TNA to vote against 18th amendment

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 September 2010, 04:42 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) that has a parliamentary strength of fourteen members Monday decided to vote against the 18th amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka, according to Colombo media reports quoting TNA media spokesman and Jaffna district parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran.
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Sri Lanka stifles attempts to investigate war atrocities - paper

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 September 2010, 19:06 GMT]
Comparing how the United States accounted any Vietnamese killed as Viet Cong, Peter Bouckert, in the British Daily Guardian said Sunday that "Sri Lanka's defence secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has taken such creative accounting to new heights. The United Nations reported that at least 7,000 civilians were killed and tens of thousands wounded during the final months of the brutal conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which ended in May 2009. But Gotabhaya has repeatedly cast aspersions on the idea that there were any civilian casualties."
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More than 25,000 war widows in Batticaloa district alone

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 September 2010, 14:00 GMT]
“Estimates reveal that there are more than 89,000 war widows in the North and Eastern provinces and more than 25,000 of these widows are in Batticaloa district in the Eastern province,” Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Batticaloa district parliamentarian P. Selvarasa said in a meeting of the War Victimized Women Association in Batticaloa. “Women have been victimized by war even more than by natural disasters and Sri Lanka government has failed to do anything constructive to improve their miserable living conditions though thirteen months have passed since the end of the cruel war,” Selvarasa said.
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1215 uprooted civilians abandoned in Visuvamadu in Vanni - MP

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 September 2010, 02:30 GMT]
1215 uprooted civilians from Vanni brought from the camps three months ago in the name of resettlement are held without any help in Visuvamadu area in Mullaiththeevu district, Suresh Premachandran, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP, who visited them Monday told media. Mullaiththeevu district Sri Lanka Army (SLA) authorities do not allow them to settle in their own lands in the district and the people abandoned by government authorities and humanitarian organizations are subjected to untold hardships. The families say that they will look after themselves if only they are allowed to settle in their own properties, the MP said.
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Nirupama faces civil society outburst in North

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 August 2010, 17:31 GMT]
India provided arms and logistical support to Colombo in the Vanni war. It didn’t take any effort to stop the war. Even after one year of the war, India didn’t act on rehabilitating the incarcerated people, accused members of the confederation of citizens’ forums in Jaffna while meeting the visiting Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao on Tuesday. Resettlement is a hoodwink in Vanni, said retired Senior Professor S.K. Sitrampalam of the University of Jaffna, expressing the strong sentiments of Eezham Tamils. Army has occupied the Tamil lands and people have strong doubts whether India would be of any help in Tamils getting a political solution, the civil society representatives told the visiting Indian diplomat.
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SL Cabinet approves removal of 2 term executive presidency system

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 August 2010, 15:06 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Cabinet Monday approved the draft constitutional amendments. Prime Minister D. M. Jayaretna presented the draft proposals at a special cabinet meeting held at Temple Trees. Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse presided the meeting, sources in Colombo said. The draft proposals included the removal of two term restriction allowing an incumbent president to contest any number of times and modifying the 17th Amendment with a five member constitutional council by amending of Article 31 (2), the sources said.
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80% of resettled families in Batticaloa not paid livelihood assistance

[TamilNet, Monday, 30 August 2010, 05:53 GMT]
Around eighty percent of resettled people in Batticaloa district have not been paid their livelihood assistance of twenty-five thousand rupees. Others were not paid a single cent as livelihood assistance they are entitled at the time of resettlement, according to Batticaloa district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Pon. Selvarajah.
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Nirupama Rao to visit North

[TamilNet, Sunday, 29 August 2010, 07:53 GMT]
Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao is to visit Jaffna, Ki'linochchi, Mullaiththeevu and Vavuniyaa in the North 30, 31 August in the context of Indian Foreign Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna's proposed visit to Sri Lanka late September, sources in Jaffna said. Nirupama Rao will inspect the progress of development projects, resettlement and rehabilitation activities in the North before meeting Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians 1 March in Colombo. Sri Lanka government, keen to make a show of the 'Development of North' to international countries and India, is sending its ministers to North in haste in an effort to support its claims of achievements in the above mentioned matters, the sources added.
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Woman injured in explosion in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 27 August 2010, 19:09 GMT]
A woman was seriously injured Friday in an explosion when her daughter put an object into the hearth at which the mother was cooking in her house in Koddadi in Jaffna, sources in Jaffna said. The daughter, a girl studying in one of the schools in the Pa'n'ai area in the outskirts of Jaffna town, had picked up the object lying along the road while returning home from school. The device is suspected to be one of the landmines Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has sown around its newly constructed base in Pa'n'nai area. SLA authorities in Jaffna had earlier assured that Jaffna town and surroundings had been cleared of landmines.
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Colombo plans to acquire EPC lands in Trincomalee district

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 August 2010, 05:52 GMT]
Plans are afoot by Sri Lanka government land ministry to acquire five hundred and twenty five acres of state land that comes under the administration of the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) in the Kuchchave'li divisional secretariat division in Trincomalee district for the Tourist development Ministry. These lands are located along the coast of Kuchchave'li division.
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Opposition to introduce bill to protect journalists rights

[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 August 2010, 04:59 GMT]
Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has declared that legislation will be brought to parliament shortly which will ensure that the rights of all journalists in Sri Lanka are safeguarded. According to Dinamina, a state run newspaper, Wickremesinghe will put forward the bill as a private member’s motion.
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Morawaka

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 August 2010, 22:29 GMT]
The side of Mora trees (Nephelium longanum)
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95 persons disappeared in Batticaloa district after SLA occupation

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 August 2010, 09:07 GMT]
Ninety-five persons including two women have disappeared without trace in Batticaloa district since Sri Lanka Army (SLA) occupation of the district, according to Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, P. Selvarasa. The youths who had left the Liberation Tigers and married leading a normal life and persons who had been supporters of the LTTE had been arrested or abducted by SLA Intelligence Wing with the assistance of Tamil paramilitary group of Pillayan and Karuna. These persons are among those gone missing. The abductors arriving in white vans during nights had taken away the persons who had disappeared since then, the MP said.
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Indian HC refuses visa to head of Northern fishermen society representatives

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 August 2010, 06:48 GMT]
Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka refused to issue visa to the president of the Northern Fishermen Societies Federation, S. Thavaratnam who was to head the delegation of 23 representatives from Northern Sri Lanka to hold talks with their counterparts in Tamil Nadu. The former secretary of Vadamaraadchi Fishermen Society, K. Sooriyakumaran is now leading the delegation which is engaged in the talks now, sources in Jaffna said.
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The Hindu review accuses LTTE for failure of peace

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 August 2010, 10:31 GMT]
“To those who knew that the ceasefire was built on a glaringly faulty premise — that the LTTE wanted a negotiated settlement within a united Sri Lanka — its eventual breakdown was foretold on the day it was signed,” writes, Nirupama Subramanian in reviewing a book in The Hindu Tuesday. The review was favourably highlighting a point that Tamil polity should drop ‘liberation’ to focus on securing economic rights for the people. “They are absolutely right since the development they mean is not even economic liberation of people,” responded Tamil circles, adding that the previous generation of Indians shouldn’t have asked for independence but should have focused on development the British colonialism was undertaking.
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Batticaloa district TNA parliamentarians asked to appear in court

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 August 2010, 14:09 GMT]
Batticaloa Magistrate Mr.V. Ramakamalan Tuesday issued notice to the three Batticaloa district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians C. Yogeswaran, K. Selvarajah and P. Ariyanethran and two others, R.Thurairatnam, member of the Eastern Provincial Council and the President of the Batticaloa District Unemployed Graduates Association, to appear in court on September 7 on an application filed by Kaatththaankudi police.
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Traditional Hindu temples in East destroyed, replaced with Buddhist Viharas: MP

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 17 August 2010, 06:43 GMT]
"Sri Lanka government is systematically destructing Hindu temples in the Eastern Province and constructing Buddhist Viharas in their places and one cannot remain passive while the Sinhala Buddhist chauvinists continue to destroy Hindu temples and appropriate the traditional Tamil lands for the occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA)," S. Yogeswaran, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian for Batticaloa district said.
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Attempt to misuse resettled women in Vanni foiled

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 August 2010, 06:38 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians Saravanabavan and Sritharan intervened and stopped Sunday the attempt of a private company from Kandy in Ki'linochchi town enticing young women recently allowed to resettle in Vanni, with job opportunities in South Sri Lanka with attractive salaries. The parliamentarians, on suspicion raised by local people about the true intent of the company, visited the enlisting place in front of Ki'linochchi Government Secretariat and prevented the unsuspecting young women being taken away to the South.
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Indian, Northern fishermen society representatives meet to discuss comon issues

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 August 2010, 05:20 GMT]
A group of 23 representatives of the fisheries societies in Northern Sri Lanka are to meet their counterparts in Tamil Nadu to discuss matters including the illegal invasion of Indian fishing trawlers into the seas of Northern Sri Lanka and the escalating attacks by Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) on Tamil Nadu fishermen. The gorup, led by S. Thavaratnam, will hold discussion from 14 to 22 August, fisheries society sources in Jaffna said. Though a similar meeting had been arranged two years ago it had to be abandoned as Sri Lanka Defence Ministry and the Indian High Commission to Sri Lanka had not permitted the meeting to take place.
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Indiscriminate sand excavation in Vadmaraadchi causes seepage of seawater

[TamilNet, Sunday, 08 August 2010, 07:46 GMT]
Sri Lanka Department of Geological Survey & Mine Bureau (GSMB) officials who arrived in Jaffna to conduct a survey in Vadamaraadchi East where indiscriminate excavation of sand causes seepage of sea water had to stop their work due to interference by Sri Lanka minister Douglas Devananda, leader of Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), sources in Vadamaraadchi said. The EPDP firm called ‘Maheswary Funds’, named after assassinated EPDP organizer Maheswaray Vealautham, has procured exclusive rights to excavate sand in Vadamaraadchi and is alleged of making huge profits, the sources added.
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