TAG to file civil case against Rajapakse in Texas Federal Court

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 January 2011, 02:37 GMT]
Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group advocating criminal legal action worldwide against Sri Lanka's alleged war-criminals, said in a press release issued today, that TAG's attorney is filing civil action against visiting Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse for damages under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA/TVPA) on behalf of three plaintiffs for the killings of 40,000 civilians in Mullaiththeevu in 2009, killing of 5 Trincomalee students in January 2006, and for the killing of 17 Action contre la faim (ACF) workers in August 2006. As calls to apprehend, investigate and prosecute Mahinda Rajapakse by rights organizations, US Congresspersons and diaspora Tamils have escalated, European Tamil diaspora youth are mobilizing protests in front of US embassies against Rajapakse's visit to the U.S.
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Sri Lanka's commission to conclude "sittings"

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 14:25 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), the mandate of which was deliberately designed to whitewash Sri Lanka's war-crimes, and invitation to three leading premier human rights watchdogs Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and International Crisis Group (ICG) to attend LLRC's sittings was rejected due to LLRC "lacking the ability to advance accountability for war crimes," announced that the LLRC will "conclude its public sittings after the completion of sittings in the Ampara District in mid February" and would then would prepare its "final report that would be submitted to [Sri Lanka's] President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May," local media reported.
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Boy reported missing in Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 09:34 GMT]
A 13-year-old boy from Oottuppu'lam, a hamlet situated south of Puthumu'rippu ku'lam, 5 km south-west of Ki'linochchi town, who went herding the cows of his family on Thursday has been reported missing. One of the cows was found killed, according to the villagers who went searching for the boy. The boy had lost his mother in Vanni war and was living with his uncle. At a time when young boys were being abducted by uniformed men occupying Vanni, the disappearance of the 13-year-old boy has created a fear-psychosis among the villagers of Oottuppu'lam.
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Rajapakse, a war-criminal in hiding

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 January 2011, 00:47 GMT]
Sri Lanka's President, Mahinda Rajapakse, purportedly on a private visit to the U.S. is likely to remain in hiding with his physical whereabouts kept secret from the public to avoid another embarrassing battle with diaspora Tamils. While, as a matter of jurisprudential fairness, US Ambassador Butenis's acknowledgment that Rajapaksas have committed possible war-crimes in Sri Lanka should trigger a Justice Department investigation, Rajapakse would not have attempted to enter U.S. absent assurance from the State Department that he will not be subjected to any legal procedures. Rajapakse will also be aware that, unlike in the UK, in the US private citizens cannot apply for an arrest warrant.
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SL military, southern traders, encourage child labour in Vanni

[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 January 2011, 07:57 GMT]
Children have become scavengers of scrap metal for their livelihood in the war ravaged Vanni and this ‘economic activity’ finds the blessings of occupying military and re-cycling metal traders coming from the south. Damaged and abandoned vehicles, fittings of un-resettled houses and other buildings, and other vestiges of war are targeted for this trade that actively deploys children to collect the metal. Such conditions of child abuse is a direct result of international community conceding a nation ‘conquered’ in a civil war to the genocidal conquerors and its military. None of those who were talking of ‘child soldiers’ earlier come forward to help the situation now, commented an NGO worker in Vanni. He made a particular note of UNICEF inaction.
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Rajapaksa leaves to USA after meeting Armitage

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 15:07 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa Wednesday morning left Colombo to United States of America on a 'private' trip , according to Ada Derana, an electronic media that cited Bandula Jayasekara, the director general of the SL President Media. On Tuesday, Mr.Mahinda Rajapaksa held discussion with the former United States Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage.
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'Pentagon blighting Tamil cause may turn counter-productive to US interests'

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 January 2011, 00:39 GMT]
“The Sri Lankan government does have supporters in the U.S., particularly in military circles. Senior officials told me that their government owed much to a Pentagon official named James Clad, ‘a great friend of Sri Lanka.’ Clad was the Bush Administration’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia, in charge of the Pentagon’s dealings with India and Sri Lanka, until he was replaced by the Obama Administration in January, 2009,” wrote John Lee Anderson in Newyorker.com last week, adding that in order to reform Sri Lanka’s public image, Clad, who recently retired from the Pentagon’s National Defense University, recommended to Gotabaya Rajapaksa that he host a meeting on maritime-security concerns in the Indian Ocean to “get out of its box as a ‘single-issue country’ and reconnect it with an earlier maritime heritage,” Anderson cited Clad, advising Gotabhaya.
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Rajapaksa claims credit for British-aided causeway and bridge to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 January 2011, 20:00 GMT]
“The foundation for this causeway and bridge was laid down 7 times since 1940's, but it was only my government that managed to complete the project,” claimed Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in opening a causeway and bridge in the SL military-occupied Tamil country in the island, between Keara-theevu of the Jaffna peninsula and Changkup-piddi in Poonakari of the main island on Sunday. The causeway as used to be called Mahadeva Thaampoathi was first built in British times and the present bridge, doing away with the ferry route in between points of the causeway, has been built by British Steel Corporation, aiding the island. Mr. Rajapaksa made no mention of the British aid at the inauguration and the obscured British officials were found seated only among the audience.
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Five children orphaned as 'abducted' father found dead

[TamilNet, Friday, 14 January 2011, 12:41 GMT]
The identity of the dead body, recovered from an abandoned well at Yoakapuram in Koappaay in a highly decomposed state, was concluded as that of Mahalingam Amirtharajah, a father of five children, reported missing since January 01. Mr. Amirtharajah who was earlier living in Vanni resettled at Yoakapuram, after having lost his wife in Sri Lanka Army shelling the war, and after going through the internment camp in Cheddiku'lam. He resettled with his children at his sister's house at Yoakapuram.
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Gotabhaya to 'witness' in white-flag case

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 22:06 GMT]
Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is to give evidence before the Trial-at-Bar of the Colombo High Court on January 25 in the white flag case. Mr. Rajapaksa is the fourth witness in this case against former commander of the Sri Lanka Army Sarath Fonseka who has been charged for causing 'disrepute' to the Colombo government by making a statement in an interview to the English weekly, the Sunday leader.
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Further oppression expected as SL Army takes over islands off Jaffna from SL Navy

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 21:23 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army occupying Jaffna will take over the islands off Jaffna from the occupying SL Navy, an Army spokesman announced in Jaffna Thursday. Since 1990s the control of the islands off the Jaffna Peninsula was vested with the occupying Navy of colonial Sri Lanka. Extensive new bases are now being built for the army next to the establishments of the SL Navy in the islands. Fear engulfs the people of the islands as the Army is insisting on fresh registration of people in addition to earlier registration of them with the SL Navy. Pungkudutheevu Island has become the new centre for the Army’s extensive establishment.
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Gotabhaya-led team responsible for killings, abductions in North

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 00:15 GMT]
An esoteric team of military intelligence led by Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is directly involved in the killings and abductions in the North, informed circles in Colombo said, citing a high-ranking military officer. The SL military in Jaffna is informed of any such operations of this team only when it is being carried out and it is instructed to provide only logistical support to those operations whenever required, the sources further said, adding that people who are targeted by this killer squad could hardly come back alive. The said squad reportedly maintains an operational unit in Vavuniyaa near the Oamanthai check post.
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146,679 Vanni people missing within a year of war: Bishop of Mannaar

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 12 January 2011, 00:09 GMT]
According to records of the SL Government Agent offices of Mullaiththeevu and Ki’linochchi districts, the population of Vanni was 429,059 in October 2008. The total number of people who got into SL government control after the war was 282,380, according to UN update as of 10 July 2009. “Due clarification should be made regarding what happened to 146,679 people, which is the discrepancy between the number of people who came to government controlled areas between October 2008 – May 2009 and the population reported to be in Vanni in early October 2008,” said the Catholic Bishop of Mannaar, Rt. Rev. Dr. Rayappu Joseph in his submission to the LLRC Saturday. The Bishop has also raised the issues of militarization, colonisation, land grab, Sihalicization, Buddhicisation and civil as well as human rights abuses that take place in the Tamil land following the war.
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Five of six Mannaar abductees released, Colombo involvement exposed

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 January 2011, 08:40 GMT]
Five of six civilians abducted from Mannaar on Thursday, including Jazeel Jaharil whose abduction created confrontation between the abductors and his relatives exposing the squads link with Sri Lankan military, returned Friday evening from Colombo and were handed over to their relatives Saturday early morning by the Sri Lankan Police. Earlier reports said 4 persons were abducted on Thursday. But, according to latest information 6 persons were abducted that day. No information is available about the other person, Mr. Sasi, who is also reported missing on Thursday.
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LTTE former commander Yaan's wife witnesses on SLA war crime

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 January 2011, 06:39 GMT]
Bearing witness in front of Mahinda Rajapaksa's Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Committee (LLRC) in Maanthai West in Mannaar on Sunday, Mrs R. Mironio, the wife of LTTE's former Mannaar commander Antony Rayappu alias Yaan, said she has not heared from her husband or not told of the whereabouts of him after he surrendered in front of her in SLA controlled territory in Mullaiththeevu on 18 May 2009. The surrender was facilitated by facilitated by Catholic Priest Rev. Fr. Francis Joseph, she said. The priest was also taken with her husband, but noone have heared about them, she said.
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SLA commanders target women in North for garments industry in South

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 January 2011, 04:44 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army commanders in North have been campaigning among the rural populations in the North that they were offering employment to Tamil women in the garments industry in the South. Women's Development Centre, Jaffna, and gender equality groups such as Paalnilai Chamaththuva Amaippu have urged residents in the North to be aware that such offers targeting women are being made without any guarantees of transparency or contracts, sources in Jaffna said.
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Oppression is not forever, but resistance is – editorial

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 January 2011, 15:20 GMT]
It is not the possibility of statehood, but the impossibility of living under oppression that sustains protracted struggles for self-determination, the Tamil Guardian newspaper said this week. Referring to the three major initiatives for self-determination at the beginning of 2011 – by South Sudanese, Iraqi Kurds and Palestinians, the paper noted that in all three cases, years of international intervention to produce an amicable settlement amongst the peoples in conflict failed due to the conduct of the state concerned. Similarly, in Sri Lanka today, “the state's murderous policies of violence, humanitarian deprivation, demographic change and economic starvation will sustain, more forcefully than any theoretical exposition, the Tamil demand for self-determination,” the paper said.
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JDS condemns silence of Colombo media over terror campaign in North

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 January 2011, 08:27 GMT]
Detailing the recent killings, abductions and other atrocities in the SL military occupied North, the Journalists For Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), an exiled organisation of journalists, on Friday condemned the silence of Sinhala and English media in Colombo over the terror campaign. Instead, these media highlight only the explanations from the side of the SL government, the report said. The JDS statement exposed the latest twist of portrayal of the situation by SL media minister and government spokesperson Keheliya Rambukwella, who wanted to pass the blame on "elements seeking tarnish the image of Colombo government internationally". The JDS statement, with details of earlier unreported crimes, noted that human rights violations not being exposed is high in Vanni as journalists and aid workers were barred from entering Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu districts.
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Fatal blow on Eezham Tamil fishery follows Indo-Lanka ‘defence’ agreement

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 January 2011, 01:14 GMT]
From Maathakal to Mannaar, several millions worth fishing nets belonging to Eezham Tamil fishermen, laid in the Palk Bay even very close to the shores of the country of Eezham Tamils, were systematically destroyed this week in a highly organised way by trawlers coming from the Tamil Nadu coast. The destruction of Eezham Tamil fishery in the Palk Bay follows immediately the defence agreement signed between New Delhi’s Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar and Colombo’s Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa in the last week of December. While an agreement has been reached between the two establishments on the security of sea-lanes, as in the past many protocols of it remain a secret. Both the establishments in New Delhi and Colombo have joint interests in bringing in a wedge between the Tamil fishing communities on either side of the Palk Bay.
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Sudden transfer of Vanni GAs, political motivation of SL minister alleged

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 January 2011, 03:59 GMT]
Mannaar Government Agent A. Nicholas Pillai has been suddenly released of his duties and has been transferred to ministry work in Colombo. The Mullaiththeevu Government Agent Nagalingam Vethanayagam is expected to take over Mannaar. A project director in Mannaar District Secretariat, A. Pathinathar will be taking over as government agent of Mullaiththeevu district, informed sources in Mannaar DS said.
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