Reconciliation

UPFA Parliamentarian Sajin Vass Gunawardena yesterday emphasized that any final solution to the Tamil question will only be through the PSC process. MP Gunawardena who is the Secretary of the committee appointed to have discussions with the TNA said there was no deadline agreed to or even discussed as to the committee proceedings. He was […]

 Kusal Perera Finally, the full report of the long awaited Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) is in public domain, after it was presented in parliament on Friday (16 December, 2011) by the Leader of the House, Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva. He in fact sounded very certain the recommendations would be carried out to […]

Saman IndrajithThe Lessons learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) has called for a joint declaration of apology from leaders of all sides to the country’s citizens who have suffered as a result of the 30 year long conflict. “Leaders of all sides should reach out to each other in humility and make a joint declaration, extending […]

Melani Manel PereraAlmost three since the end of the civil war, the northern peninsula has one one soldier for every 11 civilians, that is 40-50,000 troops out of a population of 600,000. About 39,000 war widows and 200,000 internally displaced people are still waiting. Tamils too are waiting for the government to provide housing, jobs, […]

On December 10th 2011, a group of 42 HRDs and political activists from the South of Sri Lanka were detained by police in the Northern town of Jaffna and prevented from attending a protest to mark international human rights day in Jaffna. Events to mark Human Rights Day including protests in other parts of Sri […]

Sumanasiri LiayanageAlthough I took up this and related issues many a time before, the current impasse in talks between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has compelled me to address those issues once again as, in my view, the resolution of the national question would be key to Sri […]

 Shamindra Ferdinando The JVP on Saturday (Dec. 10) said that those held for their alleged involvement with the LTTE should have been tried before Tamil speaking judges.  Launching a special political campaign in the Northern Province, the JVP lambasted the UPFA government for keeping LTTEsuspects in the dark as to what was going on in courts. […]

 [TamilNet] The Sri Lankan Police in the city of Mannaar has been backing a 10-member gang to fuel communal hatred among the sections of Tamil speaking people in Mannaar, legal sources in the city told TamilNet Tuesday. The ploy has come to light after the gang leader with Muslim name, allegedly a convert from Hindu […]

Land Issues in the Northern Province: Post-War Politics, Policy and Practices by Senior Researchers Bhavani Fonseka and Mirak Raheem at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) is the most recent endeavour by CPA to critique and provide alternatives to land and related issues in the post-war Northern Province in Sri Lanka.Download the report as a […]

(The Hindu) Reiterating the commitment of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to continue the talks aimed at arriving on an amicable political solution for the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the TNA on Saturday urged the government “to honour the mutual agreement reached and not to place new impediments to achieving an acceptable political solution that […]

R. K. Radhakrishnan Work on translating the voluminous report of the committee that had studied the years since the collapse of the truce with the Tamil Tigers in 2002 to the end of the war in 2009 is set to begin soon. One official in the know said the report prepared by the Lessons Learnt […]

Maryam AzwerWhen The Sunday Leader interviewed R. Sampanthan a week ago, the TNA leader claimed that of the 50,000 houses the Government of India had donated to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sri Lanka, only 50 had been fully completed.“According to our sources, when the Indian Foreign Secretary visited last month, only 50 houses had […]

Security in and around the Jaffna peninsula and the North has been tightened as the military has received information that a group was planning to paste posters in the area to mark  the birthday of Velupillai Prabhakaran.Jaffna Security Forces Commander Major General Mahinda Hathurasinghe noted that no celebration or activity will take place in the […]

 [TamilNet] Genocidal Sri Lanka occupying the country of Eezham Tamils continued for the third year in militarily preventing people observing the Heroes Day week ending on Sunday. SL military’s paranoia or arrogance of oppression has gone to the extent of ordering temples not to toll bells or light lamps during the week. Military is also […]

The Sri Lankan Government has decided to declare year 2012 as the Year for a Trilingual Sri Lanka aimed at motivating the people to acquire trilingual skills.A paper presented by president Mahinda Rajapaksa to the Cabinet suggests that far-seeing initiatives are  needed  to be taken to prevent the resurgence of terrorism which ravaged the country […]

Maryam AzwerLeader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Rajavarothiam Sampanthan, says the Tamils in the country are still not treated as equal citizens and have lost their dignity and self respect.  In an interview with The Sunday Leader, R. Sampanthan also spoke on Sinhalese settlement in the North and East, as well as local and […]

Srilankamirror – The TNA says the party’s aim is to conclude discussions with the government on finding a political solution to the ethnic issue by the end of the year.  Requests made by the TNA from the government to set a deadline to the discussions in order to make it more effective had not received […]

WATCHDOGs Changes since the end of the war: 30 months after the end of war, more people travel between the once off limits North[i] and the South and many of the travel restrictions have been eased. The dreaded Medawachiya checkpoint is no more, and since 2010, we have not taken a flight or ship to […]

(Srilankamirror) – TULF leader is advising president Mahinda Rajapaksa in good faith that no satisfactory permanent solution can ever be found to the national question under a unitary system of governance.   In a letter to president Rajapaksa, the TULF leader says, “I had been repeatedly saying that only the Indian Model will be acceptable to […]

 [TamilNet]Colombo government has recently given instructions to Ea’raavoor Urban Council chairman Ali Zahir Mowlana to bring 7 Tamil villages under his administration using the Urban Council, informed sources told reporters in Batticaloa. The villages Aa’rumukaththaan-kudiyiruppu, Tha’lavaay, Chavukkadi, Mayilampaave’li and wards No 1, 4 and 5 in the Ea’raavoor under the Ea’raavoor Chengkaladi Piratheasa Chapai (PS) […]

 M.R. Narayan Swamy (IANS) A prominent Sri Lankan politician who played a key role in the peace process says his country stands at ‘a critical point’ when decision makers need to make choices to help heal the wounds of a war that ended two years ago.‘We stand at a critical point. We have an opportunity […]

 [TamilNet] Expressing dismay at the “chauvinistic attitude” of the Sri Lankan state, former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said on Friday the international community was united in its criticism of Sri Lanka’s conduct in the north and east and that SL President Mahinda Rajapaksa would not be welcomed internationally unless conditions there improved.“I […]

” We have very clearly stated our position with regard to that. In our meetings with the Sri Lanka Tamil community in Canada and UK, Mr. Sampanthan has told them that our objective is to find a political solution within an undivided, united country and that we cannot be running two courses. This is our […]

Story and photos by N. Parameswaran There are still some 34.000 people, or 2,000 families, living in welfare centres or rented houses in the Jaffna district, close on two years after the conflict in the North and East ended. Another 7,100 displaced Jaffna residents are housed in refugee camps in India, as shown in the […]

An evaluation report by Norway of its peace efforts in Sri Lanka between 1997 and 2009 has named presidential advisor and Minister Basil Rajapaksa as the person through whom the LTTE leadership tried to negotiate a last-minute surrender deal before the entire hierarchy of the group was killed in May, 2009.“In the night between May […]

Jonathan Goodhand and Bart Klem and Gunnar SorboNorwegian peace efforts in Sri Lanka have been the subject of heated debate and controversy, ever since they became public in December 1999. This debate has spawned many different stories about Norway’s involvement in Sri Lanka, some of them very critical. The evaluation entitled “Pawns of Peace”, which […]

 AYESHA ZUHAIR The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) yesterday strongly defended its decision to hold political discussions with US State Department officials in Washington and said the TNA delegation had not discussed anything that had not already been stated by the party publicly in Sri Lanka.In an interview with Daily Mirror TNA parliamentarian M.A. Sumanthiran said, […]

(LBO) – A controversial new way to register land in Sri Lanka’s former war zones outside established procedure has been stayed by the island’s Court of Appeal with the state also not objecting, lawyers said.  In July 2011, Sri Lanka’s Commissioner General of Lands had issued a circular Regulating the Activities Regarding Management of Lands […]

Nita Bhalla(AlertNet) The packed buses hurtle along the once forbidden, dusty A9 highway from the Sri Lankan capital across the former frontline to the “liberated” north – a region held by the defeated Tamil Tiger separatists for the best part of a quarter of a century.Along the way, the buses stop and passengers descend into […]

Andrew Buncombe His name was Abi, he was six, and the last his family glimpsed of him was in the frenzied moments after deadly shells struck close to the bunker where they had been sheltering. His sisters were gravely injured, his mother too, and the young boy put his arm around her. “Mother,” he sobbed […]