britishtamil.com

Councilors of the Western Peoples Front (WPF), Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) along with veteran trade union leader Vasudeva Nanayakara of the ruling independent group walked out of the monthly meeting of the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) held Wednesday in protest to threats by gangs coming by white vans. Other members of the ruling independent group did not participate in the walkout.

[Read more →]

Eleven civilians including two Tamils and a Muslim were taken into custody in a cordon and search operation conducted by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in the Gampaha town on Wednesday. Police said they are being detained in the police station as they failed to prove their identity.

[Read more →]

Demining employees of Danish Demining Organization engaged in demining Tuesday found a human skeleton suspected to be that of a woman in the area on the eastern flank of Jaffna-Kandy road which includes Chemma’ni and Ariyaalai areas within Jaffna Municipality limits. The hair and dress found on the skeleton point that it may be the skeleton of a woman, Jaffna police said. People gone missing in Jaffna peninsula in the 1996, 1997 periods were suspected of being killed and buried in the above places.

[Read more →]

Demining employees of Danish Demining Organization engaged in demining Tuesday found a human skeleton suspected to be that of a woman in the area on the eastern flank of Jaffna-Kandy road which includes Chemma?ni and Ariyaalai areas within Jaffna Municipality limits. The hair and dress found on the skeleton point that it may be the skeleton of a woman, Jaffna police said. People gone missing in Jaffna peninsula in the 1996, 1997 periods were suspected of being killed and buried in the above places.

[Read more →]

A Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Bell 212 helicopter, which was airlifting wounded Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers from Ma’nalaa’ru (Ma’nalaa’ru) was hit by artillery fire on and was forced to make emergency landing at Anuradhapura SLAF base Tuesday evening, a well informed source in Anuradhapura said.

[Read more →]

Nuwereliya Magistrate Court served Tuesday a verdict of six months imprisonment suspended for three years and a fine of thousand rupees each for violating a court order, on Ceylon Workers? Congress (CWC) leader, Minister Arumugam Thondaman, Deputy Minister Muththu Sivalingam and Central Provincial Council member, V. Rathakrishnan, sources in Nuwareliya said.

[Read more →]

A SAARC ‘Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms’ of the people of the region based on the same fashion that of the European Union, as well as a ‘Regional Mechanism on Human rights’ may be a way to fight the so-called terrorism because such a convention with a regional mechanism to implement it will prevent the root causes for violence arising in the first place. Countries like Pakistan and India, two of the big brothers of the region should do better than supplying lethal weapons to Sri Lanka to kill its own citizens. Aspirations of the peoples cannot be put down by Human Rights violations and state terrorism, says Opinion Columnist Koanaamalai Manraadiyaar.

[Read more →]

“Frequently now I wonder whether Sri Lanka would have been a much more peaceful and much more homogeneous place if say 40% or so of the Tamil speaking population had been Buddhists and not exclusively Hindu or Christian. Is taking the Buddhist religion to Tamil people such a difficult task?” wonders Niranjan de Silva Deva-Aditya, Member of European Parliament (MEP) from U.K. and Honorary Ambassador-at-Large for Sri Lanka, in a statement after his recent visit to Sri Lanka as Vice-Chairman of the EU delegation. The Sinhala speaking MEP is tagged with a title, ‘Vishwa Keerthi Sri Lanka Abhimani’ (universally famous pride of Sri Lanka), bestowed onto him by the Buddhist clergy of Sri Lanka.

[Read more →]

Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Jaffna Commander, Major. Gen. G. A. Chandrasiri announced fresh measures that would further curtail travel out of the peninsula and the use of CDMA wireless phones in the peninsula in a meeting held Wednesday morning in Thellippalai area in SLA Palaali High Security Zone (HSZ). Jaffna Government Agent (GA), K. Ganesh, Heads of government departments and corporations and representatives of various organizations participated in the meeting.

[Read more →]

Eleven Tamil civilians were taken into custody in a cordon and search operation conducted from 6:00 a.m. till 10:00 a.m. Wednesday in Mt.Lavinia area in Colombo division by the Police with the assistance of about one hundred members of the Civil Volunteer Force (CVF). Police used sniffer dogs and metal detectors to trace explosives in vehicles and in public places, sources said.

[Read more →]