India provided arms and logistical support to Colombo in the Vanni war. It didn’t take any effort to stop the war. Even after one year of the war, India didn’t act on rehabilitating the incarcerated people, accused members of the confederation of citizens’ forums in Jaffna while meeting the visiting Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao on Tuesday. Resettlement is a hoodwink in Vanni, said retired Senior Professor S.K. Sitrampalam of the University of Jaffna, expressing the strong sentiments of [...]

In a recent paper titled "Why National Reconciliation in Sri Lanka Is Not Possible," Brian Senewiratne, a renowned physician and an Australia based Sinhala expatriate, says although he had realized that ‘national reconciliation’ in Sri Lanka was ‘totally unrealistic’, after witnessing the major human rights violations inflicted upon the Tamil people, what has made the reconciliation really ‘impossible’ was the most serious recent slaughter of Tamils with features of genocide. In addition, what makes reconciliation ‘most unlikely’ is ‘international meddling’ [...]

The Sri Lankan Cabinet on Monday approved changes to the 1978 Constitution, including an amendment that clears the path for President Mahinda Rajapaksa to seek a third term in office.

Reforms to the Constitution introduced by the former President, J.R. Jayewardene, have long been on the agenda of both the major parties in Sri Lanka. However, till now neither could push through the changes due to lack of the required two-thirds majority in the 225-member Parliament.

Threshold reached

In [...]

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Friday secured the two-thirds parliamentary majority he needs to change the constitution after an opposition party with eight legislators pledged its support.

"We will not join the government, but we will support the proposed constitutional amendments," Basheer Segu Dawood, the chairman of the ethnic minority party Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, told Reuters.

The president’s United Peoples Freedom Alliance won a sweeping majority in an April parliamentary poll after Rajapaksa’s re-election to the presidency three months [...]

Recognising the need for a political settlement of the Tamil question in Sri Lanka, Communist Party of India (Marxist) Central Committee member T.K. Rangarajan, MP, on Friday said the immediate priority should be to address the concerns of relief, resettlement and rehabilitation of the Tamil civilian population.

Addressing the 19th National Congress of the Sri Lankan Communist Party (SLCP) in Colombo, Mr. Rangarajan said the expeditious settlement of the Tamil question should involve the devolution of powers and autonomy [...]

Sri Lanka’s Deputy Permanent Representative (DPR) to the United Nation’s post in New York, vacant following the recall of previous DPR, Bandula Jayasekera, after an alleged sexual harassment scandal, is reported to be filled by Major General Shavendra Silva, former 58th Division commander, who has been accused of committing war crimes by his former General Sarath Fonseka, Inner City Press reported. Professor Francis Boyle, an expert in International Law, commenting on this reported UN job said, "the Government of Sri [...]

Asked about Sri Lanka on his final day as UN Humanitarian Coordinator, John Holmes offered a defense of his department’s funding of the government’s internment camps while admitting the government may have “deliberately shelled” civilians and hospitals. Video here, from Minute 17:29.

Inner City Press asked Holmes about criticism of his and the UN’s actions in Sri Lanka, for example pulling out of Kilinochchi, funding the internment camps and failing even now to get to the bottom of the murder of [...]

Sri Lanka’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN post, vacant following Bandula Jayasekera’s department triggered by a sexual harassment scandal, is now reportedly slated to be filled by Major General Shavendra Silva, who “was allegedly among those mentioned by MP Sarath Fonseka in a media interview where he had said that the former 58 Division Commander had received orders to shoot at sight LTTE suspects who came with white flags to surrender to the army during the final stage of [...]

A Tamil diaspora visitor who recently went to see the archaeological site at Kantharoadai in the heart of Jaffna peninsula found all signboards in the site in Sinhalicized Sinhala. Further, he was asked to remove shoes to walk the site, indicating that this important heritage site of the people of Jaffna is fast becoming a cult centre of contemporary Sinhala-Budhhism to culturally and psychologically alienate the people of Jaffna from their land. Ancient remains of Buddhism in Tamil land are [...]

TamilNet shortly plans to launch a weekly video programme Palaka’ni, fulfilling repeated requests from its readership to extend services in Tamil. The programme will have panel discussions on current affairs in Tamil. Even though constrains faced by TamilNet are manifold, we go forward in this venture considering the needs of the times. TamilNet appeals for continued support and cooperation of its readership, depending solely on which it has hitherto been functioning. TamilNet reiterates its independent and democratic support to the [...]

Back in my hometown to wash the family gravestone and meet friends, mostly writers, who never left Sarajevo, I heard a joke from the time of the siege, when the famous tunnel under the airport runway was the only way to escape the embattled city.

In the middle of the tunnel, two brothers heading in opposite directions bump into one another. They immediately begin shouting the same words: “Where the hell are you going? There is nothing there.”

I [...]

Whispers about a boat headed to Canada began long ago in Thailand’s small and closely knit Tamil community.

Among the regulars at the New Madras Café – a Tamil restaurant in the bustling commercial heart of Bangkok that serves roti, curry and lassis under photographs of the beaches of the Tamil heartland in northern Sri Lanka – there was frequent talk that the infamous Tamil Tigers, or at least some of their ex-operatives, were planning something: A money-raising operation [...]

The British Tamil youth who set out to highlight the need for an international investigation into Sri Lanka’s war crimes through an awareness-raising walk from London to the United Nations in Geneva is near the end of his journey, fellow activists said. Well wishers from several European countries are traveling to Switzerland to welcome him there. Gobi Sivanthan has almost reached Geneva, activists said Thursday night. Whilst French media outlets have reported regularly on his progress through France, local [...]

What is the role of the UN’s emergency relief and humanitarian coordinator? The question is raises as the UK’s Sir John Holmes ends his 3 1/2 years in the position.

  Initially the UK put him forward to head the UN Department of Political Affairs. When this was impossible, he was given the humanitarian job. But what is the relation between diplomatic politics and the humanitarian imperative?

The most recent example is the UN’s silence from at least August 2 to [...]

Holed up in the dark stinking hull of a wooden fishing boat, Amalan, a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee, made a "nightmare" voyage to Australia.

The 29-year-old had paid people-smugglers $15,000 (AU$16,600; £9,600) to help him escape his country’s brutal civil conflict.

The smugglers had promised him a short journey across the Indian Ocean. In the end he spent 30 days at sea.

Three people out of the 76 crammed on the rickety vessel died during the crossing.

"There were no facilities on board, [...]