Police arrest suspect in killing of Sinhalese doctor in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 September 2009, 16:13 GMT]
Batticaloa police took into custody Friday a suspect involved in the killings of a Sinhalese Medical Officer and a Tamil civilian that took place in Naavatkudaa in Batticaloa district on 16 November 2008. Batticaloa court ordered the suspect to be detained in Ea’raavoor police station for further interrogation.
Full story >>

Batticaloa Tamil resident arrested in Katunayake airport

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 September 2009, 07:03 GMT]
Sri Lankan Terrorist Intelligence Division (TID) officials Friday arrested a Tamil civilian at Katunayake International Airport when he was about to leave the country.
Full story >>

Economist: EU report places Sri Lanka's GSP+ concession in jeopardy

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 September 2009, 02:06 GMT]
"Its [Sri Lanka's] alleged wartime and other abuses make a grim catalogue: thousands of Tamil civilians allegedly killed by army shelling during the rebels’ last stand; scores of Tamils disappeared; nearly 300,000 Tamil war-displaced callously interned; murder and intimidation of journalists—including J.S. Tissainayagam, sentenced to 20 years hard labour on August 31st for criticising the army’s tactics," says an editorial in The Economist in its 3rd September edition, and points to a damning 130-page report by the European Union which concludes that "Sri Lanka has failed to honour important human-rights commitments, and is ineligible for GSP Plus."
Full story >>

UK Tamils welcome Conservatives’ concern for Tamils in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 September 2009, 10:00 GMT]
Tamils in Britain have welcomed the statement last week by the main opposition Conservative Party highlighting the ongoing suffering of over 280,000 Tamils held in barbed-wire ringed, militarised detention camps in Sri Lanka. Noting the Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague’s expressions of “serious concern” over the confinement of Tamils in the camps, and those by the Shadow Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox, during his recent visit to Sri Lanka, the British Tamils Forum (BTF) said Wednesday it will continue to engage with all political parties and others in Britain to bring a permanent end to the suffering of the Tamil people in their traditional homeland.
Full story >>

Tamil civilian reported missing in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 September 2009, 08:30 GMT]
A Tamil civilian from Saanthipuram in Mannaar is reported missing since 23 August, according to complaints made by his wife to the police and human rights organization in Mannar Tuesday.
Full story >>

Return of 3,800 detained Tamils cancelled – TearFund

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 September 2009, 02:29 GMT]
TearFund, a Christian relief and development agency, this week renewed its call for hundreds of thousands of Tamils detained in Sri Lanka’s concentration camps to be allowed home. A scheduled return of 3,800 detained Tamils to a region being assisted by TearFund was cancelled two days ago - even after detainees had packed to return home, the agency said. TearFund also called for an international commission of inquiry into possible war crimes committed by both sides during the armed conflict in Sri Lanka after viewing Channel 4 video footage, allegedly showing Sri Lanka army soldiers executing Tamil men in January of this year.
Full story >>

Ban under fire, Sri Lanka performance said key failure – Washington Post

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 September 2009, 18:22 GMT]
Amidst controversy surrounding Ban Ki Moon’s visit to Norway, Washington Post, in a critical article, published Tuesday, critiquing Ban’s performance, said, “halfway through his first term, Ban is facing a leadership crisis as U.N. civil servants and diplomats here increasingly portray him as an ineffective administrator whose reluctance to hold outlaw leaders to account for bad behavior has undercut the United Nations' moral authority.” Faulting Ban’s approach to quiet diplomacy with “despots and dictators,” the paper pointed to the engagement with Sri Lanka as a major failure of Ban’s tenure, for “not pressing hard enough to hold Sri Lanka accountable for its actions,” and for dropping “U.N. push for an independent investigation into war crimes, leaving it to Sri Lanka to determine whether its military was responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in the final offensive.”
Full story >>

26 civilians arrested by TID in Mannaar in August 2009

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 September 2009, 17:13 GMT]
Terrorist Intelligence Division (TID) operating from Colombo had arrested twenty-six civilians, including young family men, in Mannaar in the month of August alone, sources from Mannaar Welfare Association said. Complaints have been made by the Association to the relevant authorities to have the arrested civilians released, the sources said.
Full story >>

4 Tamil civilians arrested in Katunayake HSZ

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 August 2009, 14:13 GMT]
Four Tamil civilians arrested by the police while staying with their relatives and friends in Katunayake, a High Security Zone (HSZ) in Colombo district Saturday night are still being detained in the Katunayake police station and interrogated by the Terrorism Intelligence Department (TID). All the four are natives of north and east, sources said.
Full story >>

Video, leaked memo bedevil Moon's climate visit to Norway

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 August 2009, 13:23 GMT]
International Development Minister Erik Solheim told Norway's Aftenposten Wednesday that he will discuss the details of the gruesome video showing Sri Lanka soldiers executing naked, bound men, during Ban Ki Moon's Norway visit this week. Meanwhile, the visit occurs while 'The Economist' gave Mr. Moon a failed grade in his UN performance (30%), and a leaked memo by Norway’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Mona Juul, accused Moon for being a "passive observer when thousands lost lives and were driven from their homes [in Sri Lanka]," in her mid term assessment of Ban’s tenure.
Full story >>

Colombo suspends releasing Trinco internees from Menik farm

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 August 2009, 15:53 GMT]
Sri Lanka authorities, without prior notice and without citing any reason, have suspended Saturday, a planned release of a group of 600 persons out of about 3,000 internally displaced persons who are residents of Trincomalee district and fled from Vanni and currently being interned in military supervised Menik Farm in Vavuniyaa to their own villages, civil sources in Vavuniyaa told media. More than 300,000 Tamil civilians are currently being held in the internment camps in Vavuniyaa.
Full story >>

Tamil youth shot, injured identified as an IDP

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 August 2009, 04:44 GMT]
The Tamil civilian shot and injured on Wednesday night in Ka’luwaangkear’ni in Batticaloa district has been identified as 27-year-old Nadarajah Baskaran who returned from Vavuniyaa internment camp for resettlement in his native village.
Full story >>

Horrendous video images indicate violation of International Law - UN expert

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 August 2009, 22:23 GMT]
Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, commenting on the video clip aired in British Channel-4 TV, allegedly showing Sri Lankan troops executing prisoners, stressed the need for an investigation, AFP reported. The images, which Alston described as "horrendous," indicate a serious violation of international law if found to be authentic, AFP reported Alston as saying. The video showed victims stripped naked and their hands crossed and tied behind their backs, when they were executed.
Full story >>

Switzerland ‘deplores’ block on Tamils’ movement, donates essential drugs

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 August 2009, 01:05 GMT]
Announcing its third donation of essential drugs of the Tamils confined in Sri Lanka’s militarised camps, Switzerland Thursday “deplore[d] the continued lack of freedom of movement” for those in the camps and appealed for Colombo to cooperate with the international community and allow humanitarian actors access to the people “rapidly and without hindrance.” Although the press release by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) referred to the people held in the barbwire ringed camps as "Sri Lankan civilians," they are in fact all Tamils - comprising the population of the northern Vanni region.
Full story >>

UK main opposition: “serious concerns” about Sri Lanka camps

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 August 2009, 12:46 GMT]
As British Tamil groups prepared to launch a campaign to raise public awareness of Sri Lanka’s concentration camps, the UK’s main opposition Conservative Party joined the chorus of international protests about the “continued confinement” of hundreds of thousands of Tamils. Calling for “full and unrestricted access” for international humanitarian actors, Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague stressed the importance of the Sri Lankan government living up to its commitment to allow the people to return to their homes by the end of the year. Tamil expatriates in UK will on Thursday – the “100th Day behind barbed wire” - launch an awareness campaign titled “Unlock the Concentration Camps in Sri Lanka.”
Full story >>

Canadian Tamils demonstrate against China’s support to Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 August 2009, 11:27 GMT]
Several hundred Canadian Tamils gathered outside the Chinese Consulate in Toronto, Wednesday, August 26, 2009 to protest against China’s financial, economic, and diplomatic support of the Sri Lankan government. Many Tamils attending the protest have their relatives or friends in the Sri Lanka military supervised internment camps in Vavuniyaa where more than 300,000 Tamil civilians.
Full story >>

HRW: UN must investigate Sri Lanka atrocities

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 August 2009, 11:16 GMT]
In the wake of a mobile-phone footage of Sri Lankan soldiers executing bound, blindfolded, and naked prisoners, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has again called on the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to create an independent international commission of inquiry to investigate atrocities during Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tigers. “Ban should stop relying on the [Sri Lankan] president's promises [to the UN] of domestic action and make it clear that an international commission is needed if the victims of Sri Lanka's bloody war are to find justice," Steve Crawshaw, UN director at HRW said in a statement Wednesday.
Full story >>

Tamil civilian reported missing in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 August 2009, 10:31 GMT]
A Tamil civilian from Ukku’laangkulam in Vavuniyaa is reported missing since Tuesday after having left home on his motorbike to obtain a pass to travel to Jaffna from Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Public Relation Office located in Vavuniyaa town, according to complaints lodged by his wife Sellamahal Gowrishankar to Human Rights Commission (HRC) Vavuniyaa office and the police.
Full story >>

Thenmaraadchi farmers to be allowed to resume cultivation

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 August 2009, 06:45 GMT]
An event, where the farmers of Thenmaraadchi who had been refused permission to cultivate their lands in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) High Security Zone (HSZ) in Thenmarraadchi for nearly ten years are to be allowed to resume cultivation Thursday, has been announced by Sri Lanka government. Meanwhile, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Allaippiddi who had fled their village due to SLA artillery attacks in August 2006 and now living in Jaffna town have been asked to be present at Duraippah Stadium Thursday to participate in an event where action will be taken to resettle them, according to another announcement. Basil Rajapakse, parliamentarian and Senior Advisor to the President, Northern Province Governor, G. A. Chandrasiri and Minister of Social Services, Douglas Devananda, will be present at both events, the announcements said.
Full story >>

Special search operations conducted in Wellawatte

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 August 2009, 19:24 GMT]
Wellawatte, where Tamils are living in majority in Colombo was subjected to search operations from morning till evening Tuesday following reports that the police had seized suicide kits and explosives from a place. Special Task Force (STF) personnel were deployed in every nook and corner of Wellawatte.
Full story >>