Salli woman challenges case transfer

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 June 2001, 19:15 GMT]
The Colombo High Court Friday fixed the argument in the transfer application filed by the Commanding Officer of the Sri Lanka Navy detachment in Nilaveli, the first respondent in the Salli Habeas Corpus Application Case, for July 26. Nilaveli is 12 kilometres north of Trincomalee. Mr.Jeyakili was arrested by the Navy while fishing in the sea with two colleagues on 25 February 2000. The Navy released Mr. Jeyakili's colleagues two days later, but denied that it had arrested him. The fisherman is believed killed.
Full story >>

Tamil alliance calls for 'Hartal' against rape

[TamilNet, Friday, 29 June 2001, 14:09 GMT]
The ten Tamil party alliance said in Colombo Friday that itís calling a general shut down in the Northern and Eastern provinces on 6 July as a protest against the rape of Tamil women by Sri Lankan security forces. Addressing a press conference Friday afternoon at the Grand Oriental Hotel in downtown Colombo, spokesmen for the Tamil alliance said that there would be a protest demonstration in Colombo and a strike in the tea and rubber plantations. They said that the rape of the Tamil girl at the Police checkpoint in Maradana in downtown Colombo on 25 June "once again underscores the fact that the draconian Emergency Regulations promote torture and rape of Tamil women by Sri Lankan security forces".
Full story >>

Rights watchdog releases torture camp account

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 June 2001, 15:50 GMT]
Asian Human Rights Commission said Thursday it is issuing an eyewitness account of extreme physical and psychological torture, overcrowding and hundreds of disappearances/ extrajudicial killings at an illegal military detention camp in Wehera, Kurunegala district, 25 miles from Kandy run by the man being appointed Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia, Major General Janaka Perera.
Full story >>

No faith motion on 16 July ñ Acting President

[TamilNet, Thursday, 28 June 2001, 14:02 GMT]
Speaking at ceremony to honour a Buddhist monk in Piliyandala, an outer suburb of Colombo, this afternoon Sri Lanka's acting President Ratnasiri Wickremanayaka said that the no confidence motion against the government by the opposition would be taken up for debate in the Parliament on 16, 17 and18 of July.
Full story >>

Court rejects confession under torture

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 June 2001, 12:50 GMT]
The Eastern High Court in Trincomalee Friday acquitted the accused in the murder four years ago of former Trincomalee District Parliamentarian M.E.H.Maharoof. The accused had been in remand at Kalutara prisons for the four years. "I acquit the accused as I cannot accept his confession made to the police voluntary and also due to contradictory and inconsistent evidence led by the prosecution," said High Court Judge Mr.A.N.Ramachandran in his order delivered Friday.
Full story >>

Driver, schoolboy missing in Mannar

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 26 June 2001, 02:04 GMT]
The Mannar Citizens’ Committee Monday received four complaints about two disappearances and two arrests. Arumugam Thevarajah, 40, a driver who went to the Sri Lanka Army's pass office in Mannar town on 18 June to obtain a temporary resident permit to stay in the suburb of Panankattikottu, did not return home and is missing since then, according to a complaint lodged by his sister Kanapathipillai Thevanayagi. A fifteen-year-old student in Mannar has also been reported missing since 13 June. Relatives who fear that he might have been arrested and detained have sought the Citizens’ Committee’s assistance to trace him.
Full story >>

Girl raped in Police checkpoint

[TamilNet, Monday, 25 June 2001, 15:23 GMT]
Three Policemen on duty at a checkpoint in downtown Colombo were arrested Monday for gang raping a girl in the early hours of the morning on Sunday. The girl was returning from work with a boy when she was stopped at the Police checkpoint near the Central Theatre in Maradana in downtown Colombo around 4.45 a.m. The Policemen had allegedly gang raped the girl after forcing her inside their checkpoint by threatening her that they would arrest and detain her on suspicion that she is a spy of the Liberation Tigers if she refused to get into the bunker. Any member of the Sri Lankan security forces regardless of his/her rank can arrest anyone if she/he has “reasonable ground” to suspect that the person has links with the Liberation Tigers under the provisions of the Emergency Regulations (18.1).
Full story >>

Opposition submits no confidence motion against the govt.

[TamilNet, Friday, 22 June 2001, 07:03 GMT]
A motion of no confidence against the ruling People's Alliance government, signed by 97 MPs was handed over to the speaker of the house Friday morning. The main opposition United National Party (UNP) said it is confident of defeating the government.
Full story >>

Rauff Hakeem removed from cabinet

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 June 2001, 03:05 GMT]
Mr. Rauff Hakeem, senior minister and the leader of the main coalition partner of Sri Lanka's ruling People's Alliance government, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress was removed from the cabinet, state media announced Wednesday morning. He was stripped of his cabinet portfolio on the directions of the President, Sri Lankan government sources said. Meanwhile the Speaker of the Sri Lankan Parliament ruled Wednesday that the Supreme court has no right to overule the national legislature on the question of impeaching the Chief Justice.
Full story >>

Protests as Janaka Pereraís appointment proceeds

[TamilNet, Monday, 18 June 2001, 16:03 GMT]
(News Feature) Hundreds of Tamils protested outside Australia's Parliament Monday over the government's acceptance of a Sri Lanka Army General accused of human rights violations as Colombo's High Commissioner to Canberra. Amnesty International also voiced its opposition, but Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said his Sri Lankan counterpart, Lakshman Kadirgamar, had given his "personal assurance" that Major General Retd.) Janaka Perera is a "suitable and worthy appointment."
Full story >>

ICRC war surgery seminar in Colombo

[TamilNet, Friday, 15 June 2001, 21:10 GMT]
"Since its establishment 138 years ago, the main goal of the ICRC has been to assist and protect, as a neutral intermediary, the victims of armed conflict. The ICRC bases its mandate on rules of international humanitarian law, the rules of war, which it has helped to develop and promote, and which have culminated in the four Geneva conventions and their Additional Protocols. The Geneva Conventions have been ratified by 189 states (including Sri Lanka) , which makes these humanitarian provisions the most widely recognised body of international law" said the head of Delegation, ICRC Colombo, Ms. Isabelle Barras, in her welcome address at the 2-day 'seminar on War Surgery' which opened in Colombo Friday.
Full story >>

Call for permanent UN rights office

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 13 June 2001, 11:17 GMT]
"The report of the Presidential Commission that inquired into the disappearances taken place in the northeast of country is still in the cupboard. We do not know when that report will be implemented. Justice delayed is justice denied" said Attorney-at-Law Kasinathar Sivapalan, and a human rights activist, presiding over a function held in Trincomalee on Tuesday to publish the Tamil edition of the Human Development Report-2000, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Full story >>

Damage control as peace process hits the rocks

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 June 2001, 05:15 GMT]
(News Feature) The bi-lateral decision by Norway and Sri Lanka last Thursday, at the latter's insistence, to reduce the prominence of Oslo's peace envoy, Erik Solheim, has delivered an unexpected and severe blow to the Liberation TigersÇ confidence in the Norwegian initiative, political analysts said Monday. Sri Lanka's state-media Monday strove to give the impression that the process was still on track, but the LTTE's strongly worded statement Sunday and sentiments being expressed by Tamil politicians and media emphasised the depth of the crisis, they said.
Full story >>

Jaffna hospital a human shield - doctors

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 June 2001, 21:31 GMT]
"The Jaffna hospital has been a human shield since 1996. As such the use of some of its buildings and passages is still prohibited. Our reasonable request to remove the Sri Lanka army camp near the Jaffna hospital in consideration of the safety of its patients and staff and to declare it and its environs as a demilitarised zone under the supervision of the ICRC has not been heeded until this day", said Medical officers in Jaffna who went on a protest strike along with their colleagues in the north and east of Sri Lanka Monday.
Full story >>

Resident pass restrictions afflict Trinco too

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 June 2001, 19:01 GMT]
"The Police exert pressure on Tamil persons who temporarily reside in Trincomalee town to return to their own areas when they go to police stations to renew their resident permits every month", said Mr. Soosaipillai Jesuthasan, Secretary of the Trincomalee District Refugees' Welfare Association speaking at a meeting between representatives of non-governmental organizations in Trincomalee and Mr.Selvakumaran, an official of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, Monday.
Full story >>

ICRC course for senior army NCOs

[TamilNet, Monday, 11 June 2001, 18:53 GMT]

Ms.Isabelle Barras, head of the delegation, ICRC, Colombo. (ICRC Photo)

"The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) is an attempt by nations to establish certain minimum standards of conduct for parties to an armed conflict, in order to prevent or at least reduce the suffering of the victims.
Full story >>

LTTE "displeasure" over "unilateral" changes in facilitator's role

[TamilNet, Sunday, 10 June 2001, 08:15 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Sunday expressed its "displeasure" over what it said was Sri Lanka's "unilateral initiative to change the role and function of the Norwegian peace envoy, Erik Solheim." The LTTE said the government had sought to remove Solheim because of his "impeccable neutrality, a rare quality that was viewed with suspicion and apprehension in Sri Lankan political discourse." In a strongly worded statement from its Vanni headquarters, the movement also said "the facilitatory process in peace making is not an exercise in inter-governmental relations; it involves tripartite relations between the facilitator and the parties in conflict," and observed that "[Norway's] bi-lateral decision with the government of Sri Lanka, circumventing the other party in conflict entails a breach of protocol and neutrality."
Full story >>

MP slams Sri Lanka's judicial system

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 June 2001, 21:31 GMT]
"In Sri Lanka the Tamil people are denied the exercise of their sovereignty through the judicial system because fundamentally it is made to work against them. The security forces and the laws of the land are meant to protect the people. But in Sri Lanka the law is harnessed only to protect the security forces. .
Full story >>

Norway's Foreign Minister to Visit Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 June 2001, 13:50 GMT]
Norway's Foreign minister Thorbjørn Jagland will arrive in Colombo Thursday to review the peace process in the island, according to a press release issued by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry Wednesday.
Full story >>