Australia reluctant to call for closure of camps, release of IDPs

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 August 2009, 11:48 GMT]
While expressing serious concern about the civilian toll of the conflict, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) officials conveyed to a delegation of the Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations (AFTA) that Australia’s trade relations with Sri Lanka has been very strong from time immemorial and Australia wants to maintain this relationship, and further to nurture that, Australia is keen on seeing a united Sri Lanka. While continuing to insist that the IDP camps be administered in line with international standards, Australia is reluctant to call for a closure of these camps and release of the innocent IDPs as soon as possible, DFAT officials told the Tamil delegation last week.
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Boyle debunks Kohona's war-crimes braggadocio

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 August 2009, 03:17 GMT]
Debunking Sri Lanka's Foreign Secretary, Palitha Kohona's statement that "no winner of a war has been tried [for war crimes] before a Tribunal," Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the Illinois College of Law, said, as legal counsel for the Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinja, he had convinced the Honorable Carla Del Ponte, the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), to indict Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for every crime in the ICTY Statute, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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Australian politicians troubled by deteriorating conditions in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 August 2009, 08:54 GMT]
A group of Australian parliamentarians have expressed concern for the plight of thousands of refugees being held in Sri Lankan military run camps at a meeting with members of the Tamil youth at Parliament House on Tuesday. In a free flowing discussion covering conditions faced by displaced civilians and a lack of independent access to refugee facilities, the panel also condemned reports of intimidation directed at the Tamil Diaspora from the Sri Lankan Government, before citing the promised resettlement of the 300,000 refugees within a 6 month period as the basis for future engagement.
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Global vigilance needed amid Sri Lanka’s post war rhetoric: Australian Senator

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 August 2009, 23:57 GMT]
The ethnic issue in Sri Lanka must remain at the forefront of the global conscience amid the “very serious prospect of continued breeches of human rights” faced by over 300,000 Tamil IDP’s at the hands of the Sri Lankan Government, said Liberal party Senator Gary Humphries in address at Canberra on Tuesday. Citing allegations of abuse and continued censorship imposed by the Sri Lankan Government throughout military controlled refugee camps to dismiss claims of post war stability, senator Humphries urged the international community "to be vigilant, to watch carefully what is going on, to ask questions about how the Sri Lankan government is treating people” in order to force the Rajapakse regime to address the plight of thousands of Tamil civilians.
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White House Tamil protest draws media attention

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 August 2009, 23:39 GMT]
Commenting on the increase in number of protests after President Obama came to power, Politico.com, a site run by a Virginia-based popular American political group and edited by former Washington Post staffers, noted that the "most memorable crowd of protesters outside Obama's door [White House]" was a Tamil expatriate group which has "caught the attention of administration officials and journalists alike with its unflagging, mind numbing chants." Tamils from several states in the US and Canadian Tamils have been protesting in front of the White House for the 102nd contiguous day Thursday, urging Obama administration to take steps to safeguard Tamil civilians and to enforce a just and fair solution to the Tamil National question.
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Sri Lanka maintains military spending, recruits 50,000 more troops

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 August 2009, 11:06 GMT]
Sri Lanka will keep up record defence spending despite its recent victory over the Tamil Tigers, Defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse told AFP Tuesday, as the Sri Lankan Army announced plans to recruit 50,000 more soldiers shortly. Sri Lanka raised its defence budget to a record 1.6 billion dollars this year, and finally defeated the LTTE in May after months of intense battles in which 20,000 Tamil civilians were massacred by government shelling. 6,000 Sri Lankan soldiers were killed in last three months of the war, Gotabhaya also said.
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US: Tamils ‘confined against their will’ in Sri Lanka camps

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 August 2009, 01:49 GMT]
The United States’ top official dealing with humanitarian crisis reiterated Wednesday the Obama administration’s demand that Tamil civilians held in Sri Lanka’s militarised camps be allowed to leave freely. “Our position is that people who are displaced should be agents of their own destiny,” Eric P. Schwartz, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, said. Responding to reporters’ asking about his comments during a visit to Sri Lanka, Mr. Schwartz clarified: “I don’t think there’s anything ambiguous about “confinement against their will.”
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Review fears Sri Lanka used British weapons on Tamil civilians

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 August 2009, 10:39 GMT]
Fears that British weapons were used against civilians in Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tigers have prompted calls for a review of the arms trade, British newspapers said. Four British Parliamentary committees have issued a joint report arguing that all existing licences to Sri Lanka should be investigated. Singling out Sri Lanka, Roger Berry, chairman of the Committees on Arms Export Controls, said that arms exports to countries which had only recently ceased hostilities should be monitored because of the high risk that fighting would resume. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the UK Foreign Office told the Daily Telegraph newspaper a review of Sri Lanka was underway, adding: "the Government shares the Committees' concerns regarding military exports fuelling conflict in countries such as Sri Lanka.”
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United States provides $6 million to support de-mining in North

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 August 2009, 09:21 GMT]
U.S. Department of State is contributing $6 million to be shared by four non-governmental organisations, Danish De-Mining Group (DDG), Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD), Halo Trust and MAG (Mines Advisory Group) for de-mining activities to increase their demining capacity and expand their work over the next twelve months in the Northern Province, according to a press statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Colombo. The U.S. military, through U.S. Pacific Command, will provide equipment and training to the Sri Lanka Army for humanitarian demining in the Northern Province, the statement further said.
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Academic exposes ideological shift in DMK

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 August 2009, 11:59 GMT]
Discerning students of Tamil Nadu politics, especially those analysing the role of the state in Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, are intrigued by the transformation that has taken place in the DMK perception on Sri Lanka, writes V. Suryanarayan in an article last week appeared in New Indian Express. “The tragedy of the situation must be underlined; the Sri Lankan Tamils became pawns in the electoral politics of the state. What is more, their struggle for justice, equity and dignity has been pushed back by several decades. A long winter of discontent is ahead of Sri Lankan Tamils,” he concludes the article.
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Floods threaten Tamils in Sri Lanka’s detention camps - HRW

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 August 2009, 10:31 GMT]
Floods and disease are threatening the health and lives of hundreds of thousands of Tamils detained enmasse in violation of international by the Sri Lankan government, HRW said Tuesday. The floods have caused emergency latrines to flood or collapse, causing sewage to flood several areas of the camps, heightening the risk of outbreaks of contagious diseases. The camps are located in places that are known to flood during the onsetting monsoon season.
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Internment camps in Vavuniyaa under flood water

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 August 2009, 08:25 GMT]
Additional troops have been called into the Manik Farm area in Vavuniyaa to prevent inmates in the IDP camps creating unrest or move from the camps following heavy rains which have inundated parts of the camps on Friday. Heavy rains have been continuing for the last two days in the area where the internment camps of Vanni civilians are situated, causing severe hardships to the inmates of the camps. The worst affected camps are the Zone II camps where the water has entered the tents forcing people to remain standing, a local NGO official in Colombo said.
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Sri Lanka fleeces kith and kin of IDPs

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 August 2009, 06:52 GMT]
Family members and kinsfolk of IDPs in the internment camps had remitted 100 million rupees in the past two months, according to I.D. Weerasena, Deputy General Manager of Bank of Ceylon, reported Sri Lankan state owned Daily News, Saturday. In the past four to five months, 500 million rupees had been deposited by the IDPs, said Mr. Weerasena, whose state-controlled bank had opened banking units with online and ATM facilities in the internment camps and deals with 21,000 new account holders.
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Tamils confined against their will – US

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 August 2009, 14:04 GMT]
The United States, which has provided aid to the camps and is ready to offer more to help the displaced Tamils go home, was dismayed so many were being held against their will, Eric Schwartz, US assistant secretary at the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, said. Sri Lanka’s claim that they plan to settle 75,000 of the 280,000 Tamil civilians now held in military run camps before the end of August was “encouraging news," but Colombo should move faster, he told Reuters Friday.
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Tamil civilian arrested at KIA still under detention

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 August 2009, 07:28 GMT]
A Tamil civilian attached to Mannaar Education Office who was taken into custody by police at Katunayake International Airport (KIA) in Colombo is held under detention by Terrorist Intelligence Division (TID) since 28 June, according to complaints by his wife to Colombo police and human rights organizations. She said her husband was taken into custody by the police saying that he was to attend a meeting organized by Seeman, a film director in South India in Chennai.
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Sri Lanka on way back to Tamil rebellion - FT

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 August 2009, 00:54 GMT]
Sri Lanka is careering back to where it was when the conflict began, with Tamil grievances being ignored amid a triumphalist wave of Sinhalese chauvinism, the Financial Times warned in its editorial Tuesday. Rather than share power with the Tamils, US and British officials fear the Sinhala state is seeking to scatter them, the paper said. “Unless the Sinhala majority shows magnanimity and gives the Tamils control over their lives, their cause will surely reignite from the embers of this war,” the paper said.
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Amnesty wants Sri Lanka camps unlocked, war crimes probes

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 August 2009, 17:02 GMT]
Amnesty International Monday called for “the immediate release of 285,000 innocent Tamil civilians - including an estimated 50,000 children - being held in cramped and squalid camps” by Sri Lanka’s hard-line government. Amnesty called on the United Nations, Sri Lanka’s donors and rest of the international community to monitor the camps, push for unimpeded access for aid agencies, rights monitors and journalists and to take initial steps towards on international inquiry into war crimes. Amnesty noted that in Menik Farm – the most presentable of the camps - the equivalent of the population of the town of Bournemouth live, eat and sleep in an area size of Wembley Stadium.
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U.S. youths launch campaign against Microsoft Investment in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 August 2009, 15:51 GMT]
Noting MSNBC's coverage of the conditions within the military supervised internment camps in Vavuniyaa, which said that "no one is allowed to leave the camps and few are permitted entrance," and that the camps are "at best...at the edge of all kinds of internal principles...but more likely...illegal," the U.S. based activist youth group, PEARL, urged Microsoft to reconsider investments in Sri Lanka, saying, "[t]he human rights community and Tamils all over the world are deeply concerned about the ultimate use of funds given to government of Sri Lanka. While technology transfer is important, blanket support should not be given to governments who do not respect the rule of law and basic human rights. We urge you to hear the cries of voiceless Tamils, and avoid doing business with regimes as egregious as Sri Lanka's."
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2 Tamils arrested in Colombo

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 August 2009, 09:34 GMT]
Sri Lanka police took two Tamil civilians into custody in Colombo Thursday night in two separate incidents. One was arrested in Katunayake International Airport (KIA) area and the other along D. R. Wijewardene Mawatte in Colombo town, media spokesman Ranjit Gunasekara told media.
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2 Tamil civilians arrested in Wellawatte

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 August 2009, 04:17 GMT]
Sri Lanka police took two Tamil civilians from a house located along Arethusa lane in Wellawatte Thursday, and claimed that they seized two suicide jackets, a micro pistol, and five hand grenades during the search of the house.
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