SLA reintroduces checking of vehicles in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 July 2010, 06:02 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has reintroduced checking of all vehicles passing through the main road in Batticaloa to Vaazhaichcheanai, Kalmunai and Verukal areas. This checking of civilians causes untold hardships during emergency travelling, residents express concern. Despite these checking by police and SLA, paramilitary gangs continue to rob and involve in other crimes, they added.
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PTF imposes restrictions on local NGOs in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 July 2010, 06:56 GMT]
Sri Lanka government which allows only a few Non-government Organizations (NGO) to serve in Vanni, now imposes restrictions on NGOs serving in Jaffna too through its Presidential Task Force (PTF), headed by Basil Rajapaksa, Sri Lankan Minister and brother of SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa, NGO circles in Jaffna said. It is alleged that PTF favours the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the allocation of housing constructions for more than 15,000 uprooted civilians from Vanni staying in temporary dwellings in Jaffna.
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Tamils sue Germany for accepting alleged war crimes commander as ambassador

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 July 2010, 23:54 GMT]
In an unprecedented legal move, three diaspora Tamil organisations have decided on Friday to file a case against Germany in the European Court of Human Rights. The Switzerland Council of Eezham Tamils (SCET), the Norwegian Council of Eezham Tamils (NCET) and the US based NGO, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), are to submit an application to the European Court of Human Rights charging the German government for violating EU Rights conventions by accepting a Sri Lankan military commander, Major General Jagath Dias, an accused in the war crimes, as Sri Lanka’s diplomat to Germany. Meanwhile, German based International Human Rights Association at Bremen, while welcoming the move said that real thrust could be achieved only by exposing and suing what this general is doing in Germany, violating human rights with the tacit approval of the German government.
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SLA personnel to be settled in uprooted civilians’ land in Ki’linochchi

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 July 2010, 06:28 GMT]
Five thousand houses constructed in Mu’ruka’ndi area in Ki’linochchi district including Skanthapuram along A9 road are to be settled in August with Sri Lanka Army (SLA) senior and junior officials and their families permanently while the uprooted civilians brought to be resettled in Skanthapuram are left in a school building by Sri Lanka government officials, sources in Ki’linochchi said.
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Boyle urges divestment-disinvestment campaign against "apartheid" Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 July 2010, 00:07 GMT]
Speaking at the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FeTNA) convention during the US Independence day weekend, Professor Boyle, an expert in International Law, said that Sri Lanka is a violator of the Apartheid Convention, and that Tamils across the world should, without delay, intensify a divestment and disinvestment campaign against Sri Lanka "in the same lines and for the same reason the world did this against the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa." The July event held in Waterbury, Connecticut, is traditionally the largest event of the Tamil speaking people in the US every year, and the Connecticut event this year drew more than 2000 Tamils.
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SLA soldiers continue to plunder abandoned houses in Vadamaraadchi East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 July 2010, 17:35 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers continue to plunder the valuable properties abandoned by the uprooted residents of the coastal area from Naakarkoayil to Chu’ndikku’lam in Vadmaraadchi East, a team of officials which had visited the area recently said. Only Naakarkoayil and its surroundings had been affected by war while the people and their properties in the rest of the vast area had not been greatly affected as the war did not take place in their area. These people, uprooted when SLA began to invade Naakarkoayil and Mukamaalai during the offensive on Vanni, had fled leaving all their belongings. It is this area that is now being plundered by SLA soldiers and Southern traders allowed into the area by SLA authorities, the officials further said.
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Uprooted civilians in Kodikaamam starve due to reduced food ration

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 July 2010, 15:41 GMT]
2,307 uprooted civilians of 715 families staying in Raamaavil camp in Kodikaamam in Thenmaraadchi complain of starvation as they are given only rice, that too of a very poor quality, as dry food relief ration. They are forced to sell the poor quality rice as cattle fodder and buy rice for consumption, they further said. The relief dry food ration given under World Food Programme had been suddenly suspended and former Jaffna Government Agent K. Ganesh had announced that the supply of dry food relief ration would be soon resumed, following media reports exposing the sudden suspension, sources in Jaffna said.
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Construction of fishing centre for Southern fishermen in Mannaar suspended due to protest

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 July 2010, 18:49 GMT]
The construction of a fishing jetty and a cooler facility for Sinhalese fishermen from South that was begun in Naachchikkudaa coast in Mannaar district with the support Sri Lanka government top officials was suspended as the local fishermen organizations had raised their strong protest, sources in Mannaar said. The above constructions were begun in the Nachchikkudaa coast where uprooted civilians were allowed to resettle.
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SLA forces resettled civilians in Ki’linochchi to vacate dwellings

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 July 2010, 06:12 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers occupying Ki’linochchi are forcing the resettled civilians in Selvaanakar Eight Houses Scheme to vacate their houses claiming that their houses are built on private land, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Vanni parliamentarian Sritharan said. He added that SLA soldiers entering the Scheme during nights in the last few days have been attacking the men, women and children in the housing scheme indiscriminately. The above families, whose heads are disabled, are so scared and frustrated that they consider suicide to escape SLA intimidation and harassment, Sritharan said.
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Tamil Country Councils, TAG announce legal partnership

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 July 2010, 01:02 GMT]
Four democratically-elected Country Councils (CCs) of Eezham Tamils in Europe announced Tuesday the signing of a formal "Collaboration Agreement" with Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group, to form a co-operative relationship to pursue criminal and civil litigation against Sri Lanka officials complicit in war-crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity in the courts of European Community member countries and in international courts. "Norway, Switzerland, France and Italy have already signed the preliminary agreement. The National Council of Canadian Tamils has also decided to formally join the partnership and other countries are expected to join the collaboration effort," spokesperson coordinating the effort in Europe told TamilNet.
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SLA to construct permanent base in demolished Koappaay Tiger Heroes’ Resting Home site

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 July 2010, 16:27 GMT]
Jaffna Sri Lanka Army (SLA) high command has requested Sri Lanka Electricity Board Jaffna to supply electricity to the site where Tiger Heroes’ Resting Home had stood in Koappaay before being obliterated by SLA recently as it intends to construct a big permanent base for its 512 Division, sources in Jaffna said. Meanwhile, SLA, constructing several bases in Jaffna in haste, forces the uprooted civilians living in the area around the above site to evacuate their dwellings, the affected civilians complain.
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SL minister includes spouses of Balakumaran, Yogi, among widows

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 July 2010, 13:04 GMT]
According to Rajapaksa regime’s Rehabilitation and Prisons Reforms minister and Communist Party leader, Dew Gunasekera, the wives of the senior members of the LTTE, K.V. Balakumaran and Yogaratnam Yogi are among the widows needing rehabilitation, The Island reported Monday. Both the LTTE leaders were reportedly seen reaching internment camps run by the Sri Lankan military, by many who went into those camps. The international community was repeatedly telling the LTTE to surrender to Colombo and civilians to get into barbed-wire camps of the Sri Lankan Army. The Army killed Balakumaran on the Vanni east front early last year, The Island says. There were earlier media reports that the leaders were taken to Colombo.
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SLA soldiers plunder produce of civilians in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 July 2010, 16:10 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers intimidate the resettled civilians in Paduvaankarai area in Batticaloa district and take away their home produce without paying money, according to complaints made by the affected civilians to Sri Lanka government authorities. Despite complaints to government officials the SLA soldiers continue to rob the poor civilians of what they had managed to produce as no action has been taken on them, sources in Batticaloa said.
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Non-derogable rights under international law

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 July 2010, 14:25 GMT]
While the United Nations charter guarantees "the sovereign equality of all its Members," evolving legal doctrines dealing with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity are leading to the theory that the national sovereignty is not absolute, but is qualified by peremptory norms determined by jus cogens or "compelling law." Despite Sril Lanka's persistent opposition, based on sovereignty claims, to international attempts to investigate alleged killing of more than 40,000 of Tamil civilians, the egregious nature of these crimes is unlikely to disappear from the consciousness of the world community and the Tamils affected by war. Until the issue is taken up at the world courts, expatriate Tamils should seek to assert jus cogens based cause of action in the courts of Europe and elsewhere to bring Sri Lanka officials complicit in war-crimes to justice.
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Weiss: Colombo dominated by racist ideologues

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 July 2010, 23:28 GMT]
Arguing the reasons why Sri Lanka is making "fanciful" claims that "as many as half of all Tamil boatpeople have "links" to the Tigers," Gordon Weiss, UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka during the war, says "Its [Sri Lanka's] government is dominated by racist ideologues who promote the notion of the Sinhalese as a "chosen people." Government death squads have snatched thousands of people from the streets over the years. The country's highest court has explicitly rejected the role of international human rights instruments in Sri Lanka's affairs. And the government continues to deny that it killed civilians during the recent war, that there were battlefield executions, that it bombed hospitals, or that there is anything wrong with the sham democratic machinery of the state. The repressive creature of extreme nationalism is alive and well in Sri Lanka."
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Cabinet meeting in Ki'linochchi aims to deceive Sinhala people: UNP MP

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 July 2010, 18:17 GMT]
“All should understand that the Sinhala people also have to bear the burden of foreign loans Sri Lanka has to borrow to develop the North which was destructed by Tigers,” Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed in a public meeting in Ki’linochchi Wednesday after having held the Cabinet Meeting in Ira’naimadu Sri Lanka Army (SLA) head quarters in Vanni. Nearly a hundred people brought by SLA participated in the meeting held under tight security. “There is no minority in the country but all are majority in the sense that all are Sri Lankans,” Mahinda Rajapaksa further claimed. Meanwhile, Jayalath Jeyawardene, an opposition United National Party (UNP) parliamentarian said in a statement to media in Colombo Wednesday that Mahinda Rajapaksa’s cabinet meeting in Ki’linochchi was a political drama to deceive the Sinhalese in the South, condemning the Ki’linochchi cabinet meeting.
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No peace without justice, says Obama's envoy to Srebrenica

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 July 2010, 03:24 GMT]
On the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, Samantha Power, Director of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights of the National Security Council in the Obama administration on her way to deliver message from President Obama in Srebrenica-Potocari memorial said, "as a factual matter, as a historical matter – it is very difficult to see lasting peace and stability without this kind of justice. So the more Serbia recognizes, the Bosnian government recognizes what atrocities were committed by its forces, the Croatian government grapples as well, more progress you will see and the more forward we move."
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SLA denies irrigation facility to resettled civilians in Ki’linochchi district

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 July 2010, 19:20 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) occupying Ki’lnochchi has stopped the supply of water to the paddy fields cultivated under Akka’rayan Ku’lam in Ki’linochchi district by resettled civilians claiming the water in the reservoir is reserved for its supply of drinking water, the resettled civilians said. The paddy cultivated by the resettled civilians face the risk of withering off due to lack of water, they said. SLA in Akka’rayan Ku’lam area obtains its drinking water transported in water bowsers from the tank.
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Madu uprooted Tamil families abandoned at school without food

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 July 2010, 17:19 GMT]
257 members of 110 uprooted Tamil families have been staying in Periyapa’ndivirichchaan Maha Viththiyaalayam buildings in Madu AGA division in Mannaar district since Saturday without food to elders and milk food to children. They were brought down from temporary shelters in Vavuniyaa and were left in the school building by civil authorities to find their own way to reach their abandoned houses in their villages, sources in Mannaar said.
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Houses constructed for SLA in Vanni as resettled civilians suffer, abandoned in huts

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 July 2010, 14:38 GMT]
While the resettled civilians in Vanni suffer in makeshift huts in broiling sun Colombo government is hastily constructing semi-permanent houses for Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers near Muruka’ndi in Vanni in a Sinhalese colonization scheme consisting of 12,000 houses with facilities including hospitals, schools, post offices, sources in Vanni said. The houses are being constructed in a newly declared SLA High Security Zone, strictly out of bounds for all outsiders. Hundreds of container vehicles bring the construction material for the semi-permanent houses and heap them along A9 road. These materials are transported in SLA trucks to the construction site so as to prevent any outsider seeing the work in progress, the sources added.
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