SLA permits annual Vattaappazhai Pongkal festival in Mullaiththeevu

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 May 2010, 05:34 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) authorities have permitted the annual Pongal festival in the historically famous Amman Koayil located in Vattaappazhai in Mullaiththeevu district to be held Monday but thousands of uprooted civilians from Mullaiththeevu still held in the camps are disinterested in taking part in the Pongal festival as they have been refused permission to resettle in their own places, sources in Vavuniyaa said. The government, however, is making a great show of the festival providing free transport to Vattaappazhai Pongkal festival from Vavuniyaa, the sources added.
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Congressman's war crimes call to Clinton to dog Peiris's visit

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 May 2010, 20:39 GMT]
Congressman Steve Driehaus (D-OH), a senior member of the United States National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee, in a letter to US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, asked her to "urge the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to conduct an investigation into reported human rights violations," in Sri Lanka. The Congressman points out in the letter that "[t]he pain assoicated with this [Sri Lanka's] conflict was further exacerbated as a result of alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious crimes committed during the final phase of the Sri Lanka's civil war." Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister G.L.Peiris is expected to visit the US this week, and his visit and his meeting with State Department officials are widely believed to be on accountability issues of Sri Lanka's war crimes, according to knowledgeable sources in Washington.
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NP Governor orders priority to Southern contractors in Northern development tenders

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 May 2010, 20:20 GMT]
Northern Province Governor and former Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Commander, Major. Gen. G. A. Chandrasiri, has directed Government Secretaries in the North to prioritize contactors from South in allocating tenders to all development work in the North, sources in Jaffna said. In the context of North being invaded by Southern Sinhalese businessmen and traders Governor’s directive effectively further denies all opportunities to local contractors in the development works in North, the sources added.
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SLA refuses to permit TNA parliamentarians into Menik Farm camp in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 May 2010, 12:05 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) officials in Menik Farm Camp in Vavuniyaa did not permit Saturday a group of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians to visit the said detention centre and see the Vanni civilians held, sources in Vavuniyaa said. The SLA officials insisted on prior permission from Ministry of Defence Secretary, Gothabaya Rajapakse and stood firm in their decision though the MPP tried to argue their way into the centre, the sources added.
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Peiris US bound amid war crime calls in US Congress

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 May 2010, 23:30 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister G.L.Peiris is to visit the United States next week for talks with the US government, and is expected to meet US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during his stay in US, Colombo electronic media reported quoting External Affairs Ministry sources. The hurriedly arranged visit occurs in the wake of a week of concerted calls by several human rights organizations for independent investigations into Sri Lanka war crimes. Congressmen David Price (D-4th District North Carolina) and Danny K Davis (D-7th District Illinois) added their voices for expeditious action by the international community to probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka. Three more Congresspersons made floor statements referring to traditional Tamil homeland and Tamils as a community under threat, and on the condition of Tamil refugees.
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SLA demolishes Valvai Monument for victims massacred by IPKF in VVT

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 May 2010, 16:47 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has demolished the memorial monument erected by Valveddiththu’rai (Valavai/VVT) people near Theeruvil crematorium grounds for their kith and kin massacred by occupying Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in August 1989, followed by the recent demolishing of Thileepan memorial monument, erected in Nalloor also by the public, sources said. SLA which has systematically removed all traces of Liberation Tigers in the peninsula by demolishing the Heroes’ Resting Homes, Theeruvil memorial monuments for Col. Kiddu, Kumarappa, Pulendran and ten combatants has now begun to demolish memorial monuments erected by public, the sources said.
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Citing photo evidence, HRW calls for UN war crimes probes

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 May 2010, 22:22 GMT]
Citing photographic evidence in its possession of war crimes committed in Sri Lanka in early 2009, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Thursday joined a chorus of calls this week for an independent international investigation into violations of the laws of war during the closing months of Sri Lanka’s campaign against the Tamil Tigers. Calling on the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to promptly establish an international investigation to examine allegations of wartime abuse by both sides to the conflict, HRW said it has examined more than 200 photos taken on the front lines in early 2009 by a soldier from the Sri Lankan Army’s Air Mobile Brigade. The pictures include a series showing a captured long-standing LTTE Political Wing cadre being executed by Sri Lankan troops, probably after torture, as well as the possible rape or mutilation of LTTE women cadres.
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British MPs call for war crimes probes at Mu’l’livaaykkaal Remembrance

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 May 2010, 09:36 GMT]
Parliamentarians from all three main British political parties addressed a rally Tuesday at Westminster to commemorate the forty thousand Tamil civilians massacred last year by the Sri Lankan government forces during the closing months of the island’s civil war. Addressing 10,000 people who filled the permitted space in Parliament Square, MPs from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, which comprise Britain’s new ruling coalition, and the main opposition Labour party were united in their condemnation of the war crimes and the need for international action on Sri Lanka’s war crimes.
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Senior SLA officer: ‘Kill everybody!’ order came from the top

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 19:33 GMT]
A senior Sri Lankan Army commander and frontline soldier have told Britain’s Channel 4 News that point-blank executions of Tamils at the end of the civil war in May 2009 were carried out under orders ‘from the top’. In an extended segment on Sri Lanka Tuesday, Channel 4 broadcast translated video interviews with the two soldiers. Surrendering LTTE fighters and their families were detained, tortured and shot, the trooper said. Channel 4 also interviewed in the studio the former Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, Louis Arbour, who slammed the impunity enjoyed by Sri Lankan forces throughout the armed conflict. Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United Nations, Palitha Kohana, failed to show up, despite agreeing beforehand to appear to defend his government’s record.
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Accounting for 2009 will define Sri Lanka’s future - editorial

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 11:10 GMT]
“2009’s single, protracted program of state-conducted slaughter in Sri Lanka has a sixty year-long antecedent, beginning well before the armed conflict erupted in 1983 … Since independence from Britain the Tamils have been a clear target for state-sanctioned and, later, state-conducted violence on a massive scale. … In that sense, the Tamils today embody the raison d’etre of the ‘responsibility to protect,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper argued in its latest editorial.
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Valikaamam HSZ resettlement issue remains unresolved

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 09:46 GMT]
The issue of resettling families uprooted from their properties by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) for the establishment of High Security Zone (HSZ) discussed in a meeting in Thellippazhai Divisional Secretariat Monday was not resolved due to the non-cooperation of the Tamil political leaders, the representatives of the Welfare Organizations for Uprooted Persons (WOUP) who arranged the meeting said. WOUP had requested all the parliamentarians of Jaffna district to raise their voices together to solve the issue, its representatives said.
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NESoHR: Except Dublin, world remains without action on Colombo's War Crimes

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 May 2010, 09:09 GMT]
"For the last one year, there has only been talk of war crime charges. Repeated attacks on hospitals; killing, torture, rape and sexual abuse of people escaping the war zone are some of the charges leveled against the Sri Lankan forces. But, except for the verdict passed by the Dublin Permanent People’s Tribunal there has been no other concrete action," said the exiled team members of the North East Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR), the Humanitarian body which was earlier based in Vanni, in a statement issued Monday. "The 300,000 people who walked out of the war zone are witnesses to these war crimes. Each one of them would have narrowly escaped death at least once in those safe zones. Fear, extreme fear, prevents the 300,000 eye witnesses from speaking. Even those who escaped from the island to other countries are silenced by fear."
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Sri Lanka responsible for mass killings - ICG

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 May 2010, 01:24 GMT]
The report by International Crisis Group, a Europe based NGO, said that despite its [Colombo’s] promises to protect civilians and aid workers as it made its assault on the Tigers, the Sri Lankan government had bombed relentlessly in areas where it knew unarmed people were present, according to the Monday edition of New York Times. “Evidence gathered by Crisis Group provides reasonable grounds to believe that during these months [the security forces intentionally and repeatedly shelled civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations,” the paper said quoting from the text of the ICG report, and added that “[i]t [the report] also provides reason to believe that senior government and military officials were aware of the massive civilian casualties due to the security forces’ attacks, but failed to protect the civilian population as they were obliged to under the laws of war.”
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SLA tears down Tamil Heroes memorial monuments in VVT

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 May 2010, 15:28 GMT]
More than a hundred Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers deployed Sunday evening in Theeruvil in Valveddiththu’rai, the birth place of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader V. Pirapaharan in Vadamaraadchi, are tearing down the memorial monuments erected in memory of twelve combatants including senior Commanders Kumarappa, Pulenthiran and another memorial monument of Col. Kiddu, sources in Valveddiththur’ai (VVT) said. Meanwhile, former TNA parliamentarian Sivajilingam told that he too had received complaints about the demolishing of LTTE memorial monuments.
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Tamils commemorate Vanni massacre at Lincoln memorial

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 May 2010, 12:20 GMT]
More than four hundred Tamils in the U.S. held a remembrance rally in Washington D.C. for the nearly 40,000 Tamil civilians massacred by the Sri Lanka State in Mu'l'livaaykkaal during the final months of 2009. "We had the event at the very heart of the Nation built on promise of freedom and justice; we demonstrated first in front of the White House, and after a one mile procession, at the reflecting pool adjoining the Lincoln memorial to symbolize and demonstrate our resolve that we will never forget this atrocity, and that until we bring the perpetrators of this dastardly crimes, we will not rest," Dr Jeyarajah, the main organizer of the event said.
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Resettlement of uprooted civilians remains rejected in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 May 2010, 11:05 GMT]
The civilians uprooted from Valikaamam in Vadamaraadchi by occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) converting their lands into High Security Zone (HSZ) 20 years ago have lost all hopes despite repeated promises and announcements made by government ministers, officials and Jaffna SLA Commander as SLA authorities continue to deny permission for resettlement, according to A.C. Nadarajah, one of nearly a hundred thousand uprooted persons in Jaffna peninsula. Mr. Nadarajah, a former principal, social activist and the present manager of ‘Yarl Thinakural’ in Jaffna, leads one of the welfare organizations for uprooted civilians in Jaffna peninsula. "It is obvious that the main reason for this predicament is the adamancy of the SLA to vacate the lands and properties confiscated from thousands of families in Jaffna peninsula," Mr. Nadarajah told journalists in Jaffna.
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Lest We Forget: Children affected by Genocidal War Crimes of Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 May 2010, 04:01 GMT]
Tamils all over the world mark 18 May as Genocidal War Crimes Day, observing one year remembrance of thousands who perished in the war, waged by the Sri Lankan state and its abettors, on the de-facto state of Tamil Eelam. Despite its repeated pledges to the International Community, the Sri Lankan state and its military machine vowing to erase 'separatism demand' from Tamils for generations, to turn heavy arms on civilian population claiming the lives of thousands of children and women in addition to depriving them of food, medicine and medical evacuation on time. The conduct of the Sri Lankan state, which disregarded all norms of humanity in the war, has posed a civilisational question, and justice remains undelivered. TamilNet releases 14 of 512 photos taken by a humanitarian worker to mark the Genocidal War Crimes Day.
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Vanni uprooted civilians in Raamaavil camp protest against suspension of food supply

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 May 2010, 15:02 GMT]
Nearly a hundred Vanni civilians uprooted due to war and sheltered in Raamaavil camp in Kodikaamam in Themaraadchi gathered Wednesday in front of Thenmaraadchi Divisional Secretariat protesting against the suspension of relief food since 1 May. As the uprooted civilians are free to go out of the camp Jaffna Government Agent (GA) had ordered the suspension of relief food items to the refugees expecting them to find employment and their own means of living, Thenmaraadchi Divisional Secretariat sources said. The civilians complained that their children are starving and demanded immediate resettlement in their own places.
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Arbour to campaign for independent war-crimes inquiry in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 May 2010, 23:29 GMT]
Louise Arbour, president of the NGO International Crisis Group (ICG) and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "will examine these allegations [of war crimes in Sri Lanka] and make the case for an independent international inquiry as a necessary step in making Sri Lanka's tenuous and bitter peace more just and sustainable," said a note sent to the invitees for a conference on "War Crimes in Sri Lanka" to be held Monday at the premises of the event's joint sponsor, Chatham House, London.
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SL government stages hidden agenda in Jaffna peninsula – Jaffna MP

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 May 2010, 17:23 GMT]
Suresh Premachandran, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Jaffna district parliamentarian, accused Sri Lanka Government for purposely encouraging crimes in Jaffna peninsula such as abduction and killing for ransom, robbery, sexual abuse of lonely women so that it could continue to hold the peninsula in its authority, in a press meet held Monday at his Jaffna office. He further blamed the government for having abandoned the resettled civilians in Mullaiththeevu district who had been uprooted and detained during the war on Vanni.
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