US government donates USD 100,000 for flood relief in North-East

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 December 2008, 11:35 GMT]
The United States Government will provide $100,000 for emergency relief to assist people affected by the flooding in the North and the East, said a press release issued by the Embassy of he United States of America. The US donation will be used for non-food relief items and targeted to victims in Jaffna and in the Vanni, where particularly serious flooding has occurred in recent days. Ambassador Blake requested funds from the US government after Major General Hettiarachchi of the Disaster Management Centre asked for American assistance, the press release said hinting that the aid would be channeled
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Colombo's development agenda aggravates factional fight within TMVP

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 03 December 2008, 00:59 GMT]
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government has sidelined Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan, a key paramilitary leader operated by the Sri Lankan government and the Chief Minister of the Eastern Province, on the utlisation of funds allocated for 'development'. "Pillayan is being treated almost like a political prisoner by the Rajapaksa government these days, especially after the recent protests against the killings," according to a Colombo based journalist.
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'Knowing friends and enemies'

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 02 December 2008, 15:14 GMT]
“Exploiting the Mumbai carnage and the mood of indignation in India, the Colombo government is calling for the collaboration of India in labeling and isolating all Tamils as terrorists, just because they demand for their rights. Mr. P. Chidambaram, the new Home Minister of India, carrying Indian as well as Tamil identities needs to be additionally alert in what has to be done”, read Tuesday’s editorial of Janasakti, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of India. Meanwhile, an Eezham Tamil foreign national and a political analyst, now living with the IDPs in Vanni, responded to TamilNet with his remarks on current development, especially after 26 November, 2008.
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25 Tamils arrested in Upcountry, Colombo

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 December 2008, 13:21 GMT]
Twenty five Tamil civilians, including a woman, were taken into custody in two separate combined cordon and search operations conducted by the Sri Lanka Army and Sri Lanka Police Sunday morning, sources in Colombo said. Three persons, including a woman, were arrested in Maligaawatte. 22 Tamils were taken into custody in search operations conduct at Talawakelle, Nuwara Eliya, Hatton, Norwood and Kotagala in upcountry districts, police sources said.
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Sri Lanka slips out of oil deal on Supreme Court ruling

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 December 2008, 11:32 GMT]
A ruling Friday by Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court’s to halt payments to an international bank in connection to a badly judged oil hedging deal entered into by the state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) could harm Colombo’s ability to obtain credit from global markets, an internationally rating agency warns. The CPC had entered into a hedging deal on the assumption oil prices would not fall and was now obliged to buy 200,000 barrels of oil per month for 12 months at $100, even though the market price is now almost half that.
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Quick IDP action averts carnage from Cluster bombs

[TamilNet, Monday, 01 December 2008, 01:33 GMT]
“Three bombs exploded first time. Second time, when the bomber returned after 5 minutes from the opposite direction, there were 3 more blasts. But, the third time, bombs exploded with a parachute effect, like an auto explosion,”  said the head of the camp of the Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) that came under indiscriminate attack by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) in the early hours of Saturday. Many children fled into the jungle during the five-minute window before the aircraft returned for the second attack. If not for the fast action of Ketheeswaran, the head of the settlement, and Pulendran, an intrepid IDP, in escorting and moving IDPs away from the refugee camp, the cluster bombs would have wrought havoc killing many, according to the refugees who escaped. TamilNet interviewed both Ketheeswaran and Pulendran, and several wounded civilians for this feature.
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Court reserves order on admissibility of Tissanayagam "confession"

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 November 2008, 16:57 GMT]
The Colombo High Court Friday reserved its order for December 5 on the Voire Dire inquiry on the admissibility of the purported confession made by Sunday Times journalist J.S.Tissainayagam to the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID). When the case was taken up on Friday for further submission before High Court Judge Ms. Deepani Wijesundara the State Counsel and the Defence Counsel made oral submissions, legal sources said.
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Colombo's cluster bomb attack on civilians in Vanni challenges international norms

[TamilNet, Sunday, 30 November 2008, 02:21 GMT]
Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) bombers that attacked the hamlet of Internally Displaced Persons bordering Piramanthanaa'ru and Uzhavanoor in the early hours of Saturday have deployed Russian made OFAB-500 cluster bombs in their indiscriminate attack that killed three civilians, including a child, eyewitnesses told TamilNet's Vanni correspondent on Saturday. Seven children were among the wounded. Colombo's use of cluster bomb comes as more than 100 countries are scheduled to meet in Oslo on Wednesday to sign a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs.
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International media, human rights watchdogs lopsided - Jaffna MP

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 November 2008, 20:39 GMT]
"The Colombo government is embarked upon a killing spree of children and women in refugee camps who are already victims of war, displacement, cyclone and floods. This act of 'state terrorism' is in what way less deplorable than the Mumbai killings, for failing to attract condemnation and action from the International Community," asks Padmini Sithamparanathan, Tamil National Alliance MP for Jaffna.
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Kungchupparanthan: first debacle of SLA in battle for Ki'linochchi

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 November 2008, 22:55 GMT]
Several decomposed corpses of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers were still lying within the no-man area between the SLA and Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) frontiers in Kugnchupparanthan no man zone, informed sources revealed on Friday. The SLA soldiers had maneuvered deep into LTTE trap, according to the source, which said it was the first debacle of the SLA in the battle for Ki'linochchi. At least 75 SLA soldiers were confirmed dead so far, the source said adding more than 160 of the soldiers, who managed to reach back to their barracks, had been injured. The LTTE, which earlier said 43 SLA soldiers were killed and 70 wounded, is yet to release further updates.
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Norwegian Refugee Council worker among victims of Batticaloa killings

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 November 2008, 21:08 GMT]
A staff worker of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) was forcibly abducted by unidentified gunmen who entered his house on the evening of November 27 and was shot at a nearby decommissioned IDP-site, said Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Colombo on Friday. Vigneswaran, a popular and dedicated colleague, was later taken to a nearby hospital but pronounced dead on arrival. Offering its deepest condolences to Vigneswaran’s family, the NRC said it was deeply concerned by this tragic and untimely death of Mr. Vigneswaran. This is the third killing or disappearance of an NRC staff member in Sri Lanka in the past two and a half years.
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US development aims integrating East with Sinhala provinces

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 November 2008, 19:04 GMT]
Based on their firm conviction that development disparity is the root cause of the conflict in Sri Lanka, the United States Embassy in Sri Lanka is busy in recent times in promoting a number ‘development’ programmes, especially in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Launching a new programme, Connecting Regional Economies (CORE) two months ago, the US aim ‘at the provincial and community level’ is to ‘focus on improving supply chain and market linkages between producers, processors, and the end markets in five districts of the Eastern, North Central and Uva Provinces’, read a press release from the US embassy in Colombo.
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80 Tamils arrested in Colombo, Kandy

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 November 2008, 17:42 GMT]
More than eighty Tamil civilians, including eight women, arrested in Colombo and Kandy in separate cordon and search operations conducted by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and police on Wednesday and Thursday are detained in respective police stations and are being interrogated.
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Faultline of Sri Lanka’s conflict now clear - paper

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 November 2008, 19:50 GMT]
Pointing out that it is as Sinhalese have become more and more confident of winning the war that overt racism against Tamils has become blatant, the Tamil Guardian newspaper this week said “what is qualitatively different between the late nineties and now is the clarity of the ethnic faultline in Sri Lanka.” The paper, published Wednesday, argued “Since independence the island’s core problem has been Sinhala domination and … persecution, of the Tamils. In the global liberal bubble of the nineties, this fundamental truth was subsumed amidst the logics of underdevelopment, resource wars and so on.”
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India is our friend, we are not against any country, remove the hindrance of ban: Pirapaharan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 27 November 2008, 12:31 GMT]
While conveying his love and gratitude to the people and leaders of Tamil Nadu and leaders of India who have grasped the heartbeat of Eezham Tamils and have come forward with timely support, the LTTE leader V.Pirapaharan in his Hero’s Day speech on Thursday requested them to voice firmly for Tamil Eelam and to undertake conducive measures to remove the ban, a great hindrance to amicable relationship between India and the LTTE. “At no stage did we ever consider India as an enemy force. Our people always consider India as our friend. They have great expectations that the Indian super power will take a positive stand on our national question”, he said. The LTTE leader also requested the world powers to remove the ban on it, citing that the LTTE never schemed any act against any country and the Tamil struggle is not against the geopolitical, national or economic interests of any country.
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Vaiko urges British Parliament to restore Eezham Tamil sovereignty

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 November 2008, 19:06 GMT]
Vaiko, the general secretary of Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetta Kazhakam (MDMK) from Tamil Nadu, while addressing British parliamentarians of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Tamils on Wednesday in the British Parliament, said that the British Parliament has a moral responsibility to rectify the historic injustice caused on to the Eezham Tamils during the colonial rule. It was the British who statutorily put the Tamil and the Sinhala territories together in 1833, made Ceylon a unitary entity and refused to consider federalism in their constitutional reforms. When they left in 1948, they passed on the power to the Sinhala majoritarian rulers, he said.
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Relief supplies from Tamil Nadu still not reached Vanni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 November 2008, 05:25 GMT]
Emergency relief supplies, sent by the efforts of Tamil Nadu people and their government, received in 100 containers in Colombo 11 days ago, have not reached Vanni due to the sabotage by the Sri Lankan military, a top government official, who did not wished to be named, told TamilNet. Severe flooding has cut off Vanni on Wednesday. However, contradicting to the ground reports, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi was made to believe that the supplies were reaching the affected civilians unhindered.
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Seeking solutions in horror-scope

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 November 2008, 20:19 GMT]
Ever since the Sri Lankan polity has become violent and belligerent, the top Sinhala politicians have abandoned the rational Heenayaana Buddhism to become Tantrics or perhaps Vajrayaana Buddhists. It has now become a routine for them to consult astrologers, seek propitiation or instigation from Malayala Tantrics and to undertake pilgrimages to temples and establishments of god-men in India just like visiting Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and M.K. Narayanan. They leave no stone unturned in winning the war with Tamils, writes Opinion Columnist Ampalam.
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4 youths shot dead in Horowopottana

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 November 2008, 17:06 GMT]
Four youths were shot dead at a spot along Anuradhapura-Horowopottana road in the north central province Tuesday afternoon around 2.30, according to media reports in Colombo.
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Rights watchdog faults Colombo for deteriorating human rights situation in East

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 November 2008, 07:52 GMT]
"Killings and abductions are rife and there is total impunity for horrific abuses," in the eastern province, which the Sri Lankan government claims to have 'liberated' as an example of democracy in action, said the New York based Human Rights Watch (HRW). There have been at least 30 extra-judicial killings and 30 abductions in Eastern Province within the last 60 days, the HRW said blaming the Sri Lankan government for providing unqualified support to TMVP paramilitary factions. The attacks and other threats against journalists have caused the media to curtail reporting on the security situation in the East. Members of civil society organizations have also been subjected to threats, according to the HRW.
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