Tamil family man abducted in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 March 2009, 17:07 GMT]
Unidentified gunmen in a white van forcibly abducted Saturday around 12:30 p.m a Tamil family man who was riding on his bicycle along Ka'n'nangkudaa Veethi in Koththiyaapulam area in Vavu’natheevu police division in Batticaloa district, according to a complaint lodged with Vavu’natheevu police.
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Paramilitary, intelligence personnel arrested for abduction, ransom

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 March 2009, 06:22 GMT]
Vavuniyaa police in mufti arrested Wednesday three paramilitary persons and three Sri Lanka military intelligence personnel for the abduction of the Assistant Manager of the Bank of Ceylon Vavuniyaa branch and a security officer Tuesday, demanding millions of rupees from the Bank as ransom, sources in Vavuniyaa said. The abductors later demanded the family members of the two abducted officers to pay a ransom of 900,000 rupees as Bank of Ceylon authorities refused to pay the sum originally demanded.
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SLN arrested Vanni civilians held back in Point Pedro

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 March 2009, 16:08 GMT]
Only five of the 92 civilians fleeing war in Vanni and arrested Tuesday by Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) on the seas of Point Pedro have been handed over to the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) detention camp in Kodikaamam Government Tamil Mixed School (GTMS) while the fate of the rest 87 civilians remains unknown, Kodikaamam sources said. None of the arrested civilians has been produced in Point Pedro Magistrate Court either until Wednesday evening. Independent sources in Jaffna said that civilians fleeing war from Liberation Tigers held areas coming into Vavuniyaa and Jaffna peninsula and arrested are subjected to intensive screening by the SLA and that many of them have disappeared without any trace, a trend that continues.
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Charred body with gunshot wounds recovered in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 March 2009, 12:15 GMT]
The charred body of a youth with gunshot injuries in his head was recovered Monday morning in Maha Irrambaiku'lam area in Vavuniyaa police division. He was blindfolded and hands were tied from behind, media sources said.
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SLA uses A9 route to Jaffna after 18 years

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 March 2009, 22:51 GMT]
A detachment of around 600 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers arrived in a convoy of buses Monday evening in Jaffna town along the A9 Jaffna-Kandy land route from Vavuniyaa town after a period of nearly eighteen years, sources in Jaffna said.
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IDP shelters gutted by fire in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 March 2009, 18:34 GMT]
Eight temporary shelters in the welfare centre for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) located in Unit 11 in Poonthoaddam, Vavuniyaa were completely gutted by fire Saturday noon, sources in Vavuniyaa said.
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Eastern University suspends lectures, examinations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 February 2009, 14:39 GMT]
Eastern University administration informed Saturday that lectures and examinations in all its faculties are being suspended until further notice. The death of a first year student of the Faculty of Arts and Culture in the women hostel of the university causing tension among the girl students is said to be the reason for the suspension, sources in Batticaloa said.
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TNA MP's secretary abducted in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 February 2009, 12:20 GMT]
A group of 10 armed men, including a female, who arrived in a white van abducted Sellathurai Sabanathan, a 50-year-old secretary of Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian Kanagaratnam Sathasivam. The abduction has taken place Saturday around 3:30 p.m. at the residence of the victim at Vairavappu'liyangku'lam.
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UN nods ‘fight to the finish’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 February 2009, 04:04 GMT]
The position taken by UN Security Council Friday indicating no go beyond ‘hearing’, and the considerate briefing of John Holmes largely endorsing and trusting Colombo’s agenda and assurances for civilians, are read between the lines by international political observers as a ‘knowing wink’ at Colombo to pursue its offensive. Alternatively, the UN stance either paves way for intervention by interested powers outside of the UN or perhaps reveals an actuality that the UN can be shaken not when people face genocide, but only when ground realities endanger the Sri Lankan state, observers said.
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Jaffna University student union appeals to government

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 February 2009, 17:39 GMT]
Jaffna University Students Union (JUSU) extended an appeal to the government of Sri Lanka to enable Jaffna University students from Vanni held in the detention camps in Government controlled areas to continue their studies in Jaffna University, in a press report Friday. JUSU also said that though it has been said in the media that a group of Vanni students held in the detention camps had been flown to Jaffna to continue studies so far none of them had come to Jaffna University.
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Slave camp suspected in Ki'linochchi hospital building

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 February 2009, 17:34 GMT]
A slave camp consisting male and female members 'chosen' from the fleeing civilians by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) is reportedly setup in the abandoned Ki'lnochchi hospital building, reported TamilNet correspondent in Vanni, citing unverified information reaching Mullaiththeevu from males who escaped from the camp. According to the sources, men are kept at the downstairs for forced labour and women kept in the upstairs for abuse by the SLA soldiers who are on temporary leave.
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2 Tamil civilians shot dead in Batticaloa district

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 February 2009, 11:43 GMT]
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed two Tamil civilians Wednesday night in two separate shootings. A family man was gunned down around 8:30 p.m in Vellaave’li police division while a farmer was shot and killed in Vavu’natheevu police division Wednesday night, in Batticaloa district, according to police sources.
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Revise policies on Tamil struggle: Karen Parker tells U.S. Senate

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 February 2009, 00:55 GMT]
The twenty-six year old armed conflict between the armed forces of the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has reached a phase that can only be called genocide-like and catastrophic for the Tamil people in the north and east of the island, said human rights expert Karen Parker, Wednesday to the subcommittee of the US Senate, hearing on the situation in the island of Sri Lanka. Describing the war waged by Colombo as illegal military operations, using illegal weapons or legal weapons in an illegal manner without any international monitoring, she urged the US government to call for an immediate ceasefire and address it most forcefully to the Rajapaksa administration.
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Tamil youth shot dead in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 February 2009, 18:18 GMT]
Unidentified armed persons shot dead a Tamil youth Saturday night around 7:30 p.m while he was returning home which is located in Sivapuram in Vavuniyaa police division. The victim had been identified as Kantharooban Pirapaharan, 19.
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Holmes u-turns minutes after TNA meeting

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 February 2009, 11:41 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentary group leader R. Sampanthan has told the visiting UN Under Secretary General of Humanitarian Affairs, Sir John Holmes, that there is an urgent need for the international community to act decisively to stop the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the Vanni. However, in the press conference he gave minutes afterwards, Sir Holmes lauded the Sri Lankan government’s conduct vis-à-vis the humanitarian situation and said there was “good cooperation” between UN agencies and the Mahinda Rajapakse regime.
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Holmes whitewashes Sri Lanka’s ‘slaughter’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 February 2009, 23:44 GMT]
Within a day of Human Rights Watch’s damning report stating that “Sri Lankan forces are shelling hospitals and so-called safe zones and slaughtering the civilians there,” the UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Sir John Holmes, went out of his way to avoid criticising the hardline Mahinda Rajapaksa regime and instead praised the “good cooperation” between the government and the UN agencies vis-à-vis the needs of the displaced Tamil population. Instead, he blamed the LTTE for the continuing suffering of the Tamil civilians in Mullaiththeevu.
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Holmes relies on SL Minister to translate IDPs' complaints

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 February 2009, 23:42 GMT]
Visiting UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Sir John Holmes, visited displaced camps in Vavuniyaa on Friday, accompanied by the Minister of Resettlement, Rishard Badurdeen and his security detail. Moreover, Sir Holmes relied on the Minister to translate the complaints of those people brave enough to speak up, humanitarian sources in Vavuniyaa said. When one woman complained her sons had been abducted by the Army, Minister Badurdeen told Sir Holmes that she said LTTE had abducted or shot her sons. Meanwhile, parliamentarians of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) had also protested the matter to Sir Holmes, sources said.
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Sri Lanka forces 'slaughtering' civilians – HRW

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 February 2009, 23:07 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government should immediately cease its indiscriminate artillery attacks on civilians in the northern Vanni region and its policy of detaining displaced persons in internment camps, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Friday. "Sri Lankan forces are shelling hospitals and so-called safe zones and slaughtering the civilians there," James Ross, legal and policy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Sri Lankan forces have repeatedly and indiscriminately shelled areas crowded with displaced persons. This includes numerous reported bombardments of government-declared "safe zones" and of the remaining hospitals in the region,” HRW said. “The plight of the region's civilians has been made worse by the government's decision in September 2008 to order most humanitarian agencies out of the Vanni.”
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Tiger aircraft bomb Colombo, 2 killed, 51 wounded

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 February 2009, 16:25 GMT]
Two LTTE aircrafts hit two Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) installations in Colombo, the Slave Island area where the SLAF Headquarters is located and the SLAF base at Katunayake between 9:20 and 9:45 p.m. Friday. 47 persons, including Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) airmen, were rushed to hospital from Slave Island. Several of the wounded have sustained serious injuries, the sources said. Two of them succumbed to their injuries. At least 6 persons were wounded inside Katunayake airbase. Two of the aircrafts have come down on their targets, according to available details from Colombo.
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Eyewitness account on Vavuniyaa internment camps

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 February 2009, 11:14 GMT]
"Now, what is happening here is genocide in many forms. Needless to say scattering people all over to unknown and unfamiliar places will ultimately lead to a weak population and result in damages done to our culture, education, and relationships. I can foresee a maimed Tamil generation with no hope in the future. The international community can make statements. But none will pay heed. For me the future looks dark and gloomy," reveals a letter written by a professional eyewitness, who visited the barbed-wired internment camps and hospital in Vavuniyaa couple of days ago.
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