Police arrests Tamil youth in Kandy

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 August 2007, 05:17 GMT]
A Tamil youth was arrested on Saturday evening for allegedly taking photograph of a bridge located at the entrance to the Kandy town and is being detained in Kandy police station and subjected to interrogation by the Terrorist Intelligence Division, sources said.
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Heavy fighting in the seas off Pulmoaddai - LTTE

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 August 2007, 23:02 GMT]
Three Sri Lanka Navy Fast Attack Crafts (FACs) were damaged and more than 20 Dvora gunboats were chased away by the Sea Tigers, the naval force of the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE), towards Trincomalee port Sunday night after a fierce sea battle off Pulmoaddai that lasted from 10:00 p.m. till 2:30 a.m. Monday, according to Sea Tiger officials in Vanni. Six Sea Tiger fighters were killed in action in the battle, the Tigers said. Meanwhile Sri Lankan military sources claimed that they had sunk a Sea Tiger vessel in the clash.
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LTTE fires mortars towards Weli Oya, says SLA

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 August 2007, 21:18 GMT]
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam (LTTE) fired mortars targetted towards Wel Oya area in Polllanaruwa district, Sri Lanka Army (SLA) spokesperson Brigadier Prasanth Samarasinghe said Sunday. The attack began at 8:00 a.m. Sunday and claimed the life of a 65-year old man and injured five others, Brig. Samarasinghe said. A number of private residences are also said to have been damaged during the attack.
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Former AG Kamalasabeyson passes away

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 August 2007, 11:43 GMT]
Mr.K.C.Kamalasabeyson, former Attorney General of Sri Lanka, passed away in a private nursing home at Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu state in India, Sunday early morning around 2.30 a.m., after a brief illness, sources in Colombo said. He was 59. He retired from the post of Attorney General in April this year.


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'Para Demala': a reader's response

[TamilNet, Sunday, 12 August 2007, 01:58 GMT]
A Sinhala reader of TamilNet has come out with the following note on our news feature 'Para Demala', dated 06 August 2007. According to him, the word 'para' is the worst kind of derogatory word in Sinhala, but is used in the sense to mean alien or foreign. It is not connected to the Pa'raiyar community. He further adds that even Sinhala-Buddhist reformers of the calibre of Anagarika Dharmapala had used the phrase 'Para Demala' in a negative sense to mean low-grade aliens.
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A few devotees attend Maaviddapuram CAR festival

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 August 2007, 16:54 GMT]
Only around two thousand devotees entered through Sri Lanka Army (SLA) checkpoint in Thellippazhai to attend the Thear festival of the historic Maaviddapuram Kandasamy temple located inside the Valikaamam north High Security Zone (HSZ). After the SLA offensives in 1990 civilians living close to temple and surrounding areas were evicted, and in 1999 the area was demarcated to fall within the HSZ, despite protests from Chaiva organizations.
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One STF soldier killed, six injured in Kagnchikudichchaa'ru

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 August 2007, 16:47 GMT]
A Special Task Force (STF) soldier was killed and six others wounded when a combined team of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) troops and STF involved in deep penetration activity in Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)-controlled areas in Kagnchikudichchaa'ru area in Ampaa'rai District stepped on pressure mines Friday evening, Amparai police said.
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Tamil civilian's body recovered in Ea'raavoor

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 August 2007, 15:51 GMT]
The highly decomposed body of a Tamil civilian was recovered Thursday afternoon by Ea'raavoor police in a farm land in 5th Division, Ea'raavoor, sources in Batticaloa said. The victim has been identified as Nagamany Yogalingam, 40, a familied man from Chengkaladi, Cheanaikkudiyirippu area.
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Mullaiththeevu fishing woes

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 August 2007, 05:13 GMT]
Thanapalasingham Suman, 22 and his brother Manoharan, 27, were wounded in A'lampil seas in Mullaiththeevu on 28 July this year when SLN Dvora gunboats fired at their fishing boat. The brothers are currently recovering at the Mullaiththeevu District hospital. In an interview with TamilNet this week, Suman said many fishermen in his area have to risk their lives against frequent attacks by the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) to feed their family, and often to support ageing parents.
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Youth reported dead in STF roundup in Akkaraippattu

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 August 2007, 11:06 GMT]
Sri Lankan Special Task Force commandos in Akkaraippattu cordoned off the house of a family that runs a foreign employment agency Friday around 11:30 a.m. and fired at a 28-year-old man who was visiting the house. The victim, identified as Gunaratnam Ranjan, 28, was reported dead by the Police who said the death occurred due to the intake of cyanide. The family that runs the business has fled the area and contacted Human Rights Commission officials in Batticaloa seeking protection as the Police alleged that the visitor was a Liberation Tigers of the Tamileelam (LTTE) cadres, initial reports said.
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STF arrests two civilians in Kokkadichchoalai

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 August 2007, 16:49 GMT]
Sri Lanka Police and Special Task Force (STF) soldiers arrested two Tamil civilians during a combined search operation conducted in Kokkaddichchoalai police division in Batticaloa district Tuesday, police sources said. The arrested have been identified as M.Thiraviyarasa, 25 and Thiyagarasa, 36.
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Impunity reigns, rights record seriously deteriorates- HRW

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 August 2007, 02:31 GMT]
Qualifying the report as focusing primarily on abuses by the Sri Lankan government, the Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based rights organization, in a hard-hitting report released Monday said "the government's respect for international law has sharply declined, with it often appearing indifferent to the impact on civilians in the north and east...the main areas of concern [are], from violations of the laws of war and extrajudicial killings to unlawful restrictions on the media and nongovernmental organizations and the widespread impunity enjoyed by state security forces...Sri Lanka's defense establishment is particularly responsible for abuses."
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Kaakkaachchi Vaddai

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 August 2007, 11:45 GMT]

1. The surroundings of Kaakkaachchi oyster
2. The surroundings of Kaakkaachchi oyster shells

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Right to Protect

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 August 2007, 01:01 GMT]
Gareth Evans, President, International Crisis Group, in the eighth Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture at International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) , Colombo, 29 July said "The State has a primary responsibility to protect the individuals within it. Where the state fails in that responsibility, through either incapacity or ill-will, a secondary responsibility to protect falls on the wider international community. That, in a nutshell, is the core of the responsibility to protect (R2P) idea" and that "Sri Lanka is anything but an R2P."
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South African Tamils observe Black July

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 July 2007, 17:25 GMT]
Several hundred South African Tamils filled the Bayview Arutpa Kazhagam Hall in Chatsworth in Durban Friday evening to express solidarity with the NorthEast Tamils, and to pay respect for the victims of the pogroms against Tamils in Sri Lanka in July 1983.
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Ezhuvaitheevu

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 July 2007, 10:57 GMT]

1. The island of landmark
2. The emerging island at the mouth of the channel
3. The island of the group of seven
4. The first island sighted
5. The island of Eezham
6. The island of goats

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Black July emblematic of Sinhala rule - paper

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 July 2007, 05:38 GMT]
In nearly a quarter century of conflict since the state-sponsored anti-Tamil riots of July 1983, despite the tens of thousands of lives that have been lost in the conflict, “there has not been an iota of change in the Sinhala leadership’s thinking – nor, for that matter, in the sentiments of the international community [on the ethnic question],” the Tamil Guardian newspaper argued in its editorial this week. Comparing the regimes of Presidents Junius Jayawardene, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapakse, the paper contends: “Black July is not just a historical event. Rather, it is an emblematic act of Sinhala rule."
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Australia's Terror Prosecutions

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 July 2007, 20:14 GMT]
While Australian media highlighted that recent prosecutions by Australia's law enforcement gave the "appearance of a political imperative to obtain convictions and an excessive zeal for using harsh anti-terror laws," federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, suprised by the Melbourne court's decision to bail two Tamil men charged with supplying funds to Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, appeared to shift the blame towards the Courts saying, "bail laws for people charged with terrorism offences could be reviewed if there is evidence courts are misinterpreting them,"


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Thoompil / Thoompilpiddi

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 July 2007, 01:41 GMT]
The sandbar at the channel-entrance
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Australia Court grants bail to 3 arrested on terrorism charges

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 July 2007, 11:37 GMT]
Victoria state Supreme Court Judge Bernard Bongiorno, telling the court that if the "principle [normal presumption of innocence] is abandoned or even modified for political expediency, that risks the whole foundation of our criminal justice system," Tuesday released Aruran Vinayagamoorthy, 33, and Sivarajah Yathavan, 36, on bail, Associated Press reported. Bongiorno pointed out that the Australian government has not declared the Tamil Tigers a terrorist group. The two were arrested in May charged with "raising money for Liberation Tigers."
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