Sinhala cattle breeder arrested in Buttala

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 February 2008, 13:04 GMT]
A Sinhalese villager was arrested Friday by the police on a report that he had supplied meals and cigarettes to unknown persons hiding in Buttala jungle. He is to be produced in Buttala court on Monday, media sources said.
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Kosovo’s victory has lessons for other liberation struggles - paper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 February 2008, 16:16 GMT]
Describing Kosovo’s declaration of independence on Sunday and the ensuing international recognition as “a powerful shot in the arm to peoples resisting and seeking independence from tyrannical regimes,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper this said that “whilst every situation and every circumstance is unique, there are important lessons from the Kosovan march to independence for liberation struggles everywhere. The paper pointed out that just a few years ago, the idea of Kosovan independence had been dismissed by the international community and the Kosovan Liberation Army had been condemned as terrorists by the United States and other countries.
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29 Tamils arrested in Gampaha

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 February 2008, 13:45 GMT]
Thirty four civilians were taken into custody in a cordon and search operation conducted by the government security forces at Gampaha town from Saturday night till Sunday morning. Twenty nine of those arrested are Tamils, majority of them plantation workers. Three are Muslims and 2 are Sinhalese, media sources said quoting police.
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Suspects remanded in attempted murder of Sarath Fonseka

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 February 2008, 12:27 GMT]
Colombo Fort Magistrate Mr.Namal Bandara Thursday ordered further remand till February 27 for two suspects in the suicide attack attempt made on Sri Lanka Army Commander Sarath Fonseka on August 25, 2006 near the headquarters of the Sri Lanka Army. The army commander escaped. But 11 soldiers of the SLA were killed and 25 injured, legal sources said.
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Indian Marxist party shuts door on JVP

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 February 2008, 08:31 GMT]
The Communist Party of India (Marxist), the key ally of the ruling Congress, has not invited the JVP to its 19th Annual Meet to be held in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. The boycott of the extreme Sinhala nationalist party, that has been a regular attendee of CPI-M meetings since the 1970s, comes in the wake of heightened Tamil sentiments prevailing in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu where the CPI-M looks forward to consolidating its base.
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Thirumavalavan urges Center to hold referendum on extending LTTE ban

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2008, 20:18 GMT]
Viduthalai Chiruththaikal Kadchi (VCK, Liberation Panthers Party) President Thol. Thirumavalavan on Friday urged the Indian Government to conduct a referendum among the sixty five million people of Tamil Nadu on the extension of LTTE ban. He was speaking at a demonstration organized by his party to pressure the Indian Government to wage war against Sri Lanka for planting mines in the sea waters of Kadchatheevu and for arbitrarily arresting Tamil Nadu fishermen.
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Conflict headed for bloody, decisive phase- Uyangoda

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2008, 01:16 GMT]
"With the umbilical cord between Sri Lanka’s conflict-management process and the international community, in the form of the CFA, having been severed, both parties are now relatively free to conduct the war in the way they feel suitable, with no external pressures regarding human rights or humanitarian consequences. In the coming months, the conflict will become a war without checks or balances, a war without inhibition," Prof. Uyangoda says in a dispassionate analysis that appeared in a southasian monthly, Himal, on the reasons and aftermath of the formal abrogation of CeaseFire Agreement.
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Police rescinds collecting personal details of Tamils in Modara

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 January 2008, 18:01 GMT]
“Sri Lanka Police has no authority to collect private personal details especially financial details even during the current State of Emergency in Sri Lanka,” Mr. R. Yogarajan, the Vice President of Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) said in an interview to BBC Tamil service Thursday. The forms distributed to the Tamils by the police in Sinhalese language calling for personal details including place of work, phone number, and bank details, ending into the hands of criminal elements would be dangerous to the Tamils, Yogarajan told the BBC.
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SLA, police cordon, search Akkaraipattu

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 January 2008, 10:46 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and police started a large scale cordon and search operation from Thursday early morning in Aalayadiveampu, Koa’laavil and Naavatkaadu in Akkaraipattu in Ampaa'rai district, following the killing of two Sinhalese men at Aalayadiveampu Wednesday around 9:00 p.m, Akkaraipattu police said.
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U.S. Group advocates for Tamil Statehood

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 January 2008, 13:52 GMT]
"Applying the 'self-evident' truths celebrated in the Declaration of Independence, the United States should recognize the right of Sri Lanka's long oppressed Tamil people to independent statehood from the racial supremacist Sinhalese," says Bruce Fein, the associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, and a lawyer for Tamils For Justice, a U.S. group of Tamil activists, in an opinion piece appearing Tuesday in Washington's conservative news paper, The Washington Times.
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Providing moral support to Eelam, not a crime- Thirumavalavan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 January 2008, 18:53 GMT]
"Any move to suppress those expressing moral support to Tamil Eelam and LTTE is violation of all tenets of democracy and humanism, and will border on fascism," Viduthalai Chiruththaikal Katchi (VCK, Liberation Panthers Party) President Thol. Thirumavalavan said on Friday addressing a conference organized by his party in Chennai labeled "Redeem the Freedom of Expression."
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15 civilians arrested in Buttala still in custody

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 January 2008, 03:12 GMT]
Fifteen civilians arrested at Buttala in Badulla district in Uva province on Wednesday evening in a combined cordon and search operation conducted by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and Sri Lanka Police are still being detained in police stations and interrogated. Of the arrested, 12 are Tamils and three are Sinhalese youths, police said.
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Rantembe reservoir security tightened

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 January 2008, 11:05 GMT]
The security of Rantembe reservoir in Kandy district has been tightened when residents of the area reported to the Hasalaka police about the presence of a group of strangers in the surrounding jungles, media reports said.
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Two SLA troopers wounded in Moneragala

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 January 2008, 12:26 GMT]
Two Sri Lanka Army troopers were wounded when a group of attackers opened fire on a SLA unit engaged in a search operation in a jungle area near Kithulkotte in Thanamalwila Police division Tuesday noon, Police said. Meanwhile, informed sources in Colombo said around 8,000 security personnel comprising SLA troops, Special Task Force, Police and homeguards, have been deployed in the jungle areas in a search operation. Around 2000 Sinhalese men were to be recruited to Civil Defence Force as homeguards in the district, informed sources further said.
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LTTE, the most dangerous, deadly, says FBI

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 January 2008, 03:09 GMT]
In a campaign "celebrating a century," U.S.'s Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) said of the Liberation Tigers: "Needless to say, the Tamil Tigers are among the most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world. For more than three decades, the group has launched a campaign of violence and bloodshed in Sri Lanka, the island republic off the southern coast of India." The website added that LTTE's "ultimate goal is to seize control of the country from the Sinhalese ethnic majority."
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Sri Lankan State not secular, nor fair- Retd Indian Colonel

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 January 2008, 21:01 GMT]
Noting that Sri Lankan State has a fundamental problems that lie at the root of the conflict, Retired Indian Colonel, Mr Anil Athale, in a column appeared in Rediff Friday, says "many Indian commentators have flippantly advised Tamils to accept Sri Lankan unity without realising that Sri Lanka is not a secular State like India nor is it a 'fair State' like the UK in terms of rule of law."
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"Military solution is all Mr. Rajapakse has left" - Wall Street Journal

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 January 2008, 15:47 GMT]
Despite holding moral high ground as countries have labelled the LTTE terrorists and cracked down on funding, Rajapakse's "commitment to the negotiated cease-fire has always been shaky," and Rajapakse and his party "have done little to win over moderate Tamils," said the Wall Street Journal in an article published in Friday edition, and added that "now, the military solution is all Mr. Rajapakse has left, and it's not a sure bet by any means."
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Conflict sustained by world equating oppressor and oppressed - paper

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 January 2008, 08:12 GMT]
The international community’s “stubborn refusal to accept, even when it is thrust in their faces, the racist oppression that underpins ethnic politics there and, consequently, the impossibility of reforming the Sinhala state,” is sustaining Sri Lanka’s conflict the Tamil Guardian newspaper argued this week. “It is [the] ready equating of the violence of the oppressor with the resistance of the oppressed which reveals the international mindset,” the paper’s editorial said.
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Col. Charles laid to rest in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 January 2008, 01:29 GMT]
The remains of Col. Charles, Head of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Military Intelligence, killed Saturday evening in a random Claymore attack by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Deep Penetration Unit in Pa'l'lamadu in Mannar, was laid to rest with full military honours in Kanakapuram Heroes Cemetery Monday.
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Indian PM's participation in SL independence day not fixed

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 January 2008, 17:12 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogolloagama had to hastily retract on Friday his earlier claim that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will participate in the 60th Independence Day celebrations of Sri Lanka on February 4, 2008. A few weeks ago, Mr. Bogollagama told Parliament that Sri Lanka had invited Dr. Manmohan Singh to be the chief guest of the independence day function. The information that the dates of Manmohan Singh's proposed visit to Colombo have not been finalized was revealed a day after Bogollagama called the Indian High Commissioner Alok Prasad to inform him about GoSL's decision to abrogate the almost six-year old CFA agreement with the LTTE, informed sources said.
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