Three killed in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 March 2001, 13:18 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army at Santhively, 24 kilometers north of Batticaloa, Friday handed over to the Eravur hospital the body of a civilian who was shot dead by troops lying in ambush in the interior of Korakallimadu, a hamlet near Kiran Thursday night. The family of Paththakkutti Nallarasa, 49, father of four, told Tamilnet that he was returning home with two friends last night around 8.30 p.m. when an SLA ambush party from the Santhively camp opened fire on them.
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Tigers extend cease-fire, warn Sri Lanka over attacks

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 March 2001, 11:44 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers Thursday extended their unilateral cease-fire for another month, till April 24, but warned they would resume armed operations if the Sri Lankan government refused to reciprocate and continued military operations against the LTTE. Pointing out that it has not launched any offensive operations either in the north-east or the southern provinces or capital, Colombo, during the three months of its unilateral cease-fire, the LTTE said in a statement that 133 of its fighters had been killed in attacks by the Sri Lankan military in the same period.
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Blair urged over Jaffna journalists

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 March 2001, 07:21 GMT]
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was Wednesday urged by Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) to raise the issue of press freedom in Sri Lanka and in particular the murder of the BBC journalist for Jaffna, Mayilvanagam Nimalarajan, with visiting Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumratunge. In a letter Wednesday, RSF’s General secretary, Robert Menard, urged Mr. Blair also over the abusive detention of another Jaffna journalist by Sri Lankan security forces since January 2.
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Anuradhapura players pique Batticaloa SLA

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2001, 15:10 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army Monday stopped a street play performed by a Sinhala group in Batticaloa, objecting to a character of the skit who was in military uniform. The group, Saama Sevaya Cultural Forum from the village of Talawa in Anuradhapura, was scheduled to perform the play, Tears of Blood, in several parts of Batticaloa Monday. The SLA at Santhively, 24 kilometres north of Batticaloa town, interrupted the play and took away all 16 members of the troupe performing in the premises of Thadakam, a social service organisation in the area, to its camp for questioning around 11.30 a.m. this morning.
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Jaffna fisherman protest sea ban

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2001, 10:45 GMT]
More than 2000 thousand fishermen sat in protest in front of the Assistant Government Agent's office in Pt. Pedro Monday demanding that the Sri Lankan government should lift the decade long draconian restrictions on fishing in the seas off the Jaffna coast.
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Chandrika’s mistrust of media manifest in censorship- CPJ

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2001, 08:26 GMT]
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists, the New York based media watchdog, said Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's censorship policy “is just one manifestation of her basic mistrust for the media” and that she had introduced emergency regulations that included “some of the harshest censorship measures ever imposed in the country” in a statement ‘Attacks on journalists 2000’ issued Monday. CPJ said that in Sri Lanka, “Violent attacks against journalists were typically committed with impunity”. “Even when the government has paid nominal attention to pursuing justice, it has come up short”, notes the statement.
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Lawyers slam Emergency, PTA wrongs

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2001, 17:30 GMT]
(NEWS FEATURE) "The war and emergency cannot be excuses for completely denying all the rights of citizens. Human rights activists who speak of the limits of the government's power are looked upon as enemies of the state", said Mr. V.TThamilmaran, senior lecturer in law at the University of Colombo, addressing a two-day seminar on human rights education in Trincomalee Sunday. "Persons arrested and detained under the Emergency Regulations are remanded few months later by the Trincomalee courts under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, on applications made by the Police. Is this not a violation of human rights? Is it not contrary to the law?" asked Mr. Arumugam Jegasothy, President of the Trincomalee Bar Association, in his inaugural address Saturday.
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"Kadirgamar betraying Tamils for mess of pottage" - Maheswaran

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2001, 15:21 GMT]
Mr. Thiyagarajah Maheswaran, opposition MP for Jaffna, Saturday accused Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister Mr.Lakshman Kadirgamar of betraying the Tamil people to make a living. The MP, speaking on the People's Alliance budget, said Mr. Kadirgamar is urging countries to ban the Liberation Tigers in order to keep his job by begging the government.
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Mutur magistrate sets a precedent

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2001, 10:23 GMT]
The Mutur Magistrate this week issued certificates that the deaths of seven Tamil farmers in the Poomarathadihchenai massacre in Trincomalee district were due to gunshot and cut injuries. Representatives of the International Committee of Red Cross on Thursday went to Poonagar and handed over the death certificates to the families of the dead, enabling them to claim compensation and relief. Magisterial inquests are not held for Tamils who are killed thus in border villages. As a consequence, hundreds of Tamil families in border villages that have lost their sole breadwinners are denied poverty relief as they cannot produce death certificates for the diseased required by the authorities to accept and process their applications.
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World Bank visits Batticaloa, deplores project

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 March 2001, 14:47 GMT]
The World Bank is not satisfied with the progress of the development work it is funding in the Batticaloa under the ëNortheast Irrigation and Agriculture Projectí (NIAP) said Bank officials Friday, winding up a three day visit to this eastern district. ce.
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Tigers release four Sinhala farmers

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 March 2001, 12:38 GMT]
Four Sinhala farmers from Padaviya, a region lying close to the Mullaithivu district, were released by the Liberation Tigers in the Vanni Thursday, Harasha Gunawardena, press officer of the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Tamilnet. He said they would be handed over to their families in Padaviya tomorrow. Meanwhile, the chief incumbent of the Buddhist temple in Vavuniya Ven. Siyambalagaswewa Wimalasara Thero told Tamilnet that the release comes in the wake of a promise made to him by the Liberation Tigers when he met them in the Vanni on 19 February as a member of an inter-religious delegation.
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CWC calls off protest, settles for Rs.280

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 March 2001, 13:04 GMT]
The Ceylon Workers Congress called off its Satyagraha (protest) campaign Thursday, settling for a nine-rupee raise in the daily wage for tea workers. Instead of granting the 400-rupee monthly cost of living allowance demanded by the protesting work force and the CWC, the tea companies agreed to a 9 rupee (11 US cents) raise and also to pay a 5-rupee per day conditional work incentive (the current daily wage is 107 rupees-1.24 USD).
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Official apathy, malnutrition plague Trinco refugees

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2001, 21:30 GMT]
(NEWS FEATURE) Over 75 percent of refugee children under five living in conflict zones of the northeastern province suffer from malnutrition, according to preliminary surveys by government and NGO officials presented at a three-day workshop inaugurated Wednesday morning at Trincomalee Town Hall under the auspices of Sri Lanka's Ministry of Planning and Implementation. The surveys indicate that the majority of mothers among the displaced in these regions suffer from malnutrition during pregnancy and after childbirth.
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CWC makes offer to end tea crisis

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2001, 11:04 GMT]
The Ceylon Workers Congress leader Arumugan Thondaman said Wednesday following talks Wednesday with Minister for Labour Mr. Alavi Moulana MP that his union might settle for 250 rupees cost of living allowance instead of the 400 demanded by workers in Sri Lanka's tea plantations.
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Managing war, not economy central question –Minister

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 March 2001, 18:36 GMT]
“Today it is no longer a simple question of managing an economy. The real and predominant question is the managing of the war”. “A war as is waged by the LTTE has its several facets. The LTTE is quite a military machine that can very competently engage in conventional warfare with the added advantage of innovative tactics which they derive from the guerilla aspect of their war organization. A Combination of these two aspects can be deadly especially when they (the Tigers) had the time from about 1987 to 1993 to consolidate their positions in the open and in the jungles” said Mr. Batty Weerakon, a senior cabinet minister of the People’s Alliance government, speaking in Parliament Tuesday on his government’s budget.
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Northeast doctors protest discrimination

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 March 2001, 15:50 GMT]
“Refusing to grant a section of employees working in a government department allowances because of their place of birth despite their equal standing with the other employees is discriminatory. This action compels us to the conclusion that the permanent residents of the north and east are second-class citizens” said a statement issued by doctors on strike in government hospitals in the north and east Tuesday.
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Police arrest released Tamil political prisoner

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2001, 18:31 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Police in Valaichenai town, 32 kilometres north of Batticaloa, arrested Monday a youth who had spent more than three years in the Kalutara prison and was released by the Colombo high court six months ago. Relatives said the Police arrested the youth on being told to do so by a Sri Lanka Army informant. “The re-arrest and detention of Tamil political prisoners who have been cleared and released by the courts makes a travesty of the judicial process in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, the Police and the army do it often for arbitrary reasons, purely on the strength of the powers given them under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Emergency Regulations”, a lawyer in Batticaloa told Tamilnet.
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Bindunuweva commission’s mandate queried

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2001, 18:16 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government said Monday that it would appoint a one-man commission to probe into the massacre of the inmates of the Bindudunuweva Rehabilitation camp near the hill country town of Bandarawela. Young Tamils, mostly former guerrillas from the eastern province, were hacked to death by a well-armed Sinhala gang on 25 October last year. Some inmates were thrown into a timber-sawing machine that chopped them to pieces. The Sri Lankan Police or the government are yet to name the culprits. In statement issued Monday night the Sri Lankan government said that the President has appointed P.H.K Kulatilake, a judge of the Court of Appeal, to probe the massacre. This is the second commission of inquiry ever appointed by Colombo to probe a massacre of Tamils. “The merit of this commission and its effectiveness can be judged only when its mandate as stipulated by the government is clearly laid out”, a human rights lawyer in Colombo said.
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For a few litres more....

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2001, 14:22 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Navy barred more than eighty fishermen in Pallimunai, a coastal suburb of Mannar town, from setting out to sea since Thursday 8 March for taking in their boats 10 litres of kerosene above the quantity permitted under the unwritten restrictions of the Vanni embargo. A spokesman for the Pallimunai fishermen said Sunday that they had got special permission from the Police for taking the additional 10 litres per boat as they were going to fish in the seas near Iranaithivu and Naachchikudah, more than forty sea miles north of Mannar.
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War victims organize in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2001, 10:34 GMT]
A Sinhala fisherman who lost a limb when the Sri Lanka Navy attacked his boat in the seas off Trincomalee was elected President of an association of persons disabled due to the war that was formed in the eastern port town this week. War and torture victims in the north and east get little assistance from the Sri Lankan government, due to red tape and sheer discrimination.
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