The Times calls for world boycott of Sri Lanka over detainees

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 11:59 GMT]
Expressing outrage at Sri Lanka’s treatment of Tamil detainees, The Times of London called Friday for the world to boycott the island until the detainees are released. “Sri Lanka wants no witnesses to what is now being done in these modern concentration camps. … None of [the IMF] money should be paid until independent aid agencies are guaranteed access to the Tamil camps and until Sri Lanka starts to release those detained. Other world bodies — the Commonwealth, the United Nations and even world cricketing organisations — should boycott Colombo until reconciliation begins,” the paper said in its editorial.
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Exorbitant charges by SLA to transport goods to Jaffna through A9 road

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 05:32 GMT]
Representatives of Jaffna Traders’ Union (JTU) accused the Government of charging excessively for the transport of goods by lorries from Colombo to Jaffna through A9 road and the consequent high price the people have to pay for the goods, in a meeting held Thursday at Jaffna Secretariat with a visiting team of Government Ministers, sources in Jaffna said. The Ministers, however, said that the extra charges have to be made in order to meet the expense of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) which has to inspect the goods and escort the lorries from Oamanthai SLA check post, the sources added.
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2 Muslims shot dead in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 04:05 GMT]
Bullet ridden bodies of two Muslim persons were recovered Thursday morning by Colombo Police from two different locations in Colombo city. One body was recovered along Old Moor Street in Fort area by Kotahena Police Thursday 5.30 a.m and the other body at Maligaawatte near a bridge behind Kettarama stadium. Police spokesman Ranjit Gunasekara claimed that both men were wanted in connection with several crimes and suspected to be leaders of underground criminal gangs operating in Colombo district.
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‘1,400 dying each week in Manik Farm camp’ – The Times

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 03:37 GMT]
About 1,400 people are dying every week at the giant Manik Farm internment camp set up in Sri Lanka to detain Tamil refugees from the nation’s bloody civil war, senior international aid sources have told The Times. The shocking toll lends credence to allegations that the Government, which has termed the internment sites “welfare villages”, has actually constructed concentration camps to house 300,000 people, the paper said. Most of the deaths are the result of water-borne diseases, particularly diarrhoea, a senior relief worker told The Times on condition of anonymity.
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Little foreign interest in Colombo port - report

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 02:43 GMT]
China Merchants Holdings, which operates ports in mainland China, together with a top Sri Lankan conglomerate, Aitken Spence, were the sole bidders for a container terminal concession at Sri Lanka's Colombo port, press reports said this week. Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH), the world's leading port investor, developer and operator, said this week it had refused to bid because elements of its original bid in 2007 had been included in the Sri Lankan government’s second request for proposals this year, putting HPH at a disadvantage. Meanwhile, Colombo port’s future is reportedly threatened by India’s plans to develop Vizhinjam in the southern state of Kerala.
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Sri Lanka restricts aid visas, equates its camps with Italy’s

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 01:39 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management and Human Rights Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe this week drew parallels between his government’s running of barbed-wire ringed militarized camps in which 300,000 Tamils are held with Italy’s management of camps for survivors of the L’Aquila earthquake. The state-owned Daily News also quoted Mr. Samarasinghe as saying Sri Lanka “would welcome all [foreign] help it can get if relevant organizations would fall in line with the national agenda.” On Thursday, the minister said future visa applications for foreign aid workers will be granted only if their work “could not be carried out by locals.”
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US concerned about IDPs, peace process: ambassador-designate to India

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 July 2009, 00:28 GMT]
The Ambassador-designate of Obama administration to India, Tim Roemer, appearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Wednesday, said the US is very concerned about the internally displaced people, resettlement, reconciliation and a peace process to go forward. “I think that’s something that would be important for the next ambassador, to continue to work with the Indian government on, to see that the Sri Lankan situation moves in a peaceful process, with reconciliation as a high goal”, he said in his testimony. While appreciating India’s role to US in Afghanistan, about Sri Lanka, the nominee was appreciative of India’s humanitarian aid.
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Vanni doctors forced to give false statement

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 July 2009, 17:36 GMT]
5 Tamil doctors being held by the Sri Lankan authorities say they expect to be released, after being paraded to local and international media on Wednesday when they were made to claim that they had exaggerated civilian casualty figures in the final phases of the war at the request of the LTTE. Meanwhile, health workers who have escaped Vanni have slammed the international community for allowing the detainment of the doctors and questioned the validity of their statements in light of the 'precarious position' they face.
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Railways Dept rules out sabotage in Yarl Devi fire

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 July 2009, 03:32 GMT]
Sri Lanka Railways ruled out sabotage but said it has sustained damages in the region of 25 million rupees due to the fire that broke out Sunday morning in Thaandiku'lam bound Colombo Yarl Devi intercity express train. The fire destroyed two wagons including the canteen.
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The onus is on the diaspora

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 July 2009, 00:22 GMT]
The military outcome of the crisis has emboldened a bunch of people to chant that ‘we told you so’ and now collaborate with thy oppressors. This group is not new to Eezham Tamils, writes TamilNet's political commentator in Colombo. "Ever since universal suffrage was introduced in the ethnically divided island in 1931, there was always a section willing to play stooges to the majority. Yet the struggle of the freedom seekers also remained alive. If the fighters are accused of not achieving any, so are the collaborators and the ‘we told you so’ groups," the commentator writes. "The onus of facing the situation now entirely rests on the Eezham Tamil diaspora, as it is the only entity that has the freedom of expression. Response to Karunanidhi has to come from the diaspora through reaffirming the Vaddukkoaddai resolution," he further writes.
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Sri Lanka ‘siphoning off’ refugee aid money – The Times

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 July 2009, 11:59 GMT]
The Sri Lankan Government is trying to siphon off millions of pounds of humanitarian aid by imposing a tax on all funding for aid groups, The Times newspaper reported Monday. Aid workers told the paper that Burma was the only other country that they could remember imposing such a tax — one of several new measures hampering their efforts to help victims of Sri Lanka’s civil war. Colombo is backdating taxes to 2005, the paper also said.
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Animosity of Tamils will not help India’s maritime ambitions

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2009, 16:46 GMT]
Dominating the Indian Ocean, the shores of which are shared by 47 countries, has been the long-cherished dream of India ever since its independence. As China entering into a competition, the Indian Ocean is fast emerging as the new hotspot of Sino-Indian rivalry, says an article appeared Wednesday in Pakistan Observer. India’s security concerns as well as its needs to assert as a world power may be justifiable, but it is making a grave blunder in earning the animosity of Tamils, which is not going to help in its maritime ambitions, says TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.
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5000 Vanni IDPs from internment camps moved to Anuradhapura

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2009, 13:23 GMT]
The Sri Lankan military has relocated nearly 5000 Tamil civilians from Vavuniyaa and Cheddiku'lam internment camps and resetteld them in pre dominant Sinhala village Tharmapuram in Anuradhapu on Tuesday and Wednesday, civil sources said. The SL military officials had told the Tamil civilians that they would be re-settled in their native villages in Ki'linochchi or Mullaiththeevu within 14 days, but the Rajapaksa government, at an all party meeting in Colombo on Thursday, said that it needed time to clear the mines before any resettlement.
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Britain maintains warning against travel to Sri Lanka’s North and East

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2009, 12:31 GMT]
Updating its travel advisory Wednesday, Britain warned its nationals “against all travel to the north and east of Sri Lanka, and to Yala National Park and the areas around it.” The new advisory was issued with an update on new surveillance measures at Bandaranayake International Airport related to A (H1N1) Swine Flu.
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Sri Lanka turning Manik Farm camp into permanent ‘city’ - report

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2009, 12:11 GMT]
Despite assuring the international community that most Tamils interned in militarized detention camps would be resettled by the end 2009, the Sri Lankan government is turning Manik Farm, the largest barbed-wire ringed site, into a permanent detention centre, The Times newspaper reported Friday. Tamil refugees are being used as forced labour, UN sources told the paper. Aid workers say the site was fast becoming Sri Lanka’s second biggest city after the capital, Colombo. Whilst Sri Lanka blames mines for preventing resettlement, foreign demining agencies say that they have been given access so far to only about 30 sq km of the former Vanni conflict zone.
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113 ministers in Rajapakse’s cabinet

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 July 2009, 03:44 GMT]
The number of ministers in the Cabinet of ruling party United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) led by President Mahinda Rajapakse rose to one hundred and thirteen Thursday with the induction of two more ministers, Nandana Gunatilake and Piyasiri Wijenayake of the National Freedom Front (NFF), a splinter group of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). NFF is an ally of the UPFA since JVP broke away from the alliance, sources in Colombo said.
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Jaffna residents demand back money, jewelry from Central bank

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 July 2009, 16:30 GMT]
Representatives of civil organizations, NGOs, Traders’ Circle and other participants requested the President of Bank of Ceylon, Dr. Gamini Wickremasinghe, to expedite the return of all the money and jewelry belonging to Jaffna residents taken to the Central Bank in Colombo in 1996 for safe keeping, Wednesday evening at Uroville Hall in Muththirai Chanthai in Nalloor. Mr Wickremasinghe was presiding a seminar titled "The role of Bank of Ceylon in the Development of Northern Province," when the demand was made, sources in Jaffna said.
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UN hires lawyers to defend detained local UN staff

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 July 2009, 11:26 GMT]
Inner City Press (ICP) reported Tuesday that after a week of silence by the U.N. the U.N. spokesperson has revealed that "U.N. has hired a lawyer who has visited the U.N. staff and who are still detained in Colombo. Kandasamy "Saundi" Saundrarajan of UNOPS (Office of Project Services) and N. Charles Raveendran of UNHCR taken by the Sri Lanka Government and are under detention for more than a month.
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3 Tamil civilians arrested in Colombo

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2009, 09:27 GMT]
Sri Lanka Terrorist Intelligence Division (TID) in Colombo took into custody Wednesday three Tamil civilians staying in a lodge located in Kotahena, sources in Colombo said. The arrested civilians are suspected to be escaped detainees from one of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps in Vavuniyaa, the sources added.
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Nirupama Menon Rao succeeds Shiv Shankar Menon

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 July 2009, 07:25 GMT]
Nirupama Rao, nee Menon, hailing from Kerala is named as India’s Foreign Secretary Tuesday, to succeed Shiv Shankar Menon who will be retiring on July 31. The 58-year-old diplomat is currently serving in China as India’s ambassador and before that she was High Commissioner of India in Sri Lanka, between 2004 and 2006.
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