Changes in SLA senior ranks

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 June 2002, 23:07 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Army Tuesday announced changes in some of its senior ranks. Major General L. C. R Goonewardene has been appointed new Chief of Staff while Major General A.E.D Wijendra has been appointed his deputy. Meanwhile press reports said SLA Commander Lt. Gen. Lionel Balagalle would serve an extended term with the approval of the United National Front government.
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New SLA camp at Sakkottai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 June 2002, 21:40 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army has established a new camp at Sakkottai, Vadamaradchi division in Jaffna district. The SLA personnel are engaged in constructing bunkers around the new camp, residents said.
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TRO's Trincomalee office begins work

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 June 2002, 13:16 GMT]
The Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) branch in Trincomalee town is taking action to reconstruct the Karadipuval village, destroyed by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA), and to conduct rehabilitation work in the Kapalthurai village, said Mr.C. Kumarakuruparan, the branch secretary, at a TRO musical night held Sunday in the eastern town.
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Paper lists public places occupied by military

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 11 June 2002, 12:36 GMT]
The Sri Lankan military is occupying at least 139 places of worship, 74 schools and 113 public buildings across the north and east of the island in violation of the permanent ceasefire between the government and the Liberation Tigers, the Tamil Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday. The London-based weekly published the details, categorised by type and district, of the public locations it said are presently under military occupation.
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Students boycott classes over Army presence

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 June 2002, 11:43 GMT]
The students of Point Pedro Hartley College and Methodist Girls College in Vadamaradchi division in Jaffna district Monday boycotted their classes demanding that the Sri Lanka Army should vacate their schools immediately as stipulated in the ceasefire agreement signed by the government and the Liberation Tigers.
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Quit notices on Linganagar Tamil families withdrawn

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 June 2002, 05:13 GMT]
The Trincomalee Divisional Secretary (DS) has decided to withdraw ejectment applications filed in the magistrateís court under the State Lands (Recovery of Possession) Act against several Tamil residents who live on state lands in the Linganagar area, a suburb in Trincomalee, when the defense counsel submitted that the affidavits of the prosecution were bad in law and not in conformity with the land.
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SLA positions bar temple access

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 June 2002, 02:27 GMT]
Claims by the Sri Lanka Army that its troops have moved out from temples and schools occupied Kommanthurai, located on the Valaichenai road between Vantharumoolai and Chenkalady is a sham since the sentries, roadblocks and restrictions on access to the area continues, local civil society leaders said.
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‘SLA constructions undermine truce’

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 June 2002, 18:04 GMT]
The construction of new camps and bunkers by the Sri Lankan military in Jaffna was undermining the restoration of normalcy and violated the spirit of the ceasefire agreement between the LTTE an the government, the head of the Liberation Tigers' political section in the northern peninsula, Mr. T. Ilamparithi, told a press briefing Saturday.
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Prohibition on unauthorised felling of treess

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 June 2002, 09:29 GMT]
A notice prohibiting the unauthorized felling of trees in the north and east of Sri Lanka was issued by the Tamil Eelam Forest Conservation Unit of the Liberation Tigers on June 5, to coincide with World Environment Day (WED). Disciplinary action would be taken against violators, a notice published in the Vanni Wednesday said.
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‘LTTE committed to ceasefire’

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 June 2002, 22:20 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers will fully implement the ceasefire agreement between themselves and the Sri Lankan government and are determined to ensure the truce does not fail, a senior member of the LTTE’s political division in Jaffna told a protest rally by students in the northern peninsula Wednesday , according to local press reports.
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Jaffna court seeks EPDP's weapons list

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 June 2002, 12:26 GMT]
The Jaffna magistrate Mr. R. T Vignarajah Friday directed the Sri Lanka Police to serve notice on the Eelam People's Democratic Party's (EPDP) deputy organiser for Jaffna, Mr. K. Manipallavarajan, to appear in court on Monday, 10 May with the list of weapons the paramilitary group had in its possession when the journalist, Mylvaganam Nimalarajan, was murdered. Mr. Nimalarajan, Jaffna correspondent for the BBC, the Tamil daily, Virakesari and the TamilNet was killed at his home on 19 October 2000 by gunmen suspected to be members of the EPDP, a key ally of President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
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Development Forum awaits 'urgent change'

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 June 2002, 23:54 GMT]
(News Feature) The Sri Lankan government needs to move faster in securing peace and implementing economic reforms, the Vice President of the World Bank's South Asia region, Mieko Nishimizu, said Thursday in her concluding statement to the Sri Lanka Development Forum meeting in Colombo.
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'Wont fall for provocations to break truce' - Karikalan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 June 2002, 16:28 GMT]
"The power of our people is greater than the power of the gun. We have come into areas controlled by the Sri Lanka army because we trust the might of the Tamil masses. The commandos of the Special Task Force are telling our people to make coffins when the whole world is exhorting all of us to make peace. In truth, the STF is trying to bury the peace process in those coffins," said Mr. Karikalan, a senior official of the LTTE's political division, addressing a rally of more than five thousand students in Thambiluvil, 76 kilometres south of Batticaloa, Thursday.
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Jaffna fishermen tell Colombo to lift controls

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 June 2002, 15:59 GMT]
Hundreds of protesting fishermen paralysed the Jaffna District Secretariat and blocked traffic in a busy part of the northern town Thursday, demanding that Colombo should do away with restrictions on fishing. Colombo promised to lift draconian controls on fishing in the Northeast within ninety days when it signed the cease-fire agreement with the Liberation Tigers on 24 February. Tamil fishermen, however, say that many restrictions remain. "Don't sell our seas to China", the protesting fishermen shouted, objecting to an alleged proposal by the Sri Lankan government to allow the Chinese start a fisheries project on the Jaffna coast.
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Disabled soldiers march for peace

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 June 2002, 18:33 GMT]
Sri Lankan soldiers maimed in the war against the Liberation Tigers Wednesday marched in downtown Colombo in support of the current peace talks to end the island's conflict. They handed over a memorandum to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
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Senior Tamil leader Sivasithamparam dead

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 05 June 2002, 03:04 GMT]
Mr. Murugesu Sivasithambaram, President of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), the main constituent of the Tamil National Alliance, passed away peacefully early Wednesday morning around two at the age of seventy-nine. The death occurred at the Colombo national hospital after a brief illness.
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SLA builds Nunavil supply route

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 June 2002, 21:10 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army is rapidly constructing a new road connecting Nunavil, located on the Jaffna-Kandy Road (A-9) in Chavakachcheri East, to the Maravanpulo Junction. The SLA is moving forces from parts of Chavacachcheri into a major new 100-acre base established at Nunavil, press reports said.
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New Army base in Columbuthurai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 June 2002, 20:50 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army is constructing a new base near the Maternity Home in Nedunkulam, Columbuthurai in the outskirts of Jaffna town, local press reports said Tuesday. The Army is bulldozing the walls, fences and trees on both sides of the Nedunkulam Road in preparation, the Uthayan newspaper reported.
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SLA bars IDPs returning by sea

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 June 2002, 19:42 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army Tuesday refused to permit more than 32 fishermen and their families who came by sea from the Mullaithivu coast to land in Sakkottai, a fishing village near Pt. Pedro in Jaffna, from which they were displaced by the war in 1995. "The fishermen have come with their gear and other belongings to resettle in their village. It is too expensive for them to bring their boats, out board motors and fishing gear by road to Jaffna. They are stranded in mid sea with women and children because of the SLA is refusing to consider their plight", an official of the Federation of Fisheries Societies in Vadamaradchi told TamilNet.
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Ratwatte's return provokes commotion in Parliament

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 04 June 2002, 17:49 GMT]
Pandemonium prevailed in the Sri Lanka's parliament Thursday morning when the controversial former Deputy Defense Minister General Anurudhha Ratwatte entered the legislature. Members of the ruling party and the opposition shouted at each other when they saw General Ratwatte who was released on bail last week, walking to the well of the House to take his seat. The United National Front accuses him of unleashing violence, intimidation, election rigging and murder while he was the powerful deputy minister of defense in the People's Alliance government from 1995 to 2001
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