Norwegian peace envoy arrives in Colombo

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 November 2006, 03:02 GMT]
Jon Hansen Bauer, Norwegian special peace envoy to Sri Lanka, arrived in Colombo Wednesday night around 11:15 p.m. to attempt to revive peace talks between the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).


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Sri Lanka Army bulldozes Heroes' Cemetery in Trincomalee - Elilan

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 November 2006, 18:28 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army has bulldozed the Alankulam Heroes' Cemetery in Muthur East, on November 25, said LTTE's Trincomalee District Political Head, S. Elian Wednesday. "Sri Lankan military has once again desecrated a war cemetery. No military in the civilized world, would engage in a such act," charged Mr. Elilan.
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US presses GoSL, LTTE on CFA

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 29 November 2006, 04:28 GMT]
In the United States’ first reaction to the LTTE’s declaration Monday that successive Sinhala regimes’ intransigence in resolving Sri Lanka conflict has compelled Tamils no option but to seek an independent state, a State Department spokesman on Tuesday called on both sides to honour the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), describing it as the “foundation” for the finding peace, and also called for a return to dialogue.
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Rajapakse dismisses Pirapaharan’s comments

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 28 November 2006, 11:57 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapakse Tuesday dismissed Tamil Tiger leader Vellupillai Pirapaharan’s declaration Monday that Colombo’s intransigence has compelled Tamils no option but an independent state. Rajapakse, who is visiting India this week said he had not heard the speech. “But I have not taken it seriously. Because he has always been saying these things.” President Rajapakse’s comments come after belligerent and contradictory comments by Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka, government defence spokesman Rumbekwella and government Peace Secretariat chief Palitha Kohana.
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Sri Lanka Army launches tank offensive on Vaharai

[TamilNet, Thursday, 23 November 2006, 03:43 GMT]
Heavy fighting broke out between the Sri Lanka Army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, at the southern border of Vaharai region in Batticaloa district Thursday as SLA troopers from Kajuwatte and Mankerni SLA camps, launched a ground troop movement backed by heavy mortar, artillery and Multi-Barrel Rocket fire, into the LTTE territory Thursday around 8:30 a.m. The fresh SLA operation comes following Sri Lankan defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwela's interpretation on Wednesday that the outcome of a crucial meeting by the Co-Chairs was not hard as Colombo had feared. Mr. Rambukwela had said Sri Lanka's "national security" had a higher priority than upholding the ceasefire.
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Sri Lanka assured of Co-Chairs’ military, financial support

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 November 2006, 13:13 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s casual dismissal of the Co-Chairs statement Tuesday condemning rights abuses and ceasefire violations by the armed forces stems from confidence that, despite these, military and financial support from the international community is not going to be disrupted – a point reinforced by the strong messages of support for Colombo by individual representatives of the Co-Chairs soon after their meeting in Washington on Tuesday.
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Sri Lanka rejects Co-Chairs’ condemnation, continues attacks

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 22 November 2006, 12:25 GMT]
Unfazed by strong condemnation by international donors of rights abuses and truce violations by its military, Sri Lanka’s government Wednesday continued air strikes and bombardment against the Liberation Tigers. Saying the donors had been “mislead” by international truce monitors and a UN envoy, government defense spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella insisted that national security took precedence over the ceasefire and that the international community recognised this.
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Co-chairs call for full implementation of CFA

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 21 November 2006, 23:07 GMT]
While condemning the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers for "systematic ceasefire violations," the co-chairs called both sides to "seize the historic opportunity created by the 2002 Cease-Fire Agreement to resolve the country's conflict peacefully," in a press release issued after the meeting in Washington Tuesday. Co-chairs while urging re-opening of A9, called on the LTTE to co-operate with GoSL's effort to send one convoy as a first step.
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Colombo ignoring humanitarian catastrophe - Thamilchelvan

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 November 2006, 15:49 GMT]
Colombo was engaged in "last minute tactics to placate the international community," prior to a scheduled meeting of Co-Chairs in Washington, by dispatching a single lorry into Vaharai where 38,000 civilians were starving for the past fortnight. Likewise, Colombo was showcasing to the media that it would dispatch a single convoy of supplies through A9 into Jaffna where 600,000 Tamils are under military siege in an "open prison," charged S. P. Thamilchelvan, political head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) Monday.
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Vavuniya shuts down for massacred students

[TamilNet, Monday, 20 November 2006, 06:06 GMT]
The Vavuniya town came to a standstill Monday due to a 'hartal' (general shut down) called by the Tamil National Allaince (TNA) to protest against the massacre of 5 Agricultural Farm School students by the Sri Lanka Army on Saturday. Ten other students, including 6 six girls were also injured in the incident.
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Troops 'shot students at close range’ - SLMM

[TamilNet, Sunday, 19 November 2006, 14:38 GMT]
International truce monitors said on Sunday Sri Lankan troops entered a school and opened fire on a group of students at close range on Saturday, killing five, after a deadly Tamil Tiger ambush on government forces. "These soldiers fired indiscriminately at a group of students who had thrown themselves on the ground seeking safety after an LTTE (Tamil Tiger) claymore mine blast nearby," Helen Olafsdottir, spokeswoman for the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission that oversees the 2002 ceasefire, told Reuters.
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UN considering resolution criticizing Sri Lanka's rights violations

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 November 2006, 15:16 GMT]
The United Nation's Human Rights Council, created in 2006 to improve the United Nations' capacity to confront the world's worst rights abusers, is considering a resolution criticizing Sri Lanka, a European Diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity told Washington Post, the paper reported in its Saturday edition.
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‘Everything on table, equal respect for all’ needed for peace - Murphy

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 November 2006, 15:55 GMT]
Peace talks can succeed only if “everything is on the table and there is respect for all points of view,” Britain’s former Northern Ireland Minister said Thursday after meeting Tamil Tiger officials. Saying there is a “huge comparison” between the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, Mr. Murphy said: “no one can win this kind of war. … we have the same message for the Sri Lankan government as the LTTE: keep searching for a solution, ensure the ceasefire agreement is one of integrity, renounce violence and ensure there is a proper look at everything that can bring peace.”
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Displaced cut off from international aid – watchdog

[TamilNet, Thursday, 16 November 2006, 14:14 GMT]
Some 130,000 internally displaced people - more than half of those uprooted by the current intensification of violence in Sri Lanka - are "cut off from international assistance and exposed to serious human rights abuses," the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said in a report released Thursday, citing the shelling of a refugee camp in Vakarai last week. Despite “signals” by the government that access restrictions "may be eased", IDMC said it is concerned that "bureaucratic procedures will in effect continue to prevent humanitarian workers from reaching the civilian populations."
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Tamil Americans call for moratorium on military aid to Colombo

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 November 2006, 03:12 GMT]
Expressing condemnation over killing of at least 65 internally displaced people (IDPs) who were seeking shelter in a school in Vakarai by the government of Sri Lanka," a joint press release issued by Tamil organizations in the US Friday, called upon the international community to "impose a moratorium on military assistance to GOSL," and urged "the co-chairs of the peace process to explore modalities that will allow the peoples on the island of Sri Lanka to live with dignity, to determine their political and economic future without interference, and to ensure regional security."
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A9 closure is ‘breach of CFA’ – SLMM

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 November 2006, 19:37 GMT]
International monitors overseesing Sri Lanka’s truce have criticized the Sri Lankan government for closing the A9 highway at Muhamalai, The Sunday Leader reported. "The government is clearly violating the Ceasefire Agreement and they have trapped more than half a million civilians within the Jaffna Peninsula. The A9 should be opened immediately," acting spokesperson for the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), Helen Olafsdottir, said.


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Braving sea of perils

[TamilNet, Sunday, 05 November 2006, 01:11 GMT]
The abundance of fish stock in Mullaitivu seas has provided a life line to fisher families from littoral villages dotting 70km Mullaitivu coast stretching from Kokkilai in the south to Iranaipalai in the north. Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has occupied 13km of this coastline from Kokkilai to Nayaaru from 1985. Although fall of SLA's Mullaitivu garrison to Liberation Tigers in 1996 brought relief to fisher families, continued harassment by the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) and threats from the SLA camps in the southern coast of the district continue to plague fisher families who brave the seas to earn a living.
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Co-Chairs’ failure to condemn bombing will fuel violence - IFT

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 November 2006, 16:22 GMT]
Geneva based Tamil diaspora federation, International Federation of Tamils (IFT), criticising the Co-Chair's "failure" to condemn the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) airstrike on the environs of Kilinochchi hospital which killed five people, the IFT warned the weak international response “will encourage Sri Lanka to continue such attacks with impunity.”
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Kilinochchi raid violates International Humanitarian Law- TNA

[TamilNet, Friday, 03 November 2006, 15:58 GMT]
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in a press release issued in Colombo Friday condemned the Thursday bombing raid by SLAF near Kilinochchi hospital as "serious violation of International Humanitarian Law," and said the bombing was "conducted with callous disregard for the safety and the security of Tamil civilian life and property." TNA also expressed disappointment that despite repeated attacks by GoSL against civilian life and property, "the International Community is unable to bring such attacks of the GOSL to an end."
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Kuchaveli villagers under paramilitary threat- TNA

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 31 October 2006, 12:38 GMT]
Many residents from villages in Kuchavel Pradeshya Sabha division, who have been returning to resettle after being displaced before 2002, are again fleeing the villages due to threat from paramilitary cadres, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentary group leader, Mr Sampanthan complaiend in a letter sent to Sri Lanka's President, Mahinda Rajapakse, Tuesday.
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