Tamil survivors bear phosphorous burns - report

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 May 2009, 23:24 GMT]
Tamil civilians who escaped the Sri Lankan military bombardment, treated by French doctors, included those with injuries from phosphorous bombs, AFP reported. Doctors at the French field hospital Cheddikulam, Vavuniya said that among those who were treated were those with white hands, possibly caused by burns from phosphorus- an incendiary weapon which is banned from use in civilian areas under an international convention. According to Peter Herby, head of the ICRC's (International Committee of the Red Cross) Arms Unit, there are specific rules on the use of white phosphorous that go beyond the general rules of war.
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Aid workers tell donors not to fund Sri Lanka, reports Channel-4's Walsh

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 May 2009, 21:14 GMT]
"This is a man-made humanitarian disaster, the aid worker explained. "I am in the strange position of just keep telling all our donors when they come here to NOT to give money,"" writes Channel-4's Nick Paton Walsh, quoting an aid worker inside an internment camp in Vavuniyaa. The Channel-4 crew was deported on the directions of Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse for reporting allegations of abuse, rape, and ill-treatment of Tamils held in internment camps.
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4 Tamil youths missing, 1 abducted in Batticaloa in a day

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 May 2009, 07:03 GMT]
Four Tamil youths from Batticaloa district had gone missing Sunday 3 May in places around Batticaloa town while armed men in a white van abducted a young farmer on the same day in Vavu’natheevu, in Batticlaoa district, according to complaints registered with Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission (SLHRC) in Batticaloa, by their relatives. Four of the youths who are friends had gone missing after leaving homes while unidentified armed men arriving in a white van had forcibly taken away the fifth youth from his home in Vavu’natheevu, sources in Batticaloa said.
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Rains expose callousness of mass imprisonment

[TamilNet, Friday, 08 May 2009, 16:05 GMT]
Heavy rains earlier this week flooded the internment camp created in the name of Ananda Coomaraswamy in Vavuniyaa where the last influx of captured civilians of Vanni are held in temporary tents. But, as 'war prisoners' they didn't have the freedom to move to dryer places, said an aid worker in Vavuniyaa, condemning the International Community and the UN for insisting on the capture of civilians but not taking adequate responsibility of them and their freedom of movement even in times of such a situation.
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Deaths of elderly Vanni IDPs increase in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 May 2009, 13:44 GMT]
Death toll of elderly persons displaced from Vanni due to military operations and held in detention centres in Vavuniyaa is on the increase, sources in Vavuniyaa said. On Monday alone ten elderly persons died in detention centers located in Vavuniyaa and their bodies had been handed over to the Vavuniyaa general hospital, the sources added.
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Tamil teacher shot dead in Vavu’natheevu

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 May 2009, 11:49 GMT]
An unidentified armed man shot dead a Tamil teacher Wednesday morning at Kannankudaa Pi’l’laiyaaradi area in Vavu’natheevu police division in Batticaloa district while he was cycling to his school located at Paavatkodichcheanai, sources in Batticaloa said.
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2 elderly women die of starvation in Jaffna SLA detention centres

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 05 May 2009, 16:59 GMT]
A 79-year-old woman detainee in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) detention centre in Mirusuvil Roman Catholic Church and a 75-year-old woman in Kathadi Saiva Children Home SLA detention centre are reported dead due to starvation, sources in Jaffna. Jaffna magistrate court, being informed of the deaths, is awaiting post mortem examination reports from medical authorities for further legal action, the sources added.
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Paramilitary kills kidnapped girl in Batticaloa after ransom demand

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 May 2009, 11:56 GMT]
Dead body of the 8-year-old Thinusika Satheeskumar, the girl reported missing since Tuesday after going to her school, was recovered inside an abandoned well in the city Saturday morning. The victims' relatives have alleged that the killers were paramilitary operatives who have been demanding 3 million rupees in ransom. Thinusika is the daughter of Satheeskumar Santhirarajah who was abducted two years ago allegedly by Karuna Group paramilitary men demanding ransom. He was reportedly slain in Welikande even after a part of the ransom was paid. Now, a former PLOTE paramilitary operative is alleged to be the man behind the abduction and murder of the girl.
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7,000 Tamils in Vanni killed, 14,000 injured in 3 months, TNA tells David Miliband

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 11:53 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Trincomalee district MP and parliamentary group leader, R. Sampanthan, and parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran told the visiting British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, that 7,000 Tamils in Vanni have been killed and 14,000 injured in the last three months, but the International Community has remained inactive without taking any action to stop the killings, TNA sources said. The TNA parliamentarians also told Miliband that more than 300 Tamil youths in Vavuniyaa detention centre have been arrested by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and that the SLA has not revealed the whereabouts of the arrested youths to their parents.
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Events unfold typical of Nazi concentration camps

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 10:13 GMT]
Food parcels were thrown to people after making them run like dogs, and two children were killed in the melee in the barbed-wire camp at Menik Farm, Vavuniyaa. A 12-year-old boy on Monday and a 7-year-old boy on Tuesday were crushed to death in the melee, media sources in Vavuniyaa said. Meanwhile, around 300 Tamil youth from several camps in the area were forcefully taken by the Sri Lanka army, in the name of arrest, amidst protests of family members on Tuesday. Recently, 60 people have died of sickness in the camps, the sources further said. A total of 154,368 Vanni civilians are in captivity by the SLA up to Wednesday and out of them, 90, 181, were captured after 20 April.
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Youths held in Jaffna SLA detention centre escape

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 16:49 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Jaffna said that a number of youths held in the SLA detention centre in Nelliyadi Maththiya Mahaviththiyalayam escaped Monday and Tuesday into residential areas in Vadamarraadchi. SLA is engaged in announcing over loudspeakers fitted to vehicles instructing the escapees to surrender, informing that the escapees would be granted general amnesty, since Monday in Vadamaraadchi, sources in Jaffna said.
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SLA arrests 98 youths in Vavuniyaa detention centre

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 April 2009, 04:01 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) intelligence unit officers arrested and took away Tuesday 98 youths among the civilians from Vanni held in SLA Ne'lukku'lam detention centre in Vavuniyaa despite the strong protest of the detainees numbering more than 3,000, sources in Vavuniyaa said. The enraged detainees attacked the government and other offices and employees in the centre, the sources added. The SLA officer-in-charge of the detention centre said that he has no information of the 98 youths taken away, the sources further said.
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'Explicit international deceit on Tamils'

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 20:03 GMT]
“What is the limit of IC’s appeasement with Colombo and what is the limit of IC in cheating Tamils,” asks Sri Navaratnam, on the 8th day of his hunger strike in Oslo, furious at the news of Colombo’s all out attack on Tamil civilians Monday night. “To facilitate the international community to deceive Tamils, Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday announced the halt of the use of heavy weapons in the safety zone of more than 165,000 civilians. Everybody welcomed it as though killing the civilians by small weapons is acceptable. It was a joke, the UN begging ‘Sri Lanka must respect heavy weapons pledge’, as though they are prepared to act if Sri Lanka breaches it. Colombo, which was already aerial bombing the civilians started with intense barrage of heavy weapons Monday night”, he cited.
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SLA suspends locating Vanni civilians in Vavuniyaa, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 17:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) key officials informed Jaffna Secretariat that the possibility of bringing civilians from Vanni to Jafnna peninsula for detention appears limited, Jaffna Secretariat (JS) sources said. Action is being taken to detain Vanni civilians instead in the SLA occupied areas like Ki’linochchi, Ka’ndaava’lai and other indentified places constructing big concentration villages, sources in Jaffna said. JS officials, recently taken by SLA to gather particulars of the civilians from Vanni held without being sent either to Vavuniyaa or Jaffna peninsula, refuse to reveal the information for security reasons.
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Thousands of Vanni civilians held in Oamanthai, Ki’linochchi district

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 April 2009, 11:30 GMT]
Thousands of families from Vanni are being held in Ka’ndaava’lai and Ki’linochchi areas, Jaffna Secretariat officials taken to these areas by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) said. The officials who went there to collect details of the civilians from Vanni further said that no decision has yet been taken as to where these civilians will be sent to. Meanwhile, more than 75,000 civilians from Vanni on the way to Vavuniyaa are held back around Oamanthai SLA entry point to Vavuniyaa, NGO sources in Vavuniyaa said.
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Outrageous response of UN to humanitarian crisis: Diaspora scientist

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 14:33 GMT]
Children as young as 12 are forcefully recruited and given with guns to fight on the front line alongside LTTE, Guardian.co.uk reported Saturday, 9.49 GMT, citing Gordon Weiss, UN spokesman in Sri Lanka. “Whom are they guarding”, Tamil circles asked. “It is outrageous that the UN which has no means to stop Colombo’s genocide or immediately take responsibility of the captured and even reluctant to talk about the high casualty but only ‘leaks out’ figures, to raise this matter at this juncture in an imbalanced way, when Colombo is bombarding the remaining civilians in the so-called safety zone”, said Thomas Aloysius, senior scientist in Bergan, Norway. “If what the UN official says is true, it is deplorable, but aren’t they too responsible for the tragedy by their inaction in prevailing upon Colombo to stop the war. The LTTE always ask for ceasefire”, he asked.
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Rajapaksa appoints notorious commander to head IDP resettlement

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 17:32 GMT]
Sri Lankan President and C-in-C of the armed forces Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday appointed Chief-of-Staff of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Maj. Gen. G.A. Chandrasiri as the Competent Authority Officer in charge of resettlement of Tamils from Vanni in alleged barbed-wire 'internment camps' and 'villages' in the North. Maj. Gen. Chandrasiri was the former chief of the SLA in Jaffna, under whose command Jaffna witnessed hundreds of forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations in the period from 2006 to 2008. Meanwhile, Colombo has started to seek funds to 'resettle' and 'rehabilitate' civilians who have been captured from the LTTE controlled area.
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Yaazhtheavi extension to Thaa'ndikku'lam cancelled last minute

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 11:45 GMT]
The extension of Yaazhtheavi express train from Vavuniyaa to Thaa'ndikku'lam with effect from Thursday was cancelled last minute due to security reasons. Sri Lanka Railways inaugural event was arranged by the Transport Minister Mr. Dallas Alahaperuma. Thaandikku'lam is located about 3 km north of Vavuniyaa. Yaazhtheavi currently runs between Colombo and Vavuniyaa.
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'Bountiful in killing shells, but no means for food packets'

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 00:37 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army (SLA) which was able to fire thousands of shells per day into the so-called safety zone to capture the civilians, doesn't have enough means to feed them when they are captured, said a District Secretariat official in Vavuniyaa. The SLA, which is still keeping the civilians inside the militarized zone, north of Oamanthai, for its screening, has asked the Tamil people of Vavuniyaa through loudspeaker announcements, to donate cooked-food packets to supply the captured civilians, the official speaking in condition of anonymity told TamilNet Thursday. So far, no civil official is able to confirm the arrival of the new batch of civilians into the internment camps of Vavuniyaa town this week.
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3 youths reported missing in Vavuniyaa, Mannaar

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 April 2009, 15:45 GMT]
One Tamil youth was abducted in Vavuniyaa, and two Tamil youths were reported missing in Mannaar since last Tuesday in two separate incidents, according to complaints lodged by their relatives in respective police station.
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