Paramilitary men shoot dead 3 Tamils, a Muslim in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 April 2009, 06:54 GMT]
Paramilitary men operating with Sri Lanka Army (SLA) shot and killed Saturday around 8:45 two Tamil civilians including the President of the Nochchiku’lam Peace Committee and a Muslim civilian in Kantha’laay police division in Trincomalee district, sources in Trincomalee said. Meanwhile, paramilitary men gunned down a Tamil civilian Saturday around 9:00 p.m at Shaanthipuram in Kantha’laay police division, the sources added.a
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Colombo steps up air strikes, safe zone targeted 39 times Sunday

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 April 2009, 06:11 GMT]
Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) fighter jets bombed Sunday the so-called safety zone where tens of thousands of civilians have sought refuge at least 39 times in six sorties so far on Sunday. The indiscriminate bombardment by the Sri Lankan state has been intensified despite the call from the White House on Saturday to stop attacking the 'safety zone' and to stop the fighting immediately. Exact casualty details were not available at the moment. Heavy bombardment by SLAF bombers has caused panic and tension among the civilians, who are facing imminent starvation as Colombo has blocked the shipment of humanitarian supplies facilitated by the ICRC.
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Starvation: Colombo deploys the worst genocidal weapon

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 18:29 GMT]
No food shipment was sent to the safety zone after 02 April. Even the earlier supplies were pathetically inadequate. The World Food Programme (WFP) shipment that already set sailing with 1,500 MT food items and was scheduled to arrive in Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal has been diverted to Jaffna in the last minute by the Colombo government, citing ‘security reasons’, civil officials inside the zone told TamilNet Saturday. People starve beyond imagination, subsisting just on fish and prawns caught amidst high risk of SLA attack and eating them semi-raw, roasted in fire, as there is no cooking oil.
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Nadesan denies UN accusation

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 17:48 GMT]
LTTE Political Head B. Nadesan on Saturday categorically denied recruitment and arming children as young as 12 to fight alongside the Tigers as alleged by news reports citing the UN Colombo Spokesman Gordon Weiss.
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Outrageous response of UN to humanitarian crisis: Diaspora scientist

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 14:33 GMT]
Children as young as 12 are forcefully recruited and given with guns to fight on the front line alongside LTTE, Guardian.co.uk reported Saturday, 9.49 GMT, citing Gordon Weiss, UN spokesman in Sri Lanka. “Whom are they guarding”, Tamil circles asked. “It is outrageous that the UN which has no means to stop Colombo’s genocide or immediately take responsibility of the captured and even reluctant to talk about the high casualty but only ‘leaks out’ figures, to raise this matter at this juncture in an imbalanced way, when Colombo is bombarding the remaining civilians in the so-called safety zone”, said Thomas Aloysius, senior scientist in Bergan, Norway. “If what the UN official says is true, it is deplorable, but aren’t they too responsible for the tragedy by their inaction in prevailing upon Colombo to stop the war. The LTTE always ask for ceasefire”, he asked.
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Schools in Jaffna to reopen Monday

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 13:40 GMT]
Directors of Education in Jaffna peninsula met Saturday to explore possibilities of reopening the schools for the second term and to find alternate arrangements to continue education for the students of the schools where civilians from Vanni are being held, sources in Jaffna said. It was decided in the meeting to reopen all schools in the peninsula on 27 Monday and to enable the students of the schools appropriated, to study in the schools located close by, based on a shift system, Education Department sources said.
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10 Tamils arrested in Badulla

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 12:27 GMT]
Ten Tamil civilians were taken into custody in several estates surrounding Passara in Badulla district during a cordon and search operation conducted on Thursday from morning till evening. Police said the arrested were detained in police stations and being interrogated as they failed to prove their identity and justify the reason for their presence in the location.
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Military end to conflict will end hope for a unified Sri Lanka - Obama White House

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 12:02 GMT]
In a statement issued Friday the Obama White House called on "both sides to stop fighting immediately," and "the Government of Sri Lanka to stop shelling the safe zone and blocking international aid groups and media from accessing those civilians who have managed to escape," adding both sides should "strictly adhere to their obligations under international humanitarian law," and that the Obama administration is "very concerned about reports of violations, and take these allegations very seriously." The White House cautioned that, "[i]t would compound the current tragedy if the military end of the conflict only breeds further enmity and ends hopes for reconciliation and a unified Sri Lanka in the future."
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Demand for separate state can intensify, says Boston Globe

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 11:50 GMT]
Pointing out that "[f]or more than a quarter century, successive Sri Lankan governments have refused to grant ethnic Tamils in the north and northeast of the country some form of autonomy or self-rule in a confederal state," the Boston Globe in an editiorial said Saturday that "[i]f the Tamil populace sees no hope for autonomy within Sri Lanka, it may come to demand a separate state." The Globe said, "[t]he Tigers have committed terrorist acts. But the overwhelming majority of the victims in the Rajapaksa brothers' war have been Tamil civilians."
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Sri Lanka intensifies bombardment, 'safe zone' bombed 25 times Saturday

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 09:21 GMT]
Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) unloaded bombs in four sorties on Saturday, intensifying bombardments in the northern and southern parts of Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal inside the safety zone. The bombers hit several locations, 4 times around 10:15 a.m., 12 times at 2:00 p.m. 4 times around 4:15 p.m. and an hour later five times, bringing to total 25, the number of times the SLAF hit targets inside the "Safe Zone" where tens of thousands of civilians have sought refuge. The attacks intensified a day after Indian diplomats visited Colombo and discussed the war with the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
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SLN beefs up security in Mannaar

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 06:40 GMT]
Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) setup a new check point at Mannaar Fort in place of Vankkaalai check point since Tuesday and are currently subjecting passengers to and from Mannaar to severe search and interrogation, sources in Mannaar said. State buses and private buses leave the passengers at Mannaar Fort check point and return to their depots without providing further transport to continue their journey to their destination.
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Physical capture and incarceration of people: latest ways of neo-colonialism

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 06:01 GMT]
"The pundits of political science may have to revise the connotations of the word neo-colonialism as indirect ways of imperialism only operating through economy. The experiment that is taking place with the Tamil question in the island of Sri Lanka indicates that powers of today are bold enough to orchestrate physical capture of people in brutal ways without worrying about casualty and the imprisonment of the remaining indefinitely, in order to achieve their geopolitical goals," writes a regular political commentator to TamilNet. "The manipulations at the UN, open defiance in recognizing the obvious ethnic nature of the crisis, and the outrageous statement diplomacy empty of action in saving the oppressed, but signalling Colombo’s genocide, are clear evidences for the new trends of neo-colonialism, encountered by the world of freedom-loving people," the commentator writes.
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Another carnage imminent as the two Indian mandarins return

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 03:27 GMT]
In lines of precedence with Colombo, which escalates war immediately following consultations with India, another carnage is anticipated with the return of the two Indian mandarins, Menon and Narayanan, from Sri Lanka on Friday, Tamil circles in Colombo said. Earlier, on Thursday, the Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee accused the LTTE of "barbaric" attempts. Meanwhile, US State Department Friday asked the LTTE to consider surrendering to a 'third party'. Diplomatic and military preparations are set for another bout of Colombo's genocidal onslaught, observers said.
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165,000 civilians face imminent starvation, LTTE urges IC to act

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 23:52 GMT]
In a press statement titled 'UN and IC Need to Act Faster to Prevent Hunger' the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam Friday said 165,000 Tamil civilians belonging to 40,000 families within the LTTE controlled area in Mullaiththeevu coast are faced with serious crisis due to the deliberate  denial of food and other humanitarian supplies by the Sri Lankan Government. "The LTTE urges the UN and other members of the international community to act promptly to ensure  immediate and continuous supply of food to these people.  We fear that further delay can result in a crisis similar to that faced in Darfur or even deadlier," the statement released from Vanni said.
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Rajapaksa appoints notorious commander to head IDP resettlement

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 17:32 GMT]
Sri Lankan President and C-in-C of the armed forces Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday appointed Chief-of-Staff of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Maj. Gen. G.A. Chandrasiri as the Competent Authority Officer in charge of resettlement of Tamils from Vanni in alleged barbed-wire 'internment camps' and 'villages' in the North. Maj. Gen. Chandrasiri was the former chief of the SLA in Jaffna, under whose command Jaffna witnessed hundreds of forced disappearances, extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations in the period from 2006 to 2008. Meanwhile, Colombo has started to seek funds to 'resettle' and 'rehabilitate' civilians who have been captured from the LTTE controlled area.
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Plans afoot to establish SLA concentration village in Kodikaamam

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 17:08 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) authorities have instructed Jaffna Government Agent to have the mines sown in SLA 55th Division main artillery base located at Kodikaamam in Thenmaraadchi removed as the first step to hold nearly eleven thousand Vanni civilians, now held in various SLA detention centres in Jaffna, Jaffna Secretariat sources said. Danish Demining Organization (DDO) has already begun clearing land mines and the debris from artillery and Multi-barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) fire, the sources said.
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Colombo uses starvation, denial of medicine as weapons of war: LTTE

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 11:26 GMT]
The Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) has been systematically limiting, delaying and blocking humanitarian supplies to the civilian population of Vanni committing a serious crime of war said a statement issued by the Political Division of the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) Friday. Questioning why the International Community has failed to demand the Sri Lankan government to allow humanitarian supplies reaching the civilians of Vanni, the LTTE statement issued in Tamil said it was condemning Colombo in strongest terms for using starvation as a weapon of war against civilians and for violating the Geneva Conventions.
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Civilian casualties top 20,000 in Vanni: Leaked UN document

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 09:31 GMT]
A new document originating from the UN and circulated among the diplomatic missions in Colombo this week has put the figures of the civilians killed in Vanni since January as at least 6,432 and 13,946 wounded, according to a news report by the Associated Press Friday. "The casualties were reported as 'verified data' in the document," the AP said. The Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has been firing thousands of artillery and mortar shells, including internationally banned cluster munitions and chemical warheads, into the so-called no-fire zone or 'safety zone' killing and maiming thousands of Tamil civilians, constituting a grave war crime and crime against humanity.
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'Bountiful in killing shells, but no means for food packets'

[TamilNet, Friday, 24 April 2009, 00:37 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army (SLA) which was able to fire thousands of shells per day into the so-called safety zone to capture the civilians, doesn't have enough means to feed them when they are captured, said a District Secretariat official in Vavuniyaa. The SLA, which is still keeping the civilians inside the militarized zone, north of Oamanthai, for its screening, has asked the Tamil people of Vavuniyaa through loudspeaker announcements, to donate cooked-food packets to supply the captured civilians, the official speaking in condition of anonymity told TamilNet Thursday. So far, no civil official is able to confirm the arrival of the new batch of civilians into the internment camps of Vavuniyaa town this week.
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Injured woman from Vanni dies in Point Pedro

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 April 2009, 16:36 GMT]
A woman brought from Puthu Maaththa’lan in Mullaiththeevu with gunshot injuries by Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) to Point Pedro succumbed to her wounds on the shores of Point Pedro Munai, sources in Vadamaraadchi said. Point Pedro Magistrate conducted the inquest into the death on the beach and directed the police to hand over her body to Manthikai hospital mortuary.
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