Udara Soysa, Sat 30th Apr 12:30GMT. The Tamil community in Denmark expressed their horror at the recent political killing of Tamil journalists, civil society members, government officials and political party members in Sri Lanka
“Nobody really wants peace. The government wants foreign aid while the LTTE wants to expand their rule and power. Innocent Tamil people are suffering as a result “said a Denmark based Tamil businessman.

“Sivaram is the latest victim of violence based politics! LTTE is killing other Tamils who are opposed to LTTE ideology and anti-LTTE forces who are armed are targeting suspected LTTE sympathisers for revenge. I don’t know where this will end” he added.

Another Tamil living in Denmark commented that the international community and media movements must stand against atrocities irrespectively of the perpetrator.

“When Nadesan was killed, many stood up for him. When the journalist Kamalanathan who wrote against the LTTE was killed, none came forward to condemn it” he complained.

S. Kamalanathan, a former member of TELO and provincial correspondent for the Tamil newspaper, ‘Thinamurusu’ was shot to death by the LTTE after being abducted.

Meanwhile, the Tamil Democratic forum from Denmark also condemned the killing of Sivaram.

“In spite of the ceasefire agreement signed three years ago by the warring parties, the country is daily confronted with murder and other crimes committed in the name of nationalism and freedom. Both the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are to be held responsible for these crimes.

The Tamil Democratic forum urge the Danish as well as the rest of the International society to condemn these actions and put pressure on both parties to find a sustainable solution to end the ethnic feud that has raged the country for more than 20 years and cost over 70,000 innocent human lives.” added the press release.

http://www.theacademic.org/

http://www.theacademic.org/#11147713070
By Udara Soysa in Colombo, Fri 29th April 09:30GMT. Dharamartnam Sivaram, alias Tharaki, was abducted last Thursday and found dead with gunshot injuries . His body was found near the Japan-Sri Lanka Friendship Bridge today.

Sivaram was once a member of the armed wing of the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE). He later left the party and worked as a journalist, aligning with the LTTE. He was also a columnist to the Daily Mirror and the editor of the tamilnet.com web site.

Sivaram was abducted by four men in a Toyota SUV, outside a Bambalapitiya Restaurant, in front of the police station, according to sources.

A Tamil language daily Virakesari reported that Sivaram had left his house for a movie according to his wife. Kusal Perera, a freelance journalist said that he, Sivaram, Ravi Kumudesh and Prasannna Ratnayake came out of the Bambalapitiya restaurant at about 10.25 PM yesterday night.

Kusal Perera also stated that both Ravi Kumudesh and Prasanna Ratnayakae went in the direction of the Bambalapitiya market to get their bus while he and Sivaram went in the opposite direction to a nearby bus stand.

Perera states that Sivaram had then received a phone call on his mobile and started walking towards Devos lane. While he was in conversation, three persons are said to have alighted from an ash colored SUV and shoved him into the jeep. When Perera came forward calling for Sivaram, two unknown persons had chased him until he climbed into a nearby bus.

On arriving home, Perera had informed others and the wife of Sivaram about the incident. Meanwhile the wife of the slain journalist had told him that Sivaram informed her that he was going to be late. She also said that a friend of Sivaram had phoned to inform her about the kidnapping and that she could not contact her husband on his mobile phone, the Thinakural report added.

Meanwhile, the LTTE media blamed the government directly for the killing while the defense spokesperson Brigadier Daya Ratnayake condemned the abduction and said that the authorities will take all measures to investigate into the matter.

Political abduction has become a common phenomenon in Sri Lanka. Many Tamil political activists have been kidnapped by the LTTE during the ceasefire period.The kidnap and murder of Sivaram is also widely seen as being part of the internal clashes between LTTE Karuna- Prabhakaran factions.

The Karuna group previously murdered Nadesan, (Batticaloa correspondent of the Virakesari) while the Batticaloa correspondent of the anti-LTTE weekly Thinamurasu was shot dead by the Prabhakaran group.

By EUNICE del ROSARIO

MANAMA

A PREGNANT Sri Lankan woman was beaten with a plastic hose by her Bahraini husband, after she refused to abort the baby. The 34-year-old woman was extremely lucky not to lose the baby, said doctors at Salmaniya Medical Complex.

The woman, who is four months pregnant, was attacked when her jobless husband turned up at the hotel where she works, at around 2.30pm.

Scared colleagues, ran off leaving her alone with her husband, she said.

"He pushed me to the floor and started beating me with the hose, he was so angry," said the woman, who works as a cashier.

"He said he wanted me to get rid of the baby, but I told him I wanted to keep our baby.

"Nobody helped me."

Staff alerted the police, who later arrested the 32-year-old man.

The woman spent two days in hospital with severe bruising, but later took her husband back after he signed a court pledge never to attack her again.

"He's my husband. I have no other family in Bahrain and I do not want to go back to Sri Lanka," she said.

"Besides, my husband is unemployed and has no one else to support him."

Police made the man sign a legal document stating that he would no longer beat his wife up.

Another such incident will land him a jail term, it said.

Doctors at the SMC said that she was extremely lucky that she did not lose her baby.

"He says now he is sorry and wants the baby," said the woman, who has an 11-year-old child from a previous marriage.

Her first husband is Sri Lankan and lives in Sri Lanka with their son.


Note:-

[B] An international efforts are needed to safe guard the labourers of developing countries in the middle east [/]

2 more days for the Sinhalese and Tamil new year,My wishes to all our TIG friends around the world.


cheers,

Udara

UTHR J REPORT

On 1st March in the wake of LTTE accusations against the Government, President Kumaratunge appointed a commission comprising two judges to probe attacks on LTTE personnel. Whichever way one looks at it, it is a belated and intriguing exercise in accountability. To begin with the LTTE’s complaint is not new. It has regularly blamed the government forces for all killings of political activists and civilians in the ‘government controlled’ areas. The number is above 150, nearly all of them opponents of the LTTE. Not only was the Government too cowardly to investigate these, it lent complicity to covering these up. Early in the peace process, the Defence Minister under Prime Minister Wickremasinghe dismissed well-founded reports of child conscription by the LTTE as gossip. Following the assassination of senior EPRLF(V) leader T. Subathiran in June 2003, strong evidence was produced identifying LTTE’s Nallur ‘political commissar Easwaran as the chief operator in the assassination. The Police did not even question him.

Matters did not improve when President Kumaratunge, after criticising Wickremasinghe’s management, took personal control of defence. The same month, on 28th November 2003, the LTTE brutally hacked to death 3 Muslim farmers near Kinniya. One survivor escaped to reveal the facts. Trincomalee’s police chief SSP Upali Hewage dismissed the atrocity as a land dispute between Muslims and Tamils.


Most bizarre was the Government’s attitude to the suicide assassination attempt on Minister for Hindu Affairs, Mr. Douglas Devananda on 7th July 2004. The suicide attack during a peace process was a clear revelation of the LTTE as an institution. The plot involved a woman who had a long association with the EPDP introducing the bomber to Devananda as a supplicant for a job. The bomber was a former LTTE woman cadre who tried to return to civilian life and became very upset after a marriage was arranged and the bridegroom’s party pulled out at the last minute.

Following the failed attempt, President Kumaratunge’s untimely spokesman Harim Peiris went public to say in effect that the failed attempt was an internal matter, to say nothing of the five policeman killed when the bomber blew herself up: "It is the LTTE going after a political opponent”, he said. "It is that and absolutely nothing else. It [the LTTE] is resorting to violence to kill an opponent; it is not reverting to hostilities.” The opposition UNP spokesman Ravindra Randeniya found in the suicide blast “evidence that President Chandrika Kumaratunga should take the peace process seriously”. In getting this hapless girl to blow herself up the LTTE was evidently resolving a legitimate internal matter or was working harder to find a settlement along democratic federal lines!

As for the UNP, it has continuously played the game of thwarting all attempts at a permanent solution, feeding off chaos and anarchy. While gloating over the fact that the Karuna split had weakened the LTTE, the UPFA government had meekly allowed the Vanni faction to make a bloody conquest of Batticaloa, doing nothing to protect the people and children. Tamils killing Tamils was good news. For the people of the East it was the worst of all worlds.

The new priority for the Government and the security forces was to make a show of being very impartial as regards the two LTTE factions. The Government and the STF chief Nimal Lewke have tried to impress the Vanni faction by repeating umpteen times the incident where the STF shot dead a Karuna man after he killed Vanni faction’s Jude in Akkaraipattu. One wonders what the Judges on the commission would make of that.


The Tamil people have complained since 1984 that the STF did not know the law. There was never any suggestion that the Karuna man who shot Jude posed a threat to the STF. The STF’s brief was to arrest him and charge him in court, not murdering him to score brownie points with the LTTE.


President Kumaratunge’s appointment of a commission to look into attacks on the LTTE is a caricature of accountability against the record of a systematic cover up of attacks on all others. The people of the North-East have since the 1970s demanded accountability from Colombo. Hopes that were raised when Kumaratunge came to power were dashed in 1995 when the LTTE unconscionably restarted the war. When Air Force bombing killed about 120 refugees in the Navaly church precincts on 10th July 1995 and 45 civilians including about 24 school children at a gathering in Nagar Kovil two months later, accountability was rudely denied. The LTTE was not blameless in the two incidents. But what stayed in the people’s minds was the Government’s arrogance. The same trend continued, such as when the STF in 1996 detained two innocent youths in Kalmunai, murdered them, claimed credit and were rewarded for ostensibly preventing the assassination of visiting ministers.

Arrogance had its price. Today imagination has failed; the institutions of state, the Government and the Opposition have been reduced to the Ludicrous.

What can the new presidential commission do? Find out that one military intelligence official or the other kept links with Karuna contrary to orders that were not seriously meant? The perspective is all wrong. The Government must be accountable first and foremost to the people of the North-East, not to the LTTE. The handling of the Karuna split was scandalous from the very beginning.