Horrors on women in Sri Lanka's internment camps - Egeland

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2009, 10:59 GMT]
Jan Egeland, the former UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tuesday told the press that "Sri Lanka is one of the latest examples of the World community letting a government get away with denying access for the international community of witnesses, of humanitarian relief and protection for civilians," adding that world governments failed what they swore in 2005 of the "responsibility to protect," and that "for Tamil women" there were a "number of horrors." Egeland's comment contrasts with the stand of his successor John Holmes who earlier commended the Sri Lanka's treatment of the 300,000 civilians currently being held in internment camps in Vavuniyaa.
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TNA submits nomination list for local elections in North

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2009, 08:01 GMT]
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Jaffna district parliamentarian, Mavai Senathirajah submitted Thursday the list of TNA nomination list of 29 candidates contesting Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election with Mudiyappu Remedius, a leading lawyer and a human rights activist as its principal candidate, under ‘House’ symbol of Ilangkaith Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi. The list includes one Muslim and four women candidates. Besides Mavai Senathirajah, TNA MPs Suresh Premachandran, Gajendrakumar Ponnampalam and Solomon Cyril were also present at the event in Jaffna. Meanwhile, the TNA parliamentarians N. Sivasakthy Ananathan and S. Vino Noharathalingam fielded S.N.G Nathan as principal candidate for the list for Vavuniyaa Urban Council Wednesday.
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9,247 Vanni elderly IDPs handed over to Social Welfare Ministry

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 June 2009, 02:15 GMT]
The Ministry of Social Welfare Monday took over the maintenance and care of nine thousand two hundred and forty seven elderly internally displaced persons of over sixty years of age from Vanni from the internment camps in Vavuniyaa. The lists of names of these elderly IDPs are now exhibited in the offices of the Ministry of Social Offices located in Mannaar and Vavuniyaa, media reports said.
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IDPs living on Jaffna railway track area ordered to leave

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 June 2009, 17:26 GMT]
The president of the Federation of Jaffna Non-government Organizations (NGOs), C. V. K. Sivagnanam, requested Jaffna Government Agent (GA) not to evict immediately the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), numbering around a hundred families, living in camps on the railway track area in Jaffna since the time they were thrown out of their residences in Valikaamam North which were declared High Security Zones (HSZ) by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in 1990, sources in Jaffna said.
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Devananda to contest elections under Rajapaksa's ‘Betel Leaf’ symbol

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 June 2009, 10:56 GMT]
Sri Lankan Minister and General Secretary of Eelam Peoples’ Democratic Party (EPDP), Douglas Devananda, announced Tuesday in Jaffna that his party will contest the local government elections of Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) and Vavuniyaa Town Council (TC) under ‘Betel Leaf’ symbol, the common symbol of the ruling United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA), sources in Jaffna said. Mr. Devananda has been under pressure from the ruling SLFP to join the party in recent times, giving up the "Eelam" identity, according to informed sources, which also revealed that Devananda was forced to give up his plan of contesting under his party symbol Vee'nai.
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TNA MP Kanagaretnam ordered further detention in Colombo court

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 June 2009, 09:37 GMT]
The Colombo Chief Magistrate and Additional District Judge Mr. Nishantha Kappurarachchi Monday instructed the Criminal Investigation Department of the Sri Lanka Police to further detain the suspect Mr.Sathasivam Kanagaretnam, Vanni district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, conduct investigations and submit a comprehensive report to court on the next date, July 26.
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Police collect details of Eastern province IDPs staying in Vavuniyaa camps

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 June 2009, 15:15 GMT]
Special police teams have been collecting names and other details of internally displaced persons who are permanent residents of three districts of the eastern province- Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampaa'rai and currently being kept in internment camps located in Vavuniyaa. Hundreds of IDPs of eastern province have been held captives by the Sri Lankan forces in Vanni at the end of the war.
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Outbreak of chicken pox, hepatitis reported in internment camps

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 June 2009, 15:12 GMT]
Outbreak of chickenpox and hepatitis reported from internment camps located in Vavuniyaa where hundred of thousands of internally displaced people from Vanni have been sheltered. More than twelve thousand inmates are reported to have been still suffering from chickenpox. 40 to 50 fresh cases of chickenpox are reported daily.
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25 elderly refugees sheltered in Vavuniyaa Home die in one month

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 June 2009, 10:47 GMT]
Twenty five elderly Tamil refugees affected by the war and the conditions prevailing in the internment camps in Vavuniyaa died in one month after being shifted to an elders’ home run by Vavuniyaa Koayilku'lam Sivan Koayil administration. Two more IDPs have been warded in the Vavuniyaa general hospital due to deterioration of their health, according to the sources at the District Secretariat.
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Opposition MPs denied access to Vanni internment camps

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 June 2009, 11:36 GMT]
“Sri Lanka government has not yet permitted the opposition parliamentarians to see the Tamil civilians held in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camps in Vavuniyaa in order to learn of their problems and help them,” Gayantha Karunathilaka, United National Party (UNP) media spokesman, said in a press meet held Wednesday at the office of the leader of the opposition in Colombo.
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CPA’s FR petition regarding IDPs fixed for further inquiry

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 June 2009, 11:25 GMT]
The Fundamental Rights petition filed by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka challenging the curtailment of internally displaced persons (IDPs) interned in the camps located in Vavuniyaa was listed for further inquiry on July 10 following the application made by the State Counsel that he needed more time to obtain instruction from the Attorney General. The FR petition came up for inquiry Thursday before a three member Bench of the Supreme Court, legal sources said.
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Sinhalicisation insinuated in Musali

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 June 2009, 09:45 GMT]
Top Sri Lankan military officials appointed by SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa as Competent Authority in charge of resettlement of Tamils displaced from Vanni have finalised a plan to settle 200 Sinhalese people in Musali where 2,000 displaced Tamils have been allowed to resettle, informed civil officials in Vavuniyaa told TamilNet Friday. More than 4,500 civilians were forced to flee Musali division in Mannnaar district in September 2007.
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Two UN staff reported missing in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 June 2009, 09:32 GMT]
A Tamil staff of United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and another Tamil staff of the UNHCR, both attached to the UN offices in Vavuniyaa have been reported missing for the past 3 days, civil sources in Vavuniyaa said.
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Court directs Colombo to grant permission to camp visit by MPs

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 June 2009, 03:28 GMT]
The Sri Lankan Supreme Court directed the State Counsel to seek permission from the Defence Secretary to grant permission to Members of Parliament to visit the camps occupied by the internally displaced persons in a Fundamental Rights petition filed by members of SL Parliament. The petitioner MPs said that they had sought permission from the relevant authorities to visit the IDP camps and the hospitals in Mannaar, Vavuniyaa and other places that house the civilians who had fled the war zone and surrendered to the Sri Lankan forces, but permission has not been granted.
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SL Police shoot 3 persons dead in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 18 June 2009, 06:49 GMT]
A special team of the Sri Lankan Police in Vavuniyaa shot and killed three persons at Nelukku'lam cemetery area in Vavuniyaa division in the early hours of Thursday around 2:30 a.m. Their identities have not been revealed by the police. But, the police claimed that the victims belonged to a gang of robbers and that they were shot by the police in an encounter. However, informed sources in Vavuniyaa said there was a clash between LTTE cadres and the Police.
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Seeman alleges abduction of young girls by SLA in Vavuniyaa internment camps

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 June 2009, 13:42 GMT]
Popular Film Director Seeman on Sunday said he had received reliable information from the captives inside the internment camps in Vavuniyaa that the Sri Lankan police and military establishment have started to 'filter and separate teenage girls from their families during the latest hours in large numbers. Mr. Seeman from Tamil Nadu questioned how this 'filtering' of young girls could take place inside the internment camps without any monitoring by the UN agencies present in Vavuniyaa.
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Camp disappearances reach alarming levels - Rights advocate

[TamilNet, Sunday, 14 June 2009, 04:21 GMT]
Sunila Abeysekera, a human rights activist and executive director of INFORM human rights documentation center in Sri Lanka, in an interview to Real News Network in Toronto, accused the Sri Lanka Government authorities of not providing enough attention to the welfare of the nearly 300,000 people in the internment camps who have come to these camps after months of deprivation, and said that the lack of proper registration procedures for the people inside the camp is providing Colombo a free hand in facilitating the Paramilitaries to take youths out of the camps in large numbers without any accountability.
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FR petition in SL Supreme Court against detaining Vanni IDPs

[TamilNet, Friday, 12 June 2009, 22:48 GMT]
The Centre for Police Alternatives (CPA) Friday filed a Fundamental Rights Petition in the Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court challenging the detention of hundreds of thousands of Vanni displaced Tamil families in the camps located in Cheddiku'lam and Vavuniyaa under the Emergency Regulations thus violating the fundamental rights of them such as freedom of movement and depriving employment opportunities without restriction, enshrined in the constitution, legal sources said.
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62 dead bodies of IDPs unclaimed at hospital mortuary in Vavuniyaa

[TamilNet, Thursday, 11 June 2009, 14:00 GMT]
Sixty two bodies of Tamil refugees died in internment camps in Vavuniyaa and Cheddiku'lam have been kept in the mortuary of Vavuniyaa general hospital awaiting orders of the Magistrate’s Court to conduct common burial, legal sources said. Meanwhile, medical sources said that fifty one of the victims were elderly IDPs and the remaining infants, died during delivery.
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SLA refuses to release 6 Catholic priests detained in Vavuniyaa SLA camps

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 10 June 2009, 19:57 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) High Command rejected a request made by Jaffna Bishop, Rt. Rev. Thomas Saundaranayagam, to release the six Catholic priests from Vanni held in one of the SLA detention centres in Vavuniyaa as they are suffering from illness, Jaffna Bishop House sources said. The Bishop had made the request to Defence Secretary to allow the six priests to get back to their parishes, the sources added.
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