300 Tamils disappear in Batticaloa during SLA rule, alleges TNA

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 June 2011, 02:02 GMT]
More than three hundred youths of both sexes have been reported disappeared after abduction in the Batticaloa district since the eastern province was brought under the control of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA), said Mr.P. Selvarasa, district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian during the debate on the extending the State of Emergency for another month that took place in Sri Lanka's parliament on Wednesday.
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Blake should not mislead Tamils again: Mano Ganesan

[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 May 2011, 05:38 GMT]
Mano Ganesan, the leader of the Democratic Peoples Front (DPF), who was once named by then US State Secretary Condoleezza Rice, in a statement issued on Wednesday, reminded the Tamils that the visiting US Asst Secretary Robert Blake was instrumental in providing US government's unconditional support to the war waged by the Sri Lankan state against Tamils. The “US government wanted put out a savior impression. But in real it did not bother about the Tamil civilian causalities,” Mr. Mano Ganesan said. “International community should act decisively with the GoSL. It is time that US assistant state secretary for central and south Asia affaires Robert O Blake lives upto his earlier ambassadorial preaching. He should not mislead the Tamils again.”
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BTF requests UN to release Panel report public, urges focus on Tamil Genocide in May

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 April 2011, 14:02 GMT]
The British Tamils Forum (BTF) has called upon global Tamils to come together in breaking the international silence on Tamil genocide while marking the remembrance this year of those who perished in Mu'l'livaaykkaal in May 2009. “Focusing the genocidal onslaught by the Sri Lankan state on Eezham Tamils in Mu'l'livaaykkaal and reiterating the now widely acknowledged demand for international investigations on war crimes and crimes against humanity, we should all target our efforts in convincing the global community on the core theme of the crime of genocide, which is establishing the ‘intent’ on the part of the Sri Lankan state behind a systematic destruction of the Eezham Tamil nation in the island,” Kana Nirmalan, a Human Rights activist of the BTF said when contacted by TamilNet Wednesday, following a media statement the organisation issued urging the UN to make the Panel report public.
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Abductions of under-age youth escalate in North

[TamilNet, Thursday, 07 April 2011, 23:05 GMT]
Unidentified men from South last Sunday abducted a 13-year-old Tamil boy, K. Diluxon, from Uruththirapuram in Ki'linochchi. The boy managed to escape from his abductors while they parked their vehicle in Vavuniyaa. Meanwhile, a 17-year-old girl, Sangarapillai Maithrayi, from Vallaarai in Thenmaraadchi in Jaffna district was reported missing since Monday, according to complaints registered at Human Rights Commission in Jaffna.
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Rajapaksa's LLRC seeks Buddhist Prelates guidance to prepare final report

[TamilNet, Sunday, 03 April 2011, 13:34 GMT]
Members of Rajapaksa appointed Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) had met the Mahanayaka Theras of the Malwatte and Asgiriya Chapters last week to seek guidance before preparing the final report scheduled to be presented by May 15, according to a news report published in English weekly Lakbima on Sunday. The Buddhist prelates exercise a dominant influence on the Sri Lankan regime.
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Poverty driving children to work in hotels, houses in East

[TamilNet, Thursday, 24 March 2011, 11:21 GMT]
Due to extreme poverty, over 3,250 children are working in houses and eating houses in the eastern province without attending schools. These children come from families affected by military conflict and natural disaster, according Provincial Education Minister Mr.Wimalaweera Dissanayake.
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EU team meets military governor, finds no time for civil groups in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 25 February 2011, 15:13 GMT]
The parents and relatives of abducted and ‘missing’ youth in Jaffna were thoroughly disappointed, as the visiting European Union team could not find time to meet their representatives or receive petitions from them. They were further frustrated by the act of the team choosing to meet on Thursday the SL colonial governor in Jaffna Maj. Gen. Chandrasri, who is accused of many abductions and disappearances when he was commanding the SL military in Jaffna. The EU team that showed much keenness in its ‘aid’ related investments and in knowing the ways the SL colonial administration functions in Jaffna, by its gesture, signals assent to the SL military rule of Eezham Tamils, civil groups said. Conceding synthesis of occupying military and civil service, a high official in Jaffna told the team that the military are also ‘government servants’.
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SL Military enforces photo-registration of families in Valikaamam, Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 February 2011, 19:03 GMT]
Against their wishes, the local officials are forced by the occupying military to undertake Nazi-style photo registration of families in the Jaffna Peninsula. A meeting to this effect was convened at Uduvil Girls College last week by the commanders of the 513 division of Sri Lanka Army, headquartered at Uduvil. Village officials and SL police officials of Cha’ndilippaay, Maanippaay, Thillippazhai and Chunnaakam polici divisions were asked to attend this meeting. Despite their protests, the village officials attended the meeting were instructed to collaborate with the military in the nearest camps during the registration procedures. Civil officials in Jaffna are highly worried that their participation in the military project would earn them animosity of the public.
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‘Nazi-style registration of civilians in Jaffna’

[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 February 2011, 12:08 GMT]
The occupying SL military in Jaffna is directly engaged in registration of individuals and families in the Jaffna peninsula in recent times. Everyday, covering area by area, the SL military is distributing forms to collect information and is insisting of family photographs along with children to be given to them. The activity of the SL military, reminding the Nazi practice before the Holocaust, creates terror in the minds of the people in Jaffna, said a human rights activist in Jaffna. Meanwhile, undeclared curfew is imposed in Jaffna by the SL military and police, who have brought the street movement of people almost to an end after 6:00 p.m. by harassing them through numerous checkpoints after dusk.
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TNPF boycotts local elections protesting militarisation of electoral politics

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 26 January 2011, 23:09 GMT]
Abductions, killings, militarisation of civil affairs and the Sri Lankan state involving its military arm into the electoral politics, have rendered democratic participation in local elections in the Tamil homeland meaningless, said Tamil National People's Front (TNPF) in a statement issued Wednesday announcing that the front had decided to avoid participation in the local elections.
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Forced recruitment of traders by Colombo to contest elections in Jaffna, Vanni

[TamilNet, Monday, 24 January 2011, 22:29 GMT]
Colombo’s terror campaign and abductions in Jaffna and Vanni now aim at forced recruitment of traders to contest local bodies elections under Mahinda Rajapaksa’s SLFP ticket, sources in Jaffna said. In recent days, many leaders of traders associations in Jaffna were abducted by SL Army officers coming to their houses and were taken to Colombo. They were not told why were they abducted and where were they being taken. They were later released in Colombo after forcefully getting signatures from them to contest elections in Jaffna and Vanni, under the SLFP. The traders said they didn’t want to contest but were afraid of their lives. Meanwhile, R. Ankajan, SLFP coordinator in Jaffna, is ‘recruiting’ university students to campaign in the elections.
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Terror in Jaffna is only a hair in elephant’s tail: SL prime minister

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 January 2011, 09:20 GMT]
“Crimes are taking place everywhere in the world. […] If you compare the crimes in the whole country to an elephant, what is happening in Jaffna is only a hair of that elephant’s tail,” said Sri Lanka Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne in the SL parliament Thursday, answering accusations brought out by Tamil National Alliance (TNA). Dismissing allegations, and explaining that alleged killings and abductions are suicides and elopements, Leader of the House, Nimal Siripala de Silva charged TNA that it was deliberately trying to draw a grim picture of the situation in Jaffna, to fulfil the vested interests of the Tamil Diaspora, Daily Mirror in Colombo reported Friday.
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News reports irk Rajapaksa in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 January 2011, 00:05 GMT]
SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa visiting Jaffna and ‘celebrating’ Pongkal on Monday reacted to media reports that pointed out his ‘conspicuous silence’ about an aid he was politically capitalising. Meanwhile, the SL president who is coupling a terror campaign with his campaign for a colonial polity, ‘celebrating’ a Tamil agrarian festival in military occupied Jaffna, spending millions of rupees and intimidating people to attend it, while the agricultural lands of the Tamil country are seriously deluged in the floods making hundreds of thousands homeless, was nauseating to the public, media sources in Jaffna said. But addressing along with Rajapaksa, the SL minister and the ‘host’ of the event, Douglas Devananda declared that “today the polity of collaboration is on its victorious march.”
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Gotabhaya-led team responsible for killings, abductions in North

[TamilNet, Thursday, 13 January 2011, 00:15 GMT]
An esoteric team of military intelligence led by Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is directly involved in the killings and abductions in the North, informed circles in Colombo said, citing a high-ranking military officer. The SL military in Jaffna is informed of any such operations of this team only when it is being carried out and it is instructed to provide only logistical support to those operations whenever required, the sources further said, adding that people who are targeted by this killer squad could hardly come back alive. The said squad reportedly maintains an operational unit in Vavuniyaa near the Oamanthai check post.
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Five of six Mannaar abductees released, Colombo involvement exposed

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 January 2011, 08:40 GMT]
Five of six civilians abducted from Mannaar on Thursday, including Jazeel Jaharil whose abduction created confrontation between the abductors and his relatives exposing the squads link with Sri Lankan military, returned Friday evening from Colombo and were handed over to their relatives Saturday early morning by the Sri Lankan Police. Earlier reports said 4 persons were abducted on Thursday. But, according to latest information 6 persons were abducted that day. No information is available about the other person, Mr. Sasi, who is also reported missing on Thursday.
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Family man reported missing in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 10 January 2011, 01:46 GMT]
A 52-year-old man from Urumpiraay in Valikaamam, Jaffna, has been reported missing since Friday. Meanwhile, human rights activists in Jaffna express fear that there were similar abductions have not been registered by the media as the Sri Lankan police authorities systematically suppress information reaching media on complaints of abductions and disappearances. The ‘effective’ subjugation of Tamils by the militarised Sri Lankan civil administration has silenced the community, from reporting information that could reach human rights activists or journalists as the public fears repercussions from the ‘white-van’ squad.
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Kosovo Ex-Army commanders charged of War Crimes

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 January 2011, 21:46 GMT]
European Union (EU) prosecutors have charged former Kosovo Army Commanders, Sabit Geci, 52, and Riza Alija, 50, of "war crimes against civilian population" committed in two camps in Albania towards the end of Kosovo war, according to the indictment. The two were charged with committing war crimes on Kosavars fleeing the war and who were suspected of collaborating with Serbia or having political views different from the Kosavar Army. The prosecuters belong to the 3000-member EU Rule of Law (EULEX) mission which was launched in December 2008 to enforce the rule of law in the newly declared Kosovo and to supervise Kosovo's police, customs, and judiciary.
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Colombo attempts to divert attention from increasing lawlessness in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 January 2011, 18:00 GMT]
Colombo is campaigning to portray the continually escalating incidents of civilian murders, disappearance and robberies as being the result of individual enmities and family squabbles among the local population, civil sources in Jaffna said. Jaffna district Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Neville Padmadeva, speaking at a conference to explore the reasons for the increasing crimes, held in Jaffna’s Veerasingham Hall Friday, in the presence of NGOs, journalists and civil society members, advanced this view, according to attendees. Colombo is keen to divert the attention of the media and the international community from focusing on Sri Lanka Security forces saturating Jaffna district, and Colombo’s tacit sanction to Jaffna-deployed Sri Lanka soldiers and collaborating paramilitaries to create fear among the public to suppress dissent, civil sources in Jaffna said.
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JDS condemns silence of Colombo media over terror campaign in North

[TamilNet, Saturday, 08 January 2011, 08:27 GMT]
Detailing the recent killings, abductions and other atrocities in the SL military occupied North, the Journalists For Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), an exiled organisation of journalists, on Friday condemned the silence of Sinhala and English media in Colombo over the terror campaign. Instead, these media highlight only the explanations from the side of the SL government, the report said. The JDS statement exposed the latest twist of portrayal of the situation by SL media minister and government spokesperson Keheliya Rambukwella, who wanted to pass the blame on "elements seeking tarnish the image of Colombo government internationally". The JDS statement, with details of earlier unreported crimes, noted that human rights violations not being exposed is high in Vanni as journalists and aid workers were barred from entering Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu districts.
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EPDP, SLA, confuse public, lottery-fraud arrested in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 January 2011, 03:31 GMT]
An alleged EPDP member from Vavuniyaa faced the brunt of public anger in Jaffna as he was said to be moving in suspicious ways and was selling fake lottery tickets in Martin Road, Jaffna on Thursday. SL Police, on information from public, arrested him. He is said to have confessed his membership with the EPDP. There was no response from the side of the EPDP. Meanwhile, EPDP leader and SL minister Douglas Devananda in the SL parliament on Tuesday said that he didn’t want to embarrass the SL government internationally by raising the plight of the fear-engulfed people in Jaffna. In the meantime, the public in Jaffna senses EPDP and SLA indirectly passing blame on each other over the systematic infliction of terror by manipulative forces controlling the both.
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