Tamil parties sign no confidence motion

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 June 2001, 13:28 GMT]
Three Tamil parties in Sri Lanka’s Parliament signed the no confidence motion against the ruling People’s Alliance government in Sri Lanka Thursday. The Tamil United Liberation Front, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation and the All Ceylon Tamil Congress which together have nine seats in the legislature. However, a spokesman for the radical Marxist Janata Vimukthi Peramuna which has ten seats, and hence holds the key to the numbers manoeuvring in the Sri Lankan Parliament, said Thursday that it would announce its decision on Saturday.
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Sri Lanka govt. faces collapse as Muslims leave

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 20 June 2001, 09:16 GMT]
The Sri Lanka's ruling People's Alliance regime is facing collapse following the decision of its main coalition partner, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, Wednesday to pull out of the government. The SLMC decision is the culmination of a month long crisis sparked by a pogrom against Muslims in the provincial town of Mawanella. The Sri Lankan President sacked Mr. Rauff Hakeem, the co-leader of the SLMC and Minister for Internal and Internal Commerce from the cabinet last night.
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Damage control as peace process hits the rocks

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 12 June 2001, 05:15 GMT]
(News Feature) The bi-lateral decision by Norway and Sri Lanka last Thursday, at the latter's insistence, to reduce the prominence of Oslo's peace envoy, Erik Solheim, has delivered an unexpected and severe blow to the Liberation TigersÇ confidence in the Norwegian initiative, political analysts said Monday. Sri Lanka's state-media Monday strove to give the impression that the process was still on track, but the LTTE's strongly worded statement Sunday and sentiments being expressed by Tamil politicians and media emphasised the depth of the crisis, they said.
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Norway's Foreign Minister to Visit Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 June 2001, 13:50 GMT]
Norway's Foreign minister Thorbjørn Jagland will arrive in Colombo Thursday to review the peace process in the island, according to a press release issued by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry Wednesday.
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Lifting censorship said ill timed for SLA

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 30 May 2001, 13:31 GMT]
The Sri Lankan government Wednesday lifted the draconian censorship on reporting the war against the Liberation Tigers. The reason for the move is not clear, military sources in Colombo said. The censorship, imposed in May 1998, banned, among other things, reporting on military operations planned by the Sri Lanka army and on purchases of military hardware. However, the censorship generally inhibited the Sri Lankan press from candidly reporting about the Sri Lanka army and its military activities in the north and east of the island.
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Sri Lanka's decision seriously threatens peace talks: LTTE

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 May 2001, 09:13 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers Monday criticised the Sri Lankan government's refusal Saturday to lift the proscription of their organisation and said this had "seriously jeopardised" the prospects for peace talks. Expressing regret and dismay over Sri Lanka's decision in a statement issued from its Vanni headquarters, the LTTE leadership called upon the government to reconsider its position for the sake of peace and ethnic reconciliation. "If the Government adopts a hard-line position and refuses to review its decision on proscription, then it should bear full and total responsibility for the collapse of the peace efforts and the serious consequences that might arise from its decision," the Tigers warned.
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Kadirgamar's move said linked to no confidence motion

[TamilNet, Friday, 11 May 2001, 19:34 GMT]
"The Sri Lankan government announced that it had reached an agreement with the Liberation Tigers not because of a genuine commitment to peace but to deftly pre-empt the support of minority parties for the opposition's impending no confidence motion against the government", a spokesperson for the ten party Tamil alliance told TamilNet in Colombo Friday evening. "The government is alarmed now that it might lose the support of at least a section of its main coalition partner, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress over the Mawanella pogrom. This is has created a serious crisis for the People's Alliance. Why should the Sri Lankan government, which consistently rejected the LTTE's ceasefire and refused to even partially lift the embargo on the Vanni despite facing greater military defeats than Agni Khiela I last year, jump the gun at this juncture to falsely declare that it had reached an understanding with the Tigers to begin peace talks?" the Tamil politician in Colombo asked.
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SLMC slates government for Mawanella pogrom

[TamilNet, Thursday, 10 May 2001, 17:26 GMT]
Mr. Rauff Hakeem, the co-leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), the ruling People's Alliance's main coalition partner, Thursday slammed the government for not taking prompt action to stop the mass violence by Sinhala mobs against the Muslims of Mawanella. He accused the government of dragging its feet in taking action against the perpetrators of the anti-Muslim violence. He charged that transferring Policemen who were in Mawanella during the pogrom against the Muslims of the town was merely a temporary cosmetic measure.
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Bilateral cease-fire mooted

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 May 2001, 17:12 GMT]
The Norwegian peace envoy, Mr.Erik Solheim Wednesday met the Liberation Tigers' chief negotiator, and political advisor Mr.Anton Balasingham in London, for lengthy discussions. They discussed a feasibility of working out a bilateral cessation of hostility between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE to facilitate the peace process.
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LTTE accuses Sri Lanka of undermining peace

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 01 May 2001, 09:33 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers in statement issued from their international headquarters in the Vanni Tuesday accused the Government of Sri Lanka of attempting to undermine the peace environment by its irrational and dangerous policy of war and military conquest. "By unleashing a major military offensive against the LTTE's positions in Jaffna, Kumaratunga government has seriously jeopardised the Norwegian peace initiative", the statement said.
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Norway's peace initiative mired in blood

[TamilNet, Saturday, 28 April 2001, 03:38 GMT]
(NEWS FEATURE) The Norwegian peace initiative suffered several body blows this week as amid a bloody Sri Lanka Army offensive in the Jaffna peninsula, the government ruled out the possibility of a ceasefire, saying it was Ïirrelevant" to the Norwegian facilitated peace process, and insisted the Liberation Tigers would remain proscribed until they proved they were "sincere and honest" about negotiations, thereby rejecting two issues the LTTE insists are pre-requisites for succesful negotiations to be held.
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Sri Lanka vows to continue war

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 25 April 2001, 00:30 GMT]
Sri Lanka's President Chandrika Kumaratunge Tuesday vowed to defeat the Liberation Tigers and safeguard the territorial integrity of the country, the state-owned Daily News reported Wednesday. Describing the LTTE as an "unprincipled terrorist organisation," she saluted Sri Lanka's military for "continuing to fight tooth and nail to wipe out the LTTE from the face of our dear motherland."
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Tigers say Colombo bent on war, call off ceasefire

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 April 2001, 14:03 GMT]
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), in an official statement issued from its headquarters in Vanni, northern Sri Lanka, stated that the organisation had decided not to extend its unilaterally declared cease-fire that expires at midnight on the 24th April 2001. "We are compelled to make this painful decision as a consequence of the hard-line, intransigent attitude of the Sri Lankan government which has not only refused to reciprocate positively to our peace gesture but intensified land, sea and air attacks causing heavy casualties on our side. It has become impossible to contain the military assaults of the enemy with our self-restrained defensive tactics without resorting to counter-offensive operations. Under such dangerous conditions we can no longer sustain our self-imposed truce which the enemy has been exploiting to its own military advantage", the LTTE's statement said.
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Government attitudes may contribute to rapes -Sampanthan

[TamilNet, Sunday, 01 April 2001, 20:39 GMT]
"It would be pertinent to raise the question as to whether pugnacious statements made by persons in high positions and the expressed determination of the Government to continue with the war, contributes towards the unleashing of brutality such as rape and torture on unarmed Tamil civilians particularly Tamil females. It would appear that some service personnel think that if a Tamil is implicated even falsely with the LTTE any crime can be committed against such Tamil person" said the Secretary General of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), Mr.Rajavarothiam Sampanthan, in a letter to President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge.
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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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Blair urged over Jaffna journalists

[TamilNet, Thursday, 22 March 2001, 07:21 GMT]
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was Wednesday urged by Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) to raise the issue of press freedom in Sri Lanka and in particular the murder of the BBC journalist for Jaffna, Mayilvanagam Nimalarajan, with visiting Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumratunge. In a letter Wednesday, RSF’s General secretary, Robert Menard, urged Mr. Blair also over the abusive detention of another Jaffna journalist by Sri Lankan security forces since January 2.
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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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Chandrika’s mistrust of media manifest in censorship- CPJ

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 March 2001, 08:26 GMT]
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists, the New York based media watchdog, said Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga's censorship policy “is just one manifestation of her basic mistrust for the media” and that she had introduced emergency regulations that included “some of the harshest censorship measures ever imposed in the country” in a statement ‘Attacks on journalists 2000’ issued Monday. CPJ said that in Sri Lanka, “Violent attacks against journalists were typically committed with impunity”. “Even when the government has paid nominal attention to pursuing justice, it has come up short”, notes the statement.
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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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Rivals join to pressure Sri Lanka's tea companies

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 06 March 2001, 22:16 GMT]
Long time political rivals in Sri Lanka's plantation sector, Mr.Arumugam Thondaman, leader of the Ceylon Workers Congress and Periyasamy Chandrasekaran, the leader of the Upcountry People's Front, joined forces Tuesday in a march from Holbrook Bazaar to Agarapatana in the Nuwara Eliya district in the island's tea producing central province.
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