U.S. statement: 'we don't advocate talks with LTTE'

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 January 2009, 14:25 GMT]
The United States, a member of the Co-Chairs for the Sri Lankan peace process following the February 2002 Ceasefire Agreement brokered by Norway, in a statement issued after the Sri Lanka Army occupation of Ki'inochchi town in Vanni, said it does not advocate the Government of Sri Lanka to negotiate with the LTTE. "The fall of Kilinochchi represents an important point in the 25-year war that has divided Sri Lanka," the U.S. statement said.
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Peoples support will help surmount challenges: LTTE Political Head

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 January 2009, 08:23 GMT]
Pointing out that Ki'linochchi was where Sri Lanka military has suffered previous historic debacles, LTTE Political Head B. Nadesan, in an interview with TamilNet on Monday dismissed the occupation of the town as an insignificant setback in the context of a liberation struggle, and said, Tamil people’s support has always been LTTE’s strength, and with the moral backing of the global Tamil community the movement will surmount current and future challenges. "We have taken forward our struggle for more than 30 years, solely relying on the support of our people," and reiterated that the Tigers were spearheading the Tamil struggle, which was based on legitimate political aspirations as defined by the democratic mandate in the elections of 1977.
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Indian Naval Personnel to Mullaiththeevu: Thirumavalavan lambasts New Delhi

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 January 2009, 18:08 GMT]
Thirumavalavan, a Tamil nationalist leader and the president of Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) in Tamil Nadu, on Monday condemned the Indian Government for "betraying the entire Tamil people" by sending civil clothed Indian naval personnel to Mullaiththeevu through the Chennai international airport. Addressing the media in Chennai, he said that New Delhi was "totally responsible" for the "ruthless genocide" of Tamils in Sri Lanka. "Even the future generations of Tamils will never forgive the Indian Government for disrespecting the sentiments of 100 million Tamil people," he warned.
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TNA accuses Colombo of war crimes

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 January 2009, 21:06 GMT]
Describing several recent escalation in incidents where Sri Lanka Armed Forces have targetted Tamil civilian during festive days between Christmas and Thaipongal, Tamil National Alliance (TNA), in a press release issued today, said that the "stringent economic, food and medical embargos on the war affected areas," ..."are not only War Crimes in contravention of the Geneva Conventions but are also a part of a policy of Genocide that the Sri Lankan State has been carrying out against the Tamil people." The release also noted with disappointment of the silence of the international community "whilst the Genocide of the Tamil people is taking place," and continuing military assistance of the international states to the Sri Lankan State "using various pretexts."
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Lift ban on the LTTE: Tamil Nadu BJP

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 January 2009, 19:11 GMT]
The Tamil Nadu unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the principal opposition party in India, has given clear indications of the necessity for lifting the ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam according to news reports in the Indian media. Vaithiyalingam, a senior BJP leader and member of the party's national general council, proposed this idea. In an exclusive interview to a Tamil biweekly, he said that although his party did not believe in violent measures, it was unfair to impose the ideas of a Gandhian struggle on the people of Tamil Eelam.
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'Annals of history'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 January 2009, 19:44 GMT]
The message of "veiled racism" in Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s remarks Friday in his telecast address announcing the capture of Ki'linochchi town, betrayed the true intentions of him and his ilk, camouflaged in saintly wordings against separatism, terrorism, racism, North-South war etc, to hoodwink the outside world, writes a regular academic commentator to TamilNet from Colombo. "Unfortunately, those who claim to be at the helm of the international community, even though very well aware of the impossibility of the Sri Lankan state to satisfy Tamil aspirations, refuse to acknowledge the logic and legitimacy behind the ethnonational demand of Tamils to have political sovereignty to save themselves from genocide," he further writes.
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Mano Ganesan: Political solution after 'military victory' not acceptable to Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 January 2009, 10:02 GMT]
Responding to the mood of "celebration" in South over the Sri Lankan military occupation of Ki'linochchi, Mano Ganesan, parliamentarian and the leader of Democratic Peoples Front (former WPPF), in a statement issued on Saturday said political solution after "total military victory" of the Sri Lankan state was not acceptable to the Tamils. He added: "If the north today is a military battle field, the government has a political battle field in the east. You have your own provincial council. It is not the solution. But it is part of the constitutional law. You are not even implementing what is law."
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Eastern University students protest against arrests

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 January 2009, 01:30 GMT]
Eastern University students staged a protest demonstration Wednesday against the University administration for not taking steps obtain the release of two fellow students arrested and detained by the police for four months ago, sources in Batticaloa said. An earlier demonstration by the students failed to initiate any action from the campus administration, student leaders said.
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Sinhala thugs attack Muslim shops in Gampaha

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 January 2009, 01:01 GMT]
Sinhalese hoodlums attacked Muslim shops in Poogoda in Gampaha district in the western province Sunday evening after a Muslim hotel owner had a Sinhalese customer arrested by local Gampaha police for violating hotel rules by bringing liquor inside hotel premises and serving to others, sources in Gampaha said.
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North and South cannot remain separate, Rajapaksa tells Jaffna people

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 December 2008, 08:57 GMT]
“The people of Jaffna peninsula should forget the tragic past and all people of the north and south should live as one people”, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President of Sri Lanka, said in a special satellite television broadcast Monday night for the people of Jaffna peninsula, which has become an open prison under Sri Lanka Army (SLA) control. Another message, delivered by Mr. Rajapaksa to the people of Jaffna, was that he has taken steps to 'liberate' Ki’linochchi and Mullaiththeevu and very soon the people there will 'live like' the people of Jaffna.
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17-year-old SLA soldier killed in Vanni battlefront

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 December 2008, 16:14 GMT]
One of the Identity Cards recovered with a dead body of a young Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldier revealed that the SLA trooper killed in the offensive forefront in Mullaiththeevu district on Saturday was a 17-year-old boy. LTTE officials displayed photos for reporters in Vanni on Sunday. According to the Article 1 of the the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, signed and ratified by the Sri Lankan government, the government (State Party) should ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities.
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Boston Globe: Grant Tamils autonomy in homelands

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 December 2008, 22:51 GMT]
Boston Globe in an editorial published today warned that Sri Lanka’s military campaign will only produce “new phase of protracted guerrilla warfare,” and that lasting peace is possible only when Sri Lanka's government “grant[s] the Tamils meaningful autonomy in their homelands.” The paper also asserted a cautionary note to the Sri Lanka Government that “[e]thnic or nationalistic pride should not be allowed to inflict such suffering on civilians who committed no crime but to be trapped in a war zone.”
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Colombo's military campaign will not resolve conflict - British Minister

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 December 2008, 11:53 GMT]
The current approach by the Government of Sri Lanka, to defeat the LTTE militarily before developing a political solution, does nothing to win the hearts and minds of conflict-affected civilians in the north and it will not resolve the underlying conflict, said Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Bill Rammell, while responding to the concerns raised Thursday evening by British Parliamentarians at an adjournment debate on Sri Lanka at the UK Parliament. However, another response by the minister exposed the fact that the British Government still has faith in the APRC myth created by the Rajapaksa regime.
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Eastern University students clash with police during protest fast

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 December 2008, 13:27 GMT]
Eastern University students observing a protest fast in the university campus Thursday around 9:00 a.m. against the detention of two fellow students, raised strong objections when two Sri Lanka Intelligence officials who had come with the police tried to video film the protesters, sources in Batticaloa said. When the students tried to expel the two officials, police who had accompanied them opened fire on the ground, the protesting students said. The police, however, claimed that one of their men’s gun had accidently gone off.
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Robert Blake: U.S. 'development' doesn't seek majoritiarian inroads to East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 December 2008, 09:35 GMT]
Responding to an article that appeared in TamilNet on U.S. enthusiasm in 'developing East' to link it with markets in Western province, ignoring the Tamil perspectives on development, the U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Robert Blake, in an article that appeared in U.S. Embassy's blog has defended that the U.S. development program has a goal of "fostering economic development, good governance and stability while preserving the existing ethnic balance in the east." Disagreeing with the perspective shed by the Batticaloa district TNA parliamentarian Ariyanethran, the U.S. Ambassador says that meaningful development can take place in the East before a political solution is agreed upon.
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SLA death toll hits 170 in Vanni, hundreds wounded, 36 bodies recovered - LTTE

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 December 2008, 02:08 GMT]
Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) officials on Wednesday said that 130 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were killed in the multi-front offensive push by the SLA in Ki'linochchi on Tuesday. More than 300 soldiers were wounded in the heavy battle that raged throughout the day till 4:00 p.m. on five main localities and along a wide stretch of the frontiers in Ki'linochchi. Meanwhile, in Ki'laali, 40 SLA soldiers were killed and more than 120 sustained injuries. 36 dead bodies of the SLA soldiers have been recovered so far, 28 in Ki'linochchi and 8 in Ki'liaali, in the clearing missions following Tuesday's fighting. There are young recruits of the SLA, including child soldiers, engaged in the front by the SLA in Ki'linochchi.
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Fein responds: Professorial Nonsense on Stilts

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 16 December 2008, 12:35 GMT]
Responding to the note on Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) website by the Secretary General Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha on the model genocide indictment against Sri Lanka officials, the former U.S. Deputy Associate Attorney General Bruce Fein, says, the "Professor never denies the Rajapaksa-Fonseka genocides," but, "delivers an indictment against the LTTE as a purported defense to the Rajapaksa-Fonseka genocides." Fein adds: "The genocide prosecution sought against Sudanese President Omar Bashir has rejected such a defense theory to a charge of genocide."
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Unidentified men shoot, injure two sinhala settlers

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 December 2008, 10:01 GMT]
Two Sinhalese villagers were injured when unidentified men opened fire on a village Samaagipura in Kanthalaai police division in Trincomalee district Saturday night around 7:00 p.m. The villagers were guarding a chena cultivation when they were shot. Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers and police rushed to the site on receipt of information and opened fire in retaliation.
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Fein: Genocide charges against Sri Lanka officials ready

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 December 2008, 06:36 GMT]
Bruce Fein, a former U.S. Deputy Associate Attorney General and currently Counsel for a U.S. Tamil Group said in an interview this week that a 400+ page model indictment charging Sri Lanka officials for genocide against Tamils will be ready to be submitted to the U.S. Justice Department first week of January. He added that the document describes the motivational context, catalogues crimes, and constructs legal arguments establishing culpability of a U.S. citizen and a U.S. greencard holder for the crime of genocide against Tamils in Sri Lanka under the U.S. Genocide Accountability Act (18 U.S.C. 1091).
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SLA imposes rigid pass system on civilian access to Jaffna hospital

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 December 2008, 20:16 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) directed the Jaffna Teaching Hospital (JTH) administration Monday to introduce a 'pass' system under which even patients in need of treatment will have to prove their ailment to the police and army personnel manning the check post in front of the hospital. This system is being imposed to to ensure the safety of the Sinhalese medical officers of JTH by restricting the number of patients and visitors seeking entry to the hospital, hospital authorities said.
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