Tamil civilian arrested in Chilaapam

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 October 2009, 16:47 GMT]
A team of the State Intelligence Service Sunday arrested a Tamil civilian, a resident of Chilaapam in the northwestern province. Chilaapam police said he was taken into custody on information that he had been assigned by Liberation Tigers to gather information around the Colombo port area.
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Police arrests Tamil youth in Negombo

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 October 2009, 02:21 GMT]
Negombo police Saturday arrested a Tamil youth while he was staying in his residence alleging that the youth is a senior cadre of the LTTE and had arrived in Negombo a year ago. The arrested youth is being detained by the State Intelligence Unit and being interrogated, police said.
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Release 250,000 Tamils from illegal detention immediately, HRW tells Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 October 2009, 20:40 GMT]
Pointing out that "[d]eteriorating conditions, including a shortage of water since October 5, 2009, combined with the prospect of flooding during the imminent monsoon season, have led to rising tensions among camp residents and clashes with the military," New York based rights watchdog, Human Rights Watch (HRW), called on international donors Japan, the United States and European Union member states "to send a clear message to the Government of Sri Lanka that continued detention of the displaced will have serious consequences for Sri Lanka's relationship with the international community."
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Emergency extended in Sri Lanka for another month

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 October 2009, 17:54 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s parliament Thursday adopted a motion to extend the State of Emergency by another month with a majority of seventy votes. Eighty-two parliamentarians from the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and the National Freedom Front (NFF), the rebel group of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) voted in favor of the motion. Twelve Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians who were present at that time voted against the motion. The main opposition United National Party (UNP) abstained from voting. Parliamentarians of the JVP were not present in the House at that time of voting. The State of Emergency is being extended by the parliament monthly since August, 2005.
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Tamils facing “cultural annihaliation” by SL Government: Australian Politician

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 October 2009, 05:10 GMT]
“It may be argued that the Tamil people have a legitimate right to self-determination but what is essential now is that we must see an end to the oppressive and discriminatory policies of the victorious Sri Lankan Government” urged Greens MLC Ian Cohen in an address to the Australian Parliament on September 24th. Highlighting the “potential humanitarian catastrophe” faced by almost 300,000 refugees who “despite their desire and capacity to return home they are being held prisoner”, Cohen described the Governments treatment of Tamils as “a litany of injustice, cultural annihilation and human rights atrocities”. Meanwhile, a Tamil NGO official in Vavuniyaa, while welcoming the interest of Australian politicians, said they should also come forward to "first address the question of double standards, employed by their government, between issues such as East Timor and Eezham.”
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Boat people, no security risk - Australian Minister

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 October 2009, 12:25 GMT]
Australian Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor has "rejected claims some Sri Lankan boat people detained on Christmas Island are former Tamil Tigers who could pose a security risk," Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) reported Tuesday. The Minister was responding to Sri Lanka's high commissioner to Australia, Senaka Walgampaya's allegations that "former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels are among recent illegal boat arrivals," the newspaper said.
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Sri Lanka's internment camps for Tamils: experience of an inmate

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 October 2009, 09:37 GMT]
South Asia has never witnessed such a large scale, state-organized crime as one committed on Eezham Tamils by the government of Sri Lanka. Perhaps the world has never witnessed hitherto that such a crime of internment camps for civilians could be initiated collectively by all the powers of the world and the UN, and could be left like this without anyone being able to do anything about it. A civilian woman who was a captive in the Zone 3 of the internment camp of Menik Farm for four months, and managed to come out by ‘other means’ a month ago, writes on her experience in the camp – an indelible shame for the so-called civilised world.
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Clinton's rape bombshell

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 October 2009, 00:17 GMT]
US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, chairing the United Nations Security Council meeting Wednesday, on the last day of US's turn of the rotating presidency of the 15-member body in September, on violence against women in warfare, dropped a bombshell on Sri Lanka by including Sri Lanka in the company of Congo, Sudan, and Mayanmar, saying Sri Lanka has used rape as a weapon of war [against Tamils], thereby adding another incriminating legal element to mounting woes of the Sri Lanka Government from allegations of war-crimes for slaughtering more than 20,000 Tamil civilians, and incarcerating more than 300,000 Tamils with little freedom of movement in military supervised internment camps.
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Internment, poisoning hopes of reconciliation - Economist

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 October 2009, 05:29 GMT]
"The fate of a quarter of a million interned Tamils is poisoning Sri Lanka’s hopes of ethnic reconciliation....So long as Tamils feel abused by a racist Sinhalese state, the conflict may resume. Economic development of their shattered regions, which the government is planning, is unlikely to change that. Hence the government’s continued war-footing—but this is in turn also reinforcing Tamil grievances," a feature in the 1st October edition of The Economist said,
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JVP demands Tamil political prisoners to be produced in courts

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 October 2009, 02:43 GMT]
The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) Tuesday issued a statement demanding the government to subject all Tamil political detainees held in Anuradhapura prison and other prisons in the country for several years to judicial inquiry or release them. Parliamentarian Ramalingam Chandrasekaran issued the statement on behalf of his party JVP.
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IDP from Vavuniyaa camp arrested by Kandy Police

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 October 2009, 02:31 GMT]
A member of an IDP family that fled from Vanni during last leg of military operation and detained in internment camp in Vavuniyaa was arrested by a special team of the Kandy police Sunday. The police team acting on the directions of Deputy Inspector Generals of Police Gamini Navaratne and Pujitha Jayasundara rushed to Chettikulam from Kandy and took the suspected IDP into custody, Police spokesperson Nimal Mediwake told media.
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Former LTTE leaders likely to be used for Colombo-US formula

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 September 2009, 00:34 GMT]
Unconfirmed reports indicate that some noted LTTE leaders in the custody of Colombo are likely to be made to collaborate a Colombo-US formula of ‘reconciliation,’ nullifying national aspirations of Eezham Tamils. The recent visit of Colombo’s defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and foreign minister Rohita Bogollagama to the US was in fact aimed to discuss the details, sources in Colombo said. The visiting delegation also wanted to strike a ‘deal’ with the US on handling the LTTE cadres and suspects in its prison camps, the sources further said. Meanwhile, the war crimes report scheduled to be released by the U.S. State Department to the U.S. Congress on 21st September is delayed, allegedly due to ‘Gotabhaya involvement’, according to a report by the Inner City Press.
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374 Vanni IDP families remain in Trinco transit centres

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 29 September 2009, 02:51 GMT]
Three hundred seventy four IDP families out of three hundred eight nine families brought to Trincomalee district from Vavuniyaa internment camps three weeks ago to be resettled in their villages are still held under detention in transit centres located in four schools under heavy security of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA), sources in Trincomalee said.
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Tissainayagam, a prisoner of conscience - paper, Amnesty

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 September 2009, 15:48 GMT]
Arrested without a warrant, incarcerated without detention order, refused to see a lawyer for more than two weeks after arrest, denied privacy of conversation with his attorney and his wife while under detention, and held without charge for more than 5 months, and now sentenced by Sri Lanka's high court for 20 years in prison, Jayaprakash Sittampalam Tissainayagam, a Sri Lanka's Tamil journalist, "became a symbol of [Sri Lanka] government repression and a martyr for freedom of the press. To many observers, Tissainayagam’s treatment cemented Sri Lanka’s reputation as a totalitarian state in the making," Sunday Leader said in its weekend edition. Tissainayagam was chosen by President Obama as an emblematic example of persecuted journalists.
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Indian envoy listens to preparations on IDPs withstanding monsoon

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 September 2009, 00:55 GMT]
The Indian High commissioner in Colombo, Mr. Alok Prasad, on Saturday visited internment camps in Vavuniyaa and held discussions with the militarised 'Competent Authority' for IDPs in the Northern Province, Maj. Gen. Kamal Goonaratne, and the Sri Lankan Government Agent for Vavuniyaa Mrs. Charles. Amidst all what have been listed by the Indian High Commission, as matters discussed by the High Commissioner, observers give much significance to his listening to briefings on making facilities for the internment camp mates to face flooding and water logging during the forthcoming monsoon. Tamil circles find it as tacit acceptance by India for prolonging the internment camps beyond this year's rainy season.
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Denial, bravado, defiance cannot erase Rights issues – Saravanamuttu

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 September 2009, 17:56 GMT]
Noting a number of rights violations for which Sri Lanka is under scrutiny by the international community, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, writes in a Daily Mirror column: “Human rights issues are stubborn ones. They will not go away. They cannot be dealt with by denial, bravado, defiance, conspiracy theories or neglect. Moreover they are indubitably in the national interest and to the detriment of no one other than the perpetrators of violations. At the same time, foreign policy cannot be conducted through allegation and counter allegation, shrill incoherence and what increasingly looks like incomprehension and incompetence. Most importantly governance cannot be served or sustained by conflict and conspiracy, fear, paranoia and insecurity.”
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In Orwellian Sri Lanka 40 civilians disappear from camps daily - Samaraweera

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 September 2009, 11:49 GMT]
“In George Orwells 1984, the Ministry of Peace dealt with war, and the Ministry of Love with torture. Likewise we witnessed in Sri Lanka how the Peace Secretariat justified excesses carried out in the name of war against terrorism. And the so-called welfare camps are virtual prisons,” Daily Mirror said quoting Mangala Samaraweera's charge against the Sri Lanka in the parliament Tuesday, adding that about 30 to 40 persons are abducted on a daily basis from IDP camps in the North,
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“No IDPs but FDDPs, in Vavuniyaa camps” - Mangala Samaraweera

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 September 2009, 03:51 GMT]
“Today barbed wire internment camps are euphemistically called “Welfare Camps” and the 280,000 people incarcerated there are called IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) while in actual fact that these people should be called FDDPs (Forcibly Displaced and Detained Persons)”, Mangala Samaraweera, the leader of the dissident group of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), said.
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US leadership in rights issues questioned

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 September 2009, 02:27 GMT]
Noting that the "[Obama] Administration has pursued a low profile approach to Sri Lanka, where a military offensive against rebels is believed to have killed thousands of civilians," Washington Post in an article in Tuesday edition says that rights advocates have been frustrated by several episodes and said US's new approach has undercut U.S. leadership on human rights issues. Responding to U.S.'s assertion that "it[US] is not going to preach its values and not going to impose its values," Kenneth Ross, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said "[t]he problem is they are not American values -- they are international values."
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HRW: World leaders should demand end to Sri Lanka detention camps

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 September 2009, 02:08 GMT]
Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based rights group, in a press release issued Tuesday, expressed concern "about a lack of protection mechanisms in the camps and the secret, incommunicado detention - and possible enforced disappearance - of suspected combatants. Poor conditions, overcrowding, and inadequate medical care increases the risk of serious health problems during the coming monsoon season," and noting that "the authorities are not being open and honest with camp residents about when they may go home, keeping them in a state of uncertainty and anxiety," urged the world leaders to demand an end to Sri Lanka 'detention camps."
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