Jaffna Bishop seeks release of 6 Catholic priests detained in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 June 2009, 14:02 GMT]
Jaffna Bishop Rt. Rev. Joseph Saundaranayagam has despatched a letter to Defence Secretary requesting the release of six Catholic parish priests who are being held in an unknown Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camp in Vavuniyaa, sources in Jaffna said.
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Hunger strike of British Aid worker enters 16th day

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 June 2009, 04:48 GMT]
Tim Martin, director of Act Now, a rights group formed by former British aid workers in Sri Lanka, is on a hunger striek in Parliament Square, London, calling for intervention by U.S. and other Governments to protect the massacre-survivors from the Safety Zone in Mulliaththeevu, currently being interned in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) supervised camps in Vavuniyaa. Martin handed a letter to Mr Kerry McCarthy MP, and Mrs Kerry when they visited him, and asked the MP to hand over the letter to U.S. President Obama, well wishers at the Parliament square said.
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Sinhala "lebensraum" in progress in Vanni, warns Prof.Boyle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 June 2009, 03:15 GMT]
"The Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) is continuing to inflict Nazi-type crimes and atrocities against the Tamils even after their alleged excuse of fighting a "war against terrorism" has been exposed as a bogus pretext to annihilate the Tamils and to steal their lands and natural resources. This is what Hitler and the Nazis called "lebensraum"--"living space" for the Sinhala at the expense of the Tamils. The GOSL's "ethnic cleansing" of the Tamil Homeland for the benefit of the Sinhala is now underway," warns Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law.
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13,000 have ‘disappeared’ from Sri Lanka camps – UN reports

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 June 2009, 14:58 GMT]
According to reports of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, last week over 13,000 internally displaced people have disappeared from Sri Lanka’s internment camps for Tamil civilians, Inner City Press reports. Moreover, UN sources in Colombo are telling Inner City Press that senior UN officials above them, Sri Lankan nationals who are Sinhalese, are deliberately downplaying the 13,000 "missing" IDPs, which would otherwise be of much concern given the reports of disappearances from the camps, the seizing of teenage males for detention and females for sexual abuse.
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33 Tamils arrested in Wellampitya

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 June 2009, 13:44 GMT]
Police took into custody thirty-three Tamil civilians in Wellampitya in Colombo district on Sunday during a cordon and search operation as they failed to register themselves with the police.
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Britain sold arms despite Sri Lanka’s abuses – The Times

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 June 2009, 13:01 GMT]
Britain sold £13.6m worth of arms to Sri Lanka in the past three years despite Colombo’s widespread abuse of human rights, The Times newspaper reported. Whilst the United States suspended arms sales in 2008, Britain, Bulgaria and Slovakia continued to arm President Mahinda Rajapakse’s ultra-nationalist government. The sales contravened the 1998 EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports that restricts business with countries facing internal conflicts or with poor human rights records and a history of violating international law. The arms were sold as international ceasefire monitors, human rights groups and Tamil Diaspora repeatedly protested Sri Lanka’s rights abuses.
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Colombo to issue finger print ID to Vanni civilians in custody

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 June 2009, 11:23 GMT]
All members of IDP families including children of over ten years of age who were forced to flee Vanni and detained by the Colombo government in Vavuniyaa internment camps are to be issued with special identity cards with their finger prints. Police with officials of the Presidential Secretariat are currently engaged in implementing the scheme.
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Sri Lanka war crimes: Ban must speak, UN must investigate – The Times

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 June 2009, 10:51 GMT]
Following on from investigations published last week which revealed the United Nations was aware as 20,000 Tamil civilians were being slaughtered by the Sri Lanka Army, The Times newspaper called Monday on the UN to investigate the war crimes, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to speak out, and UK Foreign Minister David Miliband to press Mr. Ban. Saying “there is a terrible augury for such inexplicable reticence [by the Secretary-General],” to speak out, the paper recalled the UN’s “insouciance and failure” over the Srebrenica massacre of Muslims by Serbs and asked if the UN would scotch parallels for it in Sri Lanka.
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UN can investigate Sri Lanka’s actions - war crimes judge

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 May 2009, 20:47 GMT]
The United Nations is able to investigate the war crimes which occurred recently in Sri Lanka, British human rights lawyer and international war crimes judge, Geoffrey Robertson QC said Sunday. The avenues for the UN include the UN Human Rights Committee, which can investigate individuals’ complaints against states under the International Convention on Human Rights, to which Sri Lanka is a signatory. The UN Human Rights Council, by contrast, is a “highly politicized” body staffed by diplomats of various countries, including those abusing human rights, rather than human rights experts, he said.
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Potent Tamil voice for European Parliament

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 May 2009, 01:44 GMT]
June 4th elections will determine if Tamils in the London electoral region have the political muscle, organizational acumen and seasoned campaigning skills to attract broader British voters to elect Ms Janani (Jan) Jananayagam, a British, French educated young professional, who is contesting as an Independent candidate to the European Parliament. Ms. Jananayagam’s educational credentials, demonstrated communications skills, and a deftly constructed election platform centered on civil rights, financial transparency, and equality and diversity, will appeal to a broad section of British public and other immigrant groups besides the Tamil community, political observers in London say.
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Misappropriation of relief food to Vanni detainees in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 May 2009, 23:39 GMT]
Representatives of Non-government Organizations (NGOs) in Jaffna have brought to the notice of Jaffna Government Agent (SLA) the prevailing misappropriation in the supply of relief food to the detainees held in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in Jaffna peninsula. Though the NGOs spend millions of rupees in supplying cooked food to the detainees daily, the food is below standard and the distribution irregular, NGOs told the GA. Nearly 40% of the daily relief food supply is being misappropriated.
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SLA officials accused of taking bribes from Vanni detainees

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 May 2009, 23:11 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) high officials in charge of the internment camps in Jaffna, where Vanni civilians are held, are alleged to be taking bribes ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 rupees to free the youths among the detainees, according to complaints made by the detainees to Human Rights Organizations (HRC) in Jaffna. SLA authorities in Jaffna, however, continue to refute such allegations.
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The Times demands action over ‘monstrous collusion’ in slaughter of Tamils

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 May 2009, 15:59 GMT]
Pointing out that not only the United Nations but several Western governments knew of the ongoing slaughter of 20,000 Tamil civilians by the Sri Lanka Army, but kept silent for fear of upsetting the Colombo Government, The Times newspaper Saturday demanded international action to prevent further atrocities. “Such a monstrous collusion in covering up an atrocity must not go unchallenged. If the UN Human Rights Council refuses to investigate what has happened, the West must do so forthwith,” the paper said. “The silence of those who were warned of civilian deaths in Sri Lanka is shameful. They must speak out now to prevent future atrocities,” the editorial’s subtitle charged.
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Evidence points to Colombo culpability to Tamil massacre - Washington Post

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 May 2009, 13:24 GMT]
Adding to the increasing international media coverage of Government of Sri Lanka's culpability to the massacre of more than 20,000 Tamil civilians in Mullaitheevu, Emily Wax of Washington Post in a Saturday story said, the beach "shows clear signs of heavy artillery shelling, according to a helicopter inspection of the site by independent journalists, interviews with eyewitnesses, and specialists who have studied high-resolution satellite imagery from the war zone." The paper notes Rights advocates view that "any government could defeat terrorism if it ignored the 1949 Geneva convention that aims to protect civilians caught in war zones," and adds that U.S. Justice Department is considering whether to seek criminal charges against Colombo officials based on information filed by Attorney Bruce Fein.
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UN Officials complicit in aiding, abetting GoSL's Nazi-type crimes - Prof. Boyle

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 May 2009, 11:14 GMT]
Pointing to a report in the French paper Le Monde, which quoted Vijay Nambiar, chief of Staff of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, as telling UN representatives in Sri Lanka that the UN should “keep a low profile” and play a “sustaining role" that was "compatible with the government," Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law said Saturday that both the United Nations Organization itself and its highest level officials are guilty of aiding and abetting Nazi-type crimes against the Tamils by the Government of Sri Lanka, in violation of international law. "Unless this Momentum is reversed and all these U.N. Officials fired, the United Nations Organization shall follow the League of Nations into the "ashcan" of History," Boyle said.
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Sri Lanka hunting media’s Tamil sources - RSF

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 May 2009, 23:47 GMT]
Apart from threatening to prosecute journalists who attempt to visit the northern areas captured from the Liberation Tigers, Sri Lanka’s military is trying to identify Tamil civilians who provided information to the foreign press by infiltrating paramilitaries into their military-run refugee camps, RSF (Reporters Without Borders) said Friday. While the Army general appointed in charge of resettling refugees says “all foreign journalists are working against his homeland,” the country’s police chief claims that several journalists, “mostly Sinhalese”, were on the payroll of the LTTE and were involved in the insurgency.
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UN concealed carnage to keep Sri Lanka goodwill – Le Monde

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 May 2009, 23:39 GMT]
The United Nations deliberately hid the number of Tamil civilians being killed during the Sri Lankan government offensive against the LTTE, according to a report in the French daily Le Monde. The report, translated by FRANCE 24, quotes several UN sources alleging that high-ranking UN officials, including Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, chose to keep silent about the high civilian death toll so as to avoid offending the Sri Lankan government and maintain UN operations in the country. A low figure was even leaked by the UN in mid-May, when it was known that the real toll was approaching 20,000 dead.
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‘Still no access’ - UN, aid agencies

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 May 2009, 19:09 GMT]
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and international aid groups Friday protested Sri Lanka’s denial of access to hundreds of thousands of Tamils concentrated in militarized camps in the north and the homes from which the displaced had fled. Sri Lanka is still refusing to provide aid workers with full access despite an appeal by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the UN said separately.
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20,000 Tamil civilians massacred by Sri Lanka – The Times

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 May 2009, 00:54 GMT]
Evidence gathered by The Times newspaper has revealed that at least 20,000 Tamil people were killed on the Mullaitivu beach by Sri Lanka Army shelling. Aerial photographs, official documents, witness accounts and expert testimony collected by the newspaper “present clear evidence of an atrocity that comes close to matching Srebrenica, Darfur and other massacres of civilians,” the paper’s editorial says. Confidential UN documents acquired by The Times record nearly 7,000 civilian deaths in the ‘no-fire’ zone up to the end of April. UN sources said that the toll then surged, with an average of 1,000 civilians killed each day until May 19.
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SLA-backed paramilitary men abduct Tamil civilian in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 May 2009, 17:06 GMT]
Paramilitary men operating with Sri Lanka Army (SLA) arriving in a black pick-up vehicle Thursday around 9:00 p.m at the house of a Tamil three-wheel driver abducted him, in Vaazhaichcheanai in Batticaloa district, according to a complaint lodged with Vaazhaichcheanai police. The relatives of the driver said that the paramilitary men had said in Sinhalese language that they had come from Pollanaruwa police station.
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