Colombo opts for bravado than complying with Human Rights

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 September 2009, 00:22 GMT]
Challenging the impending EU move to cancel 1 billion pounds trade concession to Sri Lanka, the islands former foreign secretary and newly appointed permanent representative to UN, Palitha Kohona , Thursday said, that it is a “cynical approach” of the EU. "We can handle [the loss]. Western countries should remember that economic power has shifted from the west to the east. New markets open up in the east. Our friends China, India, Japan, Korea, Iran … a whole range of countries [can help]," he said. UK refused ‘five years multiple entry visa’ to Kohona this week. Palitha Kohonoa was earlier named in media reports as one of the actors of the ‘failed rescue’ of LTTE officials that could be considered a matter for war crimes investigation.
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SLA massacred civilians in bunkers - medical worker

[TamilNet, Monday, 07 September 2009, 08:57 GMT]
The advancing Sri Lanka Army massacred civilians by paving their bunkers with tanks, by throwing explosives inside the bunkers and by shooting the injured, says a medical worker who came out of Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal during the last days of the war, became incarcerated in a camp and now escaped the island. "Around a hundred thousand captured civilians herded to Mullaiththeevu were kept in rows within barbed wires, most of the time without water or food under the hot sun, and were bullied and ill treated with arrogance," he writes in a lengthy note that reached TamilNet this week. The note in Tamil was provided by the Norwegian Tamils Health Organisation (NTHO), urging TamilNet not to reveal the identity of the health worker for reasons of his security.
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JVP to decide on its stand in supporting extending emergency

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 September 2009, 16:48 GMT]
The politburo of the Sinhala Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) is to decide this week whether to support the Extension of Emergency in the country any more in view of the arrest and detention of three journalists working in its official paper “Lanka” under the Emergency Regulations (ER) and Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), JVP parliamentary group leader Mr. Anura Kumara Dissanayake told media in Colombo. Police arrested three journalists of JVP in Deniyaya on 2nd September while they were taking pictures and videoing Bewarali estate bungalow.
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Colombo evicts UNICEF official

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 September 2009, 13:34 GMT]
Chief of Communications for UNICEF in Sri Lanka, James Elder's visa to continue to remain in Sri Lanka was refused by Sri Lanka's Department of Immigration, BBC reported Sunday. Mr Elder, a spokesman for the UN children's agency regularly spoke to the media on the plight of children caught up in the conflict, but Sri Lanka spokesperson was quoted by BBC as saying "James Elder's visa has been cancelled over his propaganda in support of the Tigers."
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Sri Kantha meets fellow MP Kanagaretnam in detention

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 September 2009, 03:07 GMT]
N.Sri Kantha, Jaffna district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Friday met with the fellow parliamentarian Mr. Sathasivam Kanagaretnam who is currently being detained under the Emergency Regulations (ER) in the sixth floor of Sri Lanka's Criminal Investigation Department (CID), sources in Colombo said. Mr Kanagaretnam was arrested from a camp in Omanthai by CID officiers when the MP sought refuge after fleeing from Mullaitheivu in the last leg of military operation against LTTE. The TNA MP was trapped for several months in Mullaitheivu due to military operation.
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India to share nuclear technology with Sri Lanka - report

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 September 2009, 20:45 GMT]
India is likely to share its nuclear technology with Sri Lanka for power generation using Thorium as the main source of energy, Science and Technology Minister Tissa Vitharana said Friday. The Daily Mirror newspaper quoted Professor Vitharana as saying India is prepared to support Sri Lanka with setting up a nuclear power plant and that he had requested IAEA support for the project. Professor Vitharana also told the paper he had invited Indian nuclear scientists to conduct a feasibility study on the use of Thorium deposits – said to be found in abundance along Sri Lanka’s southern costal belt – as a source of nuclear energy for power generation.
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Batticaloa Tamil resident arrested in Katunayake airport

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 September 2009, 07:03 GMT]
Sri Lankan Terrorist Intelligence Division (TID) officials Friday arrested a Tamil civilian at Katunayake International Airport when he was about to leave the country.
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Arrest Sri Lankan state racism to meet norms of International governance - paper

[TamilNet, Friday, 04 September 2009, 00:13 GMT]
A future peace in Sri Lanka rests on the international community being willing and able to contain and constrain the now rampant, but long-embedded, Sinhala chauvinism gripping the island, the Tamil Guardian said this week. “Racism, especially when entrenched thus [in the state], cannot be effaced by suasion and engagement, but by making it utterly impossible for it to hold sway,” the editorial said. “In short, as in the case of [past] racist regimes in other parts of the world, the international community must be prepared to isolate and exclude the Sri Lankan state until it is prepared to adhere, no matter how reluctantly, to international norms of governance.”
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5th Vanni doctor released on surety bail

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 September 2009, 17:15 GMT]
Dr. Kanagathurai Sivapalan who was serving in Puththukuddiruppu hospital in the Vanni region during the final assault on the LTTE by Sri Lanka Army was released on surety bail of a sum of 200,000 rupees by Colombo Chief Magistrate Nishantha Hapuarachchi Tuesday. He was the last in the batch of five doctors arrested from the internment camps in Vavuniyaa after they fled from the battle ground.
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Tamil woman arrested in Wellawatte

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 September 2009, 10:49 GMT]
Sri Lanka police arrested a Tamil woman in Wellawatte Monday while staying in a lodge making preparation to travel abroad. She is being detained by the police and interrogated by the Terrorist Investigation Unit, police sources said.
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Tissainayagam wins international award for ‘courageous and ethical journalism’

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 August 2009, 19:56 GMT]
J. S. Tissainayagam, a Tamil reporter sentenced Monday to 20 years in prison, has been named the first winner of the Peter Mackler Award for Courageous and Ethical Journalism. Tissainayagam was selected for the awrd, by the US branch of RSF and Global Media Forum (GMF), a company founded by Mackler to train journalists and non-profit organizations to use the media as a tool for social change. The Peter Mackler Award, named for a 30-year veteran of Agence France-Presse (AFP) who died last year, rewards journalists who fight courageously and ethically to report the news in countries where freedom of the press is either not guaranteed or not recognized.
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Vanni IDPs in camps seek HRCSL help to locate missing relative

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 August 2009, 14:09 GMT]
Vavuniyaa regional office of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) receives twenty-five to thirty written complaints daily by post from internally displaced inmates held in the internment camps in Vavuniyaa, according to an HRCSL official. The official further said IDPs held in camps or members of public who are expecting the services of his institution regarding locating missing relatives in the final stages of the war could write to HRCSL office located along Railway Station Road in Vavuniyaa or by telephone. The telephone number is 024-2222029.
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Horrendous video images indicate violation of International Law - UN expert

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 August 2009, 22:23 GMT]
Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, commenting on the video clip aired in British Channel-4 TV, allegedly showing Sri Lankan troops executing prisoners, stressed the need for an investigation, AFP reported. The images, which Alston described as "horrendous," indicate a serious violation of international law if found to be authentic, AFP reported Alston as saying. The video showed victims stripped naked and their hands crossed and tied behind their backs, when they were executed.
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600 Hindu, Catholic priests allowed to leave internment camps in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 August 2009, 16:04 GMT]
Government of Sri Lanka Wednesday freed around 600 Hindu and Catholic priests who were held in internment camps in Vavuniyaa. They had fled Vanni when Sri Lanka Army launched its military operation against LTTE in Vanni region. A total of 571 Hindu priests, six Catholic priests and two nuns were allowed out while 220 nuns are still held in the camps.
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STF shoot 2 Tamils dead in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 August 2009, 14:08 GMT]
The Special Task Force (STF) of the Sri Lanka Police Tuesday night shot dead two Tamils along Thuraineelavanai lagoon in Batticaloa district.
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SLA war crimes eerily similar to Srebrenica Scorpions' terror, says Boyle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 August 2009, 00:27 GMT]
Summary executions violate Common Article 3 to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, to which Sri Lanka is a contracting Party, prohibiting in subsection I(d) "... the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court...." Violations of the Geneva Conventions are war crimes, said Professor Francis Boyle, after watching the video on the cold-blooded extra-judicial killings carried out by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers, published by a German-based group 'Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS)' Tuesday.
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Video shows style of extra-judicial killings in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 August 2009, 20:34 GMT]
A video clip received from Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) evidences the way extra-judicial killings are executed in the island. The video captured in January show the behaviour of Sri Lanka’s soldiers during the war that is claimed ‘humanitarian operation’ to rescue the Tamils, JDS reported Tuesday. The conversations of the killers are in Sinhala. “From the casual nature of the conversations and from the fact that it is taking place in an open area in broad daylight – it can be surmised that these are not ordinary acts by rogue elements carried out without the permission from the top leadership. The soldiers egging each other on, the insulting jokes and the laughter show that there is a consensus that these cold blooded killings should take place,” JDS further reported.
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4 Vanni doctors released on conditional bail

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 August 2009, 16:15 GMT]
Three doctors and a medical superintendent, who had worked in Vanni and later arrested and grilled by the Sri Lankan authorities alleging that they made pro-LTTE statements, were released on conditional personal bail for a sum of one million rupees each Monday by the Colombo Chief Magistrate Mr. Nishantha Hapuarachchi. The doctors were ordered to appear before the Vavuniya CID every Sunday and also they have been instructed to reside in Vavuniyaa and not in any other place, legal sources said.
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Police arrest Muslim youth in Puththa'lam

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 August 2009, 05:20 GMT]
Sri Lanka police Saturday arrested a Muslim youth at Wanathavilluwa in Puththa'lam distirict on reports that he was alleged to have provided information to LTTE during the conflict. The police said he was acting as an informant to the LTTE in past.
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Eelam and the new 'super power' Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 23 August 2009, 04:46 GMT]
In their petty geopolitical and corporate interests, India and the West have created a Frankenstein monster of a state in Sri Lanka that disgraces the whole world. What fears them now is this monster in its frenzies making their labours lost in the island. This is what impels them to tell the victims to reconcile, not to anger the monster and not to say genocide even when it takes place for decades. A general excuse they come out with is that the present world has no appetite for new nation states. Colombo makes the best use of this weakness. No justifiable norm of polity could be seen in why India and the West should labour so hard to uphold a united Sri Lanka and to appease it beyond all limits, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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