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Sri Lanka Army to Form Tamil Regiment After Civil War, BBC Says

June 30, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

Sri Lanka’s army will establish an ethnic Tamil regiment for the first time, following the end of the country’s civil war, the British Broadcasting Corp. said. Read the rest of this entry →

SL foreign missions directed to persuade the host countries to lift travel advisories

June 29, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

The Foreign Ministry has directed all Sri Lankan foreign missions to persuade the host countries to lift travel advisories on Sri Lanka as the country’s situation has rapidly changed with the eradication of terrorism. Read the rest of this entry →

LTTE Leader’s parents taken to Colombo for further investigation

June 29, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

Parents of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, who were taken into custody from an IDP camp in Vavuniya and detained separately from all others were transferred to Colombo for further investigation. Read the rest of this entry →

Tamil dailies’ staff threatened in Sri Lanka

June 29, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

The two leading Tamil dailies in Jaffna, Udayan and Sudar Oli are forced to stop publication from tomorrow as an obscure group has threatened the staff. Read the rest of this entry →

An eye witness account on Manik Farm camp

June 27, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

On the day I visited the camp, Education Minister Susil Premjayantha and Resettlement Minister Rishad Bathiuddeen were meeting with some NGOs [non-government organisations] in the camp. So we had to wait until they left. Police officers were controlling the people, wielding batons. Read the rest of this entry →

UN Runs Scared of Sri Lanka, Says National Staff Not Immune — But Genocide Suspects Are

June 27, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, June 26 — As the Sri Lankan government locked up an astrologer who dared make predictions that President Rahinda Rajapaksa didn’t like, the UN in New York stayed silent. Inner City Press asked, for the third time, what is being done about the two UN staff members who were grabbed up by the government using unmarked vehicles.

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Sri Lanka - The world has moved on

June 27, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

As with other dramatic and often bloody developments that capture the world’s major media players, (and thereby our own attention), from time to time, the short-lived but intense focus on events in the tiny island state of Sri Lanka has subsided. We should not expect the media to continue to supply us with further developments ,following the violent end to a bloody civil war which has racked the country since the anti-Tamil riots of 1983 and led to many thousands of deaths. Read the rest of this entry →

Voluntary dismissal filed in DC court as US contends IMF suit unjusticiable

June 27, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

Counsel for Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), a US-based activist group that filed a law suit in the Federal Court of District of Columbia to stop the U.S. from voting for the $1.9B IMF loan to Sri Lanka, said his group filed for voluntary dismissal in view of the strong legal position taken by the U.S. that the issue is a nonjusticiable political question, and that the plaintiff has no private right of action because Congress did not create a private right of action expressly and created alternative mechanisms for Congress itself to monitor the Executive Branch’s actions.” The decision was taken after careful review of the recent developments on the loan where the U.S. and the U.K. have expressed strong objections to speedy approval without attaching conditions for improving human rights violations of Sri Lanka, TAG officials said. Read the rest of this entry →

S Lanka camp young ‘malnourished’ - BBC

June 27, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

The high rate of malnutrition reported among children in camps for displaced people in Sri Lanka is a cause for concern, a senior UN official says.

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‘We will continue to fight through political means’ - KP

June 26, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

The LTTE’s Selvaraja Pathmanathan says the group is giving up violence and adopting a non-violent agenda to secure the political rights of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Read the rest of this entry →

‘MV Captain Ali’ - Amid assurances, lack of movement at the ground level

June 26, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

After the positive statement by the External Affairs Minister Hon. Mr. S.M.Krishna on Wednesday evening (24 June 2009) regarding the Mercy Mission ship the MV Captain Ali, Mercy Mission personnel, supporters, volunteers and the Tamil Diaspora as a whole were relieved that there was movement on the part of the Government of Sri Lanka and that the desperately needed humanitarian relief aboard the ship would be delivered to the 300,000 Tamil civilians in the internment camps in Sri Lanka. Read the rest of this entry →

Burning of Jaffna dailies: Uthayan MD fears similar intimidations may occur frequently

June 26, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

The Uthayan daily received a fax on the 23rd June 2009, for publication. The heading of the text was ‘Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam’ and sent by the ‘Tamil United Force to Safeguard the Country’. The chief editor and the co-editor found that it was not properly sent. The article was neither forwarded on  a letterhead of the party  nor carried details of the sender. The editors after a careful scrutiny of the article decided not to publish it in their daily. Read the rest of this entry →

Six priests held prisoner and in solitary confinement in refugee camps

June 26, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

Six Catholic priests are kept in isolation in the camps of Sri Lanka. The bishop of Jaffna has requested their release, but has not yet received any response from the Ministry of Defense. A humanitarian worker working in the fields in which 300 thousand displaced persons live tells their story and denounces the disappearance of three government doctors who had circulated the figures of the dead during the last days of war between the army and Tamil Tigers. There is no news of their fate. Ranil Kumaratunga is a name we use to maintain the anonymity of the source of AsiaNews. Read the rest of this entry →

CANADA: Archbishop urges government action on Sri Lanka

June 26, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

[Ecumenical News International, Toronto] The head of the Anglican Church of Canada has urged the Canadian prime minister to lead international efforts to protect the civil liberties of Sri Lankans following a government victory over the rebel Tamil Tigers. Read the rest of this entry →

INTERVIEW-Sri Lanka says critical juncture for IMF loan

June 26, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

Reuters News

SRILANKA-MINISTER/USA (INTERVIEW)

* Colombo is seeking $1.9 billion IMF loan

* Minister says denying Colombo funds ‘counterproductive’

* Sri Lanka ended 25-year war with rebels in May

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka’s post-war reconciliation process needs international financial support, its trade minister said on Friday, urging swift action on Colombo’s request for a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund loan. Read the rest of this entry →

S Lanka camp young ‘malnourished’ - BBC

June 26, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

A Tamil woman sits with her children while getting their clothes dry next to their tent at the Manik Farm refugee camp located on the outskirts of the northern Sri Lankan town of Vavuniya Tuesday, May 26, 2009.

Most of the camps are in the northern Vavuniya district

The high rate of malnutrition reported among children in camps for displaced people in Sri Lanka is a cause for concern, a senior UN official says.

The UN’s representative on children and armed conflict told the BBC’s Sinhala service that the government should set up special feeding programmes.

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UN Jaffna officials accused of misreporting in favour of GOSL, SLA

June 26, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

Civil society sources in Jaffna raised accusations against United Nation (UN) Jaffna officials for releasing facts and statistics, related to the detainees held in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps, provided by Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and SLA, instead of the true situation prevailing in the camps, to the outer world. For instance, the UN officials in their June 15 report said that only four detainees had died in the past six months in Jaffna camps where as many have died including a woman due to septicemia, in a meeting held in Jaffna town Thursday, participants in the meeting said. Read the rest of this entry →

Tamil Sangam, USA welcomes the formation of Transnational Govt of Tamil Eelam

June 25, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

The Ilankai Tamil Sangam, USA issued a press release on wednesday (June 24, 2009) welcoming and expressing support for the Committee for the formation of a provisional transnational government of Tamil Eelam. Read the rest of this entry →

Burning of newspapers doesn’t augur well for free elections: TNA

June 25, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

TNA MPs in Jaffna

“We do not believe that the elections are going to be free and fair. The burning of newspapers on the eve of nominations raises a big question about the circumstances under which the elections are going to be conducted,” said Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarians Mavai Senathirajah and Suresh Premachandran at a press conference Thursday afternoon after tending nominations for the Jaffna Municipal Council elections. The government is fully responsible for the attack on newspapers that took place when two of its ministers are camping in Jaffna said Suresh Premachandran MP. “A vicious propaganda is being made that the TNA is divided, but we stand together in all respect and take decisions in our central committee,” he further said. Read the rest of this entry →

Wholesale attack on Jaffna newspapers - Tamilnet

June 25, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

All the local newspapers of Jaffna that defied publishing an anonymous and defiling notice against the LTTE came under attack by an armed group in the early hours of Thursday. The notice was brought out in the name of ‘Tamil Front Protecting the Country’ allegedly linked to a paramilitary group operating with Colombo. Thousands of copies of the local newspapers, Valampuri, Uthayan and Thinakkural (Jaffna edition), were burnt down wholesale in huge flames by the armed group allegedly operated by the Sri Lankan military intelligence at Aanaippanthi and Kannathiddi junctions at 5:00 a.m. Thursday, while the newspapers were being taken for distribution. Read the rest of this entry →

Lanka assures more powers to Tamils

June 25, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

Sending a delegation of high-ranking officials to Delhi, Sri Lanka on Tuesday allayed Indian concerns over rehabilitation of war-hit Tamil civilians and devolution of more political powers to its Tamil-dominated provinces.The delegation that met External Affairs Minister S M Krishna included Sri Lan­kan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s two influential brothers — Senior Adviser to the President Basil Rajapaksa and Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Read the rest of this entry →

Sri Lanka to resettle war refugees soon: official

June 25, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

A Sri Lankan official delegation visiting India said on Wednesday Colombo was working to resettle tens of thousands of civilians displaced by fighting on the island. Read the rest of this entry →

S Lanka ‘accepts’ Tamil aid ship -BBC

June 25, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

Indian authorities says Sri Lanka has agreed to accept a cargo of aid from Europe for Tamil civilians displaced in the final months of the civil war.

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IDP camps are almost a hell, given choice IDPs would prefer to live under trees: SB

June 24, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

UNP National Organizer S.B Dissanayake has said today that at a time when every effort should be made to reconcile with Tamil people they are being angered by keeping them in camps that are not just prisons but almost a “hell.” Read the rest of this entry →

Colombo reporters decry new body - BBC

June 24, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

 

By Charles Haviland
BBC News, Colombo

 

Sri Lankan TV attack
Critics say press freedom is under attack in Sri Lanka

The main media organisations in Sri Lanka have urged the government not to re-establish a body that can fine and imprison print journalists.

They say that self-regulation, introduced six years ago, is working.

Seven media bodies, headed by the Editors’ Guild which groups the main newspaper editors, have written to President Rajapaksa.

They say that the reactivation of the Press Council fills them with deep concern and disappointment.

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Signs of dictatorship further endorsed – Now hunt for Sri Lankans living abroad

June 23, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

The government of Sri Lanka hell-bent on creating a dictatorial monarchy by unconstitutional means in the island has now launched a campaign to brand Sri Lankans who dissent the dogma of the regime and living abroad as “traitors” and severely punish them. A news release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs states “members of the Sri Lankan expatriate community who are engaged in activities detrimental to the sovereignty and dignity of the country would be severely dealt with, said Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama”. Read the rest of this entry →

TNA MP Kanagaretnam ordered further detention in Colombo court - Tamilnet

June 23, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

The Colombo Chief Magistrate and Additional District Judge Mr. Nishantha Kappurarachchi Monday instructed the Criminal Investigation Department of the Sri Lanka Police to further detain the suspect Mr.Sathasivam Kanagaretnam, Vanni district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, conduct investigations and submit a comprehensive report to court on the next date, July 26. Read the rest of this entry →

Sri Lanka’s forgotten displaced Muslims - BBC

June 23, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

As the world focuses on displaced Tamils in northern Sri Lanka, a large group of Muslims forcibly ejected from the north by Tamil Tigers 20 years ago are finally contemplating a return home. Read the rest of this entry →

President to be in power ‘for ever’ - BBC

June 23, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

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Mahinda Rajapaksa will be the executive president of Sri Lanka for life after next general elections, a senior leader of the ruling party said.

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Plans for Militarization and Colonization are Going on at a Feverish Pace

June 22, 2009 By: oruvan Category: English News

The colonization they intend is seen already in the Eastern Province in and around Trincomalee port, and in the Northern Province around the KKS and Point Pedro port, and Pallaly airport. They also hope to create new high security zones and also bring in IRC prisoners [1] from the jails, providing them early release as long as they are prepared to live and cultivate some land provided by the  GOSL/SLA, along with free housing. So they get free land, a house, and others’ help, including financial assistance so that they increase the Singhala population in and around the Northern and Eastern Province. Buddhist temples and Singhala schools will also be established and they would force Tamils living in the area to learn Singhalese.

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