Rae assails Canada's indifference to unfolding tragedy in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 April 2008, 20:29 GMT]
Pointing out the "continuing fighting and terrible loss of life in Sri Lanka," Mr Rae, former Ontario Premier and an advisor to an earlier round of peace talks, said in a media release issued in Canada's Liberal party website that “[t]he world can't just sit back and let this death and destruction happen. This is a humanitarian disaster and must be met with a concerted response,” and that “Canada should put conflict prevention at the top of its foreign policy agenda. We can't be indifferent to this tragedy.”
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SLA suspends KKS-Trincomalee passenger ship service

[TamilNet, Saturday, 19 April 2008, 19:09 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Palaali Military High Command has allegedly issued a directive informing the public that the passenger ship service between Kaangkeasanthurai (KKS) and Trincomalee will be suspended from Sunday until further notice, informed sources in Jaffna said. The military cited security situation as the reason for the suspension. However, Jaffna Government Agent (GA) K. Ganesh has not issued any formal statements regarding this matter until Saturday night, civil socitey sources in Jaffna said.
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International Community should learn from experience, Vaiko tells Norway

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 April 2008, 23:03 GMT]
Expressing that the lack of implementation by the Government of Sri Lanka on the agreed principles of the February 2002 Cease Fire Agreement (CFA), especially disarming of army backed paramilitary groups, led to the ultimate breakdown of the peace process, Vaiko, the General Secretary of Marumalarchchi Dravida Munneatta Kazhakam (MDMK), told Norwegian International Development Minister Erik Solheim and Jon Hanssen-Bauer, the Norwegian Special Envoy, that the International Community should prevail upon the GoSL to reinstate the ceasefire in order to engage in a meaningful process for a negotiated settlement.
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Colombo attempts to create 'health disaster' in Vanni - LTTE

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 April 2008, 08:16 GMT]
Health services in Vanni are facing a man made disaster created by the Sri Lanka Defense Ministry, said N. Selvy, LTTE's spokesperson on Human Rights. Sri Lankan forces have blocked supplies to Ki'linochchi Deputy Provincial Director of Health Service (DPDHS) division. The DPDHS office recently said that medicine quota for the district hospital for the first quarter of 2008 is yet to arrive. Meanwhile, Mullaiththeevu DPDHS has told media that only 20% of the fuel supplies needed to operate the district hospital, two sub-hospitals and six pharmacies in the district, has been allowed across the entry point at Oamanthai by the Sri Lankan forces.
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"Sri Lanka at the brink"

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 08 April 2008, 12:26 GMT]
Advocating a "federal accommodation for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority," Dr Whitehall in an article on Australia's News Weekly says: "In the first eight months of 2007, an estimated 1,212 Tamils were murdered or disappeared, according to the Sri Lanka-based Law and Society Trust, which reports that Tamils to have been "overwhelmingly affected". Of these victims, 23 were aid and church workers, eight worked with the media, and 68 were children. Most of the abuses occurred in Jaffna, the historic capital of the Tamil region, which is now "occupied" by over 50,000 Sri Lankan troops. Many of the reported abuses have occurred within "high security zones" under the control of those troops."
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U.S. film festival features Black Tigers documentary

[TamilNet, Monday, 31 March 2008, 01:29 GMT]
"My daughter the terrorist," a documentary on the lives and faiths of two female Black Tigers, produced by Norwegian film maker, Beate Arnestad, is to be featured in a premier documentary film festival in the United States to be held in Durham, North Carolina 4th of April. More than 100 documentaries are to be shown during the four-day festival from 3rd to 6th April. TamilNet talked to Arnestad during her visit to the U.S. to present the documentary at the Durham festival.
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Furore in Tamil Nadu over 'anti-Tamil' film

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 March 2008, 19:29 GMT]
Politicians and film personalities from Tamil Nadu have taken strong exception to a Sinhalese film that seeks to "vulgarize the Tamil liberation struggle in Sri Lanka." Tamil Nadu Film Producers' Association President Rama. Narayanan condemned the film for disgracing the Tamil people at the end of a special screening. Tamil Protection Movement President Thol. Thirumavalavan vowed to take legal action to prevent the film's release in Tamil Nadu since he felt that it not only degraded the Eelam liberation struggle and hurt Tamil sentiments but it was also capable of disrupting communal harmony in Sri Lanka.
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No solution possible without LTTE – South Africa

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 March 2008, 03:52 GMT]
Expressing deep concern over the escalating violence in Sri Lanka, South Africa this weekend called for renewed negotiations to end the protracted conflict and emphasized “no solution to this conflict can be found without the involvement of the two principal parties to the conflict – the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE.” Speaking in London, South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Communications Roy Padayachie assured that his country would render every assistance towards making peace but, in an implicit criticism of approaches by some other countries, said: “we will never ever impose our involvement in any part of the globe.”
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South African Indians oppose Indian Arms to Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Friday, 21 March 2008, 00:09 GMT]
Carrying the red and yellow flag, an impressive number of South Africans of Indian Origin, demonstrated outside the Indian Consulate in Durban on Thursday, to register their collective opposition to the military oppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan Government. They appealed to the Indian government to stop military assistance to the Government of Sri Lanka. While the Chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commission received the memorandum of the demonstrators and spoke to them, the Indian Consulate refused to accept it. Except a negligibly few Eezham Tamils, the vast majority of the demonstrators were people of Indian origin.
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Boston Globe advocates "Self-rule in a confederal structure for Tamil region"

[TamilNet, Monday, 17 March 2008, 10:01 GMT]
Pointing to Sri Lanka's documented pattern of "abductions of civilians by security forces," and Rajapakse Government's complicity in "large scale disappearances," Boston Globe in an editorial Monday said: "[t]he bottom line is Sri Lanka's conflict is political, and it must be resolved by political means. A lasting solution will require that the central government grant meaningful self-rule to the Tamil region, perhaps in a confederal structure that maintains the unity of the country. Continuing attempts to resolve the conflict militarily can only produce more suffering and more war."
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India risks indictment in war crimes, cautions LTTE

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 March 2008, 20:05 GMT]
Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) from its Head Quarters in Vanni on Monday released a statement condemning the Indian 'State welcome' extended to Sri Lanka Army Chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka and the statements made by Indian military chiefs in this context. "The Indian State must take the responsibility for the ethnic genocide of the Tamils that will be carried out by the Sinhala military, re-invigorated by such moves of the Indian State," the statement said. "LTTE wishes to point out to the Indian State that by this historic blunder, it will continue to subject the Eelam Tamils to misery and put them in the dangerous situation of having to face ethnic genocide on a massive scale."
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International leftists urge support for Tamil cause

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 March 2008, 02:50 GMT]
More than thirty international leftwing political parties and organisations who met last week as part of a conference organized by Fourth International in Amsterdam made an appeal to “left wing and progressive forces to come forward in defence of the just cause of the Tamil people.” In a public statement they demanded that the Sri Lankan government “stop imposing its will militarily on the Tamil people.”
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Diaspora groups demand international action over MP’s slaying

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 March 2008, 02:52 GMT]
Tamil Diaspora organisations Friday condemned the killing of Tamil parliamentarian K. Sivanesan Thursday in a fragmentation mine attack blamed on Sri Lankan commandos and called for international action against the Colombo government. Pointing out that Mr. Sivanesan is the latest Tamil MP to be murdered by suspected Army-backed paramilitaries or members of the security forces in recent years, expatriate organisations from Australia, Canada and Britain called for the Sri Lankan government to be held accountable and for international sanctions to be imposed.
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Britain to get tough with Sri Lanka - Minister

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 27 February 2008, 13:51 GMT]
Britain will be pressing Sri Lanka’s hardline government for greater access for senior UN officials and would join European allies in taking a stronger position against Colombo over human rights abuses. In a meeting with Tamil Diaspora representatives at the British Foreign Office on Monday, Foreign Minister Lord Malloch-Brown said he would personally be attending the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva next week to press the point. The government of President Rajapakse had “made political process secondary to military process,” the British Tamil Forum, a Diaspora advocacy group which attended the meeting, quoted the Minister as saying.
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Tampoe: Sri Lanka is a virtual Police, Military dictatorship

[TamilNet, Sunday, 24 February 2008, 16:42 GMT]
Prominent Trade Union leader, Bala Tampoe, says Rajapakse Government falsely states that their military objective is to defeat terrorism. The main objective is to wrest control from the LTTE the areas of North and east. "...[Colombo] can never achieve a proper political settlement till and until they recognise the right of self-determination, which is a democratic right, of the Tamil people and the Muslim people in the North and East, Tampoe says in an interview to Vikalpa, a citizen journalism initiative in Sri Lanka built on the effort pioneered by the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a Colombo-based think-tank.
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India's Peace and War

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 February 2008, 01:24 GMT]
The now defunct Ceasefire Agreement in Sri Lanka was mooted and shadow-managed by the BJP government, according to Indian journalist, M.R. Narayan Swamy. Wickramasinghe and Pirapaharan were aware of this top secret mission of India, supervised by Vajpayee's Advisor Brajesh Mishra, but not J.N. Dixit who succeeded him with the change of government in May 2004. Dixit had to learn it from Wickramasinghe. The CFA signed in February 2002 was unilaterally withdrawn by the Sri Lanka government in January 2008. Swamy's revealing and the chronology of events implicate the Congress establishment and the ego war of the Chanakyas (Machiavellis) of New Delhi in belligerency returning to Sri Lanka.
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Germany wants sanctions if Sri Lanka continues war

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 February 2008, 13:40 GMT]
Unless Sri Lanka’s hardline government abandons its militarist path, the EU should impose sanctions, Germany said this week, adding that an EU-Troika will travel to Sri Lanka in early March to assess the situation. In an interview with the Tages Speigel newspaper published on February 9, German Economic Cooperation and Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul also said Germany had frozen new development cooperation projects with Sri Lanka and, because of the deteriorating security situation, was withdrawing half their development personnel from the island as well as closing the German Development Bank in Sri Lanka.
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Indian Marxist party shuts door on JVP

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 February 2008, 08:31 GMT]
The Communist Party of India (Marxist), the key ally of the ruling Congress, has not invited the JVP to its 19th Annual Meet to be held in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. The boycott of the extreme Sinhala nationalist party, that has been a regular attendee of CPI-M meetings since the 1970s, comes in the wake of heightened Tamil sentiments prevailing in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu where the CPI-M looks forward to consolidating its base.
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Conflict headed for bloody, decisive phase- Uyangoda

[TamilNet, Saturday, 02 February 2008, 01:16 GMT]
"With the umbilical cord between Sri Lanka’s conflict-management process and the international community, in the form of the CFA, having been severed, both parties are now relatively free to conduct the war in the way they feel suitable, with no external pressures regarding human rights or humanitarian consequences. In the coming months, the conflict will become a war without checks or balances, a war without inhibition," Prof. Uyangoda says in a dispassionate analysis that appeared in a southasian monthly, Himal, on the reasons and aftermath of the formal abrogation of CeaseFire Agreement.
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LTTE Political Head writes to UN Secretary General

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 January 2008, 10:17 GMT]
Liberation Tigers Political Head B. Nadesan, in a letter to United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, bringing attention to the Claymore attack by the Sri Lanka Army Deep Penetration Unit in Madu, urged the UN Secretary to "recognize Tamil sovereignty as a constructive approach to end the unending five decades long, large scale, and serious rights violations against the Tamil people." Stating that the Tigers have ensured that there was no underage members in the movement and that the LTTE has respected the efforts made by the international community to rectify the rights situation, Mr. Nadesan said the LTTE has "demonstrated its readiness to cooperate with the international community."
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