Colombo's aid program for refugees “flawed”: The Times

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 December 2009, 01:54 GMT]
Sri Lankan government bodies are incapable of administrating aid programs required to assist the thousands of refugees temporarily released from military camps, further compounding their suffering by refusing regional access to aid groups and organisations “far better skilled at delivering resettlement aid than local authorities” The Times has reported. Many refugees, including children and the disabled, who are without homes and entirely dependent upon aid programs after months of imprisonment have not been able to obtain basic essential items days after the Government claimed to have released thousands of civilians in custody.
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Colombo's claims of free access a lie, says media, ICRC

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 December 2009, 03:30 GMT]
Reporters and aid workers said they are still being barred from visiting Government internment camps housing thousands of Tamil refugees, days after Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama proclaimed on British television that the areas were "totally open."
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Civilian killed in army fire at Vaazhaichcheanai beach

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 December 2009, 23:47 GMT]
One person was killed and another was injured when soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) of Kumburumoolai camp fired at a group of persons in an attempt to flee in boats Friday night from Vaazhaichcheanai sea beach. SLA soldiers rushed to the Vaazhaichcheanai beach on receipt of information that a group of people suspected to be asylum seekers assembled there Friday evening.
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Sri Lanka's modern-day genocide

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 December 2009, 14:27 GMT]
""Genocide" is too limiting a term in any case. In recent years, governments have not necessarily been exterminating entire subgroups en masse with crystal-clear intent. Yet some governments show no qualms about shelling huge numbers of ethnic minority civilians trapped in confined war zones, as we saw in Sri Lanka earlier this year. More common still are governments that kick one ethnic group off its land and force the people into displacement camps where they become permanent wards of international humanitarian agencies -- think Darfur, for example, to mention just one place commonly labeled a "slow-motion genocide," says an article by Andrew Stroehlein, Communications Director at the International Crisis Group (ICG), in the December issue of the widely read Foreign Policy magazine.
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Civilians held for more than a year in SLA Thellippazhai Rehabilitation Centre

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 December 2009, 13:59 GMT]
One hundred and thirteen civilians, claimed to have surrendered themselves as Liberation Tigers, are being held for more than a year in Thellippazhai Special Rehabilitation Centre of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Jaffna peninsula, according to Jaffna Human Rights Commission (HRC) sources. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka government refuses to reveal the number of inmates continued to be detained in Kaithadi SLA detention camp which has been converted into a Rehabilitation Centre, Jaffna Secretariat (JS) sources said.
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IDP resettlement must be unconditional - Amnesty International

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 December 2009, 17:12 GMT]
Amnesty International’s expert on Sri Lanka, Yolanda Foster, in a press statement issued from Washington said Tuesday that the Amnesty had received information about possible restrictions on families choosing to leave the camps in Vavuniyaa. Ms. Yolanda Foster referred to reports, which indicated that the IDPs could be asked to return to the camps after only 15 days. “A permanent release from camps must be accompanied by assurances that people are not subjected to further questioning or re-arrest in new locations,” said Foster. “It is also critical that the government maintain its responsibility to care for displaced people wherever they choose to go.”
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Resilience marks Maveerar Day in Sydney

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 December 2009, 09:03 GMT]
Thousands gathered on Saturday to commemorate Heroes Day 2009 in an outpouring of grief in Sydney. A series of artistic and visual tributes, including a spectacular centre piece display carrying the symbols of Tamil Eelam set behind commemorative tombstones, illuminated Parramatta Park amid an atmosphere of reflection and resolve as over 2000 members of the Diaspora paid tribute to the fallen soldiers of the liberation movement and reaffirmed their commitment to the establishment of Tamil Eelam. The sister of LTTE Political head B. Nadesan, along with family of Colonel Amuthap lit the flame of sacrifice to mark the event, which featured songs, poetry and a series of provocative dramas portraying the horrors of Mullivaiykal and the sacrifices made by the fallen soldiers throughout the struggle.
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Florida protest targets Mall shoppers

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 November 2009, 12:23 GMT]
More than twenty Fort Lauderdale Tamils protested in front of the Sawgrass Mills shopping center Saturday drawing attention to the shoppers of the boycott campaign to shun "Made in Sri Lanka" goods, especially garments. The Florida mall is one of the biggest in South East of USA, and visited by most tourists from Caribbean and South American countries. Leaflets distributed said that trade in garments by US big label stores with Sri Lanka promotes a Government that has allegedly killed thousands of Tamil civilians, committing possible war-crimes in the process, according to a recent US State Department report.
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Book Review: The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 November 2009, 13:01 GMT]
The engagement of Professor Francis A. Boyle, an eminent American expert in international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, during the last years of Sri Lanka's conflict is traced in a forthcoming book published by Clarity Press of Atlanta. Titled "The Tamil Genocide by Sri Lanka: The Global Failure to Protect Tamil Rights Under International Law,” it is the first book to develop an authoritative case for genocide against the Government of Sri Lanka under international law.
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Big GAP in ethics, US shoppers told

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 November 2009, 22:44 GMT]
Several dozen protesters carried placards in front of the Gap and Banana Republic stores on Wisconsin Avenue, Maryland, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Saturday, urging ethical U.S. shoppers to boycott garments produced in Sri Lanka, while another group of Tamil activists assembled in front of Victoria's Secret Stores in midtown Manhattan in New York to protest against the Store's textile trade with Sri Lanka, sources in Washington D.C. said. Protests were also held in Miami, Boston, Atlanta, San Franciso and Dallas. Leaflets distributed said that trade in garments by US big label stores with Sri Lanka promotes a Government that has allegedly killed thousands of Tamil civilians, committing possible war-crimes in the process, according to a recent US State Department report.
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Carter, Tutu: continued detention, clear violation of international law

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 November 2009, 01:29 GMT]
A group of eminent global leaders, whose members include former US President, Jimmy Carter, and South African Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, has written to Sri Lanka's President Rajapaksa to say they are “deeply worried” about the humanitarian situation faced by the largely Tamil civilian population who fled fighting in the north of the country, and warn that this could squander hopes for national reconciliation. The leaders add that the continued confinement of approximately 135, 000 internally displaced people is a “clear violation of international law” and that these people are being denied basic human rights, including the right to liberty and freedom of movement.
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Rapp snubs Sri Lanka's comment to US's war crimes investigations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 November 2009, 00:29 GMT]
United States will "press for accountability at the national level, at the level closest to where the crimes were committed," Washington Post said quoting Stephen Rapp, Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues appointed by President Obama. Rapp told the Post that last month, to a request by Rapp to investigate war crimes by the Sri Lankan military, which allegedly killed thousands of civilians in an offensive against the country's separatist insurgency, a Sri Lanka diplomat [not named] had told Rapp, "[w]e're following your [US's] lead. We [Sri Lanka] believe in eliminating these terroristic threats and resolving these issues once and for all."
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Thousands attend Heroes day remembrance at Excel Centre, London

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 November 2009, 15:42 GMT]
Over 50,000 British Tamils gathered at the Tamil National Remembrance Day held in the Excel exhibition centre. Specially designed interior props and the lighting resembled the “Maveerar Thuyilum Illam” Graves of fallen heroes. British Tamils carrying red roses, Gloriosa lilies (Kaarthikaippoo: Tamil Eelam national flower) and lamps, are filing into the main venue, at the Excel Centre in East London, where large cut-outs of Tamil Eelam were displayed on either side of the stage.
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Police arrest Tamil civilian in Akuressa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 November 2009, 08:52 GMT]
Sri Lanka Police arrested a Tamil civilian in Akuressa in Matara district Wednesday. Police sources said he was taken into custody on receipt of information that he was involved in several terrorist activities in the south including the bomb attack that took place on March 10 this year. Several persons were killed in the blast. Minister of Posts Mahinda Wijesekara was seriously injured.
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3 resettled IDPs arrested in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 November 2009, 11:53 GMT]
Three Tamil civilians were taken into custody by the Intelligence Unit of the Mannaar police Tuesday evening. Police sources confirmed that the suspects were a part of a group of Tamil civilians recently resettled in Adampan and Parappaagka'ndal villages in Mannaar district after being released from internment camps in Vavuniyaa.
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Protest unsettles Victoria's Secret's catwalk

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 November 2009, 00:12 GMT]
Several American Tamil activists protested in front of the midtown Manhattan New York State armory building where Victoria's Secret catwalk event was being held Thursday evening. While celebrities were arriving to attend the popular event, the protesters highlighted the Corporation's trade with Sri Lanka as aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, and war-crimes. "The New York Police attempted to harass the protesters, but we carried on our protest much to the dismay of the catwalk organizers," said a protest organizer.
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'Future bleak, but do not give up,' veteran Marxist reviewed

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 November 2009, 21:19 GMT]
“Fifty years of ethnic cleansing have wiped out whole generations who knew any sort of peace, and made cohabitation with the Sinhalese people virtually impossible,” says veteran Marxist A.Sivanandan on the political future of the island of Sri Lanka in an interview to the New Left Review 60, November-December 2009. The 87 years old ideologue, who in his younger days “had no sense at all of being a Tamil” while living in the south, and who now feels “not only for the Tamils but also for the Sinhalese people,” further said: “The Sinhala elite has transformed the country into a counter-insurgency state like Colombia, in which repression, torture, imprisonment without trial and disappeared people are institutionally embedded. I don’t think anything now can be done from above, let alone from the debased self-interests of the ‘international community’.”
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'Norway finances humiliation of Tamils'

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 November 2009, 03:18 GMT]
Norway is up to appease Colombo as the Tamil Tigers are out of the picture and the only way to do this is abetting Colombo’s discrimination of Tamils in the line of Iran, Burma and China, writes Professor Øivind Fuglerud of the University of Oslo adding that a revealing cue comes from Norway insensitively sponsoring a Buddhist organisation to conduct a music festival on 27th November in Galle, timed to humiliate Tamils on the Heroes' Day. Norway sat silently like a mouse in the final phase of the war. Now its ‘humanitarian’ aid helps the internment camps of captivity and death. In future Norway’s aid may be integral to Colombo’s military complex cum Buddhist temple infrastructure to dominate Tamil areas, he further says. Not surprisingly, Norway's leading news agency, NTB, on Monday came out with biased reporting on the first ever democratically elected council of diaspora Tamils.
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Roshan Gunatilake appointed as new CDS

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 November 2009, 15:58 GMT]
General Sarath Fonseka relinquished his post as Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Monday and Sri Lanka Air Force Chief Roshan Gunatilake assumed duties as the new CDS. Meanwhile, heads of the three armed forces did not attend the farewell ceremony accorded to General Sarath Fonseka Monday at Army Headquarters.
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Sinhala speakers socially fail in moral responsibility: Peter Schalk

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 November 2009, 13:05 GMT]
“We all know there will be no apologizing. It may come only when Lanka’s intellectual and political elite among Sinhala speakers faces its judges in an international war tribunal after an international (military) intervention by the UN or a cluster of states, or when the Lankan economy suffers a breakdown. We should not delay any effort to bring these criminals to justice. If they do not acknowledge any moral responsibility we can teach them legal accountability,” writes Professor Peter Schalk opining futility in expecting change and improvement for the Tamil people to come from the Sinhala society that is structurally not prepared by its mindset to accept responsibility and tactically considers pleading guilty is costly.
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