Time for India to re-think, says Singaporean scholar

[TamilNet, Friday, 17 October 2008, 16:21 GMT]
The all-party resolution in Tamil Nadu should provide New Delhi an opportunity to do some introspection about its Sri Lanka policy, says TS Gopi Rethinaraj of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore in an article that appeared in Hindustan Times on Thursday. Unless India is able to lock SL in a broad bilateral security relationship, their leadership will have no qualms about allowing China or Pakistan to get a foothold, he says. "This is the real danger of India's current policy facilitating the military defeat of the LTTE. If India were to take a hard-nosed view of its interests, a subtle shift in its position on the LTTE will go a long way in safeguarding its strategic interests in the region besides securing the interests of ethnic Tamils in the island."
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Kanimozhi hands over symbolic resignation

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 09:45 GMT]
Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, the daughter of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Kalaignar Karunanidhi and a Member of Indian Parliament submitted Wednesday her resignation saying that it was for the party to take an "appropriate decision at appropriate time" on her resignation following the two-weeks ultimatum given to New Delhi by the Tamil Nadu government to exert pressure on Colombo to declare a ceasefire, The Times of India reported.
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Tamil Nadu Government gives ultimatum to New Delhi to safeguard Eelam Tamils

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 October 2008, 19:39 GMT]
Giving a time frame of a fortnight to New Delhi to respond, an All Party Meeting organized by the Tamil Nadu Government at the State Secretariat in Chennai on Tuesday warned the Union Government of India that all forty members of the Indian parliament representing Tamils would resign en masse if New Delhi failed to take up the right steps to protect Eezham Tamils.
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Norwegian politicians express concern on humanitarian access, media coverage

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 October 2008, 15:08 GMT]
Norwegian politicians and activists who addressed the participants of a Eelam Tamil diaspora organised rally and a fasting awareness campaign on Monday and Tuesday in front of the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo, criticized the expulsion of International NGOs from Vanni and urged the International Community, including the Norwegian Government, to do their maximum to enable the International humanitarian agencies to be present with civilians in need of humanitarian assistance, and to enable access to media to visit the affected areas.
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UN pulls staff from Vanni, aid workers fear 'bloodbath'

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 09 September 2008, 13:33 GMT]
United Nations staff have begun leaving Vanni this week after Sri Lanka’s government ordered aid workers out of the Tamil Tiger controlled region and told them to remove their equipment with them. The government move comes after the UN agencies said they were unable to advise civilians to vacate LTTE-controlled areas in compliance with a government directive to this effect. Over 160,000 people have been displaced in the past two months by Sri Lankan offensives and a humanitarian crisis is fast developing, aid workers said. And amid indiscriminate bombing and shelling, some aid workers are warning of an impending bloodbath.
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Catholic commission in Vanni highlights IDPs plight

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 August 2008, 00:19 GMT]
Amid pouring rain and thundering blasts of artillery and mortar shells, more than 170,000 Internally Displaced Persons in Vanni are facing a great human tragedy, which is calculatedly concealed from the world outside, said Rev. Fr. James Pathinathan, the president of the Vanni branch of the Justice and Peace Commission (JPC) of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jaffna, in an urgent appeal to the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, on Tuesday. "If the International Community doesn't act at once, it will be too late," he told TamilNet after handing over the memorandum to the Residential Representative of the UNHCR in Vanni.
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NPC urges GoSL to relax embargo on peace envoys visit to Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 July 2008, 01:28 GMT]
National Peace Council, a Colombo-based peace group, on Tuesday said that the absence of positive responses by the International Community to the offers of talks and ceasefires was indicative of a credibility problem. Urging both the parties reassess their past behaviour and to find ways to rebuild their credibility, the NPC said the ceasefire offer by the LTTE, regardless of its motivations, is not to be lightly rejected and urged the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) to relax its embargo on peace emissaries going into the Vanni.
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SLAF fighter jets bomb Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 July 2008, 01:07 GMT]
Two Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) bombers dropped at least four bombs Wednesday morning between 6:20 and 6:35 a.m. targeting Thiruvaiyaa'ru, 4 km east of Ki'linochchi. The aerial strike comes as the Sri Lankan government has rejected to respect the unilateral ceasefire announced by the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) in connection with the SAARC summit taking place in Colombo from 26 July to 04 August.
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SLA fires artillery, MBRL from Northern Front

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 July 2008, 14:48 GMT]
A barrage of heavy artillery and Multi Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) fire from the Northern Front was launched by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Sunday and Monday into Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) controlled territory in Iyakkachchi, Pazhai and Vadamaraadchi East villages despite no provocation from the LTTE side, sources in Ki'linochchi said.
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TIC urges Colombo to reciprocate LTTE's ceasefire

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 July 2008, 19:55 GMT]
In a press release issued Sunday, Tamil Information Center (TIC), a UK-based peace advocacy organization, urged Sri Lankan Government "to view the LTTE’s ceasfire offer as positive, and reciprocate it by making a similar announcement giving rise to a real ceasefire leading to an end to the armed conflict and the beginning of confidence building between the parties, peace talks and agreement on substantive issues that lie at the heart of the conflict."
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Ki'linochchi, Mullaiththeevu, not far away, says Rajapaksa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 27 July 2008, 09:40 GMT]
It is "not too far away," to "liberate the people of Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu" and make them live under a "democratic set up" now being "enjoyed by the people of the eastern province," declared Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, addressing a provincial election campaign meeting in Anuradhapura on Saturday. The statement comes after Sri Lanka Army officials in Colombo told media that their forces were making "rapid progress" in Vanni claiming that the SLA recovered 37 dead bodies of LTTE fighters together with arms as the Sri Lankan forces were engaged in consolidating an offensive line south of Mallaavi.
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Sri Lanka rejects LTTE truce offer, responses differ

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 22 July 2008, 04:15 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s government Tuesday rejected the Tamil Tigers offer of a unilateral ceasefire for the period of the SAARC conference (Jul 26 to Aug 4). But senior officials of the Colombo government gave different responses as to the government stance on the truce offer, announced formally by the LTTE Political Wing on Monday.
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LTTE announces unilateral ceasefire during SAARC summit

[TamilNet, Monday, 21 July 2008, 18:30 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) on Tuesday announced that the movement would observe unilateral ceasefire during the period of SAARC conference from 26th July to 04 August, giving cooperation for the success of the conference. Conveying goodwill and trust of the Tamil people, the LTTE Political Wing, in a press statement issued from Vanni said it wished for the success of the SAARC conference, extending the movement's support to the "countries of our region, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives."
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JVP trying to launch another insurgency- SLFP

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 July 2008, 12:47 GMT]
The Sinhala Nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), has been on its way to the jungle once again after its internal split, said the General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and a senior minister in the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government, Mr.Maithiripala Sirisena, addressing a press briefing held in the auditorium of the Mahaweli Centre in Colombo Friday.
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Knowledge books mistreat Tamil history

[TamilNet, Thursday, 03 July 2008, 07:34 GMT]
The presentation of the History of Eezham Tamils, in some of the international reference material such as Britannica Concise Encyclopedia and The World Factbook by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has become a matter of serious concern for Tamils all over the world. When the discipline of history itself is being deconstructed in the portals of knowledge of the postmodern era on one hand, these international sources of information are still harping on colonial brand of Orientalism, by basing history on myths.
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Australian parliamentarian calls for ceasefire

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 July 2008, 01:06 GMT]
Australian parliamentarian for federal state of Lowe, Mr John Murphy, submitted to the House of Representatives Wednesday, a petition signed by more than 4000 Australians calling the Australian Government "to do everything in its power to get a peaceful resolution" to Sri Lanka's conflict, and pressed for the "proper implementation of the 2002 ceasefire agreement" that brought optimism for all Sri Lankans that there would be an end to the needless death and displacement of innocent people.
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International inaction reveal hollowness of external assurances - paper

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 June 2008, 10:29 GMT]
By rearming and stabilizing the Sri Lankan state after the ceasefire and then encouraging a hardline approach to the Liberation Tigers, the international community is responsible for the catastrophe unfolding in the island, the Tamil Guardian newspaper argued in its latest editorial. "Rather than seizing the moment [of the peace process] and making the restoration of the Tamils' dignity and self-rule their focus, the international community made the weakening and marginalizing of the LTTE their preoccupation" the paper said. "Presently, whilst an imposed solution is in the interests of everyone except the Tamils, a just solution is, conversely, in the interests of only the Tamils."
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Reserved hero: Brigadier Balraj

[TamilNet, Friday, 23 May 2008, 09:00 GMT]
In over two decades of service with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Brig. Balraj, who passed away Tuesday after a heart attack, had been a courageous and skilled fighter and commander whose last years were spent institutionalizing the training of a new generation of LTTE field officers. Although he joined the LTTE later than many of the other top commanders, Brig. Balraj had risen rapidly through the ranks on the strength of his shrewdness on the battlefield and courage under fire, fighters who served with him said this week.
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No CFA in future, says Sri Lanka's PM

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 May 2008, 18:50 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government would not sign any ceasefire agreement (CFA) with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at any stage as the time has come to wipe out terrorism from Sri Lanka completely, said Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, Sri Lanka's Prime Minister, at an event held Tuesday in Colombo.
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Amnesty: Rights abuses flourish in secrecy, denial in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 May 2008, 02:57 GMT]
Noting that in conflict situations "without reports, pictures and film of the fighting and the violence, no-one knows enough to put the pressure on the participants to ensure human rights are respected," Amnesty International, in a media release issued Friday, said the need for such environment is "strong in Sri Lanka, where fatalities on all sides are believed to be very high with large numbers of civilians caught in the crossfire."
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