Tigers extend cease-fire, warn Sri Lanka over attacks

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 March 2001, 11:44 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers Thursday extended their unilateral cease-fire for another month, till April 24, but warned they would resume armed operations if the Sri Lankan government refused to reciprocate and continued military operations against the LTTE. Pointing out that it has not launched any offensive operations either in the north-east or the southern provinces or capital, Colombo, during the three months of its unilateral cease-fire, the LTTE said in a statement that 133 of its fighters had been killed in attacks by the Sri Lankan military in the same period.
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Civilians killed in air-strikes

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2001, 12:53 GMT]
Four civilians were killed and 11 others were wounded when Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) jets and Naval gun-boats attacked the coastal villages of Chundikulam and Puthumaathalan in the north-eastern Mullaithivu district Wednesday morning, reports said.
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SLN gunboat sunk

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 21 March 2001, 09:19 GMT]
A Sri Lankan Naval gunboat was sunk in a sea battle between the Sea Tigers and the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) off the coast of Mullaithivu in the north-east of the island, security sources said.
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Anuradhapura players pique Batticaloa SLA

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2001, 15:10 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army Monday stopped a street play performed by a Sinhala group in Batticaloa, objecting to a character of the skit who was in military uniform. The group, Saama Sevaya Cultural Forum from the village of Talawa in Anuradhapura, was scheduled to perform the play, Tears of Blood, in several parts of Batticaloa Monday. The SLA at Santhively, 24 kilometres north of Batticaloa town, interrupted the play and took away all 16 members of the troupe performing in the premises of Thadakam, a social service organisation in the area, to its camp for questioning around 11.30 a.m. this morning.
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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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Mutur magistrate sets a precedent

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 March 2001, 10:23 GMT]
The Mutur Magistrate this week issued certificates that the deaths of seven Tamil farmers in the Poomarathadihchenai massacre in Trincomalee district were due to gunshot and cut injuries. Representatives of the International Committee of Red Cross on Thursday went to Poonagar and handed over the death certificates to the families of the dead, enabling them to claim compensation and relief. Magisterial inquests are not held for Tamils who are killed thus in border villages. As a consequence, hundreds of Tamil families in border villages that have lost their sole breadwinners are denied poverty relief as they cannot produce death certificates for the diseased required by the authorities to accept and process their applications.
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SLAF bombs Vanni villages

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 March 2001, 18:03 GMT]
Sri Lanka Air Force jets bombed several villages in the Vanni this afternoon. A refugee was wounded when bombs hit the village of Kombavil in the Puthukudiyiruppu area, according to reports reaching Vavuniya Friday evening. The jets flew four sorties over the area, as civilians in the villages which they bombed fled their homes for shelter, the reports said.
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World Bank visits Batticaloa, deplores project

[TamilNet, Friday, 16 March 2001, 14:47 GMT]
The World Bank is not satisfied with the progress of the development work it is funding in the Batticaloa under the ëNortheast Irrigation and Agriculture Projectí (NIAP) said Bank officials Friday, winding up a three day visit to this eastern district. ce.
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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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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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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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SLA detains three in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2001, 18:21 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army arrested three youth Sunday night in Jaffna town. Nallaiah Navanilavan, 20, Kandasamy Kunaaharan, 27 and Gnanamuttu Anton Amalathaas, 23, were cycling towards the town when they were halted and arrested by soldiers near the Chundikuli checkpoint last night around 7.30 p.m. relatives said. They are being held at the 51-2 brigade headquarters in Jaffna town, according to them.
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SLA offensive thwarted in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 12 March 2001, 13:28 GMT]
Heavy fighting erupted along the Eluthumadduval -Nagarkovil axis in Jaffna from around 10 p.m. Sunday night to 2 a.m. Monday morning when columns of Sri Lanka army infantry backed by armour and heavy artillery attempted to overrun and break through the Forward Defence Localities of the Liberation Tigers, sources in Jaffna said.
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Tamil parties join hill country protest

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 March 2001, 14:38 GMT]
"Many want the Tamils to be slaves in this country. The Tamils of the north and east have problems and the hill country workers have their problems. We should give a fitting answer to the injustices committed against the estate workers by throwing out those who are trying to oppress us", said Selvam Adaikalanathan MP, the leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation, addressing the Ceylon Worker's Congress' Satyagraha (fast) campaign in Hatton Saturday. The Satyagraha for a 4.5 Dollar raise in monthly wages has been on for 20 days with no solution in sight. It has snowballed into an unprecedented protest movement in Sri Lanka's tea producing hill country, cutting across party and trade union differences. The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, said that the plantations have lost 400 million rupees so far because of the protest movement.
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SLA detains eight from refugee camp

[TamilNet, Saturday, 10 March 2001, 12:29 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army arrested thirteen persons from the Poonthottam refugee camp in Vavuniya between Monday 5 March and Thursday this week, a human rights activist in the northern border town told Tamilnet Saturday. Troops rounded up the Poonthottam junction on Monday and arrested 10 young men and women when they were ascertained to be inmates of the refugee camp from their special identity cards. Five were released the following day. Relatives said the SLA has so far not permitted them visit the others who were detained. The army searched the Poonthottam refugee camp both during daytime and nights on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, arresting three.
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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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SLA arrests three in Jaffna, one missing

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 March 2001, 18:28 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army arrested a village officer at his home in Jaffna Thursday morning around 7 a.m. Nagalingam Sunthararajah, 44 was arrested by a SLA special forces motorcycle unit which neither gave a receipt nor reason for his arrest, his relatives said. Sunthararajah is the village officer for section J.486 in Jaffna.
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