Slain parliamentarian Maheswaran's death anniversary to be held

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 December 2008, 03:59 GMT]
The first death anniversary of Mr.T.Maheswaran, Colombo district parliamentarian, is to be held on December 21 Sunday at Bambalapitya Kathireasan Hall. He was shot dead while attending prayer in Colombo Ponnambalavaaneswarar Kovil on January 1st this year.
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3 police officers arrested for aiding LTTE cadres in Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 December 2008, 02:55 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Police Inspector of special crime branch of the Western Province with two constables were taken into custody by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for allegedly helping LTTE cadres in Colombo, and extorting money from civilians in Wellawatte and Bloemendhal area in Colombo, police spokesperson Ranjit Gunasekara said. The breakthrough came following the interrogation of three Tamil youths earlier arrested in cordon and search operations, according to police.
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Jaffna Bishop meets IDPs in Vanni

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 December 2008, 06:39 GMT]
Rt. Rev. Thomas Saundaranayagam, Bishop of Jaffna, was on a mission visit to Vanni 9 December where he met thousands of people displaced due to war offensives and floods sharing their grief and offering consolation to them, in various places in Vanni, according to Jaffna Bishop’s secretary. The Bishop stayed in Vanni meeting the IDPs in their temporary refugee camps and returned to Colombo Saturday.
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RSF condemns Colombo's censorship of BBC, Sunday Leader

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 December 2008, 12:50 GMT]
Paris-based media watchdog, Reporters sans frontières (RSF), in a press release issued Friday, condemned Sri Lanka's jamming of BBC World Service and blocking Sunday Leader from referring to Sri Lanka's Defense Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapakse. "We are worried by the increase in direct and indirect censorship in Sri Lanka," Reporters Without Borders said. "Coming after a broadcast media bill reintroducing news censorship, the selective blocking of BBC and Sunday Leader reports is disturbing. The authorities must accept the free flow of news even when it contradicts what officials are saying and irritates certain politicians," the press release added.
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Politics of Human Rights in the United Nations

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 December 2008, 12:11 GMT]
Tracing the historical contributions of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), including the publishing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), in the United Nations, Kirubaharan, general secretary of the France-based NGO, Tamil Centre for Human Rights, in a feature appearing in this week’s edition of Colombo weekly, the Morning Leader, says, “… the powerful states use their political influence and support to avoid the examination of human rights violations in their countries, and also to protect the countries which have bilateral links with them. Some states even insist that they are exempt from UN scrutiny because what takes place in their countries is an "internal affair."
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Somalia comparison irks Colombo

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 December 2008, 01:49 GMT]
Following the statement from John Campbell, a World Food Program (WFP) official, reporting from LTTE-held Tharmapuram to the BBC, that conditions there are "as basic as in Somalia," WFP country director for Sri Lanka, Adnan Khan, had reportedly said Mr Campbell was giving a "personal opinion." Peter Foster, in his column in UK Telegraph says Campbell has stepped unwittingly into the minefield of Sri Lankan politics, and adds "this piece of mealy-mouthism [of Khan] reflects the invidious position of all aid agencies in Sri Lanka, and particularly the UN which I know from personal contacts has a rocky relationship with the Sri Lankan government."
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Condoleeza Rice spotlights Rights violations in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 December 2008, 12:15 GMT]
United States Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, Wednesday, awarded the 2008 Human Rights and Democracy Achievement Award to Michael De Tar, the chief of the Political Section of our Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for engaging "constructively with Sri Lanka while underscoring our [U.S.'s] human rights," and for proposing the roadmap adopted by the Sri Lankan Government "to induce a paramilitary aligned with the government to begin to release its child soldiers [in the east]." The situation in the East, however, has rapidly deterioted recently with Human Rights Watch accusing the Colombo-backed paramilitaries in the east for thirty murders and thirty abductions during September and October.
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State of Human Rights in Sri Lanka on 60th anniversary of UDHR

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 December 2008, 08:04 GMT]
Although it is sixty years since 'Ceylon' as the Island was then known gained independence from Britain, and sixty years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations, Tamils of Sri Lanka are yet to enjoy the benefits of UDHR. According to the Annual Report for 2007 of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), more than 5000 cases of disappearances are pending without clarification from the Sri Lankan Government. Data shows that there are more extra-judicial killings in the East now after the Government’s celebrated 'liberation of the East'.
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Dissident Karu Jayasuriya appointed UNP deputy leader

[TamilNet, Monday, 08 December 2008, 16:21 GMT]
Karu Jayasuriya was appointed as the deputy leader of the main opposition United National Party (UNP) by the party executive committee that met Monday evening with Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe, the leader of the party in the chair. The appointment was made amid speculation in Colombo political circles that Mr. Karu Jayasuriya is likely to rejoin the UNP with some dissident MPs.
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Eezham Tamils' development: myths and realities

[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 December 2008, 23:03 GMT]
A development-oriented analysis originated from the West and often exploited by the Sri Lankan state to justify its ethnic chauvinism is that the Tamils were far advanced in ‘development’ under the British and the crisis was a result of independent Sri Lanka equalizing development to all people. One can understand Sri Lankan state and its intellectuals harping on the theme. But it is utter ignorance of history, lack of serious research and wrong application of analytical tools in judging development on the part of the intelligentsia outside, in creating a misleading picture of the crisis in Sri Lanka through their 'model-based' approaches, writes Opinion Columnist Chivanadi in the second part of the article, 'Development, Multiculturalism and Ethnonationalism in Sri Lanka.'
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Wickremasinghe appeals to dissidents to rejoin UNP

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2008, 19:32 GMT]
Ranil Wickremasinghe, leader of the main opposition United National Party (UNP), Saturday made an appeal to the dissident group of seventeen parliamentarians of the UNP to rejoin the party, political sources in Colombo said. Mr. Wickremasinghe made this appeal when addressing the 58th annual convention of the UNP in Dehiwela.
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North East to experience heavy rains, strong winds

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2008, 19:27 GMT]
Low depression above the Indian ocean about 350 km off Trincomalee town would pass through between Trincomalee and Mullaitivu Sunday morning between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., warned Meteorological Department, in a press release issued Saturday.
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Senior Tamil Journalist Joe Ariyanayagam passes away in Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2008, 15:30 GMT]
“Joseph Gnanapragasam Ariyaratnam, popularly known as Joe, was a senior English journalist in Jaffna peninsula who did an excellent service to the people of the peninsula in conveying their true situation to the international community and his death is a great loss to the Tamil people as well as the media,” North Ceylon Journalist Association (NCJA) said in its tribute message Saturday. Joe Ariyaratnam passed away in a private hospital in Colombo Friday where he was being treated for his illness. Free Media Movement (FMM) is making arrangements to have Joe’s remains flown to his residence in Chu’ndikkuzhi Wednesday.
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'They went, saw and returned'

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2008, 07:58 GMT]
The meeting of the representation from Tamil Nadu led by Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi with the Prime Minister of India on Thursday failed to achieve its basic objective of convincing the Indian government to take a stand against Colombo’s war on Tamils, revealed journalistic circles in Chennai. The silent listening of the Indian Establishment may have several meanings. Perhaps Dr. Manmohan Singh is not the authority to respond on this particular matter. But the message to Eezham Tamils is clear: either they ought to fight back the war thrust upon them, or face genocide, and probably they knew it long back, commented the circles.
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CID-grilled TNA parliamentarians asked to appear in courts

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2008, 06:31 GMT]
Colombo Chief Magistrate, Nishantha Happuarachchi on Friday ordered the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to seek the legal opinion regarding a complaint made by the Inspector General of Police (IGP) alleging the three Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians that they have made speeches in a Pongku Thamizh ceremony held in Germany in 2006, violating the Sri Lankan Constitution and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).
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Ethnic filtering, registration at SLA checkpost in Mannampiddi

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2008, 05:44 GMT]
Sri Lankan soldiers manning the checkpost at Mannampiddi in Batticaloa have introduced a new scheme to register all Tamil and Muslim passengers who travel from eastern province into other provinces. Only Tamil and Muslim passengers are ordered to get down at Mannampiddi from buses and private vehicles for checking and registration, but not the Sinhalese, civil sources said.
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Colombo’s 'gala war' countered in Germany

[TamilNet, Saturday, 06 December 2008, 04:03 GMT]
"A huge amount of Colombo’s war money is lavishly spent in foreign countries in fixing collaborators, capturing or coercing diaspora Tamils and in organizing gala programmes to shield its sins of inhuman war at home," said an activist of a vigilant group of German Tamils called 'Committee for People’s Uprising (CPU),' Friday. "The latest is a festive season’s grand dinner inviting German dignitaries and an exhibition of its 'contemporary civilization' to hoodwink the German public. The Eezham Tamils in Germany effectively neutralized Colombo’s devises on Friday through creative undertakings, right in front of Sri Lanka’s propaganda stall," the activist told TamilNet.
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UNICEF: GoSL, TMVP bound by action plan to end child recruitment

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 December 2008, 16:16 GMT]
The Government of Sri Lanka, the TMVP, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) signed an Action Plan on Monday to ensure that the recruitment and use of children by the TMVP comes to an end, and that all children currently with the TMVP are released and provided with reintegration assistance, UNICEF said in a press statement on Thursday. “This agreement shows a clear political commitment and is a very important step in putting an end to the recruitment and use of children by the TMVP,” said UNICEF’s Representative in Sri Lanka, Mr Philippe Duamelle.
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HRW: Colombo abuses anti-terror laws to muzzle media

[TamilNet, Thursday, 04 December 2008, 08:59 GMT]
Accusing Sri Lanka Government for “shamefully using antiterrorism laws to silence peaceful critics in the media," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a press release Monday that, "[t]his is no way for a government that claims to be a rights-respecting democracy to act." HRW demanded Colombo to drop charges and free J.S. Tissainayagam, a prominent Tamil journalist on trial for his writings, and Tamil publisher couple N. Jasiaharan and V.Valarmathy who were also arbitrarily arrested.
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5 Tamil civilians arrested in Colombo

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 December 2008, 17:13 GMT]
Five Tamil youths, most of them residents of north and others from upcountry estates, were taken into custody in cordon and search operations conducted by the police and the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) with the assistance of local home guards from Monday evening till Tuesday morning in Kohuwela area in Colombo district.
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