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 Eezham Tamils. Army has occupied the Tamil lands and people have strong doubts whether India would be of any help in Tamils getting a political solution, the civil society representatives told the visiting Indian diplomat. [ Full Report ]

    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 not a cultural property of today’s genocidal Sinhala-Buddhism. What is happening in Jaffna is perhaps the ‘reconciliation’, meant by the ‘culture and development’ pundits, commented an academic in Jaffna. [ Full Report ]

    Seeking to give a further boost to bilateral friendly ties, India will set up two new consulates in Sri Lanka's Jaffna and Hambantota cities. The two sides had agreed on this during president Mahinda Rajapaksa's visit to India in June. "In order to implement and formalise this understanding, an Exchange of Notes took place today between foreign secretary CR Jayasinghe and (Indian) high commissioner Ashok K Kantha," an official statement said. It is expected that the two Consulates General of India in Jaffna and Hambantota will be set up in the near future, it said. [ Full Report ]

    A 21-member delegation of fisherfolk , primarily from the war-ravaged northern Sri Lanka, held a consultative meeting with fishermen of the district at Keechankuppam on Thursday. Use of trawler vessels and dual-filament nets by fishermen in Tamil Nadu, and their impact on the small fishermen of northern Sri Lanka figured at the two-hour long meeting. Suryakumaran Kanthavanam of Jaffna, who led the team, said that there was community restraint on the use of trawlers, notwithstanding the government orders against their use. [ Full Report ]

    The Elections Secretariat has decided to omit from the 2010 electoral register, the names of voters in the Jaffna district who have left the country during the conflict period. Elections authorities are currently enumerating the voters to prepare the electoral list for 2010. According to the 2008 electoral register there had been 722,000 registered voters in the Jaffna district. In the 2009 register this had increased to 816,000. However, many of them now live outside the country. The People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), said yesterday that the actual number of voters staying in Jaffna could be placed roughly at 400,000. [ Full Report ]

    State-run Indian Bank headquartered in Chennai, India is planning to open a branch in Sri Lankas former war torn Northern Jaffna peninsular and also in the central hills of the island, a media report said. "Talks are in an advanced stage at the moment," the Times of India quoted the chairman and managing director T M Bhasin of Indian Bank as saying. Banks have rushed to open branches in Jaffna after the 30-year war ended in May 2009. Sri Lanka's central bank has approved dozens of new commercial banks in Jaffna, including one by Hong Kong-based HSBC. [ Full Report ]

    If you tour Jaffna and happen to visit the Jaffna railway station, you will not miss a family of three residing in one of the abandoned office rooms of the station. Selvaratnam Jayalingam (48) his wife Jayarubi and their girl child Dharshika (4) have been living there for the last four months surviving on the food and money given by visitors of the South who are going in large numbers to Jaffna these days and also soldiers who are in the vicinity. [ Full Report ]

    The Netherlands has pledged EUR 2 million (LKR 277,820,000) to support two IOM programmes that are helping internally displaced people (IDPs) to return home and reintegrating former LTTE Tamil Tiger combatants into civil society. Announcing the contribution, Dutch Ambassador Leoni Cuelenaere said: "It is important to help these people to return home safely and with dignity. We hope that IOM's programme will meet their immediate needs and provide them with a foundation from which they can start to rebuild their lives and livelihoods." [ Full Report ]

    Authorities at Jaffna University in northern Sri Lanka prevented a group of student leaders from the Inter University Student Federation (IUSF) from visiting the campus on June 12. While the IUSF was the immediate target, the broader aim behind the ban was to suppress all political activity on the campus. On hearing of the IUSF visit, the university’s vice chancellor, N. Shanmugalingan, informed the student union not to meet with them and denied permission for them to enter the university premises. A heavy police guard was deployed, creating a tense situation on the campus. Students said military intelligence personnel were loitering near the campus. [ Full Report ]

    During the 14th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, last Friday 11th June 2010, a parallel event took place. It was titled “Human Rights in South and Central Asia today” and was organised by Interfaith International and co-sponsored by Al-Hakim Foundation, Himalayan Research and Cultural Foundation, and the Rencontre Africaine de Defence pour les Droits de l’homme (RADDHO). The speakers were from the concerned region and various ethnic groups. [ Full Report ]

    It is now a year since President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government claimed to have “liberated” the Tamil population from the “terrorism” of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, there has been no improvement in the lives of the people of Jaffna and other northern towns since the LTTE’s defeat last May. Instead, there is an intensified military occupation, with many people living in refugee camps or makeshift huts and thousands of youth still under detention. [ Full Report ]

    An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission led by Brian Aitken, Mission Chief for Sri Lanka of the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department was in Jaffna yesterday for meetings with government officials, informed sources said. The IMF team, visiting Jaffna for the first time under the current $2.6 billion Stand-by Arrangement (SBA) facility, met Northern Governor G.A. Chandrasiri and Jaffna Divisional Secretary S. Ganesh jointly. [ Full Report ]

    Unidentified men arriving in a van forcibly took away a family woman Tuesday morning as she was returning along Karaveddi Sampanthar shop area after having taken her son to school, sources in Vadamaraadchi said. The abductors had attacked the woman with the intention of killing her and dumped her among the shrubs in a deserted area in Valvai where Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers are on patrol. Meanwhile, a teenage girl student had managed to escape from abductors with injuries Tuesday in Point Pedro in Vadamaraadchi while some men had tried to abduct a young woman in front of Jaffna Teaching Hospital as she was coming out of the hospital after treatment, sources in Jaffna said. [ Full Report ]

    The Sri Lanka Air Force, with the state’s authorisation, are carrying out mining and quarrying operations at a site within the High Security Zone (HSZ) in Keerimalai, in Jaffna. The site is the former premises of the Cement Corporation/Lanka Cement Ltd, which was shut down in 1990 because of the conflict. However, both the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau (GSMB) and the Central Environment Authority (CEA) say permits have not been obtained from either authority for any mining activity to be conducted in this area. “Any permit issued by the Central Environment Authority must be renewed annually or every three years, depending on the degree of pollution caused by the work in question. [ Full Report ]

    A 26-year-old male, Sivalingam Sabesan, an uprooted civilian who settled in Jaffna after leaving the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) operated internment camp in Vavuniyaa, has been gunned down on Jaffna - Point Pedro Road Sunday around 7:30 p.m. by armed men riding a motorbike. The killing has taken place in SLA-guarded road near Ceylinco insurance company and Vadamaraadchi telecommunication building. This is the first killing by gunmen reported in Jaffna after the Eelam War - 4 ended in May 2009 in Vanni. The targeted killing of Vanni IDP comes in the wake of a recent visit by Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to Jaffna. Tension prevails in the area. [ Full Report ]

    India will assist Sri Lanka to develop the Palaly air base and the Kanakesanthurai port in Jaffna peninsula, as the country works to rebuild the war-torn Tamil-dominated north. “The Indian government’s help has been sought for the development of the Palaly air base and the KKS port projects. India has said it will consider providing assistance for these ventures,” a source in the Lankan government said. [ Full Report ]

    Sri Lanka Army (SLA) authorities in Jaffna have reimposed sudden checking of persons and vehicles at the junctions of main roads in Jaffna peninsula which had been suspended prior to President Election, sources in Jaffna said. SLA officials in a report to local media Wednesday claimed that checking is being reintroduced in the context of escalating incidents of abduction for ransom, killings and robberies in the peninsula. Meanwhile, peninsula residents and civil society organizations said that this very criminal violence had taken place unchecked before the suspension of road checks by the SLA and the police. Working according to a hidden scheme SLA has reimposed the road checks as the first step in bringing the entire peninsula under its total grip, they further said. [ Full Report ]

    Two cyclists from the minority Tamil community are shooed away by government soldiers as they approach this northern Sri Lankan city’s only Buddhist temple while President Mahinda Rajapaksa is paying a visit. But when a family from the majority Sinhalese family ambles toward the guards, they are treated more amiably. These twin incidents during Rajapaksa’s rare visit to Jaffna on Apr. 1 illustrate the contrasting ways in which soldiers from an army made up largely of Sinhalese treat the majority and minority ethnic groups. [ Full Report ]

    Of the registered electors in the voting list 721,359 (One has to ignore the question whether this number true or false, as it is the officially stated number of the Sri Lankan election agency), 185,132 (25.66%) polled in the presidential election on January 26, 2010. Sarath Fonseka received 113,877 (63.84%) of the votes, while President Mahinda Rajapaksa received 44,154 (24.75%) votes. The voters in Jaffna district snubbed President Rajapaksa convincingly. Soon after the results, it was reported in the media that Devananda told his supporters that he was going to resign his minister post for being the reason for Mahinda Rajapakse’s defeat in Jaffna peninsula in the presidential election (January 30,2010). But, it was not for real. [ Full Report ]

    Unidentified persons arriving in a vehicle forcibly took away two family men on their way to Jaffna town on a motor cycle Tuesday and later rang the family members of the two men and demanded five million rupees for one of them and three million rupees for the other as ransom, their family members said in their complaint to Vaddukkoadai police. Each time the abductors had called for ransom using different hand phones. One of the abducted persons is Varatharajasingham Maheswaran, motor mechanic and a resident of Navaali. [ Full Report ]

    About eight months back, delivery boys for this northern city’s main newspaper were accompanied on their rounds by government soldiers – the first time a Sri Lankan broadsheet was being delivered under armed guard. Today, almost a year since the war against the Tamil secessionists ended in May 2009, life for Jaffna journalists is slowly changing for the better. "We were facing threats from some armed groups and we had to seek protection," recalled M V Kanamylenathan, chief editor of the Tamil-language ‘Uthayan’ newspaper. Ironically, its protector – the army – was also accused – alongside other sectors – of intimidating this newspaper group in the once war-battered northern capital. [ Full Report ]

    Compared to many bombed out homes and churches in town, the Jaffna Library is housed in a starkly and stately, milk-white building. A statute of goddess Saraswati in the courtyard and armed Sri Lankan army patrols outside the walls keep watch as students, retired government servants and academics step inside the library’s noiseless reading rooms with high ceilings to pour over books and journals. "You need to take your shoes off (before entering) as this is a temple of knowledge", former head librarian S Thanabaalasinham said. The library building was inaugurated in 1959 by mayor, Alfred Durayappah, assassinated in 1975 by slain Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, his first high-profile murder. [ Full Report ]

    A low voter turnout amid allegations of unfair electoral practices and sporadic incidents of violence marked Sri Lanka’s general elections on Thursday, the first Parliamentary poll to be held in a post-LTTE era. The Election Department said it would only release the final voting percentage after counting of ballots was completed by Friday afternoon. But non-governmental election monitors pegged the percentage of votes polled between 50 per cent and 52 per cent; more than 20 percentages lower than what was polled in the last Parliamentary election in 2004 and one of the lowest ever. More than 70 percent votes were also polled during the Presidential election on January 26. [ Full Report ]

    This week’s parliamentary elections will mark the first time the main political party of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority will be able to participate in elections without Tamil Tiger rebels breathing down its neck. Still, the campaign resolutions that attract votes remains the same: self-determination, federalism and cohabitation with the majority Sinhalese community. Even if the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) wins the election, how the party will be able to secure the president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s support when the latter has ruled out some of those demands is a big question. [ Full Report ]

    The President during his speech at the Jaffna rally on the 1st had shouted at the Tamil people saying, “Yes, we are Sinhala. The country is also Sinhala. Therefore, you Demala (Tamils) listen to me. If you cannot listen without trying to be too smart, then leave.” The President had made this statement while making his speech in Tamil with the help of the tele-prompter during the UPFA rally at the Duraiappa Stadium. The people who had not understood his speech had started to shout in anger while the President had shouted back in this manner. [ Full Report ]