Tamils' massacre made possible by West's ideological blindness and hubris - paper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 17:19 GMT]
“Those who think that the LTTE will be destroyed in the coming weeks and that then it is a question of 'peace building' and 'development' for the next few years are gravely mistaken,” the Tamil Guardian newspaper’s editorial argues this week. “[Instead] the foundations for a cataclysmic civil war are being inexorably laid today. The kind of polarisation that sustain not decades, but generations of struggle has become widespread and embedded.”
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SLN, SLA step up confrontations, Tigers sink two SLN vessels

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 11:57 GMT]
Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) continued to attack Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal shore since Wednesday 4:00 p.m., killing and maiming many. Meanwhile, Liberation Tigers of Tamlieelam (LTTE) Sea Tigers confronted the SLN vessels sinking a water jet gun-boat and Dvora Fast Attack Craft (FAC) around 2:45 p.m. Thursday.
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Events unfold typical of Nazi concentration camps

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 April 2009, 10:13 GMT]
Food parcels were thrown to people after making them run like dogs, and two children were killed in the melee in the barbed-wire camp at Menik Farm, Vavuniyaa. A 12-year-old boy on Monday and a 7-year-old boy on Tuesday were crushed to death in the melee, media sources in Vavuniyaa said. Meanwhile, around 300 Tamil youth from several camps in the area were forcefully taken by the Sri Lanka army, in the name of arrest, amidst protests of family members on Tuesday. Recently, 60 people have died of sickness in the camps, the sources further said. A total of 154,368 Vanni civilians are in captivity by the SLA up to Wednesday and out of them, 90, 181, were captured after 20 April.
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SLA fired 5,600 shells within 15 hours: LTTE

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 14:22 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) fired at least 2,600 Multi-Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) rockets, more than 1,000 artillery shells and at least 2,000 heavy mortar shells from 6:00 p.m. Monday till 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, LTTE officials in Vanni told TamilNet. Most of the shells fired by the SLA hit civilian shelters in Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal, Thaazhampan, Ottaip-panaiyadi and Iraddai-vaaykkaal areas.The Tiger officials put civilian casualty figures at more than 200 killed and said three medical centres treated hundreds of wounded civilians throughout the day. Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) bombers attacked Ottaip-panai and iraddai-vaaykkaal areas by deploying cluster bombs, LTTE officials further said.
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IC makes history in experimenting ‘genocide bomb’

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 10:14 GMT]
The international community accusing the LTTE all this time for ‘inventing’ human bomb is testing a premeditated ‘genocide bomb’ on Tamils and sets new ‘guidelines’ for global order, says a political commentator, who contributes regularly to TamilNet. “Even though there are many actors, the final responsibility for the experiment and deployment of this worst possible weapon of human civilization squarely falls on Obama’s US administration and on Ban Ki Moon’s UN,” he said adding that they will go down in history for “calculatedly allowing one of the worst ethnic genocides of contemporary history to take its toll in the island of Sri Lanka, in the cruellest and deceitful way.”
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Unprecedented carnage unfolds in Vanni

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 April 2009, 08:15 GMT]
Medical sources in Vanni reported Tuesday morning "mad shelling" by the Sri Lanka Army into civilian areas in Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal north, forcing everyone under the bunkers. Several civilians have been killed. The wounded are let to die as people are not able to move out of the bunkers due to the unprecedented barrage by the SLA from 4:30 a.m. The SLA deployed 'scorched earth' barrage using all kinds of weapons from 6:00 p.m. Tuesday in Valaignarmadam breaking the LTTE defence line. As the shelling by the SLA started to target civilian areas in Tuesday morning, the southern part of Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal has become completely congested and roads are blocked with civilians who managed flee from the northern areas.
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'Explicit international deceit on Tamils'

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 20:03 GMT]
“What is the limit of IC’s appeasement with Colombo and what is the limit of IC in cheating Tamils,” asks Sri Navaratnam, on the 8th day of his hunger strike in Oslo, furious at the news of Colombo’s all out attack on Tamil civilians Monday night. “To facilitate the international community to deceive Tamils, Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday announced the halt of the use of heavy weapons in the safety zone of more than 165,000 civilians. Everybody welcomed it as though killing the civilians by small weapons is acceptable. It was a joke, the UN begging ‘Sri Lanka must respect heavy weapons pledge’, as though they are prepared to act if Sri Lanka breaches it. Colombo, which was already aerial bombing the civilians started with intense barrage of heavy weapons Monday night”, he cited.
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SLA suspends locating Vanni civilians in Vavuniyaa, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 17:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) key officials informed Jaffna Secretariat that the possibility of bringing civilians from Vanni to Jafnna peninsula for detention appears limited, Jaffna Secretariat (JS) sources said. Action is being taken to detain Vanni civilians instead in the SLA occupied areas like Ki’linochchi, Ka’ndaava’lai and other indentified places constructing big concentration villages, sources in Jaffna said. JS officials, recently taken by SLA to gather particulars of the civilians from Vanni held without being sent either to Vavuniyaa or Jaffna peninsula, refuse to reveal the information for security reasons.
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IC has been duped by Colombo: Prof. Ramasamy

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 16:07 GMT]
The Tokyo-Co-chairs and other international actors have been duped in supporting the war aims of the Sri Lankan government, says Professor P. Ramasamy, Deputy Chief Minister of Penang, Malaysia, in an exclusive interview to TamilNet. “The LTTE is expression of Tamil discontent of the Sri Lankan government and the way the latter has dealt with the Tamil national question. In so far as the conflict in Aceh was concerned, the international community was much neutral in providing the political circumstances for peace to be achieved. However, in the Sri Lankan conflict, the international took a biased stand. The current issue is not one of positions between the warring parties, but one that re-focuses attention on the fallacy of the international community in searching for a just solution for Tamils in Sri Lanka”, he says.
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'Show of might only could stop the war'

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 11:29 GMT]
"Only a joint show of might, without wasting any time by the IC, can stop Colombo. This is the last chance for the IC if it is really interested in seeing a post-conflict Sri Lanka," writes a political commentator in Colombo. "Everybody knows how the current war in Sri Lanka has been perpetrated by the international community through systematic sabotage of the military and diplomatic balance in favour of the genocidal state of Sri Lanka. Initially the IC wanted political solution to go hand in hand with the military option. The IC failed miserably in achieving it and the way the war seems to be ending, political solution will be a mirage for ages. The war doesn’t serve any of the purposes of the IC now and is going to be counter-productive. Now it only consolidates a genocidal state that can never be reformed”, the commentator further writes.
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Sri Lanka continues air strikes violating own announcement - Puleedevan

[TamilNet, Monday, 27 April 2009, 07:45 GMT]
Two Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) fighter bombers continued to bomb civilian targets in Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal after the announcement by the Sri Lankan forces that it would not deploy heavy weapons or carry out air attacks as pressure mounted from the International Community. LTTE's Director of Peace Seceratariat, S. Puleedevan, when contacted by TamilNet told that SLAF bombers were attacking civilian targets at Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal at 12:50 p.m. and again at 1:10 p.m. despite the announcement to cease such attacks. He blamed Colombo for "attempting to deceive the International Community, including the people of Tamil Nadu," with the announcement.
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Several civilians killed, 200 wounded within 5 hours as SLA launches onslaught

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 April 2009, 22:59 GMT]
Several civilians were killed and more than 200, wounded in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) shelling and gunfire, have been admitted at Mu'l'li-vaaykkaal hospital in the early hours of Monday as the SLA opened fire from its positions attempting to advance further into the densely populated so-called safety zone (No Fire Zone) from 3:30 a.m. Monday. Heavy exchange of gunfire continued and civilians were forced to stay inside the bunkers as rounds were whizzing over them. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) bombers carried out two sorties of air raids in the morning, according to latest reports from Vanni. The aggression by the SLA comes a few hours after Sri Lanka rejected LTTE announced unilateral ceasefire.
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‘Bush-league’ editorial urges pinpoint strikes at LTTE leadership

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 April 2009, 14:56 GMT]
Criticizing the policies and efforts of Obama, Hillary Clinton and Eric Solheim, the Washington Times in an editorial Sunday said that the Obama administration should not allow the Tigers to ‘snatch victory from the jaws of defeat’ but should help Colombo ‘by providing military and intelligence support for pinpoint strikes against the terrorist leadership’. Reflecting chauvinistic passion and imitating the style and line of Colombo’s newspapers, the editorial said: "Obama administration should mind its own business. The Sri Lankans are winning; we should let them finish the job". Commenting on the editorial, a political commentator in Colombo said: "Had Bush minded his own business, Tamils would have sorted out the crisis by now and Washington Times wouldn’t have had the occasion to tax itself so emotionally."
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Sri Lankan Defence Secretary rejects ceasefire, calls it a 'joke'

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 April 2009, 11:52 GMT]
Sri Lankan defence secretary and the brother of SL president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who responded to the LTTE's unilateral announcement of a ceasefire, announced Sunday has called it a 'joke' and said there was "no need of a ceasefire and that the LTTE must surrender," reported Sky's Asia correspondent Alex Crawford.
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IC caused disaster of epic proportion: Anita Pratap

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 April 2009, 11:07 GMT]
“Lacking independent assessments, journalists repeat Sri Lankan claims that this is the end game, this is Prabhakaran's last stand. Judging from the past, I doubt it”, writes former CNN Bureau Chief in New Delhi, Anita Pratab, in the 03 May issue of The Week. “Nowhere in the world has a government been continuously bombing its own civilians for over a year. This is a crime Israeli, American and NATO forces are not guilty of. Nowhere else in the world is a war being waged without outsiders and independent witnesses, not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, not in Gaza. But in Sri Lanka”, she writes.
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LTTE announces unilateral ceasefire

[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 April 2009, 10:38 GMT]
"In the face of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and in response to the calls made by the UN, EU, the governments of the USA, India and others, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has announced an unilateral ceasefire. All of LTTE’s offensive military operations will cease with immediate effect," said a press statement issued by the Political Head Quarters of the LTTE Sunday. "We have taken into account the recent declarations by the G8 nations, the Whitehouse, Indian Ministers and the EU and other members of international community. We are in full agreement that the humanitarian crisis can only be overcome by declaration of an immediate ceasefire," the statement said calling upon the international community to pressure the Sri Lankan Government to reciprocate it.
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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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Colombo wanted to hide forced displacement of Tamils - Vithiyatharan

[TamilNet, Saturday, 25 April 2009, 20:53 GMT]
”The real reason for my arrest was to prevent me from publishing news on the forced displacement of Tamils, its impacts and about the significance of Tamils’ representation in Western Provincial Council elections,” Nadesapillai Vithiyatharan, the Chief Editor of the Tamil daily Sudaroli, who was ‘abducted’ and later claimed as ‘arrested’ by the Sri Lankan Terrorist Investigation Division (TID), said, after being released by Colombo Magistrate Court Friday, in a media report Friday in Colombo. “I was abducted on the final day of submission of nominations to the Western Provincial Council Election, Vithiyatharan said in the report.
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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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