Colombo arrested to be sent to Boosa camp

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 February 2007, 10:26 GMT]
The Colombo Magistrate Monday allowed an application by the police to send Tamil civilians arrested in cordon and search operations conducted in Fort and Pettah areas in Colombo on Saturday and Sunday to Boosa detention camp located in the southern province, sources said.
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Tamil Americans pay tribute to Anton Balasingham

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 February 2007, 01:29 GMT]
Several hundred Tamil Americans braved the weather to pay tribute to the later Anton Balasingham, theoretician and political advisor of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), at a memorial event held in Manmouth Middle School in New Jersey, 5:00 p.m. Saturday. Mr Balasingham was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in the middle of November, and passed away on 14 December 2006.
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Police commandos, Tigers exchange gunfire in Murunkan

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 February 2007, 18:01 GMT]
Murunkan Police reported exchange of gunfire between a road patrol of Police commandos and a group of Liberation Tigers Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. at Pannavedduvan, 32 km southeast of Mannar. Police said that a Tiger cadre was killed and that the Tigers had taken the body of their dead cadre, but clamied to have located a T-56 automatic rifle after the clash. Five hours later, at 3:00 a.m. Sri Lanka Army fired artillery shells towards LTTE controlled Arippu, 20 km northwest of Pannavedduvan.
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15 Tamil youths arrested in Wennapuwa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 February 2007, 17:47 GMT]
Fifteen Tamil youths were arrested in Wennapuwa, coastal town in the western province Saturday night during a cordon and search operation by the government security forces. Most of the arrested are natives of Batticaloa district who have found employment in the area, media sources said.


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300 Tamils arrested in Colombo ahead of Independence Day celebrations

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 February 2007, 03:04 GMT]
More than 300 persons, majority of them Tamils, were arrested during a combined cordon and search operation conducted by Sri Lanka security forces in Fort and Pettah areas in Colombo, Sunday morning.
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Chirac highlights civilian suffering on Sri Lanka's Independence Day

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 February 2007, 01:35 GMT]
France's President Jacques Chirac, in a message to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse on the occasion of the Sri Lanka's Independence Day on February 04, said he wished that a dialogue would start again and that a political solution to the conflict that is tearing Sri Lanka apart would be found. In his message to Mr. Rajapakse, Mr. Chirac noted that "numerous civilians are suffering in a very difficult humanitarian situation," since the fighting resumed beween the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
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266 Tamils arrested in search operation in Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 February 2007, 07:57 GMT]
Sri Lanka Police said 266 Tamils, including 53 women, were arrested in a dawn to noon house-to-house search operation, conducted by hundreds of police and armed troops in Fort area and its suburbs in Colombo city, Saturday. They are detained in Fort Police Station and are being interrogated by specially appointed police investigation teams, the police said. The police said the arrested are permanent residents of Jaffna district.
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TE Law College releases book on 'Family Law'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 February 2007, 02:25 GMT]
"We are very proud that even after the Tamil community has been subjected to unprecedented hardships, people have held onto their strong cultural values. In the last 12 to 13 years only 154 families have sought separation or divorce in Vanni region. It is a remarkable statistic in a society that has been struggling for social changes for many years," K. V. Balakumaran, senior member of Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) said Wednesday.
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Release East undergraduates immediately- TNA MP

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 February 2007, 00:27 GMT]
“Successive Sri Lanka Governments have been using education as a tool to punish the Tamil community as part of their campaign to subjugate the Tamils. The recent abductions and harassment of Northeast student community by the Sri Lankan Forces aimed at disrupting the education and instilling fear among the student population should be stopped immediately,” said S. Jeyananthamoorthy, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian for Batticaloa district, Friday.
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Civilian found dead in Pulmoddai

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 February 2007, 21:50 GMT]
The Police Friday morning recovered the body of an elderly Tamil man along the sea beach in Pulmoddai village located about 65 km north of Trincomalee town, sources in Trincomalee said.
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Fishing hamlet fears backlash after Navy arrests

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 February 2007, 12:40 GMT]
Residents of a fishing hamlet north of Colombo say their community has been dangerously stigmatised after the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) last Saturday blew up one of their boats, seized two others and arrested nine people alleging complicity in a Sea Tiger attack on Colombo port. Munnakkarai is a mixed ethnicity fishing community of around 5000 people, located 1 km southwest of Negombo.
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56 Tamil civilians arrested in Uppuveli

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 February 2007, 08:46 GMT]
Fifty six Tamil civilians including two women were arrested in a combined cordon and search operation conducted by Sri Lanka forces in Uppuveli division, about three km off north of east port town in Trincomalee district Thursday evening.
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Batticaloa GA visits Vaharai

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 February 2007, 00:44 GMT]
"Vaharai residents displaced due to the offensive of Sri Lanka army (SLA) will be resettled very soon, and displaced residents of Trincomalee district will follow soon after," said Sundaram Arumainayagam, the Government agent (GA) of Batticaloa district speaking to the press Thursday.
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Union: Navy destroyed fishing boats, not Tiger craft

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 January 2007, 11:36 GMT]
On Saturday Sri Lanka’s military said it had foiled a Tamil Tiger attack on the Colombo port and that three Sea Tiger boats had been destroyed. The navy said nine people had been arrested in connection with the attack. However, the All Ceylon Fisheries Union (ACFU) Tuesday contradicted the military and said the Navy had fired on fishing boats and arrested fishermen. An alleged black out on news had censored details of an attack said to have destroyed four Sri Lankan vessels in Colombo Harbour last Saturday. A flotilla of five attack boats and four explosions were registered by eyewitnesses.
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Acute shortage of newsprint in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 January 2007, 09:51 GMT]
International Independent Journalist Organization and Sri Lanka Organization for Freedom of Expression in Jaffna have sent letters to the Ambassadors of donor countries and International media agencies, informing the severe shortage of news print and ink in the Jaffna peninsula. The shortage has forced the publishers of Tamil dailies to reduce the number of pages and the number of copies published, the publishers said.
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Abducted TRO officials remembered

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 January 2007, 08:40 GMT]
The one-year remembrance of the abducted seven employees of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) was observed in front of the TRO head office in Kilinochchi Tuesday. The relatives of the abducted and the employees of TRO gathered around 9:00 a.m. and remembered the persons abducted by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and Karuna Group at Welikanda one year ago while they were traveling to Vavuniya from Batticaloa. The President of TRO, V. Sivanadiyar, read a memorandum addressed to the Commissioner of Human Rights for United Nations to secure the release of the persons.
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JHU appoints militant leader as parliamentarian

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 January 2007, 06:29 GMT]
Sinhala Ultra Nationalist All Monks party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), which is opposed to power-sharing and Norwegian facilitation, Wednesday replaced their National List parliamentarian monk Ven. Omalpe Sobhita Thero with a prominent militant leader of the National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT), Patali Champika Ranawaka, paving way for him to assume a cabinet post this week, when the party with 9 parliamentary seats, is expected to join Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse's UPFA alliance.
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Eleven civilians arrested in Nugegoda

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 January 2007, 03:31 GMT]
Eleven civilians, majority of them Tamil, were arrested in a house-to-house cordon and search operation conducted by the Sri Lankan security forces in Nugegoda, a suburb in Colombo city, Tuesday night, sources in Colombo said.
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Court issues summons on Colombo TRO officials

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 January 2007, 17:19 GMT]
The Colombo Chief Magistrate Tuesday ordered to issue summons on three key officials of the Colombo office of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) to appear in court on February 7. The court made this order when the case filed against the TRO by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka was taken up for further inquiry Tuesday, legal sources said.
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Canadian Memorial Stamp issued for late Navaratnam

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 January 2007, 16:17 GMT]
A set of Canadian Memorial Stamps and First Day Cover were issued at a memorial function in Toronto Saturday, honoring the contribution by late V. Navaratnam, a doyen of Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), the Federal Party, and who called upon the Tamil youth to fight for the establishment of a separate self-governing Tamils State in 1969. Mr Navaratnam urged the youth to fight, when he left the Federal Party and founded Thamil Suyadchi Kalaham, the Organisation for Tamil Self-Governance, after witnessing failed negotiations for power-sharing with Sri Lankan leaders for almost three decades.
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