Norwegian Refugee Council worker among victims of Batticaloa killings
A staff worker of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) was forcibly abducted by unidentified gunmen who entered his house on the evening of November 27 and was shot at a nearby decommissioned IDP-site, said Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Colombo on Friday. Vigneswaran, a popular and dedicated colleague, was later taken to a nearby hospital but pronounced dead on arrival. Offering its deepest condolences to Vigneswaran’s family, the NRC said it was deeply concerned by this tragic and untimely death of Mr. Vigneswaran. This is the third killing or disappearance of an NRC staff member in Sri Lanka in the past two and a half years. Read more
Faultline of Sri Lanka’s conflict now clear – paper
Pointing out that it is as Sinhalese have become more and more confident of winning the war that overt racism against Tamils has become blatant, the Tamil Guardian newspaper this week said “what is qualitatively different between the late nineties and now is the clarity of the ethnic faultline in Sri Lanka.” The paper, published Wednesday, argued “Since independence the island’s core problem has been Sinhala domination and … persecution, of the Tamils. In the global liberal bubble of the nineties, this fundamental truth was subsumed amidst the logics of underdevelopment, resource wars and so on.” Read more
Vanni MP condemns Mumbai killings
The deliberate and indiscriminate killing and injuring of hundreds of civilians and foreign tourists in Mumbai by armed men shocks the civilized world and is beyond all justification, said Selvam Adaikalanathan, Tamil National Alliance MP for Vanni, on Thursday. Read more
US development aims integrating East with Sinhala provinces
Based on their firm conviction that development disparity is the root cause of the conflict in Sri Lanka, the United States Embassy in Sri Lanka is busy in recent times in promoting a number ‘development’ programmes, especially in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Launching a new programme, Connecting Regional Economies (CORE) two months ago, the US aim ‘at the provincial and community level’ is to ‘focus on improving supply chain and market linkages between producers, processors, and the end markets in five districts of the Eastern, North Central and Uva Provinces’, read a press release from the US embassy in Colombo. Read more
80 Tamils arrested in Colombo, Kandy
More than eighty Tamil civilians, including eight women, arrested in Colombo and Kandy in separate cordon and search operations conducted by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and police on Wednesday and Thursday are detained in respective police stations and are being interrogated. Read more
Floods kill 6 people in Vanni, thousands displaced
At least four people were reportedly killed and two more feared dead in the floods caused by storms coupled with torrential monsoon rain during the past 6 days in Vanni. The sluice gates of Visuvamadu tank were opened as the raising water level posed great danger to the wall of the dam that has been shaken already by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) attacks. Also the sluice gates of two other tanks, Udaiyaarkadduk-ku’lam and Kalmaduk-ku’lam, were opened. Hundreds of volunteers of Tamils Rehabilitation Organiation (TRO) and the Tamileelam Police personnel were seen evacuating civilians and in arranging immediate accommodation in public places.
Token fast against killings of Tamil civilians observed in Batticaloa
A one-day token fast demanding the immediate stop of the rampant killings of Tamils in Batticaloa district and the arrest of the killers was observed Friday around 9:00 a.m near Gandhi Statue in Batticaloa town, organized by Pillayan faction, Baticaloa Municipal Council (BMC), and Federation of Local Government Councils’ (LGC) Presidents, presided by the Mayor of Batticaloa Municipal Council, Ms. Sivakeertha Pirapakaran, sources in Batticaloa said. Read more
SLAF attacks Paranthan
Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Kfir bombers attacked Paranthan, a key junction north of Ki’linochchi on Thursday and Friday, dropping bombs on shops and offices. Latest air attack was reported at 3:30 p.m. Friday. Meanwhile, artillery barrage that targeted Paranthan and Ki’linochchi suburbs continued despite pouring rain and floods during the past five days, according to farmers who fled the low-lying cultivation lands in the region. Read more
5 dead, thousands displaced due to floods in Jaffna
Heavy monsoonal rains and resulting floods claimed five lives in Jaffna peninsula while 118,273 persons belonging to 32,026 families have been displaced, according to Jaffna Secretariat statistics, civil sources in Jaffna said. Many persons are admitted to hospitals due to injuries sustained by collapsed roofs and falling trees. While rains have subsided, the electricity supply, transport services and telecommunication remain affected. Billions of rupees worth properties and cultivation have been damaged and destroyed in the past four days. Read more
4 STF killed in Ampaa’rai – LTTE
Four commandos of a Sri Lankan Special Task Force (STF) unit that launched a search operation into a jungle area in Poththuvil in Ampaa’rai district were killed and one wounded in a counter-attack carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE) Friday around 11:50 a.m., according to LTTE official Nilavan in Ampaa’rai. Read more
