Explosion reported in Weerawila

MONDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER 2011
An explosion took place in the ammunition dump of the Weerawila Army camp situated near the Weerawila Air Force Base last evening injuring a soldier.

 “It was an accidental explosion as we do not handle that much of ammunition and explosives. We admitted the soldier who suffered minor injuries to the nearby Weerawila Hospital,” Military Spokesman Brigadier Nihal Hapuarachchi said.

Meanwhile the Air Force said they had sent their standby emergency reaction team to the scene from the Weerawila Air Force Camp.

The incident took place around 4.00 pm in the ammunition dump maintained by the Gajaba Regiment. The explosion was followed by a number of small explosions of low magnitude.

The 14th Gemunu Watch camp has two ammunition dumps. One is maintained by the Gajaba Regiment and the other by the 122nd brigade.
The Weerawila camp where the explosion took place had comprised about 100 soldiers as it was a relatively small camp. (SD) Pix by Ranjith S Diamond-Tissamaharama

UK 'complicit in torture' as Tamils return to Sri Lanka

Channel 4 News   Monday 26 September 2011

 Britain is leaving itself open to allegations it is complicit in torture by sending failed Tamil asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka despite evidence physical abuse is a "daily reality", a charity warns.

The charity Freedom from Torture said a number of Tamils were due to be forcibly removed by the UK Border Agency and flown back to Sri Lanka on Wednesday.

The group says it has credible evidence that members of the Tamil minority are still being routinely mistreated following the end of the country's bloody civil war.

Speaking at an event at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, the charity's chief executive Keith Best called the present government's position "untenable".

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A Delhi court delivers landmark verdict sympathising with the Sri Lankan Tamils

By P C Vinoj Kumar26 Sep 2011

Posted 26-Sep-2011 Vol 2 Issue 38 For all those who have resigned to the unfairness of Indian foreign policy on Sri Lanka - which has been biased in favour of the majority Sinhalese and prejudiced towards minority Tamils - a recent order by a Delhi Metropolitan Magistrate, Arul Varma, should reinforce faith in the Indian judiciary to rise above expediency of the government.     Full Story>>> =========================================

Lanka to seek diplomatic immunity for General

By P K Balachandran  26 Sep 2011 10:59:00 PM IST

Lanka to seek diplomatic immunity for General 

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka is to seek diplomatic immunity for Maj Gen Shavendra Silva, who has been summoned by an US court following a case filed against him for alleged torture and extra judicial execution of ‘Col’ Ramesh, an LTTE commander, who had surrendered to the Lankan forces in the final days of action against the Tamil Tigers in 2009.  “Being Sri Lanka’s Deputy Permanent Representative at the United Nations, Shavendra Silva has diplomatic immunity. He cannot be dragged to a court in the US. The UN Secretary General will write to the court to inform it of the immunity,” asserted Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Lanka’s powerful Defence Secretary.
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‘Sri Lanka needs a solution that accommodates Tamil hopes’

COLOMBO, September 26, 2011

The HinduTNA leader R.Sambandan (Centre) with Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Ashok K. Kantha (Right) and Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu, N.Ram, at a lecture organised by the Sri Lanka India Society in Colombo on

Sri Lanka needs a solution to the ethnic question, home-grown or otherwise, to accommodate the just demands and aspirations of the Tamil-speaking people within the framework of the unity and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka, N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu, said here on Sunday.Full Story>>>
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Pranab Mukherjee asks Sri Lanka for early resumption of talks with Tamils

Monday, September 26, 2011

PTI / Lalit K Jha / Monday, September 26, 2011 17:59 IST

India has asked Sri Lanka for an early resumption of talks with Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the umbrella organisation of Tamil political parties, and to resolve core political issues in a timely manner.
The issue was emphatically put forward by the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, when he met his Sri Lankan counterpart Sarath Amunugama, here last week on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
"India would like to see an early resumption of the dialogue between the Sri Lankan Government and the TNA as also a more purposeful approach to the core political issues and concrete progress in a timely manner," an Indian official told PTI on condition of anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the press.
"We would like to see Sri Lanka arrive at a solution that answers substantially to the aspirations of the Tamil community for justice, peace and dignity," the senior Indian official said referring to the conversation between the two finance ministers; during which the two leaders also discussed the Indian assistance to Sri Lanka on a economic issues.
It is believed that Amunugama informed Mukherjee that Sri Lanka has completed the pilot project on completion of 1,000 houses in Northern Lanka and urged India to release the rest of the money for the construction of 50,000 houses for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), which has been committed by India.
India has announced USD 125 million for the relief and rehabilitation of the IDPs in Northern and Eastern Lanka.

Mahinda Economics

Tamil Guardian 21 September 2011

Sri Lanka’s trade, currency and debt quandaryEarlier this month Brian Aitken, the IMF’s head of mission in Colombo, warned that Sri Lanka’s policy of selling dollars to maintain the value of the rupee “does not seem to be in line with the fundamentals in the economy”’ and that the policy was rapidly depleting foreign currency reserves.


[more]

The International Monetary Fund suspended its programme of supplying Colombo with credit in  exchange for reform on Monday after Sri Lanka refused to follow advice and abandon a policy of actively intervening in foreign exchange markets to support the value of the Rupee.

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“Criminal” Lankan Minister Enjoys Immunity In India, Court Told

Monday, September 26th, 2011

“Criminal” Lankan Minister Enjoys Immunity In India, Court Told

CHENNAI – The external affairs ministry on Tuesday told the Madras High Court that Sri Lankan minister Douglas Devananda, wanted in a firing case in Chennai in 1986, cannot be arrested as he enjoys diplomatic immunity.The ministry also submitted that if Devananda was arrested while on a state visit, it would affect relations between the two countries.It also told the court that India does not have any extradition treaty with Sri Lanka. After the submission filed by the ministry, the court adjourned the case for four weeks.Advocate P Pugazhendi had filed a petition seeking the court’s directions to arrest Devananda, the Sri Lankan minister for traditional industries and small enterprise development, when he visited India in June 2010.According to the petitioner, Devananda, then a member of Sri Lanka’s separatist Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF), is wanted in a 1986 shootout and murder case in Chennai and has been declared a proclaimed offender.One more case was lodged against him for kidnapping a boy in 1988. In 1989, he was arrested and later let out on bail.A sessions court in Chennai declared Devananda a proclaimed offender in 1994 after he failed to appear in the court while on bail.

Col Ramesh's wife files a case in US against Sri Lanka President for Killing her husband: TGTE

/EINPresswire.com/ Col Ramesh's wife, Mrs. Vathsala Devi, has filed a case in the United States, against the visiting Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse for killing her husband. 

This case was filed in the Southern District of New York, under Alien Tort Statutes, on behalf of Col Ramesh's wife, by Attorney- at- Law Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran. The docket number of this case is: 11 CIV 6634. 

Col Ramesh was shown on a documentary by UK's Channel 4 "Sri Lanka's Killing Fields", being interrogated by Sri Lankan soldiers in an undisclosed location. His body was also shown in different TV and was confirmed by his wife as her husband's body. 

Full Story>>>

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Sri Lanka: Account for Wartime Disappearances

 More Than 20 People Last Seen in Army Custody Remain Missing

APRIL 7, 2011

Screengrab of a video obtained by Human Rights Watch shows LTTE leader Colonel Ramesh in Sri Lankan army custody.

(New York) - The Sri Lankan government should account for everyone who was taken into custody at the end of Sri Lanka's 26-year-long armed conflict in May 2009 and are feared to have been "disappeared," Human Rights Watch said today. Despite numerous requests from families for information about their relatives, the authorities do not appear to have conducted any serious investigations, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch has obtained several additional, longer videos of Ramesh, providing further evidence that he was in army custody. In one of the videos, Ramesh is seen lying on a bench in civilian clothes. In four other videos, several soldiers stand around Ramesh while one of the soldiers questions him about where he is from, the whereabouts of the wife of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, and how he received an injury on his back. At one point it seems that the soldiers are telling Ramesh that the date is the 22^nd, suggesting that the video may have been filmed on May 22, 2009. A sixth video shows only Ramesh answering questions about when he joined the LTTE, what his position is, and his family members.

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Crime_In_Srilankan_Army_Exc

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War Crime

Ramesh wife interview

Cartoon of the day

Monday, 26th September 2011 ========================================================== MR disappointed over his UN Assembly performance upbraids all and sundry in Embassy and foreign Ministry in choice language  (Lanka-e-News -25.Sep.2011, 3.00P.M.) When Head of the Sri Lanka (SL) Rajapakse regime President Mahinda Rajapakse addressed the UN assembly , to his utter disappointment and dismay there were more empty chairs and less listeners to greet his speech. The reason for this had been the inability of Shavendra Silva ,the SL Ambassador to the UN in New York to secure for Rajapakse a place to make his address on the first day of the assembly, according to reports reaching Lanka e news. Full story >>

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Indian trawlers threaten Sri Lanka fisheries

Officials say country loses more than $50m a year due to illegal poaching by Indian fishermen.

Sri Lanka says it loses more than $50m a year due to poaching by Indian fishermen. The problem is crippling the country's local fisheries, particularly in the eastern and northern parts of the island, where Al Jazeera shot exclusive photos of Indian trawlers fishing just 4km off the Sri Lankan coast. India has admitted to "issues relating to the straying of fishermen from both countries into each other's territorial waters" and says it is working to address the problem. Al Jazeera's Minelle Fernandez reports from Pesalai in northwest Sri Lanka.        Full Story>>> ================================================ Single Women Begin to Rebuild SRI LANKA By Amantha Perera Almost a quarter of all households in the former conflict zone are headed by single women.  Credit:Amantha Perera/IPS. Buy this picture COLOMBO, Sep 25, 2011 (IPS) - For Magei Kasai the battle against hardships did not end when the guns fell silent two years ago in the Sri Lankan civil war. New battles began for survival, for herself and for what was left of her family. The 45-year-old mother of two lost her husband and a son to the war. Since the war ended in May 2009, more than 300,000 survivors like Kasai have returned to their native villages. Kasai returned to almost nothing in her village Allankulam, about 320 km from capital Colombo in the Mulaithivu districts, where the battles were at their worst. "No house, no garden, no vegetable plants,  no nothing," she tells IPS.  MORE >>

Ban Acknowledged Lapses, Sri Lanka Says, Writing Out Rights & Sex Violence

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 25 -- When Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his team on Saturday night, Rajapaksa accused Ban of undermining the UN's credibility and, cravenly, the "Secretary General's team acknowledged that there had been a lapse in communication" regarding the Panel of Experts report alleging war crimes.

Rajapaksa shown in by Ban, Nambiar- then Wallstrom     
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Appeal for critically ill Tamil prisoner

 25 September, 2011

Authorities says at least 200 former Tamil Tigers are yet to be charged

By P Manikkavasagam
BBC Tamil service, Vavuniya

Family members of a Tamil political prisoner, who is critically ill, have appealed for an early release and medical assistance.

Rasaratnam Jegatheeswaran, 33, is now being treated at the ICU of the National Hospital in Colombo.

Doctors have revealed to his wife that her husbund’s kidneys have failed to function and he is under dialysis treatment.

Full Story>>
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India, Lanka poles apart on Tamil issues

Satarupa Bhattacharjya & Devirupa Mitra

Last Updated : 25 Sep 2011 10:18:25 AM IST

NEW DELHI: While New Delhi has been asking Colombo to find a solution to the political problem that fuelled the Eelam movement, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has managed to offer nothing, just as he had intended since his overwhelming re-election in 2010.

Addressing the UN General Assembly in New York on September 23, he reiterated his stance, “home-grown solutions.” He warned “friends in distant lands to drop pre-conceived nations.” Seemingly intended for Western governments, his message however drove closer to home.

Tamil National Alliance, the largest Tamil coalition in the Sri Lankan Parliament,draws its MPs from the north and east.                          more>>