University students protest against desecration of Parvathi Amma

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 February 2011, 12:02 GMT]
Thousands of the students at the University of Jaffna Wednesday noon boycotted their classes as the news of SL military's desecration of the ashes of late Parvathi Amma, the mother of LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan, Tuesday night. The students vacated the premises after putting up posters condemning the uncivilized act of the Sri Lankan military and condemning the Sri Lankan authorities for blocking them from participating in the funeral procession of Parvathi Amma on Tuesday.
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Seizure of Indian trawlers, a token action: fishermen representatives

[TamilNet, Friday, 18 February 2011, 00:15 GMT]
Around 500 Eezham Tamil fishing society representatives who gathered at Point Pedro in Vadamarradchi refused Thursday to hand over the poaching Indian trawlers, which they had seized from the intruding Indian fishermen on Tuesday. Declaring that their action against Indian poaching was a token one, the representatives urged immediate action from the Indian authorities. The fishermen representatives also refused to hand over the vessels to Sri Lankan military, urging the concerned authorities to resolve the dispute by civil means.
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Local elections likely to be postponed

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 February 2011, 23:44 GMT]
Sri Lankan Department of Elections has said it was considering requests made by political parties to postpone the local elections until hundreds of thousands of families displaced due to recent floods are resettled and resume their day to day normal life in their villages and towns.
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Hague's WikiLeaks admission spells legal danger to Sri Lanka war-criminals

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 February 2011, 12:11 GMT]
The Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal in The Hague has granted Charles G. Taylor, 62, the former Liberian president, who has been on trial charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the right to use two leaked American diplomatic cables as evidence to challenge the court’s impartiality. While the leaked information in the Taylor case was used by Taylor's lawyer to raise doubts on the courts independence and suggested the prosecution was political, Sri Lanka's leaked cables from the US Embassy contain incriminating information on the complicity of Rajapakse family, Ex-SLA Commander Sarath Fonseka, and Tamil paramilitaries in war-crimes and crimes against humanity on Tamil civilians, legal sources in Washington said.
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SLFP sidelines SLMC, EPDP in Mannaar local elections

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 February 2011, 23:51 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and the EPDP, constituents of the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) have been completely rejected from the lists of candidates fielded in the local elections in the Mannaar district. The SLMC led by SL Minister Rauff Hakeem was forced to file separate nominations to contest the Piratheasa Chapais (PS) of Maanthai West, Musali and Mannaar, as SL minister Rishad Bathiudeen selected candidates from Mahinda Rajapaksa's SLFP, against the assurances the UPFA had given to SLMC and the EPDP, sources in Mannaar said.
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EPDP area organizer recovered dead in Vadamaraadchi East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 January 2011, 22:20 GMT]
36-year-old Rasarathninam Sathees, Maruthangkea'ni area organiser of EPDP paramilitary-cum-political party was found dead Saturday morning near Aanaivizhunthaan cemetery near Vallipuram temple. The last news about Mr. Sathees was that he was on his way in a motorbike to organise an event to which EPDP leader and SL Minister Douglas Devananda was scheduled to attend at Ampan-kudaththanai. Sathees has been critical of EPDP leadership on its Maheswari Foundation business of excavating sand from Vadamaraadchi East. The EPDP has said Sathees was killed in a motorbike accident. Police said it was awaiting a medical report.
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UPFA nominations for local elections rejected in North

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 January 2011, 11:42 GMT]
In a sudden turn of development in the run up to the local elections in North, the election department officials in Jaffna and Ki'linochchi have rejected the nominations filed by the UPFA, disqualifying the ruling UPFA and EPDP alliance from participating in the elections in Jaffna and Ki'linochchi that come under the Jaffna electoral district. The nominations were filed under a wrong name in Tamil as Aiykkiya Makka'l Chuthanthira Kooddamaippu (AMCK) instead of Aiykkiya Makka'l Chunthanthira Munna'ni (AMCM). The date for the elections has been set to March 17.
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Teachers Union condemns one-day pay cut in East

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 January 2011, 23:50 GMT]
Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) has cut one-day pay of teachers in the province from their wages for January. The chairman of Ceylon Teachers' Union, Joseph Stalin, has condemned the act as political bankruptcy of the EPC that has bypassed the regulations for such wage cut. While the people of the other provinces and the larger international community have come forward to help the flood victims, the EPC has been engaged in cutting the wages of the victims themselves in the name of flood relief, the union said.
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Forced recruitment of traders by Colombo to contest elections in Jaffna, Vanni

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 January 2011, 22:29 GMT]
Colombo’s terror campaign and abductions in Jaffna and Vanni now aim at forced recruitment of traders to contest local bodies elections under Mahinda Rajapaksa’s SLFP ticket, sources in Jaffna said. In recent days, many leaders of traders associations in Jaffna were abducted by SL Army officers coming to their houses and were taken to Colombo. They were not told why were they abducted and where were they being taken. They were later released in Colombo after forcefully getting signatures from them to contest elections in Jaffna and Vanni, under the SLFP. The traders said they didn’t want to contest but were afraid of their lives. Meanwhile, R. Ankajan, SLFP coordinator in Jaffna, is ‘recruiting’ university students to campaign in the elections.
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Sri Lanka's commission to conclude "sittings"

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 14:25 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), the mandate of which was deliberately designed to whitewash Sri Lanka's war-crimes, and invitation to three leading premier human rights watchdogs Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and International Crisis Group (ICG) to attend LLRC's sittings was rejected due to LLRC "lacking the ability to advance accountability for war crimes," announced that the LLRC will "conclude its public sittings after the completion of sittings in the Ampara District in mid February" and would then would prepare its "final report that would be submitted to [Sri Lanka's] President Mahinda Rajapaksa in May," local media reported.
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Indian-partnered gala in Jaffna to follow Rajapaksa-Pongkal with Sinhala anthem

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 19 January 2011, 07:08 GMT]
Sri Lanka anthem was sung in Sinhala by the school children of Jaffna at the Rajapaksa Pongkal in Jaffna on Monday. A large number of the participants to the event were school students and their teachers, forcibly brought to the occasion. Around a hundred students were lured by the EPDP with promises of laptop computers from the SL president. Meanwhile, another gala, an ‘International Trade Fair’ in Jaffna, has been fixed to take place between Jan 21- 23 in the municipal grounds of Jaffna, with the partnership of India, and Basil Rajapaksa as its chief guest, Colombo media reported. Indian High Commissioner Ashok K. Kantha, Indonesian Ambassador Jafar Hussain and SL minister Rishard Bathiudeen are special guests for the occasion that is going to have ‘entertainment’ as well amidst business.
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News reports irk Rajapaksa in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 January 2011, 00:05 GMT]
SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa visiting Jaffna and ‘celebrating’ Pongkal on Monday reacted to media reports that pointed out his ‘conspicuous silence’ about an aid he was politically capitalising. Meanwhile, the SL president who is coupling a terror campaign with his campaign for a colonial polity, ‘celebrating’ a Tamil agrarian festival in military occupied Jaffna, spending millions of rupees and intimidating people to attend it, while the agricultural lands of the Tamil country are seriously deluged in the floods making hundreds of thousands homeless, was nauseating to the public, media sources in Jaffna said. But addressing along with Rajapaksa, the SL minister and the ‘host’ of the event, Douglas Devananda declared that “today the polity of collaboration is on its victorious march.”
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Rajapaksa claims credit for British-aided causeway and bridge to Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 January 2011, 20:00 GMT]
“The foundation for this causeway and bridge was laid down 7 times since 1940's, but it was only my government that managed to complete the project,” claimed Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa in opening a causeway and bridge in the SL military-occupied Tamil country in the island, between Keara-theevu of the Jaffna peninsula and Changkup-piddi in Poonakari of the main island on Sunday. The causeway as used to be called Mahadeva Thaampoathi was first built in British times and the present bridge, doing away with the ferry route in between points of the causeway, has been built by British Steel Corporation, aiding the island. Mr. Rajapaksa made no mention of the British aid at the inauguration and the obscured British officials were found seated only among the audience.
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TNA to contest local elections, TPPF politically divided

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 January 2011, 05:14 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has decided to contest all the local government institutions in the North and Eastern provinces in the forthcoming election. Some of the political parties affiliated to the recently formed Tamil Political Parties Forum (TPPF) have reportedly expressed their willingness to contest the forthcoming local election under the TNA banner, informed sources said. The official TNA stand is to contest alone. Meanwhile, the TNA is increasingly under pressure to put forward a document on political solution as absolute ‘minimum’ from both New Delhi and Colombo establishments, informed sources said.
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Family man reported missing in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 January 2011, 01:46 GMT]
A 52-year-old man from Urumpiraay in Valikaamam, Jaffna, has been reported missing since Friday. Meanwhile, human rights activists in Jaffna express fear that there were similar abductions have not been registered by the media as the Sri Lankan police authorities systematically suppress information reaching media on complaints of abductions and disappearances. The ‘effective’ subjugation of Tamils by the militarised Sri Lankan civil administration has silenced the community, from reporting information that could reach human rights activists or journalists as the public fears repercussions from the ‘white-van’ squad.
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EPDP, SLA, confuse public, lottery-fraud arrested in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 January 2011, 03:31 GMT]
An alleged EPDP member from Vavuniyaa faced the brunt of public anger in Jaffna as he was said to be moving in suspicious ways and was selling fake lottery tickets in Martin Road, Jaffna on Thursday. SL Police, on information from public, arrested him. He is said to have confessed his membership with the EPDP. There was no response from the side of the EPDP. Meanwhile, EPDP leader and SL minister Douglas Devananda in the SL parliament on Tuesday said that he didn’t want to embarrass the SL government internationally by raising the plight of the fear-engulfed people in Jaffna. In the meantime, the public in Jaffna senses EPDP and SLA indirectly passing blame on each other over the systematic infliction of terror by manipulative forces controlling the both.
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Send all party delegation to Jaffna to assess situation, says UNP

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 January 2011, 13:54 GMT]
Ranil Wickremasinghe, leader of the main opposition United National Party (UNP) Tuesday made an appeal to the Speaker of the Sri Lanka Parliament to take immediate steps to send an all party delegation to the Northern Province to assess the ground situation amid complaints by that people in Jaffna live in fear psychosis due to the rise in abduction, killing extortion by armed gangs. EPDP, one of the Para military groups supporting the government state security machinery, has been accused of encouraging abduction, killing and extortion in Jaffna by civic groups. A recent disclosure of confidential note by a US ambassador revealed that the paramilitaries operate with impunity for criminal acts sanctioned by highest level officials in Colombo.
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46 local council members to be chosen in Mannar elections

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 January 2011, 03:02 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is to contest all the five local authorities in the Mannaar electoral district in the forthcoming election, according to Vanni district TNA parliamentarian Selvam Adaikalanathan. Elections to local authorities are to be held after a lapse of thirty five years in the district to elect 46 members to an Urban Council and the four Pradeshya Sabas in the district.
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Escalating killings, abductions: ‘Diplomatic civilities will not work with Colombo’

[TamilNet, Monday, 03 January 2011, 00:06 GMT]
Fatal attacks and abductions against educationalists, environmentalists, priests and youth activists in recent days in the Jaffna peninsula seriously question the wisdom of some sections of diplomats and politicians in the international community who sometimes back advocated unassuming participation of Tamils in ‘development’ and ‘reconciliation’ without resolving political and military questions. Diplomatic civilities as shown by the US ambassador Patricia A. Butenis in taking pride of what Rajapaksa government is achieving in resettlement, while making it a beneficiary of USAID, will not work with the kind of people at the helm of affairs in Colombo. The IC is once again demonstrating its impotency in handling the national question of Eezham Tamils without political solution and without removal of occupying military, a Jaffna based human rights activist told TamilNet Sunday.
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Killed Tamil youth of postal department was an environmentalist

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 January 2011, 00:30 GMT]
Ketheeswaran Thevarajah, who was working in a post office in Vadamaraadchi and was killed Friday night was an environmentalist, who was protesting to scooping of sand in Vadamaraadchi that was causing environmental damages. Sometimes back, he was dispatching photographs through Facebook, showing environmental damage caused by sand-scooping in his locality. A feedback on his contribution to environmental protection has been sent to TamilNet by a reader who is a relative of him and who has seen the news of his assassination. Media sources in Jaffna confirmed that Mr. Ketheeswaran has been actively engaged in the protests against sand excavation and was instrumental in the protests held in Kudaththanai. He has also provided in-depth reports to local media on the environmental damage inflicted on his village.
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