Police shoot inside eastcoast Mosque

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 October 2000, 16:08 GMT]
Schools, shops and government offices were partly shut down Monday in the eastern Muslim town of Akkaraipattu, 64 kilometers south of Batticaloa on the southeastern coast of the island, in protest over Sri Lankan Police shooting and wounding five people in the town's main Mosque Saturday midnight. Police in Akkaraipattu claimed that a large crowd that gathered at the town Mosque in response to a special late night muezzin call had attacked a Police patrol, wounding some constables. Police arrested twenty eight persons, including the editor of a news paper, accused of taking part in the attack.
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Sinhala nationalists squabble and split

[TamilNet, Monday, 16 October 2000, 13:15 GMT]
Sihala Urumaya, the hardline Sinhala Buddhist nationalist party, split Monday over who should represent it in the Sri Lankan Parliament. The President of the party Mr.S.L.Gunasekera told a press conference in Colombo Monday that he and seven members of the Sihala Urumaya's central committee had walked out in protest Sunday from a meeting that had been convened to select one of its senior members as the national list MP of the party. The Sihala Urumaya got only one seat in the Parliament on account of the total number of votes it polled island wide at the general elections on October 10.
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Jaffna SLA Civil Affairs Office to go

[TamilNet, Sunday, 15 October 2000, 17:58 GMT]
The functions of the Sri Lanka army's civil affairs office in Jaffna will be transferred to the District Secretariat, government officials in the north said. The SLA's civil affairs office was in charge of controlling the passage of civilians from Jaffna. The change was due to a political decision sources said.
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SLMC gets bargain, internecine clash in east

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 October 2000, 12:50 GMT]
The Police announced and unofficial curfew in the Muslim town of Oddamavadi,35 kilometres north of Batticaloa, from 8 p.m. Saturday and called in the army to keep the peace following a rampage by supporters of National Unity Alliance (NUA) MP, Mohideen Abdul Carder, against persons who had worked for Mr.M.L.A.M Hisbullah, former Deputy Minister for Posts and a senior leader of the SLMC. (NUA is the multi-ethnic front of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress) Meanwhile, in Colombo, the 'co-leader' of the SLMC, Rauf Hakeem, said that his party will have two cabinet portfolios and four deputy ministries in the new government.
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Crowds stone soldiers in temple fracas

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 October 2000, 09:22 GMT]
The annual festival of the Vallipuram Aalvaar temple in Jaffna was disrupted Friday evening when crowds of devotees who were angered by the Sri Lanka Army's refusal to allow them to the beach for the water cutting ceremony ('Theertham') stoned soldiers and a state radio van. The TamilNet's Vadamaradchi correspondent said that three SLA soldiers were wounded by stones hurled at them by the crowd.
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SLMC to reap numbers game advantage

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 October 2000, 13:09 GMT]
The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress that won nine seats (five on PA list) to emerge Thursday as the key player in the numbers game to form a coalition government in Sri Lanka said it will not join the PA unconditionally. A party spokesman in the Ampara district told TamilNet that the PA should honour the conditions on which the SLMC supported the government in the elections to the Parliament. Meanwhile, Mr. A.L.M Yaseen, the SLMC's Ampara district secretary said his party would iterate the position of its late leader regarding PA strong man A.H.M Fowzie.
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Final results of polls released

[TamilNet, Thursday, 12 October 2000, 10:23 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Commissioner of Elections Wednesday officially announced the results of the elections to Parliament following the delay in the counting of votes in the Kandy district where widespread rigging was reported.
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SLMC crucial for PA forming government

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 October 2000, 17:00 GMT]
The People's Alliance and its minority allies, the Eelam People's Democratic Front and the National Unity Alliance, together have obtained enough seats to form the government in Sri Lanka. However, the decision of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress will be crucial for the PA in forming the government this week. Six SLMC candidates, four who contested on the PA list and two on the NUA list, have been elected.
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TULF loses in Trincomalee, Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 October 2000, 08:36 GMT]
Tamils in Trincomalee lost representation in the Sri Lankan parliament for the first time since the island became independent in 1948. Despite decades of state backed Sinhala colonization aimed at altering the demographic complexion of this east coast district, Tamils still form the majority at 36.4 percent of the population. Nevertheless, no Tamil was elected to Parliament in this election.
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TULF, PLOTE claim massive election fraud

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 October 2000, 18:23 GMT]
"More than ninety thousand votes of the total of about two hundred thousand votes said to have been polled today in Jaffna were rigged" said the leader of the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) Mr.Dharmalingam Sidarthan, the chief candidate of the ex-Tamil militant group contesting the elections to the Sri Lankan Parliament. Mr.Sidarthan told TamilNet Tuesday evening that he has requested the Commissioner of Elections not to declare the results of the Kayts and Kankesanthurai polling divisions in Jaffna because of the massive rigging.
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EPDP abducts UNP polling agents

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 10 October 2000, 06:29 GMT]
The Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), the chief Tamil ally of the People's Alliance, abducted 19 polling agents of the United National Party (UNP) at Kayts in Jaffna while they were on their way to polling booths in the island.
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Rigging feared in Jaffna 'cluster booths'

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 October 2000, 21:39 GMT]
Jaffna goes to polls tomorrow amidst fears of widespread rigging. Officials at the Jaffna district secretariat said that voter turn out is expected to be low mainly due to the fighting between the Liberation Tigers and the Sri Lankan army in the southern sector of the peninsula.
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No franchise for Mullaithivu Tamils

[TamilNet, Monday, 09 October 2000, 21:10 GMT]
None of the Tamil voters in the Mullaithivu district will be able to vote in elections to Sri Lanka's eleventh Parliament Tuesday 10 October. They have been precluded from the polls due to a decision by the Sri Lankan government not to have any polling booths in the district except one for 996 Sinhalese in Ibbanweva, a state backed settlement in the southern corner of Mullaithivu. "This is tantamount to denying them the exercise of their sovereignty as Sri Lankan citizens through the franchise or, in real terms, disfranchising them" said a political analyst in Colombo Monday asked to comment on the Mullaithivu situation.
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Tigers probe Nagar Kovil FDLs

[TamilNet, Friday, 06 October 2000, 18:49 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers on Thursday launched an attack on the forward defence lines (FDLs) of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp at Nagar Kovil, the Voice of Tigers radio said Friday. Army sources in Colombo said 8 soldiers, including an officer were killed and 32 were wounded in the attack.
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Palali flights suspended

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 04 October 2000, 15:38 GMT]
Flights to and from the airstrip in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) base complex at Palaly in the northern Jaffna peninsula have been suspended, residents said Wednesday. The airport’s closure has been prompted by shelling by the Liberation Tigers, they quoted SLA officials as saying.
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Artillery duels in Thenmaradchi

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 October 2000, 14:59 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers have stepped up artillery and mortar attacks on Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camps in Varani in the Thenmaradchi sector and Nagar Kovil in the Vadamaradchi East, since Sunday night, said sources. SLA troops at Kudathanai, north of Nakarkovil were retaliating by firing shells towards LTTE held areas, the sources added.
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Furore over peace talks letters

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 October 2000, 00:35 GMT]
(News Feature) The letters exchanged between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers during the 1995 peace talks have become an unexpected election issue in the run up to the island's forthcoming Parliamentary polls. The main opposition, the United National Party (UNP), has seized on the hitherto unpublicised letters as evidence the government had not informed the Sri Lankan public about its negotiations with the Tigers, forcing the government to respond with a counter-campaign.
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Court frees PTA detainee

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 October 2000, 14:26 GMT]
The Vavuniya High Court Friday acquitted Ramachandran Yogarasa,24, indicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), stating that the defence had proved that the confession from the accused had been obtained under duress.
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Boy bathing, shot dead

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 October 2000, 13:31 GMT]
Kunalingam Kugathasan, 14, was shot dead by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers Saturday afternoon while bathing in a lagoon in Navalady, about 4 km east of Batticaloa town, said sources. The body was handed over to his parents after an inquest held at the Batticaloa hospital.
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Skirmish in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 October 2000, 08:32 GMT]
A Sri Lanka Army soldier was killed and at least five others wounded in an attack by the Liberation Tigers near vavunathivu SLA camp about 5 km. west of Batticaloa town around 8.30 a.m. Sunday said sources.
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