‘Elusive international justice snatches away desire to live’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 20:42 GMT]
“We expected some country to step in to resolve the crisis... We believed that a dawn would come, a solution would come through [international] mediation after all the hardships we went through. But, nothing happened. Everything went out of hand for us to end up in the army-controlled area as living corpses. All countries have betrayed us,” told 40-year-old Ananthi Sasitharan, the wife of Elilan, the former Trincomalee Political Head of the LTTE, to BBC Tamil Saturday after complaining to the LLRC that SL President should know the whereabouts of her husband and fellow LTTE officials surrendered through a Catholic Priest in Mullaiththeevu on 18 May 2009. When asked whether she was concerned about repercussions for stating her views publicly from Vanni, the mother of three responded: “I am not afraid. I am prepared to face anything since we don't now live with the zest for life.”
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LTTE's Elilan surrendered to SLA on 18 May, wife tells BBC

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 16:21 GMT]
Ananthi Sasitharan, wife of Elilan, former Trincomalee political head of the LTTE, told BBC Tamil service that she and her three daughters witnessed her husband and hundreds of other LTTE members surrendering to the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers on 18th May 2009, after the war has come to an end. "I have been trying to trace my husband and has not been successful to locate his whereabouts. I have no doubt that Sri Lanka's president knows where my husband and others who surrendered are being held," she told the BBC.
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TID torture Tamil detainees held under PTA

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 07:07 GMT]
The Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) of Sri Lanka government continues to torture hundreds of Tamil youths arrested and detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) without trial, a journalist who had met the detainees said, under conditions of anonymity. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka government intends to keep the Tamil youths who were combatants of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in detention for five more years, sources close to Sri Lanka prison authorities said.
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Aayiththiya-malai Police to cover Karadiyan-aa'ru division

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 01:41 GMT]
Sri Lankan Inspector General of Police Mahinda Balasuriya said in a press release Saturday that the normal functions of the Karadiyan-aa'ru police station were being temporarily handled by the Aayiththiya-malai police station till a suitable place is located.
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Sri Lanka plays down Batticaloa blast toll

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 September 2010, 01:37 GMT]
Sri Lanka revised down the official casualty figures of a massive explosion Friday that destroyed a police station in the eastern Batticaloa district, from over sixty dead to an official count of 25, but local government officials amongst those who rushed to the site said dozens of bodies from the rubble had been swiftly removed by Sri Lankan forces. Citing negligence, the authorities said later on Friday that two Chinese construction contractors, seven civilians and 16 policemen were amongst those killed when containers of dynamite stored at the Karadiyan-aa'ru police station exploded. Local officials, however, insisted over 60 people, mainly police had been killed. It was not clear why the authorities, who have also ruled out sabotage, were downplaying the blast, they added.
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Colombo bans BBC from covering LLRC hearings

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 September 2010, 15:20 GMT]
While the forthcoming hearings by Sri Lanka's Lesson and Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) at the former LTTE stronghold Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu are to be held in public, BBC has been "blocked from covering the public hearing," BBC said Friday. "A senior defence ministry official said he could not allow the BBC to attend the sittings, due to start on Saturday....The military liaison officer declined to give any reasons," BBC said in its report.
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62 killed, 100 wounded in Batticaloa blast, official figures on casualty low

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 September 2010, 08:15 GMT]
Around 62 persons including Sri Lankan policemen, civilians and two Chinese nationals have been killed in a massive explosion that rocked the Karadiyan-aa'ru area, situated 20 km northwest of Batticaloa city, Friday around 12:30 p.m., initial reports from the area said. Containers with explosives parked close the police station exploded destroying the entire police station. The explosion also affected the nearby agricultural department building. There were at least three containers with dynamites intended for road construction which was operated by Chinese workers, the reports further said. Around 100 persons, including engineers from the South, wounded in the blast were being rushed to hospital. Ex LTTE members deployed in the construction work under Colombo's publicized rehabilitation programme were likely among the victims, a local NGO official told reporters in Colombo.
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NP Governor visits restricted areas in Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 September 2010, 02:21 GMT]
Northern Province Governor Major Gen. G. A. Chandrasiri accompanied by some Sinhala parliamentarians and Sri Lanka government officials visited Tuesday some places in Vanni where uprooted people have not been allowed to resettle by occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA). Meanwhile, some influential sections are trying again to shift Northern Provincial Council (NPC) and its offices to Ki’linochchi from Trincomalee, a move which had been suspended by Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in August, sources in Trincomalee said.
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‘Extreme position of appeasement’

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 September 2010, 00:50 GMT]
“Sri Lanka sits at the crossroads of two significant contemporary geopolitical shifts. Firstly there is the rise and resurgence of China as a regional power; and secondly, many Western governments have lost their credibility in terms of morality, human rights advocacy and international law due to interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The SL government is masterful in its diplomacy and deals with a variety of governments, which are sometimes at odds e.g.: Iran & Israel, India & Pakistan, USA & China. This puts SL in a unique geopolitical position”, says ‘Minutes of the Sri Lanka Roundtable’, convened by Centre for Peacebuilding in Switzerland last month. While the West in its inability opts for extreme position of appeasement towards genocidal Colombo, Tamil voices against subjugation are ironically viewed as ‘extremism’, commented diaspora circles.
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'LLRC lessons advocate permanent subjugation of Tamils'

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 September 2010, 02:30 GMT]
LLRC, the Rajapaksa appointed Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, is created “neither to learn lessons nor to reconcile but to make Tamils accept and tolerate the crime and cruelty of the Sinhalese and live with repression forever,” says a reader, Sam Thambipillai, in sending a comment on Jayantha Dhanapala’s submission to the LLRC. Colombo’s diplomat Jayantha Dhanapala, who once attempted to contest for the UN Secretary General position, in his submission to the LLRC last month said: “We have learnt a great deal of lessons from the experience of combating one of the most ruthless terrorist groups […] We would be providing something innovative to the international community […] to give some guidance to armies of nation states as to how they should react to such a situation”.
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NJ court dismisses 5 out of 7 charges against alleged fund raising by Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 September 2010, 02:02 GMT]
During the pre-trial phase of a lawsuit accusing two Tamils and a US-registered Tamil charity, Tamils Rehabilitation Organization (TRO) for allegedly providing funds to the Liberation Tigers which is listed as a "Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)" by the US Department of State, and thereby aiding the Liberation Tigers in causing the death of several Sri Lanka civilians, U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh dismissed all but two charges, legal sources in Washington said. The suit was filed by relatives of 24 Sri Lankan civilians under a 1789 US statute Alien Tort Claim Act (ATCA) for the alleged killing by the LTTE. Legal sources in Washington said that the plaintiffs face a difficult legal challenge to establish that the remaining two charges due to the higher thresholds of burden of proof demanded by the Court.
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Hard questions for India and Eezham Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 September 2010, 06:33 GMT]
Nirupama Menon Rao expressed satisfaction at the progress in resettlement of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and development activities of the North, said state-owned Colombo newspaper Daily News Thursday, titling the news as “Indian investment interest rising”. But, reporting on Nirupama’s visit, The Hindu on Friday titled the news “Political solution should be priority” and cited her saying to Colombo-based Indian journalists that “While the focus on development and rehabilitation is very welcome, a long term perspective that also includes the issues relating to the political settlement that would meet some of the needs of the minorities should also be kept in mind.”
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Rajapaksa blames opposition for 'aiding' LTTE

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 September 2010, 14:33 GMT]
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has alleged that "some groups who said they did not have money to fight the war, and signed ceasefire agreements with the LTTE, had money to give the LTTE,” the Sri Lankan state-run paper Dinamina quoted Mr. Rajapaksa as saying in its front page lead story on Thursday.
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Counterinsurgency, development conquistadors and economic integrators

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 September 2010, 10:50 GMT]
Many Eezham Tamils wonder at some recent political developments but they waste their energy in concentrating on individuals. The individuals, whether KP, section of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, others who come out one by one with statements and ‘development’ agenda in support of the KP-line of politics, and the members of the ‘task’ group that executed the sequence are unimportant. Why they are mobilised so and what makes them to take that line of polity are more important.
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'Anti-Tamil ideology, international meddling make reconciliation impossible'

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 August 2010, 14:42 GMT]
In a recent paper titled "Why National Reconciliation in Sri Lanka Is Not Possible," Brian Senewiratne, a renowned physician and an Australia based Sinhala expatriate, says although he had realized that ‘national reconciliation’ in Sri Lanka was ‘totally unrealistic’, after witnessing the major human rights violations inflicted upon the Tamil people, what has made the reconciliation really ‘impossible’ was the most serious recent slaughter of Tamils with features of genocide. In addition, what makes reconciliation ‘most unlikely’ is ‘international meddling’ and ‘power play’, he argues. The 78-year-old member of the Bandaranaike family, who is a long-time defender of the Eezham Tamil cause, also argues in his paper that even the real development of the Sinhala areas is not possible if the ‘developmental power’ is left in the hands of those in Colombo.
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SL government allocates land for star hotel in Jaffna to private company

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 August 2010, 08:09 GMT]
Sri Lanka government has allocated land in Chiruththeevu in the islets of Jaffna occupied by Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) to a private company to build a five star hotel, sources in Jaffna said. SLN continues to refuse permission to local fishermen to fish in Chiruththeevu area which includes Ma'ndaitheevu, Poonakari and Jaffna lagoon.
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New Zealand Supreme Court decides LTTE a political organisation

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 August 2010, 00:40 GMT]
The Supreme Court of New Zealand Friday dismissed the appeal of the government seeking rejection of the refugee status of an Eezham Tamil who was captaining a ship carrying arms to the LTTE. The court in its judgement said: “At all relevant times the Tamil Tigers was an organisation having the goals of self-determination for Tamils and securing an independent Tamil state in northeast Sri Lanka. The principal objective was to induce the government of Sri Lanka to concede such political change. These characteristics made the Tamil Tigers a political organisation notwithstanding its use, at times, of proscribed methods of advancing its cause. That much is not in dispute”.
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Colombo "deliberately shelled civilians," accuses UN's departing Holmes

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 August 2010, 11:18 GMT]
United Nation's Human Rights Co-ordinator, John Holmes, in a parting shot at Colombo the end of his 3-year tenure at the UN, defended his department's funding of the Sri Lanka government's internment camps where more than 350,000 held for several months while admitting the Sri Lanka government may have “deliberately shelled” civilians and hospitals, Inner City Press reported.
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Sri Lanka's presumptive war-criminal to take UN job in New York

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 August 2010, 00:02 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Deputy Permanent Representative (DPR) to the United Nation's post in New York, vacant following the recall of previous DPR, Bandula Jayasekera, after an alleged sexual harassment scandal, is reported to be filled by Major General Shavendra Silva, former 58th Division commander, who has been accused of committing war crimes by his former General Sarath Fonseka, Inner City Press reported. Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in International Law, commenting on this reported UN job said, "the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) is trying to sanitize and immunize their genocidaires/war criminals and thus regularize it all."
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Robbers posing as CID arrested in Colombo

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 August 2010, 09:12 GMT]
Two persons posing as Sri Lankan Criminal Investigations Department officers and robbing Tamil residents in Bambalapitiya, Wellawatta and Dehiwala suburbs of Colombo, were arrested by the Bambalapitiya Police Wednesday.
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