An office of a Tamil newspaper was attacked in the north of Sri Lanka on Wednesday, the police said. The police said that the Uthayan newspaper distribution office in the Kilinochchi town, an area which was once under rebel control, was attacked by an unidentified group. At least three people were injured during the attack while the building and a vehicle parked outside was also damaged. [ Full Report ]

    Kilinochchi, a town that was most affected by the 30 year conflict in Sri Lanka is located in the heart of the Northern Province with a floating population of 135,605, many of whom were displaced in the conflict. These displaced families underwent severe trauma having lost many of their family members during the conflict. Even though the conflict ended, their current status has been a severe impediment to normalize their lives. This has been the main challenge in areas that suffered prolonged deprivation due to the war. [ Full Report ]

    Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) men in Ki'linochchi have been threatening the Tamil land owners who have been filing cases against the Sinhalese from South who have occupied their lands. The SLFP men are behind ‘providing’ lands to the family members of the Sri Lanka Army soldiers and other Sinhalese from South. At least 15 cases are pending the Ki'linochchi courts against illegal land grab of priviate lands by the Sinhala settlers from South, legal sources in Ki'lnochchi told TamilNet. [ Full Report ]

    Alleging that Tamil women in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts in northern Sri Lanka were being forced to marry Sri Lankan Army personnel, DMK leader M. Karunanidhi on Monday asked the Union government to ascertain the facts and take it up with the neighbouring country. “The mere mention of the name Yazh (short for Yazhppanam or Jaffna) provokes the Sinhalese. Tamil scholars were attacked in the Jaffna World Tamil Conference and the Jaffna University library was burnt down,” he said and wanted India’s intervention to stop the incidents. [ Full Report ]

    21 of around 100 Tamil girls, who were conscripted to Sri Lankan military in Vanni, were admitted in Ki’linochchi hospital in a mentally affected state on Tuesday night around 11:00 p.m. by the SL military from Paarathipuram in Ki'linochchi, parents of the victims told TamilNet. In the meantime, TNA parliamentarian Sritharan was at the hospital struggling to get permission to witness the plight of the victims. But, around 30 SL military personnel guarding the hospital were not allowing him to independently witness the state of the victims, the parliamentarian told TamilNet. [ Full Report ]

    Hundreds of former Tamil Tigers, the defeated Sri Lankan rebel army, are moving into a peaceful trade, swapping a history of bombs and guns for bras and football shirts. In a sign of long-awaited economic reconstruction following the brutal conclusion in 2009 of the nation’s 23-year civil war, one of the biggest suppliers to Victoria’s Secret is training the former Tigers to work in the first big garment factories to open in the battle-scarred north of the island. [ Full Report ]

    Even though the Northern Province’s economy grew by 27 percent in 2011, according to the Central Bank, this has translated into few new jobs, said Sarvananthan, the principal researcher at Point Pedro Institute of Development, based in Jaffna District. and Wijesinha, an economist at the quasi-government think-tank Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in the capital. Both attributed the spike to the region’s large-scale infrastructure projects and low starting point following a decades-long conflict. Fighting peaked in early 2009 before the government declared victory in May that year. [ Full Report ]

    Life is slowly returning to normal in northern Sri Lanka, but three years after a decades-long conflict was officially declared over, jobs and housing are the prevailing concerns of returnees. Most of the estimated 448,000 people displaced before or during 2008 by fighting between government forces and rebels wanting an independent Tamil state have returned to the Northern Province, according to the latest figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). [ Full Report ]

    The Sri Lankan military is thought to be involved in the murder of a Canadian citizen of Tamil origin, according to journalists in Sri Lanka. The founding editor of a nationalist Tamil news organization told QMI Agency Sunday that his journalists on the ground in northern Sri Lanka reported that the Montreal man was murdered after trying to reclaim property seized by the military. Andrew Mahendrarajah Antonipillai, 53, was found dead in northern Sri Lanka in early May, his family told QMI Agency on Saturday. [ Full Report ]

    A Montrealer of Tamil origin was reportedly murdered in northern Sri Lanka in early May after attempting to recover property lost during the war, QMI Agency has learned. The family of Andrew Mahendrarajah Antonipillai, 53, learned of his death on May 3, his brother-in-law told QMI Agency on Saturday.However, Benjo Ponniah could not confirm media reports his brother-in-law was found with his throat slit and his genitals mutilated in the northern Sri Lankan town of Kilinochchi. [ Full Report ]

    Canada says it expects Sri Lanka to make a full investigation of the murder of a Canadian citizen in northern Sri Lanka last week. Reports say Anthonypillai Mahendrarajah, of Sri Lankan Tamil origin, was killed when he went to reclaim property lost during the war. His properties were said to be in Kilinochchi, the town that became the headquarters for Tamil Tiger rebels. Sri Lanka's army defeated separatist rebels in 2009 after 26 years of war. The Canadian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Bruce Levy, told the BBC that Mr Mahendrarajah was apparently murdered by a group of men just outside Kilinochchi. [ Full Report ]

    The Northern Sri Lankan city of Kilinochchi acted as the de-facto capital for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for more than a decade. In November 2008 the Sri Lankan army launched sustained attacks on the town from three directions. Battles raged along the A9, the main highway from Colombo to the Tamil areas in the north of the country, many people were killed and most of the town destroyed before the Sri Lankan army regained control in January 2009. [ Full Report ]

    Colombo based MAS Holdings, a leading apparel producer in Sri Lanka, is setting up a new factory in Kilinochchi district in northern part of the island country. The new apparel manufacturing unit being set up in once war affected area of Kilinochchi would be a world-class unit. With presence in five countries worldwide, MAS Holdings is a strategic supplier for brands like Nike and Marks & Spencer, and also caters to brands like Ann Taylor, Adidas, Banana Republic, Lane Bryant, Speedo and Gap. [ Full Report ]

    Driving on the potholed A9 highway to Jaffna that could break the strongest of spines, it was great relief spotting a volleyball match in progress at a wayside playground. It was in Kilinochchi, which used to be the LTTE capital until President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced its capture by his troops on January 2, 2009. Less than five months later, the forces ended the Eelam war killing the Tiger chief Velupillai Prabhakaran. [ Full Report ]

    Yayasan Sakti, with the cooperation of the Prime Minister's Department, will be sending humanitarian assistance to victims of Sri Lanka's 30-year civil war which ended two years ago. Its director and Makkal Sakthi Malaysia president Datuk R.S. Thanenthiran said 30 people comprising engineers, doctors and volunteers were undergoing training on the standard operating procedure (SOP) for the five-day mission. [ Full Report ]

    A Sri Lankan lawmaker - Harsha de Silva, Sri Lanka's main opposition has spoken out for food freedoms, after a fellow parliamentarian and prime minister proposed banning an imported food heavily consumed by Tamil speaking minority citizens. "The statement by the Prime Minister that wheat flour imports should be banned is an irresponsible statement and must be retracted," de Silva said. "The 2010 data, which covers the entire island, also show that the household wheat flour consumption in the Jaffna district was 19.3 kilograms per month while in Vavuniya it was 18.1 kilograms per month." [ Full Report ]

    Chinese engineers are now overseeing the repair of this 50 km stretch of gravel connecting Nedunkerni village with the A9 highway, the lifeline for Sri Lanka's former northern war zone, popularly known as the Vanni. Culverts and small bridges are being restored and sharp turns realigned. Restoration of the Nedunkerni - Puliyankulam road is a sign that basic public amenities like transport are no longer luxuries and that almost two and a half years after the war ended peace and development are finally trickling in. [ Full Report ]

    When 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 been completed,” he said. When contacted, the TNA claimed that the primary cause for the delay has been that lists of beneficiaries have been manipulated by Government Ministers. [ Full Report ]

    The dirt road leading south-west from Kilinochchi town is pale red, the colour of the soil of the Vanni, the northerly extreme of the Sri Lankan mainland. It is a land that lost all its people. They retreated with the Tamil Tigers as the civil war swept through Kilinochchi more than two years ago. There are burnt-out husks of houses. But new huts are now scattered among the trees. There is a bonfire by the roadside and small shops that returnees have opened. A few soldiers pass on bicycles. People walk by the roadside like strangers rediscovering the land of their roots. Hundreds of thousands have left army-run camps to come home. [ Full Report ]

    A Kilinochchi resident was killed while two others were injured and more than 10,000 acres of paddy fields affected by the floods from the torrential rains continued to lash the war-ravaged district in the past few days. The Meteorology Department said the weather pattern was an extension of the rainy weather in the rest of the Asian region. A spokesman said the disturbance in the lower atmosphere had caused heavy rains accompanied by thunder and lightning in the North and the East and was expected to last for a few more days. [ Full Report ]

    Next month's upcoming monsoon rains could spell trouble for thousands of returnees to conflict-affected northern Sri Lanka. The annual northeast monsoon rains run from November through February, and are usually accompanied by strong winds and extensive flooding. Inter-monsoonal rains have already begun in some areas. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), many of the more than 200,000 returnees since late 2009 now live under transitional or emergency shelter, including tents, tarpaulins, tin sheeting and improvised housing shelters. [ Full Report ]

    IOM this week took delivery of over 75,000 corrugated galvanized iron (CGI) sheets donated by India to Sri Lanka to provide roofing for some 6,200 displaced families returning to their home areas in the north. At the request of the Ministry of Economic Development, IOM will move the CGI sheets in 29 containers from the Port of Colombo to the Divisional Secretariats in Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Jaffna, Mannar and Vavuniya for final distribution. [ Full Report ]

    This war torn town is slowly starting to get back on its feet. The ravages of the conflict still dot the landscape of what is the longest town in Sri Lanka and its people are still very much scarred. The sun was setting on Kilinochchi when we drove in to have a look. Kilinochchi; the unofficial capital city and administrative hub of the LTTE, has been subjected to a protracted tug-of-war. The city has changed hands several times over the years, until the final Battle of Kilinochchi in January 2009, when the LTTE fled the city for the last time. [ Full Report ]

    One hundred houses in the military occupation scheme consisting twelve thousand houses by the Sri Lanka government in Ki’linochchi district to colonize the Tamil land of Vanni with Sinhala families of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) are being hurriedly prepared for occupation. Families of one hundred SLA officers will take possession of them in an event to be held shortly, informed sources in Ki’linochchi said. Arrangements are under way for the event in which key persons of Sri Lanka Defence Ministry will take part. Meanwhile, the owners of the land, all of them Tamils, their properties encroached by Sri Lanka government for colonisation, are not allowed even to go to their places where the military colony is being constructed. [ Full Report ]

    Occupying Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Vanni has declared the villages of Mayilvaakanapuram and Kumarasaamipuram in Ki’linochchi district not allowed for resettlement as they had been reserved for SLA use, sources in Ki’linochchi said. 140 uprooted families of the two villages brought to be resettled two months back after detention in Vavuniyaa SLA camp by Sri Lankan civil authorities have not been allowed to resettle in their properties. The uprooted families are forced to live in temporary sheds erected in a bare land without any basic facilities. [ Full Report ]

    President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka has called for people in the north of the island to sink their political differences and rebuild the region. He was speaking after chairing an unprecedented cabinet meeting in the town of Kilinochchi, which was the headquarters of the separatist Tamil Tigers until just before their military defeat last year. The government has confirmed that northern Sri Lanka will now host permanent military garrisons. [ Full Report ]

    The Sri Lankan cabinet is holding a special meeting in the former capital of the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels, Kilinochchi in the far north of the island. The town was the guerrillas’ stronghold for 11 years until January 2009. By assembling there, the government is making a clear statement of its role in reunifying the island after years of civil war. For years during their separatist war, and long after losing Jaffna further north, the Tamil Tigers held Kilinochchi. [ Full Report ]

    Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena yesterday said the government had decided not only to decentralize the government’s administration system but also the cabinet activities. He said the first ever cabinet meeting would be held in Kilinochchi on July 14. The government’s attention has also been drawn towards holding cabinet meetings in other districts as well, he added. “This has been possible under the prevailing peaceful situation in the country. Another plus factor is that the attention of ministers and officials will be drawn to the districts where cabinet meetings are held,” Minister Sirisena said. [ Full Report ]

    The military has also occupied Poonahari’s government hospital. “The military checkpoints are made out of the wood and sheets from our homes. ”The local Vattakachchi and Ramanathapuram schools remain occupied by the military.Billions of rupees are urgently needed to rebuild the Kilinochchi district for proper human habitation. But the Colombo government is not interested in rebuilding the conditions of ordinary people. Its treatment of war-devastated people is a continuation of decades of discrimination against Tamils. [ Full Report ]

    The recent death of a French de-miner in northern Sri Lanka highlights the ongoing threat of landmines in preventing the safe return of tens of thousands of conflict-displaced. Dominique Morin, who worked for the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action, was killed on 10 May when a device he was handling exploded in the village of Kakkayankulam West, in eastern Mannar District. “The risk is still there. We need to do more,” Nigel Robinson, country programme manager for the NGO told IRIN on 28 May in Colombo. [ Full Report ]

    Civilians who have returned to their homes know that they have a real struggle in their hands. There are any hardly jobs in the region. Most of the returning families use part of the 25,000 rupees (220 U.S. dollars) they receive as cash grant to set up temporary living quarters to either start small businesses or get back to farming. Agriculture and fishing are the main means of livelihood here. Still, many are willing to go through the hard grind. "If this is the price for peace, then we will pay it," said Joseph Devasagayam, a resident of Omanthai in Mulaithivu district. He says finding jobs and staying off minefields are nothing compared to what he endured a year back. [ Full Report ]

    The northern Sri Lankan town of Kilinochchi – former capital of the defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – is struggling to address the needs of thousands of returnees. According to Sri Lankan military officials, more than 24,000 people or close to 30 percent of the town’s original population have returned since December – many of whom are living in tents. But 10 months since the government declared final victory over the LTTE in May 2009, Kilinochchi is grappling with an influx of returnees. Thousands of residents fled the city en masse in the conflict’s final days, only to find themselves in displaced people’s camps in the town of Vavuniya or elsewhere. [ Full Report ]

    A video footage taken a few days back, while travelling between Ki'linochchi and Paranthan, shows the real situation in the heartland of Vanni in Tamil Eelam. The tract bustling with contended people two years back is virtually a no-man zone with ghost buildings and stray cattle today. The landscape is physical evidence to the genocide committed on a nation. The parties responsible for one of the worst crimes against humanity in the 21st century such as this, refuse to accept it, but hide it, coerce the victims not to talk about it and in various nuanced ways want to finish the genocide to its end, is the feeling of Eezham Tamils, both in the island and in the diaspora. [ Full Report ]

    It will take one-and-a-half to two years to do away with most land mines and another year to declare the areas safe for habitation, reported Times of India, Sunday, citing Indian Army’s retired Major General Prem K. Puri who is heading one of the Indian outfits engaged in de-mining the North and East. Meanwhile, 82 more former Indian soldiers have gone to Sri Lanka last week to join the hundreds or perhaps thousands already operating under the care of Colombo’s National Steering Committee. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s insistence on ‘de-mining first’ to free civilians from the concentration camps and India sitting on international intervention raise serious concern in Tamil circles, how long both the Establishments are going to continue the ‘human shield’ in fulfilling their agenda. [ Full Report ]

    Demining operations are underway in the northern parts of Sri Lanka that have been freed from the LTTE control and rebuilding process will begin once these areas are cleared. This was conveyed by Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama to External Affairs Minister S M Krishna when they met in Phuket in Thailand yesterday on the sidelines of ASEAN meeting."They (Sri Lanka) have promised that the three lakh displaced people of Tamil origin will be resettled. They have promised to complete the process within 180 days," Krishna said while giving details of his conversation with Bogollagama. [ Full Report ]

    A maroon shirt still draped over a railing, houses with doors half open, their roofs bombed away, the walls streaked with bullet marks; cattle left behind by fleeing owners graze in green fields dotted with hidden landmines; empty street after empty street and a lot of silence. This is Kilinochchi today, half an hour from the current Lankan battlefront. Once a bustling town and the de facto capital of the LTTE empire, since its fall in January this year it’s the symbol of triumph of the Sri Lankan Army’s military campaign against the Tamil Tigers and also the tragic story of the Tamil people, whose lives have been shattered in a never-ending struggle for dignity that eventually turned into a bitter and violent ethnic conflict. [ Full Report ]

    Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa Thursday paid a surprise visit to Kilinochchi and addressed troops who captured the region from the Tamil Tigers in January, ending a decade of rebel rule. “The president visited Kilinochchi and addressed the troops there. He was accompanied by the defence secretary, the service commanders and several officials,” military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara told IANS. President Rajapaksa, who is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, is the first state leader to visit Kilinochchi after nearly three decades. [ Full Report ]

    Mr. K. Mylwaganam,who had been contributing many articles to Sangam.org during the last few years, with the very latest on August 28, 2008, passed away in his sleep in Puthukudiyirruppu hospital on 24-01-2009 all alone. He leaves behind his wife, sons and daughters far away from home. Our sympathies to them. Maybe, his heart could not take it anymore, the sufferings all around him in that hospital and outside. Myl brought to us, his age group and everyone else, the nearness of our dear soil through his articles in Sangam.org. [ Full Report ]

    One of this island nation's best hopes for ending its long civil war is a former Tamil Tiger child soldier, barely 5 feet tall, with the nom de guerre of Pillayan, an endearment meaning "baby." Pillayan is now 33 years old and no longer a rebel. Instead of fighting for a separate state for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, as the Tamil Tigers have done for a quarter-century, Pillayan is now the chief minister of the country's Eastern Province, backed by the central government. That makes him a critical piece in its strategy to extinguish one of the world's longest-running separatist rebellions and replace it with moderate minority politicians who have local support. [ Full Report ]

    Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardene said yesterday that the development of the recently librated Kilinochchi would begin soon with the assistance of India. He said the government would also seek the assistance of other countries to develop Kilinochchi. Mr. Abeywardene told a news conference that preliminary discussions had taken place on Monday between Senior Presidential Advisor Basil Rajapaksa and Indian High Commissioner Alok Prasad on the development of Kilinochchi and the North. [ Full Report ]

    Three thousand Sri Lankan soldiers were killed fighting the Liberation Tigers in the past three months, the Sunday Island newspaper reported this week, quoting government Defence spokesman and Minister Keheliya Rambukwella. He was responding to opposition charges that 15,000 troops had been killed in the battles since October last year. Meanwhile SLA commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka wants to eventually double the size of the SLA to 300,000 soldiers to hold areas captured from the LTTE. A colonel of the SLA’s Air Mobile brigade was killed in a booby trap explosion in the fighting for Elephant Pass last week, the Sunday Times reported. [ Full Report ]

    Democratic People’s Front (DPF) Leader and Colombo District Member of Parliament Mano Ganesan observes that the fall of Kilinochchi is not the end of the political war that successive governments have been waging since independence. Admitting that the fall was a military success, the MP said one cannot get carried away by military victories. He said that the entire nation could celebrate only when a concrete solution was found to the national question. “The stumbling block to a political solution is the lack of statesmanship at the national level,” he told The Nation in an interview. [ Full Report ]

    The United Nations refugee agency has called on the Government of Sri Lanka to ensure security for civilians in the eastern part of the strife-torn nation, citing a significant increase in the number of killings, abductions and injuries in areas of return, including 24 civilian deaths recorded in November alone in the Batticaloa district. “We’re also worried about the negative impact these security incidents may have on the sustainability of the return process,” Ron Redmond, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told reporters in Geneva. [ Full Report ]

    Ranjani Kandiah of Markham, Ont., got a phone call from her brother last weekend telling her the news she had dreaded: an artillery shell had hit her parents' house in northern Sri Lanka. She went to her computer and, on a pro-rebel Web site, found photos of her mother lying on a stretcher and her 66-year-old father with bandages on his chest and left wrist. "She heard the news, she started to cry," her husband, Sekar Kandiah, who works for the auto-parts company Magna International Inc., said yesterday in an interview at their home in a snowy subdivision north of Toronto. [ Full Report ]

    How does one fight a civilized war with a barbaric army? What is the response of the civilized world to the misery and death of Eelam Tamils amidst state-driven whipped up euphoria and jubilation? In the name of unity of the country, is it justified to carry on illegal census of Tamils in various parts of Sri Lanka in a clear case of racial discrimination and subsequent subjugation argues the regular columnist on Tamil affairs. Jubilation and euphoria has been reported in some Sri Lankan and Indian media, as the racist Sinhala Army occupied Kilinochichi. I wonder whether those celebrating know exactly what they are happy about. Are they celebrating the capture of Kilinochchi or the victory of the Sri Lankan army over the Eelam Tamils? [ Full Report ]

    Sri Lanka's cabinet reinstituted on Wednesday a ban on the Tamil Tiger rebels which designates them as a terrorist group, Sri Lanka's defence spokesman said. "The cabinet has decided to ban the LTTE as they are not allowing civilians to leave the war zone," defence spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella, also a minister, told a press conference. The ban against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was lifted in 2002 at the start of an ill-fated six-year truce. [ Full Report ]

    Secretary of State for International Development, Douglas Alexander and Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch-Brown commented on the situation in Sri Lanka on Tuesday 6 January. They said:'We continue to monitor developments in Sri Lanka closely, including on 2 January the capture of Kilinochchi, the former administrative capital of the LTTE in the north of the country, by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. This development makes it even more urgent that all parties achieve progress on setting out a political solution that addresses the legitimate concerns of all communities. This is the only way to achieve a strong and sustainable peace in Sri Lanka in which all communities can prosper'... [ Full Report ]

    KilLinochchi has fallen and there is great rejoicing. It is worth, however, to remind ourselves that the war still goes on, that there are three hundred thousand IDPs still in the Wanni and that the APRC is still in labour, with no sight or sound of imminent delivery. The significance of the fall of Killinochchi cannot be minimised by reference to the fact that it has changed hands before and that it came into prominence as the politico-administrative capital of the LTTE quasi-state only because Jaffna was denied to the LTTE. This is a political struggle as some of us do not tire of opining and as such, the loss is a blow to LTTE pretensions. [ Full Report ]

    Could it be that Sri Lanka's quarter-century battle against a fierce insurgency is nearly over? The government's capture of Kilinochchi, the northern stronghold of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, represents a major victory. But the military can't win this war alone, and the next phase of the war could see the Tigers turn to guerrilla warfare to continue their fight. Winning the fight will require a combination of military subjugation of remaining Tiger fighters and a political solution for the majority of the country's Tamil population. Although Colombo can't end the war just yet, it's closer to being able to than it has been at any other point in the conflict. Under President Mahinda Rajapakse, the military has transformed into an efficient fighting force. [ Full Report ]

    It was a prestigious and popular victory for the security forces and the government with the fire crackers other celebrations giving a bigger bang than the New Year’s Eve balls or fireworks... The question now is: after Kilinochchi what? Government and military spokesman say the next target would be Elephant Pass and finally the showdown in Mullaitivu. Some defence analysts believe a big question mark hangs over whether it will be Mullaitivu or mayhem. The response of the international community is also a cause for concern. The United States, Japan and India are among the countries which have said they are not impressed with such military victories and want a political package which now looks more like some lost baggage that might not be found. [ Full Report ]