6 Village divisions in Mullaiththeevu district declared as HSZ

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 October 2010, 06:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka President’s Action Committee and Sri Lanka Ministry of Defence have declared six Village Officer divisions in Mullaiththeevu district as High Security Zone (HSZ) of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Tuesday evening, according to the officials of Mullaiththeevu Government Secretariat. The above authorities have instructed the officials not to permit resettlement of uprooted families in the areas declared as HSZ. Puthukkudiyiruppu East and West, Mallikaiththteevu, Sivanakar, Aananthapuram and Manthuvil are the village officer divisions declared as HSZ.
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Media and state crimes

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 October 2010, 19:31 GMT]
“You don’t say or even think that the invasion of Iraq is a criminal aggression of the kind for which people were hanged in Nuremberg […]. Suppose a newspaper started publishing the truth—that the invasion of Iraq was a criminal invasion that destroyed the country, that newspaper or the TV station is not going to get any ads”, said 82-year-old Noam Chomsky in an interview to India’s Outlook, Saturday. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, making his most brazen disclosure – 391,832 secret documents on the Iraqi war, is a hunted man by the world’s Establishments, reports The New York Times, Saturday. “You play outside the rules, and you will be dealt with outside the rules,” Mr. Assange an Australian national was told by an Australian official.
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Civilians’ gold recovered from Vanni should be returned to them – Mano Ganeshan

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 October 2010, 05:33 GMT]
Commenting on Sri Lanka government’s claim that its troops collected vast amount of gold jewelry during its war on Vanni, Civil Monitoring Commission chief Mano Ganeshan told AFP that, “We don't know where the military found this gold, but what is clear is that it belongs to Tamil civilians." Chief government whip Dinesh Gunawardena told parliament Wednesday that Sri Lanka Army (SLA) troops had collected gold items worth more than four million USD during the final months of the decades-long civil war last year and that they had been handed over to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. “The rightful owners of the gold are Tamil civilians and they should get their property back,” Mano Ganeshan told AFP.
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3 civilians injured in explosion in Ki’linochchi

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 October 2010, 05:24 GMT]
A landmine hidden under a destroyed building in Paarathipuram in Ki’lincochi exploded Monday around 5:00 p.m injuring three civilians who were removing the remnants of the building, the office in charge of de-mining, in Jaffna Secretariat said. One of the injured was transferred to Jaffna Teaching Hospital for further treatment from Ki’linochchi government hospital where the injured had been admitted.
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Amnesty urges Hague on independent probe into Sri Lanka war crimes

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 19 October 2010, 05:23 GMT]
Amnesty International Monday urged British Foreign Secretary William Hague to demand an independent international investigation into alleged war crime abuses in Sri Lanka when he meets his Sri Lankan counterpart, Professor GL Peiris, in London Tuesday. Amnesty also said it has “huge reservations about the effectiveness” of both Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), and the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon’s Panel of Experts set up to look into the reports of war crimes.
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Civilian dies in accidental police firing in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 October 2010, 16:22 GMT]
A thirty-year-old civilian of Munaikkaadu in Batticaloa district died due to gunshot injuries Friday night while a team of police personnel went to Muthalikkudaa to arrest a suspect involved in arson. While members of the police team and two others in the area were engaged in a heated argument, the rifle in the hand of a police officer had accidentally gone off wounding the deceased, police sources said.
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HRW, ICG, Amnesty reject invite, slam LLRC

[TamilNet, Thursday, 14 October 2010, 15:25 GMT]
Three leading international organizations will not accept an invitation to testify before a Sri Lankan government commission because it lacks the ability to advance accountability for war crimes, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, and Amnesty International said in a joint letter to Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission that was released Thursday. The LLRC was set up by President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government, whose military campaign against the Liberation Tigers concluded in early 2009 with the massacre in systematic shelling of tens of thousands of Tamil civilians. “"This Commission is nothing more than a cynical attempt by Sri Lanka to avoid a serious inquiry that would bring genuine accountability,” HRW’s Kenneth Roth said.
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HRW discusses Sri Lanka war-crimes in Harvard event

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 October 2010, 12:53 GMT]
In a talk titled "Prosecuting War Crimes in Sri Lanka: “No Reconciliation without Justice” at the Harvard Law School earlier this week, James Ross, Legal and Policy Director for Human Rights Watch (HRW), discussed options available for prosecuting war crimes committed in Sri Lanka during the final stages of the war in 2009 in seeking justice to the victims. The event well attended by students and several Boston area Tamils heard Ross describe how HRW exhausted all options to stop the mass killings during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka where more than 300,000 Tamil civilians were holed up along with Tamil Tiger units in a narrow stretch of beach front.
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Dublin follow-up on Sri Lanka war crimes

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 October 2010, 15:33 GMT]
School of Law and Government of Dublin City University together with Irish Forum for Peace in Sri Lanka are holding two events this week as follow-up to the Dublin war crimes tribunal on Sri Lanka held in January this year. Dublin findings issued at the end of the hearings said, Sri Lanka Government is "guilty of War-Crimes" and "guilty of Crimes Against Humanity." The tribunal also concluded that the charge of Genocide requires further investigations. Eye witnesses included several escapees from the final week of Sri Lanka offensive in the Mullaitivu "No Fire Zone" where more than 20,000 Tamil civilians were allegedly slaughtered by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) training heavy weapons on them.
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Police, SLA search for buried weapons in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 September 2010, 02:30 GMT]
Koappaay police, assisted by hundreds of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers, engaged in a search operation Sunday in a pond in the surroundings of a Pi’l’laiyaar temple located in Ka'l'liyang-kaadu in Jaffna claiming that a cache of weapons was buried in the pond. Though the search with the use of water pumps to drain out the water continued until evening no weapons were recovered. The Officer-in Charge of Koappaay police station said that some sources had informed of the weapons buried in the pond. He said the search will continue Monday.
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Colombo bans explosives to Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 September 2010, 08:45 GMT]
Amidst suspicions arising about circumstances leading to dynamite blast at Karadiyan-aa’ru police station that killed around 62 and injured more than a hundred, the Colombo government has banned explosives reaching Batticaloa district for blasting rocks for road construction, reports from Batticaloa said. Meanwhile, eyewitness accounts confirm that a big number of dead bodies were taken away by SL armed forces that reached the spot shortly after the blast. Colombo maintains that only 21 killed and around 70 injured.
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'EU should coordinate powers to bring justice to Eezham Tamils'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 September 2010, 05:08 GMT]
While powers and countries like Norway, preoccupied with geo-strategy and ‘development’, ignore the fundamentals of the crisis in the island, the European Union should work towards convincing and coordinating them in bringing political justice to Eezham Tamils, said 62-year-old Jegatheeswaran Arunachalam, an Australian national who witnessed the war in Vanni to its end. The EU, consisting of old nations that have gone through the gravity of national question in history, is in a better position to grasp appropriate solutions, he said. “As an immediate action, the EU should send a fact finding mission that includes members of the diaspora, and it should work for an internationally guaranteed situation for the diaspora to independently reach out its kith and kin in the island”, Jegatheeswaran, now on a Walk for Justice mission across Europe with two fellow activists, told TamilNet Friday.
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US University calls for Sri Lanka war crimes investigations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 September 2010, 02:10 GMT]
The Human Rights law clinic at the Washington D.C.-based American University, in a report released to the media Friday, proposed that the United Nations should establish a War Crimes Tribunal for Sri Lanka. "The Tamil community's need for truth, justice, and redress will continue to be marginalized without outside intervention. Marginalization and impunity for human rights violations may once again lead to unrest in the country and will impede justice and accountability," the report said.
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SLA intruder attacked by house-owner in Vanni

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 September 2010, 11:33 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Army soldier, who attempted to enter a house Thursday night while the house-owner, his wife and two daughters were fast asleep, was hacked and cut by the owner of the house, civilian sources in Kanakaampikaik-ku'lam in Ira'nai-madu told TamilNet Friday.
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Sri Lanka plays down Batticaloa blast toll

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 01:37 GMT]
Sri Lanka revised down the official casualty figures of a massive explosion Friday that destroyed a police station in the eastern Batticaloa district, from over sixty dead to an official count of 25, but local government officials amongst those who rushed to the site said dozens of bodies from the rubble had been swiftly removed by Sri Lankan forces. Citing negligence, the authorities said later on Friday that two Chinese construction contractors, seven civilians and 16 policemen were amongst those killed when containers of dynamite stored at the Karadiyan-aa'ru police station exploded. Local officials, however, insisted over 60 people, mainly police had been killed. It was not clear why the authorities, who have also ruled out sabotage, were downplaying the blast, they added.
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62 killed, 100 wounded in Batticaloa blast, official figures on casualty low

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 September 2010, 08:15 GMT]
Around 62 persons including Sri Lankan policemen, civilians and two Chinese nationals have been killed in a massive explosion that rocked the Karadiyan-aa'ru area, situated 20 km northwest of Batticaloa city, Friday around 12:30 p.m., initial reports from the area said. Containers with explosives parked close the police station exploded destroying the entire police station. The explosion also affected the nearby agricultural department building. There were at least three containers with dynamites intended for road construction which was operated by Chinese workers, the reports further said. Around 100 persons, including engineers from the South, wounded in the blast were being rushed to hospital. Ex LTTE members deployed in the construction work under Colombo's publicized rehabilitation programme were likely among the victims, a local NGO official told reporters in Colombo.
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Colombo refuses visa to NGO official

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 September 2010, 22:53 GMT]
The Sri Lankan Government has ordered Daniel Horgan, security coordination officer of Nonviolent Peaceforce, a foreign NGO, to leave Sri Lanka immediately, the Sinhala language Divaina newspaper said in an article. The order was made when Horgan sent in his papers seeking renewal of his visa to continue his work in Sri Lanka.
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'LLRC lessons advocate permanent subjugation of Tamils'

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 September 2010, 02:30 GMT]
LLRC, the Rajapaksa appointed Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, is created “neither to learn lessons nor to reconcile but to make Tamils accept and tolerate the crime and cruelty of the Sinhalese and live with repression forever,” says a reader, Sam Thambipillai, in sending a comment on Jayantha Dhanapala’s submission to the LLRC. Colombo’s diplomat Jayantha Dhanapala, who once attempted to contest for the UN Secretary General position, in his submission to the LLRC last month said: “We have learnt a great deal of lessons from the experience of combating one of the most ruthless terrorist groups […] We would be providing something innovative to the international community […] to give some guidance to armies of nation states as to how they should react to such a situation”.
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NJ court dismisses 5 out of 7 charges against alleged fund raising by Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 September 2010, 02:02 GMT]
During the pre-trial phase of a lawsuit accusing two Tamils and a US-registered Tamil charity, Tamils Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) for allegedly providing funds to the Liberation Tigers which is listed as a "Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)" by the US Department of State, and thereby aiding the Liberation Tigers in causing the death of several Sri Lanka civilians, U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh dismissed all but two charges, legal sources in Washington said. The suit was filed by relatives of 24 Sri Lankan civilians under a 1789 US statute Alien Tort Claim Act (ATCA) for the alleged killing by the LTTE. Legal sources in Washington said that the plaintiffs face a difficult legal challenge to establish that the remaining two charges due to the higher thresholds of burden of proof demanded by the Court.
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Sri Lanka stifles attempts to investigate war atrocities - paper

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 September 2010, 19:06 GMT]
Comparing how the United States accounted any Vietnamese killed as Viet Cong, Peter Bouckert, in the British Daily Guardian said Sunday that "Sri Lanka's defence secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has taken such creative accounting to new heights. The United Nations reported that at least 7,000 civilians were killed and tens of thousands wounded during the final months of the brutal conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which ended in May 2009. But Gotabhaya has repeatedly cast aspersions on the idea that there were any civilian casualties."
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