Ethnocentric military dictatorship in the making in Colombo - Vanni MP

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 September 2008, 09:47 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian for Vanni, Selvam Adaikkalanathan, who blamed Sri Lanka Army commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka for his Sinhala ethnocentric comments to a Canadian paper, said Sunday that the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, as Commander-in-Chief and the Executive President, should instruct the SLA commander to apologise for the statement. Fonseka's statement not only undermined democracy by justifying an ethnic majoritarian rule in the island of Sri Lanka, but also alluded that a military dictatorship was in the making in Colombo, he said. Meanwhile, Rauff Hakim, the leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, also blamed that the "attack on the minorities " by the SLA commander "bordered on racism."
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Court orders forensic analysis on munitions allegedly found in HRC vehicle

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 August 2008, 03:03 GMT]
Mallaakam magistrate, Ms. Sarojini Ilankovan, directed Tuesday Maanippaay police to submit the munitions claimed to have been recovered from the Jaffna Human Rights Commission (HRC) vehicle parked in a motor repair garage in Maanippaay in Valikaamam, for chemical analysis in Colombo, and submit the findings to the Court, legal sources in Jaffna said.
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Indian PM's Special Protection Group personnel arrive in Colombo

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 15 July 2008, 09:55 GMT]
70 members of the Indian Special Protection Group (SPG), which provides proximate security to the Prime Minister of India and the members of his immediate family, have arrived in Colombo Sunday for security preparations for the upcoming SAARC summit, diplomatic sources in Colombo said. In addition to the SPG personnel, the Indian government has sought permission from Sri Lanka to bring three naval ships, which will be anchored in the outer-harbour of Colombo during the summit. The sources also added that there will be some air cover as well.
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Right to Protect

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 August 2007, 01:01 GMT]
Gareth Evans, President, International Crisis Group, in the eighth Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture at International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) , Colombo, 29 July said "The State has a primary responsibility to protect the individuals within it. Where the state fails in that responsibility, through either incapacity or ill-will, a secondary responsibility to protect falls on the wider international community. That, in a nutshell, is the core of the responsibility to protect (R2P) idea" and that "Sri Lanka is anything but an R2P."
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Norway dismisses lone activist’s agitation

[TamilNet, Thursday, 19 April 2007, 15:23 GMT]
A Norwegian speaker at a symposium organised by Sinhala nationalists as a “public awareness programme on how terrorism is being promoted in Sri Lanka” was dismissed by his government as a lone agitator making wild accusations. The Norwegian, Falk Rune Rovik, who alleges that Norway is financing the LTTE, was a murder convict and has been engaged by Sinhala ultra nationalists and promoted by Sri Lankan government ministries in anti-Norwegian and anti-LTTE propaganda. The activities of Mr. Rovik, who is scheduled to address a conference in Colombo Friday, has antogonized the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, according to Norwegian press reports.
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MP slams aerial bombardment on water refinery

[TamilNet, Saturday, 30 December 2006, 10:37 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF), in its latest bombing raids in Vaharai on Thursday, completely destroyed a water refinery constructed by the UN agencies to remedy the drinking water shortage in the area near Verugal Murugan temple, charged S. Jeyanandamoorthy, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian from Batticaloa. In a press communiqué issued on Friday, the MP said: "the bombardment on the water refinery is not only a Ceasefire violation but is a human rights violation and a war crime too."
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Navaratnam's funeral in Montreal, Tuesday

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 December 2006, 20:11 GMT]
Federal Party co-founder V. Navaratnam's remains are kept for public to pay their last respects at Darche Funeral Parlour, 7679 Taschereau boulevard, in Montreal, and the funeral would be held Tuesday morning at 10:30 a.m. His nine grandchildren will carry the casket from the funeral parlour to the site of the burial service, family members said.
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Colombo falls short on shipment of essentials- GA

[TamilNet, Saturday, 04 November 2006, 15:01 GMT]
The Government Agent of Jaffna, K. Ganesh, in a media report sent to local papers, said that nearly 25% shortfall in amount of required food and essential items sent by Colombo to Jaffna district was the main cause for the high prices and the difficulties residents are facing, having to stand in long lines to procure provisions, civil society sources in Jaffna said.
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SLA ban affects cultivation in LTTE held Batticaloa villages

[TamilNet, Thursday, 31 August 2006, 23:55 GMT]
Cultivation of paddy in about fifty thousand acres and cash crop in around forty thousand acres in the LTTE controlled areas in Batticaloa district has been completely affected as the farmers are not allowed to enter the government controlled area to buy agro-chemicals, fertilizer for their crops and to purchase petroleum products for the use of tractors via SLA checkpoints located in Vavunativu, Chenkalady and Kiran Bridges and Vaharai road, pointed out Mr. P.Ariyanethran and Miss K.Thangeswary, Batticaloa district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians at a conference held Thursday morning in the Batticaloa District Secretariat Auditorium.
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Earth as a Living Planet: Plate Tectonics Theory is Challenged by a New Theory

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 January 2005, 03:30 GMT]
According to the US Geological Survey more than three million earthquakes occur every year. That is, 8.000 quakes a day or one every 11 seconds. But researchers still debate on what causes earthquakes. For the last 30 years the plate tectonics theory was predominant but recently it has been challenged by a new Global Wrench Tectonics theory created by the Norwegian professor Karsten M. Storetvedt. According to his theory earthquakes are caused by gas explosions and can happen anywhere, not only along the plate borders, as suggested by earlier theories.
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Jaffna onion farmers face financial hardship

[TamilNet, Saturday, 31 July 2004, 04:08 GMT]
Market watchers warned that unplanned cultivation and increasing use of artifical fertilizers to grow onions are leading Jaffna farmers to face a tough market where the price of onions has plunged to less than Rs.12 per kilo in Colombo due to oversupply, Jaffna daily Uthayan reported.
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Major fire at Sri Lanka govt. press

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 June 2004, 13:27 GMT]
A major fire broke out at the Sri Lanka Government Printers in Colombo Saturday evening. Fire fighters were struggling to put out the fire and bring the situation under control, Police said. "We are not sure whether it is sabotage or an accident," a Police source in Colombo said.
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Muttur farmers form company to promote commercial production

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 December 2003, 17:43 GMT]
The newly formed Kottiayarapattu People's (Farmers') Company Limited in the Trincomalee district was officially inaugurated Monday at a special event held at the provincial guesthouse auditorium in Uppuveli, a suburb of Trincomalee town. The Kottiayarapattu Farmers' Company has been established with the support of the Department of Agriculture and the Integrated Food Security Programme (IFSP) of the Agency for German Technical Co-operation (GTZ), a development agency of the German government.
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LTTE's polythene ban in Vanni earns plaudits

[TamilNet, Monday, 15 September 2003, 16:07 GMT]
The ban on Polythene use in the Vanni by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has heartened the Environmental movement in Sri Lanka, said Dr. (Ms.) Ajantha Perera, the head of the project for solid waste recycling in Sri Lanka, in a press statement, the Jaffna-based Tamil language daily, Uthayan, reported Monday.
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Elephant Pass: From battlefield to salt capital

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 September 2003, 01:19 GMT]
Before 1990, Elephant Pass and Kurunchativu located 10km apart had the largest salterns in the northeast with a combined area of 100 acres, and produced more than 85,000 metric tons of salt a year. This output met all the salt needs of SriLanka and left enough surplus for export. These salterns, destroyed during the war, are being reconstructed and rehabilitated, and are currently producing close to 15% of the total capacity.
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German expert says ground water situation in Jaffna 'alarming'

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 July 2003, 14:56 GMT]
Speaking at a seminar held at the International Water Management Institute in Colombo on the potential of rainwater harvesting in the Jaffna peninsula, Mr. Herald Kraft, a consultant to the Jaffna Rehabilitation Project, funded by the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), revealed that the ground water situation in the Jaffna peninsula is alarming, given the thin cover of soil over the ground water table that provides no protection against pollutants, a press release from the GTZ said on Friday.
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An enterprise worth its salt

[TamilNet, Saturday, 12 April 2003, 00:10 GMT]
Before the Eelam Wars began, the salterns in the northeast produced enough salt to meet the all the needs of Sri Lanka and a surplus for export. Elephant Pass and Kurinchathivu were the largest of these. The other salt production facilities were in Chemmani, near Jaffna town, in Mannar town, in Nilaveli and Kumburupiddy in Trincomalee.
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Trinco Methodist College holds prize giving

[TamilNet, Friday, 28 February 2003, 21:00 GMT]
One hundred and eighty three years old Trincomalee Methodist Girls College, popularly known as the Vembadi school, held its annual prize giving celebration Thursday with the Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Education and Cultural Affairs, Mr.S.Thillainadarajah, as the chief guest.
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US to announce significant assistance in Japan meet - Armitage

[TamilNet, Saturday, 15 February 2003, 02:59 GMT]
In a conference on "Srilanka: Prospects for Peace," held at the Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington D.C Friday, Richard Armitage, Deputy U.S Secretary of State, in his Keynote address said that, "..it is my intention to return to the follow-on meeting [to Oslo] of donors" in June in Japan and "I will be able to announce significant further assistance to Sri Lanka for both humanitarian and economic aid," sources said.
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Rising from the shambles of a counter insurgency campaign

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 February 2003, 18:01 GMT]
The large Vadamunai-Tharavai region, northwest of Batticaloa, is struggling to rise out of the havoc wreaked by one of the most sustained text book counter insurgency campaigns waged by the Sri Lanka army. A few hundred of the thousands of families which were driven out of their villages by the SLA more than 12 years ago have begun venturing back to their homesteads and lands here. But there are no schools for their children, no medical facilities for the sick, no transport, no sanitation and no basic amenities in any of the villages in the region.
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