SLA tenders qualified apology as officer retires

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 January 2001, 21:30 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army in Batticaloa town Wednesday tendered a qualified public apology for massacring hundreds innocent civilians of this eastern district in the past in a handbill and over loud hailers. The SLA handbill, among other things, states "on some occasions people had to be murdered on the orders of certain commanders".
Full story >>

Chavakachcheri not suitable for resettling -Mayor

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 January 2001, 17:15 GMT]
The conditions in Chavakachcheri are not suitable for resettling people although the government and some parties are attempting to do so, said Jaffna Mayor N.Raviraj, returning from a tour arranged by the Sri Lanka army Wednesday. The SLA's 51-2 brigade commander accompanied the mayor, Mr.V.Anandasangaree, Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) MP for Jaffna and Mr. S.Aravinthan, member of the Jaffna Municipal Council (TULF).
Full story >>

Heads shaved to tighten Vanni embargo

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 January 2001, 18:40 GMT]
Four fishermen complained to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Mannar Tuesday that the Sri Lanka Navy shaved their heads and assaulted them severely on trumped up charges that they were defying the Vanni embargo. Fishermen in Mannar complain that the SLN arrests and beats them up regularly, accusing them of smuggling essential commodities banned under Colombo's decade long economic embargo on the Vanni region. Meanwhile the SLN’s intelligence wing began deployment in the northern coastal parts of the Mannar island Tuesday. The deployment is aimed at monitoring and curbing sea borne infiltration by the Liberation Tigers from the mainland SLN, sources said.
Full story >>

PM invokes Ruhuna ethos for SLA recruiting

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 30 January 2001, 16:49 GMT]
A program to recruit ten thousand youth to the Sri Lanka army was begun Tuesday the Buddhist temple in the island's main pilgrimage centre. Sri Lanka's prime minister, Mr.Ratnasiri Wickremanayaka, who chaired the function said that it was a great achievement by the people of Ruhuna to have inaugurated the program to win the war from Kataragama. The southern interior of the island was called Ruhuna in medieval Sinhala. It is celebrated by Sinhala Buddhist nationalists as the ancient seat of resistance to Tamil dominance where Sinhala rulers mustered recruits to wage war on the armies of the Chola empire. Senior SLA officers and Buddhist monks took part in the program.
Full story >>

Tigers "already implementing" Norway's MOU

[TamilNet, Monday, 29 January 2001, 20:30 GMT]
The Norwegian peace envoy Erik Solheim met the Liberation Tigers' chief negotiator, Anton Balasingham in London Monday prior to his visit to Sri Lanka, sources close to the LTTE said. Amongst other matters, Mr. Solheim had also discussed Norway's proposed memorandum of understanding to de-escalate the conflict, they said. The LTTE views the MOU positively, but would sign it only if Sri Lanka also accepted its part in it, Balasingham had told Solheim according to the sources.
Full story >>

Court to hear Mailanthanai massacre case

[TamilNet, Sunday, 28 January 2001, 23:34 GMT]
(Newsfeature) The Mailanthanai massacre case in which 21 Sri Lanka army soldiers are accused of hacking to death 35 Tamils, including women, in a remote Batticaloa village on 9 August 1992 will be taken up for hearing in Colombo Monday lawyers appearing for the families of the victims said. "Justice delayed is justice denied. As with most cases in which SLA soldiers have been accused of massacring innocent Tamil civilians, a patently deliberate procrastinating strategy drawing on untenable pretexts is causing inordinate delays. This benefits the perpetrators of the murders," Mr.N. Kandasamy, a senior human rights activist in Colombo who has been monitoring the case for nine years told TamilNet Sunday.
Full story >>

SLA ambush kills one

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 January 2001, 14:38 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers lying in ambush in the jungles of Kirimichchaikulam in the Vaakarai region, about 62 km. north of Batticaloa opened fire, killing one civilian and injuring three others. According to villagers the incident occurred around 2 p.m. on Friday.
Full story >>

Opposition march carries 'SL economy' in coffin

[TamilNet, Friday, 26 January 2001, 16:31 GMT]
Hundreds of opposition United National Party members and supporters marched through a busy suburb of Colombo Friday, carrying a coffin and protesting against the steeply rising cost of living and crime in Sri Lanka. UNP leaders and supporters addressed a meeting around 11 a.m. Friday at Sri Kotha, the party's national headquarters, lambasting the People's Alliance regime for the failing, cash strapped economy, the rupee devaluation and rising crime. The crowds then marched to the busy Nugegoda junction, carrying placards and shouting slogans against the Sri Lankan government.
Full story >>

Black bands in Batticaloa University for ceasefire, self-determination

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 January 2001, 15:03 GMT]
Students and teachers of the Eastern University in Batticaloa wore black bands on their arms and observed five minutes of silence at 12 noon Thursday to urge the Sri Lankan government to recognize the Tamil people's right of self determination and to reciprocate the extended unilateral ceasefire declared by the Liberation Tigers.
Full story >>

"Right to life not guaranteed in constitution"

[TamilNet, Thursday, 25 January 2001, 05:10 GMT]
"The Sri Lankan constitution does not guarantee the right to life. Many human rights violations and murders are possible due to such loopholes in the constitution. The Sri Lankan government refused to sign an international convention that would have obliged it to act responsibly on the question of human rights violations and missing persons. It is the governmentís duty to explain the fate of persons reported missing. But it does not do anything. This is the reason why it is possible not to take any action to bring those responsible for murdering journalists to book" said V.T Thamilmaran, senior law lecturer at the University of Colombo Wednesday, addressing the 90 days remembrance meeting for slain Jaffna journalist Mylvaganam Nimalarajan in Colombo.
Full story >>

Blast kills 11 soldiers

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 January 2001, 11:09 GMT]
Eleven Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers, including three officers were killed and five others were wounded in a blast near Muhamaalai in the Thenmaradchi sector on Tuesday evening, army sources in Colombo said. The blast was caused by a booby trap device, the sources said.
Full story >>

Kaluatara political prisoners say conditions dire

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 January 2001, 04:44 GMT]
Tamil political prisoners in the Kalutara maximum-security prison face persistent health and sanitary hazards while having to survive corruption and official apathy, human rights officials said this week. Six hundred and twenty nine Tamil political prisoners, mostly from the northern and eastern parts of the island, are incarcerated in the Kalutara prison, south of Colombo. Three were killed and seven injured in an attack on them by a mob of Sinhala convicts on 12 December 1997. The prisoners told National Human Rights officials who visited them this week that their cases were being prolonged inordinately.
Full story >>

Tigers extend unilateral ceasefire

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 23 January 2001, 12:41 GMT]
(CORRECTION) The Liberation Tigers said Tuesday they would extend their unilateral ceasefire by another month, and called on the international community to persuade Sri Lanka to "reciprocate favourably and resume negotiations in a cordial atmosphere of peace and normalcy." The LTTE's unilateral ceasefire was due to expire Wednesday night. The Tigers said they had made the decision "in conformity with the collective will of the Tamil nation which demands peace and also in compliance with the wish of the international community which pleads for a peaceful means of resolving the conflict."
Full story >>

SLAF jets bomb Trinco villages

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 January 2001, 15:35 GMT]
Sri Lanka Air Force jets bombed four villages about 8 km. south of Trincomalee around 5.30 p.m. Monday. Local residents said two Kfir jets attacked the villages of Chenaiyoor, Kaddaiparichchan, Samboor and Soodaikuda. Initial reports indicated extensive damage. But details of casualties and destruction of property are not available sources in Mutur, the town closest to the targets of Monday's air raid, said.
Full story >>

Jaffna journalist tortured in solitary confinement

[TamilNet, Monday, 22 January 2001, 13:57 GMT]
A senior Jaffna journalist held incommunicado by the Sri Lankan Police since 2 January was assaulted with pipes and tortured, Human Rights Commission officials who were permitted to see him this weekend said Monday. The journalist, Mr. Nadarajah Thiruchelvam, had been held handcuffed for 12 days in solitary confinement by the Terrorism Investigation Division of the Police, they said. The police have neither filed any charges against Mr. Thiruchelvam nor have produced him in a court.
Full story >>

Dissonant developments jar SLA music

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 January 2001, 17:17 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Army went ahead Saturday evening with a music show it had organized in Batticaloa with an audience comprising government officials despite the general shut down in the east coast town and its suburbs. Tamil musicians and singers from Colombo who has been booked for the show did not turn up, sources said.
Full story >>

Self-determination call shuts down Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 January 2001, 15:10 GMT]
The Batticaloa town was deserted Saturday as shops and businesses were closed and most people stayed indoors despite warnings by the Sri Lanka army against the Hartal (general shut down) called by the Independent Students' Union (ISU) to impress that 'the Tamil people's aspiration is the right of self determination and to demand that genocide in Sri Lanka be stopped and a fear free environment in which the Tamils can live peacefully be created'.
Full story >>

Embargo said causing malnutrition, deaths

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 January 2001, 23:03 GMT]
Four patients suffering from severe malnutrition died last month at the Kilinochchi hospital, medical officials in the Vavuniya said Friday. The hospital is unable to treat scores of people in the district bitten by rabid dogs because it has no anti-rabies vaccine in stock, according to them. Severe malnutrition is prevalent in the Vanni, particularly among children, due to the decade long economic embargo imposed on the region by successive Sri Lankan regimes. Vaccines and drugs considered essential in the acutely underdeveloped Vanni backwater are generally not available or chronically short in supply due to draconian restrictions by the Sri Lanka army.
Full story >>

SLA demolishes homes in Jaffna suburbs

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 January 2001, 19:53 GMT]
The Sri Lanka army has demolished more than three hundred homes in the southwestern coastal suburbs of Jaffna town to construct large military facilities, said residents who visited the area this week. An official of a local NGO who went to inspect his home in Colombuthurai told TamilNet that coconut plantations in these suburbs were also destroyed.
Full story >>

Heavy casualties in Jaffna fighting

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 17 January 2001, 19:02 GMT]
Airstrikes and heavy exchanges or artillery rocked the Jaffna peninsula Wednesday as the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) continued to face determined resistance from the Liberation Tigers, sources close to the LTTE said. Over 100 SLA troops and 70 Tigers have been killed in the past two days, sources close to the LTTE said Thursday evening. Over 400 SLA troops have been wounded, they added.
Full story >>