Police arrest 2 Tamil civilians in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 November 2009, 10:38 GMT]
The Intelligence Unit of the Sri Lanka Police Saturday night arrested two Tamil civilians in Thoa’nikkal in Vavuniyaa on information received that they had been members of the Liberation Tigers. They are now detained in Vavuniya police station and being interrogated to find out their involvement with the militant group earlier, police spokesman Nimal Mediwake said in Colombo.
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US Legislators urge rapid release of interned Tamil civilians

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 November 2009, 03:49 GMT]
H. Res. 711 resolution, passed in the US House of Representatives Thursday by a vote of 421 to 1, reminded the Sri Lanka Government of its commitments to care for and ensure the 'speedy return' of those displaced by fighting, noting that Colombo made a commitment to the UN Human Rights Council that the 'bulk' of the IDPs would be resettled in 180 days, a period that will end on November 23, 2009. Fewer than 20% of those detained have been released as of Oct. 23, 2009. The resolution also emphasized that "the United States supports the rapid release and voluntary return of all civilian IDPs as a critical element of national reconciliation in Sri Lanka."
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Fonseka flees US

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 November 2009, 13:19 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army chief, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka fled the United States cutting short his planned stay in the US to avoid being questioned by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over warcrimes under his command, according to an AFP report. "Mr Fonseka's future chances of retiring to the US are now in jeopardy, and consequent developments in other countries of the world, except the rights violator nations, may make him a fugitive," legal sources in Washington said. Meanwhile, incriminating, anonymous, hearsay evidence has surfaced on the activities of his son-in-law, Danuna Tillakaratne, on making weapons deals from Oklahoma. Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based pressure group, said yesterday that TAG will be preparing a detailed document after further research on this matter for possible use by the US law enforcement authorities.
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British MPs hail US initiative on Sri Lanka warcrimes

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 November 2009, 05:17 GMT]
Joining international calls for a full independent investigation into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka, a group of British Parliamentarians Tuesday welcomed the initiatives taken by the United States in this regard and urged the UK government to support Washington’s efforts. In a statement, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPG-T) welcomed US authorities questioning of Sri Lankan Army General Sarath Fonseka over the massacre of Tamil civilians in the closing months of the war this year.
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Tamil civilian arrested in Kuchchave'li

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 November 2009, 03:57 GMT]
The Kuchchave'li Police in Trincomalee district Friday arrested a Tamil civilian suspected for having had association with the Liberation Tigers earlier. The arrested civilian is being held in detention by the Terrorist Investigation Department and is being interrogated, Sri Lankan police headquarters said.
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Fonseka, Gotabhaya entangle in US legal net

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 November 2009, 00:54 GMT]
United States appears to be slowly moving to corral Major General Sarath Fonseka, an aspiring US citizen, and Gotabhaya Rajapakse, a US citizen with property and family living in the U.S., into the US Justice system to investigate the two Sri Lanka officials for criminal culpability for allegedly issuing commands to the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) to fire heavy weapons towards the SLA demarcated No Fire Zone (NFZ) in the final stages of war killing more than 20,000 Tamil civilians. Colombo dailies report that Gen. Fonseka, currently on a private visit to the US, has been asked by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to have a "voluntary meeting" to discuss matters related to the recently released war-crimes report, and if he would be willing to testify against Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary.
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Absurd logic of seeking ‘moderates’ amid a genocide - paper

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 October 2009, 15:20 GMT]
While many international actors are coming to realise that the problem in Sri Lanka is in fact rooted in the character of the Sinhala-dominated state, the London-based policy nexus which theorised, argued for, and solicited international consensus around Colombo’s military slaughter is still insisting that their strategy was essentially right, the Tamil Guardian newspaper said this week. “These handmaidens of Sri Lanka’s bloodbath will be proven disastrously wrong again. But not before the Tamils endure much more suffering and further bloodletting.”
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British MPs call for suspension of GSP+, Sri Lanka's removal from Commonwealth

[TamilNet, Friday, 30 October 2009, 05:30 GMT]
Several British Members of Parliament participated in a debate on Sri Lanka's internment camps, Wednesday 28 October for nearly 3 hours starting from 2:30 p.m. Many MPs cited the inhumane conditions under which more than 250,000 Tamil civilians are being kept in military supervised internment camps in Sri Lanka and called for the termination of GSP+ trade benefits and suspension of Sri Lanka from British Commonwealth. Joan Ryan, the Labour MP for Enfield North and a vice chair of the Labor party, initiated the debate. Full video is attached below.
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Tamil civilian arrested in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 October 2009, 11:24 GMT]
Police intelligence unit located in Mannaar Tuesday night arrested a Tamil person in Ezhuthoor in Mannaar district on receipt of information that he had been a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eezham (LTTE) intelligence division, Police Spokesman Nimal Mediwake told media Wednesday.
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Sri Lanka editors receive death threats for Channel-4 video comments

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 October 2009, 03:26 GMT]
Sunday Leader, a weekend broadsheet in Sri Lanka, said in the latest edition that two of the paper's editors, Frederica Jansz, and Munza Mushtaq, received Thursday "hand written death threats by post." The threats relate to Sunday Leader news stories on the authenticity of the August Channel-4 video which showed armed Sri Lankan soldiers executing Tamil prisoners stripped naked and hands tied behind their backs. "This newspaper has consistently in the entire 15 years of its existence come under attack. We have been burnt, bombed, sealed, harassed and threatened, culminating in January this year with the brutal killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge," the paper said.
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2 SLA, civilian killed, Pillayan's vehicle meets with accident

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 October 2009, 03:05 GMT]
A civilian and two Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed Tuesday morning around 4:30 a.m. in Kurunegala district where a vehicle of Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan, the chief minister of Eastern province and a paramilitary leader, met with an accident, Police said.
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Rights group opposes GSP+ benefits to Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 26 October 2009, 12:12 GMT]
Edward Mortimer, chair of the Advisory Council for Sri Lanka Peace and Justice Campaign, a rights group, in a letter to Financial Times responding to an earlier article on GSP+ says: "[G]overnment has until now held more than 250,000 civilians in insanitary internment camps, currently threatened with monsoon flooding, while an unknown number of alleged combatants are held elsewhere, out of sight of the media, Red Cross and other humanitarian agencies. Wartime promises that Tamil grievances would be peacefully redressed once hostilities were ended have not been fulfilled. Instead an atmosphere of racist triumphalism has been encouraged."
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SLA refuses permission to Jaffna civilians in Vavuniyaa camps to return home

[TamilNet, Sunday, 25 October 2009, 04:24 GMT]
More than 300 families from Jaffna district, now detained in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in Vavuniyaa, who had applied to return to their original places are held back as Jaffna SLA high command has refused clearance to them, sources in Vavuniya said. The clearance is denied as they are under suspicion and considered a threat to security, SLA authorities claimed.
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Tamil Nadu must recognize and support establishment of Tamil Eelam: Thirumavalavan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 13:38 GMT]
Stating that there was a total violation of human rights in the Sri Lankan Government's camps for Internally Displaced Persons, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi President Thol.Thirumavalavan, told TamilNet Friday in an exclusive interview of the "appalling conditions" prevalent in these "barbed-wire concentration camps" which he witnessed firsthand as one of the ten-member parliamentary delegation from Tamil Nadu. Pointing out that Tamil people could not become a "permanent slave society" and "live as second class citizens in Sri Lanka," Thirumavalavan sought to emphasize that Tamil Eelam was the only solution to a struggle that had claimed the lives of nearly fifteen hundred thousand Tamils civilians and more than thirty thousand Tamil Tiger fighters.
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Mercy Mission relief goods released by SL government nearing expiry dates

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 07:58 GMT]
Government of Sri Lanka which had turned away the Mercy Mission ship, ‘Captain Ali’, loaded with relief items donated by expatriate Tamils in Europe to help Tamils caught up in the war in Vanni in June has now, after purposely delaying for nearly five months, released 27 containers of the total 88 to the ICRC in Colombo Thursday, sources in Colombo said. Subsequently, the entire cargo was released and ICRC had to obtain a certificate from the Sri Lanka Standards Institute as most of the goods were nearing expiry dates, the sources added.
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UN proposes Goldstone-type mission to investigate Sri Lanka war crimes

[TamilNet, Saturday, 24 October 2009, 01:45 GMT]
Following the release of U.S. State Department's report that detailed alleged war-crimes committed by Sri Lanka's protagonists towards the end of war, conducted under Colombo imposed blackout, spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights, Rupert Colville, said Friday that an inquiry similar to one that looked into fighting in Gaza may be needed to determine if war crimes were committed in Sri Lanka in the final weeks of the war. Brad Adams of HRW had earlier said "[g]iven Sri Lanka's complete failure to investigate possible war crimes, the only hope for justice is an independent, international investigation." Sri Lanka rejected the report as "unsubstantiated and devoid of corroborative evidence."
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Rights organizations urge Japan to break its silence on SL rights abuses

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 October 2009, 17:16 GMT]
Six Japanese and international human rights organizations in a joint letter to Japan’s Foreign Minister Katsuya Okadanew called upon Japan’s new administration to publicly press the Sri Lankan government to end the illegal detention of approximately 250,000 Tamil civilian, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). “Japan is an excellent position to make its influence felt with Sri Lanka. The new government needs to make clear that it expects Sri Lanka to free the people locked up in the camps and pursue justice for the victims of the war years”, Tokyo director at HRW, Kanae Doi, said.
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U.S. forfeits international responsibility to Sri Lankan state

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 October 2009, 10:59 GMT]
"The United States looks to the Government of Sri Lanka to identify an appropriate and credible mechanism and initiate a process for accountability," read a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Colombo on Thursday, announcing that U.S. Department of State delivered a Congressional report Wednesday detailing the incidents that allegedly occurred during the final months of the war in Vanni that may constitute violations of international humanitarian law or crimes against humanity. While Eezham Tamils are expecting justice from international mechanisms on the genocidal war carried out by the Sri Lankan state against the Tamil nation, the U.S. statement attempts to make Colombo responsible for initiating a process for accountability within the anti-Tamil Sri Lankan system itself, commented Tamil circles blaming the statement as attempting to abet Colombo’s agenda of structural genocide.
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22nd death anniversary of IPKF killed JTH personnel held in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 October 2009, 07:45 GMT]
The 22nd death anniversary of the 21 medical personnel including three leading doctors killed indiscriminately by the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) on 21st October 1987 within Jaffna Teaching Hospital (JTH) was held Wednesday in JTH in an emotionally charged atmosphere, sources in Jaffna said. All activities of JTH were suspended for a while when the event took place with the participation of JTH personnel and hundreds of patients. IPKF, opening fire on the medical personnel who were trying to safeguard the patients and civilians, had killed more than a hundred of them too along with the medical personnel.
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30,000 Tamils march in London over Sri Lanka's internment camps

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 October 2009, 20:37 GMT]
More than 30,000 British Tamils marched to draw attention to the Sri Lankan government's continued incarceration of over 280,000 Tamils in military supervised camps despite earlier pledges to release within 180 days from the end of war in May. Protesters, young and old, carried banners and chanted slogans expressing that 150 days have passed with no concrete steps taken to resettle the Tamils held in the “concentration camps" in Vavuniyaa.
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