiyiruppu still strive for resettlement

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 March 2011, 19:41 GMT]
Large number of Tamil families from Mullaiththeevu district of Vanni, forcibly displaced and still held behind barbed wire camps in Menik Farm and other places, are yet to be allowed into their native villages in Puthukkudiyiruppu. The occupying Sri Lankan military has only allowed civilians to enter 6 of 19 Village Officer (GS) divisions in Puthukkudiyiruppu. So far, Only 68,846 persons from 23,050 families have been resettled in 65 out of 92 Village Officer divisions in Mullaiththeevu district. Thirty percent of the civilians are not allowed to resettle in the entire district of Mullaiththeevu, according to the data from the Mullaiththeevu District Secretariat.
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No security guarantee for Tamil parliamentarians: TNA MP

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 March 2011, 07:58 GMT]
Over the attack on his vehicle at Nochchiyagama on Monday, Tamil National Alliance Ki'linochchi district parlimentarian S. Sreetharan said in Parliament on Wednesday, “It is clear that there is no security guarantee for MPs in this country. How can a Tamil here expect security from the state?” He further stated that while he was passing Medawachchiya on Monday at 5:30 p.m., a white colored van without a number plate overtook their vehicle. When they approached Ullukku'lam the said vehicle was parked on the side of the road and three men got off from the vehicle and fired at them using small weapons. In return, his security guards fired back before the assassins threw a grenade at his vehicle and fled the scene.
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Meaningful accountability comes by addressing the national question

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 March 2011, 10:33 GMT]
When events similar to what happened and is happening in the island led to international intervention and liberation of the affected in many other instances of the world, the issue of Eezham Tamils is consciously blunted as something concerned to insurgency, counterinsurgency and war crimes investigation of both. In the process, the main culprit of decades, i.e., the Sri Lankan state (not the regimes) escapes unscathed and is being saved by those who have a problem of irregularity with their appetite, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo responding to discussions in a live web-seminar conducted by Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research of Harvard University on 24 February.
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Sri Lanka's rights violations compel investigations, says Australian MP

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 March 2011, 02:45 GMT]
Laurie Ferguson, Member of Australian Parliament for Werriwa and Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services, in his statement following submitting a private members bill for debate on "Humanitarian Issues During the War in Sri Lanka," Monday detailed the egregious violations of human rights in Sri Lanka and said he supported eminent personalities, Governments, and premier Rights organizations around the world in demanding an independent, international investigations into Sri Lanka's rights violations.
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Kohona, Samarasinghe issues raised in Australia Parliament

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 March 2011, 02:28 GMT]
John Murphy, Australia's Labor pary member of parliament for Reid, during a house debate on Thursday expressed grave concern at the "foreshadowed appointment" of Sri Lanka's ex-Navy commander Admiral Samarasinghe as the next high commissioner, and called upon the Australian Government to "independently investigate" the involvement of Dr Palitha Kohona, an Australian National, in the killing of surrendees during the last phase of Sri Lanka's civil war.
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Occupying military orders VVT people to register before 10:00 a.m. Wednesday

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 March 2011, 20:40 GMT]
In a draconian order, the SL military occupying the country of Eezham Tamils has asked the people of Valveddiththu’rai, a densely populated town in the northern coast of Jaffna, to register themselves with the military, along with family photos, before 10:00 a.m. Wednesday. The shocked Eezham Tamils wonder whether their country is fast turning into an open concentration camp for them. The order comes even as there is a case against such registrations filed by TNA is pending in the court. The notice to the public to register within 24 hours and forms for that are distributed by the SL Army to local shops. On the order of the Army, the local village officials were seen carrying out the work even during the night. People feel that the show of terror is a revenge for the participation of the people of VVT in the funeral of Parvathi Amma, despite military harassment.
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After Libya referral to ICC, US warns Sri Lanka on war crimes

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 March 2011, 13:12 GMT]
The United States warned this week that Sri Lanka could be hauled before a war crimes tribunal over the killing of “many thousands of civilians” in the final months of its armed conflict, if it is not willing hold to meet international standards in its own investigations into the mass killings, AFP reported. The warning, described by AFP as “the toughest yet” came in comments by US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert Blake, in an interview with the agency. Blake also cited the UN Security Council referring Libya to the International Criminal Court last week as a signal of global concern over human rights.
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