8 SLA killed, 20 wounded in Mukamaalai FDL clash - LTTE

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 May 2008, 08:54 GMT]
Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) on Monday said they defeated a fresh attempt by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) to break into the LTTE Forward Defence Line, killing 8 SLA soldiers and recovering a dead body of one SLA soldier in Mukamaalai Monday around 10:00 a.m. The LTTE has seized a Light Machine Gun from the SLA in the confrontation where more than 20 SLA soldiers were wounded, the Tigers said.
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Tigers attack SLN point in Mannaar city

[TamilNet, Monday, 05 May 2008, 03:33 GMT]
Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) mounted a raid on a coastal point of the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) in Koanthaippiddi in Mannaar city in the early hours of Monday around 2:00 a.m. and seized arms and ammunitions from the point, killing three SLN personnel, according to LTTE's Military Spokesman Irasiah Ilanthiarayan. The LTTE unit which engaged in the attack has recovered the body of a slain SLN trooper, he said. Meanwhile, the Tigers also launched an artillery attack on the installations of the Sri Lanka Army and Navy in Mannaar.
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Ethnic divide reflected in Sri Lanka media coverage

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 May 2008, 17:56 GMT]
The polarization between Sri Lanka’s ethnic communities is also reflected in coverage of the island’s protracted conflict and has rendered ‘the truth’ an inevitable casualty of war, several speakers argued last week at the annual conference in London of the International Association of Tamil Journalists (IATAJ). The day-long event at the University of Westminster was attended by one hundred invited participants and was addressed by journalists, academics and media activists, including Mr. Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, editor of the Uthayan newspaper, Mr Chandana Bandara, senior producer with the BBC’s Sinhala service and Mr. Bhagwan Singh of the Deccan Chronicle.
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Remove arms from Paramilitary groups in Batticaloa – UNP

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 May 2008, 15:01 GMT]
“The weapons of the paramilitary groups in the Eastern province should be removed from them before the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) elections,” Tissa Athanayake, the Secretary of United National Party (UNP) and parliamentarian said Saturday evening addressing a meeting with Tamil UNP contestants and supporters in Batticaloa, sources in Batticaloa said.
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41 civilians arrested in Ratmalana, 24 in Minuwangoda

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 May 2008, 10:59 GMT]
Sri Lanka Police, assisted by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in two separate cordon and search operations, took into custody 65 civilians for questioning. 41 were arrested in Ratmalana in search operation conducted Sunday for about five hours from 5:00 a.m. 24 civilians were arrested in Minuwangoda from Saturday night till Sunday early morning, reports from Colombo said.
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Diaspora children attend Europe-wide exams in Tamil

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 May 2008, 10:14 GMT]
13,300 children and students from the Tamil Diaspora on Saturday attended annual exams in Tamil language across various countries in Europe and in New Zealand. The exams, conducted by the Tamil Education Development Council (TEDC), a European trans-national Tamil initiative, are largely sustained through volunteer effort and from the contribution of Tamil educational institutions in Europe.
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Tamil woman, man reported abducted in Colombo

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 May 2008, 02:04 GMT]
Unidentified men have allegedly abducted two Tamil civilians, a woman and a man, in Colombo in two separate incidents on 28th and 29th of April, sources close to the victims said.
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2,000 Sri Lankan soldiers killed last year – Fonseka

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 May 2008, 01:46 GMT]
Over two thousand Sri Lankan Army (SLA) soldiers were killed and four thousand wounded in the battles of 2007, the commander of the SLA, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka told a conference at Army Headquarters last week, the Sunday Times reported. He claimed over five thousand Tamil Tigers were also killed last year. Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government has forbidden military officials from giving interviews and launched a hunt for those leaking details to the media. The government has instructed ambulances transporting wounded soldiers from Ratmalana airport to hospitals in Colombo not to use their sirens, the paper said.
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Large-scale search operation in Colombo: 84 taken to station, 15 detained

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 May 2008, 18:00 GMT]
Around 300 Tamils were taken into Jinthuppiddi grounds following a large-scale search operation conducted by the police with the assistance of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) covering Kathiresan Street and Jinthupity Street in Colombo Saturday morning. 84 persons were taken in two buses to Pettah police station and fifteen of them were detained there for interrogations Saturday evening, Police said.
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Tamil post peon shot dead in Ka'n'niyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 May 2008, 14:42 GMT]
A Tamil post peon J.F.Sathiyaseelan, 42, was shot dead Friday night around 7:00 p.m. by some unidentified armed men when he was returning home after duty at Uppuve'li post office to Puthukkudiyiruppu, a suburb in Ka'n'niyaa, traditional Tamil village located along Trincomalee –Anuradhapura road, about seven km off east port city.
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Indian Coast Guard arrests 65 Sri Lankan fishermen

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 May 2008, 14:35 GMT]
Indian Coast Guard has arrested 65 Sri Lankan fishermen of Sinhalese origin in the past week for illegally fishing in Indian waters without carrying any valid documents. According to reports in the Indian media, a Coast Guard ship on routine offshore patrol had spotted a flotilla of trawlers moving 116 nautical miles off Chennai on April 27.
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Northern Front impregnable, say NTT panelists

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 May 2008, 10:49 GMT]
Colombo was forced into staging Mukamaalai offensive to ensure safety to troops in Jaffna which had fallen within the range of artillery, panelists said during a Political Analysis segment of National Television of Tamileelam (NTT), participated by LTTE military spokesperson, Irasiah Ilanthiraiyan, and Chief-Editor of Viduthalaip Pulika'l, LTTE's official organ, S. Ravi, in the programme moderated by K. Veera, this week. Panelists added that Colombo's assertion that LTTE is moving troops between different Northern fronts is a figment of their imagination, and refuted the claim that the Sri Lanka Air Force has caused detrimental impact to LTTE's war machinery.
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Tamil youth reported missing in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 May 2008, 07:10 GMT]
34 year-old Thavanayagam Kaantharoopan has been reported missing since 18 April this year, according to complaint lodged with the Vavuniyaa police, regional offices of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) and the International Committee for Red Cross (ICRC) by his relatives.
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Amnesty: Rights abuses flourish in secrecy, denial in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 03 May 2008, 02:57 GMT]
Noting that in conflict situations "without reports, pictures and film of the fighting and the violence, no-one knows enough to put the pressure on the participants to ensure human rights are respected," Amnesty International, in a media release issued Friday, said the need for such environment is "strong in Sri Lanka, where fatalities on all sides are believed to be very high with large numbers of civilians caught in the crossfire."
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14 Tamil civilians arrested in Wellawatte, 10 in Moratuwa

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 May 2008, 18:26 GMT]
Ten Tamil civilians in Moratuwa and fourteen Tamil civilians in Wellawatte were taken into custody in two separate cordon and search operations conducted by the police. Majority of those arrested on Friday morning in Wellawatte are natives of north and east and are being detained at the police station, media sources said.
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JVP whips up anti-Indian rhetoric

[TamilNet, Friday, 02 May 2008, 10:11 GMT]
Somawansa Amarasinghe, the leader of the extreme Sinhala nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which recently suffered a split, has whipped up anti-Indian sentiments in his May Day address calling for protests against what he labeled as 'Indian hegemonic foreign policy'. Stating that Sri Lankan forces 'liberated the East' not for the benefit of Indian geo-political and economic interests, but to resettle 'all ethnic communities' there, he said that the JVP would not allow separation of the country in the name of devolution proposals and proclaimed that the renewed JVP would become the locomotive of the future governance of Sri Lanka.
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3 Tamil youths arrested in Dehiwela

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 May 2008, 18:39 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and police arrested Thursday morning three Tamil youths in a joint cordon and search operation launched from 6:00 a.m to 9:30 a.m in Dehiwella, a suburb of Colombo. The youths, from Ki’linochchi, Point Pedro and Kayts of ages between 22 and 24, did not possess valid evidence to prove the reason for their presence in the area, Galkisse police said.
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Police arrests 8 Up-Country Tamils in Kandy

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 May 2008, 18:37 GMT]
Kandy police arrested 2 youths in Kandy town for not having registered their names in the police record of their working place and 2 for the possession of drugs, Wednesday evening. Meanwhile, Davulagala police in Udunuwara division in Kandy arrested 4 Tamil youths in their police division for not possessing documents of their identification.
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US Country Report accuses GoSL, LTTE of terrorist activities

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 May 2008, 11:17 GMT]
Noting that in South and Central Asia, "[t]errorism remained a serious problem in the region, directly and indirectly threatening American interests and lives," the Country Reports on Terrorism 2007, released by the US Department of State Wednesday, blamed the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers for terrorist activities saying, "[t]he LTTE reverted to targeting civilians in bus bombings and claymore mine attacks, while the government used anti-LTTE paramilitaries to terrorize citizens suspected of having ties to the Tigers."
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Colombo has failed to honour Kachchatheevu agreement after 1983 - CPI

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 May 2008, 07:02 GMT]
Communist Party of India (CPI) National Secretary D Raja on Tuesday made a special mention during the Zero Hour in the Indian Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament of India stated that the agreement on Kachchatheevu and the historical waters between the Government of India and the Government of Sri Lanka, signed in 1974, didn't work after 1983. Mr. Raja said there is a grey area in the agreement with regards to the right of access to the island by the Indian fishermen and said that the agreement should be reopened and renegotiated in order to protect the rights of fishermen.
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