Chandrika’s mistrust of media manifest in censorship- CPJ

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2001, 08:26 GMT]
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists, the New York based media watchdog, said Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's censorship policy “is just one manifestation of her basic mistrust for the media” and that she had introduced emergency regulations that included “some of the harshest censorship measures ever imposed in the country” in a statement ‘Attacks on journalists 2000’ issued Monday. CPJ said that in Sri Lanka, “Violent attacks against journalists were typically committed with impunity”. “Even when the government has paid nominal attention to pursuing justice, it has come up short”, notes the statement.
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Lawyers slam Emergency, PTA wrongs

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2001, 17:30 GMT]
(NEWS FEATURE) "The war and emergency cannot be excuses for completely denying all the rights of citizens. Human rights activists who speak of the limits of the government's power are looked upon as enemies of the state", said Mr. V.TThamilmaran, senior lecturer in law at the University of Colombo, addressing a two-day seminar on human rights education in Trincomalee Sunday. "Persons arrested and detained under the Emergency Regulations are remanded few months later by the Trincomalee courts under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, on applications made by the Police. Is this not a violation of human rights? Is it not contrary to the law?" asked Mr. Arumugam Jegasothy, President of the Trincomalee Bar Association, in his inaugural address Saturday.
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TID arrests human rights lawyer

[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 March 2001, 14:40 GMT]
The Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) of the Sri Lanka Police Sunday arrested Mr. Kanaka Namanathan, a human rights activist and lawyer in Batticaloa. A special unit of the TID that came to Batticaloa Sunday arrested Mr. Namanathan at his residence in Kallady, a suburb of the town this afternoon around 2 p.m. family members said. The lawyer was taken to Colombo by the TID unit soon after his arrest.
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Nedunkerni OPD reopens, residents resettle

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 March 2001, 17:36 GMT]
The OPD of the Nedunkerni hospital reopened Wednesday after more than three years, according to reports reaching Vavuniya. The peripheral hospital was mostly destroyed and thousands of families in this Vanni town were rendered refugees overnight when the Sri Lanka army captured the general area of Nedunkerni from the Liberation Tigers in May 1997, during the first phase of Jaya Sikurui, the biggest military operation ever attempted by Colombo. The Tigers retook Nedunkerni, 42 kilometres northeast of Vavuniya, in November 1999. More than a thousand families have been resettled here since January this year after extensive clearing of anti personnel mines (APLM) in the town and its hinterland, government officials in Vavuniya said.
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CWC calls off protest, settles for Rs.280

[TamilNet, Thursday, 15 March 2001, 13:04 GMT]
The Ceylon Workers Congress called off its Satyagraha (protest) campaign Thursday, settling for a nine-rupee raise in the daily wage for tea workers. Instead of granting the 400-rupee monthly cost of living allowance demanded by the protesting work force and the CWC, the tea companies agreed to a 9 rupee (11 US cents) raise and also to pay a 5-rupee per day conditional work incentive (the current daily wage is 107 rupees-1.24 USD).
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Official apathy, malnutrition plague Trinco refugees

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2001, 21:30 GMT]
(NEWS FEATURE) Over 75 percent of refugee children under five living in conflict zones of the northeastern province suffer from malnutrition, according to preliminary surveys by government and NGO officials presented at a three-day workshop inaugurated Wednesday morning at Trincomalee Town Hall under the auspices of Sri Lanka's Ministry of Planning and Implementation. The surveys indicate that the majority of mothers among the displaced in these regions suffer from malnutrition during pregnancy and after childbirth.
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Deserter obduracy gets amnesty extension

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2001, 18:48 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army extended until midnight Thursday 15 March a general amnesty for thousands of its deserters who are still at large. An amnesty was announced in January this year and another from 6 March to Wednesday 14 midnight. Frequent amnesties, harsh measures against businesses employing deserters, search operations by Police and exhortations and pleas by leading Buddhist priests have brought few deserters back to the ranks. Military analysts say that 15000 to 20000 deserters are at large at any given time. According to a report in the Colombo press, at least 7000 soldiers deserted their units with weapons. Police point the finger at these for the growing crime rate and the rise of well-armed underworld gangs in many parts of the island, mainly in the capital Colombo.
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CWC makes offer to end tea crisis

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 14 March 2001, 11:04 GMT]
The Ceylon Workers Congress leader Arumugan Thondaman said Wednesday following talks Wednesday with Minister for Labour Mr. Alavi Moulana MP that his union might settle for 250 rupees cost of living allowance instead of the 400 demanded by workers in Sri Lanka's tea plantations.
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No funds for analysis says CID

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 March 2001, 19:46 GMT]
(Correction) The Criminal Investigation Department of the Sri Lankan Police told the magistrate hearing the Chemmani case Tuesday in Colombo that the DNA and forensic reports on the Chemmani skeletal remains were not available because the Ministry of Defence had not allocated funds for sending the bones for forensic examination abroad. The CID had got quotations for the forensic examination of the skeletal remains and the DNA tests of the blood samples taken from the next of kin of the persons who were believed killed and buried in Chemmani.
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Managing war, not economy central question –Minister

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 March 2001, 18:36 GMT]
“Today it is no longer a simple question of managing an economy. The real and predominant question is the managing of the war”. “A war as is waged by the LTTE has its several facets. The LTTE is quite a military machine that can very competently engage in conventional warfare with the added advantage of innovative tactics which they derive from the guerilla aspect of their war organization. A Combination of these two aspects can be deadly especially when they (the Tigers) had the time from about 1987 to 1993 to consolidate their positions in the open and in the jungles” said Mr. Batty Weerakon, a senior cabinet minister of the People’s Alliance government, speaking in Parliament Tuesday on his government’s budget.
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Northeast doctors protest discrimination

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 13 March 2001, 15:50 GMT]
“Refusing to grant a section of employees working in a government department allowances because of their place of birth despite their equal standing with the other employees is discriminatory. This action compels us to the conclusion that the permanent residents of the north and east are second-class citizens” said a statement issued by doctors on strike in government hospitals in the north and east Tuesday.
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Police arrest released Tamil political prisoner

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2001, 18:31 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Police in Valaichenai town, 32 kilometres north of Batticaloa, arrested Monday a youth who had spent more than three years in the Kalutara prison and was released by the Colombo high court six months ago. Relatives said the Police arrested the youth on being told to do so by a Sri Lanka Army informant. “The re-arrest and detention of Tamil political prisoners who have been cleared and released by the courts makes a travesty of the judicial process in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, the Police and the army do it often for arbitrary reasons, purely on the strength of the powers given them under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Emergency Regulations”, a lawyer in Batticaloa told Tamilnet.
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Bindunuweva commission’s mandate queried

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2001, 18:16 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government said Monday that it would appoint a one-man commission to probe into the massacre of the inmates of the Bindudunuweva Rehabilitation camp near the hill country town of Bandarawela. Young Tamils, mostly former guerrillas from the eastern province, were hacked to death by a well-armed Sinhala gang on 25 October last year. Some inmates were thrown into a timber-sawing machine that chopped them to pieces. The Sri Lankan Police or the government are yet to name the culprits. In statement issued Monday night the Sri Lankan government said that the President has appointed P.H.K Kulatilake, a judge of the Court of Appeal, to probe the massacre. This is the second commission of inquiry ever appointed by Colombo to probe a massacre of Tamils. “The merit of this commission and its effectiveness can be judged only when its mandate as stipulated by the government is clearly laid out”, a human rights lawyer in Colombo said.
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For a few litres more....

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2001, 14:22 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Navy barred more than eighty fishermen in Pallimunai, a coastal suburb of Mannar town, from setting out to sea since Thursday 8 March for taking in their boats 10 litres of kerosene above the quantity permitted under the unwritten restrictions of the Vanni embargo. A spokesman for the Pallimunai fishermen said Sunday that they had got special permission from the Police for taking the additional 10 litres per boat as they were going to fish in the seas near Iranaithivu and Naachchikudah, more than forty sea miles north of Mannar.
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War victims organize in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 March 2001, 10:34 GMT]
A Sinhala fisherman who lost a limb when the Sri Lanka Navy attacked his boat in the seas off Trincomalee was elected President of an association of persons disabled due to the war that was formed in the eastern port town this week. War and torture victims in the north and east get little assistance from the Sri Lankan government, due to red tape and sheer discrimination.
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SLAF celebrates golden jubilee with air show

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 March 2001, 12:33 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Air Force celebrated its golden jubilee in Colombo Friday with a show by more than fifty aircraft, including a group from the Indian Air Force and Colomboís recently acquired Mig 27s and Israeli built Kfirs . A seventy-member team from the Indian Air Force was a special feature of the air display.
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Increased taxes finance war machine

[TamilNet, Friday, 09 March 2001, 01:51 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government increased the National Security Levy (NSL) it imposes on goods and services by one percent, introduced a 25 percent surcharge on corporate taxes, doubled airport tax, hiked up taxes on punters and casinos, among a series measures to raise revenue to manage the island's cash strapped economy and to finance an unwieldy war machine. Prof. G.L Pieris, Junior Minister for Finance, said that his government has allocated 75 billion rupees for defense this year. Analysts said that this figure would eventually be much higher.
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Marxists, UNP mark women's day, NGO flops

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 March 2001, 16:30 GMT]
The women's wing of Sri Lankas radical Marxist Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Liberation Front) staged a street play in the heart of Colombos business hub to mark International women's day.
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‘Prolonged detention of Jaffna journalist worrying’ - RSF

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 March 2001, 11:30 GMT]
In a letter to the Sri Lankan Minister of Justice, Constitutional Affairs and National Integration, Professor G. L. Peiris, Thursday, Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders RSF), the Paris based media watchdog, called for the release of Subramaniam Thiruchelvan, the correspondent for the state run Tamil daily Thinakaran in Point Pedro in Jaffna. The journalist has been detained by the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) since 2 January 2001. Robert Ménard, general secretary of RSF, notes in his letter that “this prolonged and excessive detention of a journalist from the Jaffna peninsula is a very worrying warning to all media professionals working there, especially since it has occurred a few months after the still unpunished crime against reporter Mayilvaganam Nimalarajan from Jaffna.”
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US ambassador visits mass graves site in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 07 March 2001, 19:11 GMT]
"If you say that the LTTE is a terrorist organization then you must also accept that the Sri Lankan government is promoting terrorism in the country", representatives from the University of Jaffna told the US ambassador for Sri Lanka, Mr. Ashley Wills, during a discussion Wednesday in the northern town.
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