October 2016

Former Judge of the High Court of Madras, K. P. Sivasubramaniam is to file a communication with the UN Human Rights Committee that the 6th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution is a violation of freedom of speech and conscience guaranteed in Articles 18 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. He is to be part of a campaign led by the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE), a pro-LTTE diaspora group in the US. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark is also part of the campaign. The TGTE has called on the Tamil Diaspora, global Tamils and progressive lawyers around the world to provide legal representation to the communication before the UN Human Rights Committee. The TGTE emphasized that, while […]

The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) says that its proposals sent to the Public Representations Committee (PRC) on Constitutional Reforms had been ignored, while submissions from unknown diaspora groups had been taken into consideration. The GTF’s Spokesperson Suren Surendiran told the “Sunday Island” yesterday that the GTF which  was established in 2009 by a number of grassroots Tamil groups following the end of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka was the largest Tamil diaspora organization with members drawn from across five continents. The GTF, he said, was committed to a non violent agenda and seeks a lasting peace in Sri Lanka based on justice, reconciliation and a negotiated political settlement, but its proposals on constitutional reform sent within the deadline to the PRC headed by Lal […]

Two suspected members of the ‘Aava’ sword gang were arrested by the Jaffna Police earlier today. The two individuals were arrested in a by road in Jaffna when they were traveling by a motorbike. They had two swords in possession.  They had insisted that the swords were used for the practices of a drama. However, the swords were larger and not the kind used for dramas, the police said. The ‘Aava’ gang claimed responsibility to the assault on two policemen in Chunnakam recently. They said that they attacked the policemen in retaliation to the death of two Jaffna University students on the night of October 20. Is ‘Grease Yaka’ masquerading as ‘AAVA’? The Police have been ordered to crack down on the gang going by […]

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) have commenced crucial discussions in order to reach an understanding pertaining to several key issues such as the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces. The discussions have commenced in light of the drafting a new Constitution which is currently underway. According to sources in the TNA, the discussions also focused on factors such as devolution and its extent, nature of State and the electoral process. However party officials declined to reveal the progress that had been made during the discussions so far. In addition, the TNA is also involved in discussions with other minority parties of the Northern and Eastern Provinces as well as the estate sector in order to reach a […]

President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe were seen in the same frame last Friday (28) as the duo took part in the National Deepavali Festival 2016 held at Temple Trees. This was amidst speculations that things may have turned sour between the two with President Sirisena bashing Bribery Commission and other law enforcing authorities of acting in an arbitrary manner ignoring him. Hours before, Parliamentary watchdog Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) issued its report on the controversial Treasury Bond issue after 18 months of the incident. The report came with the full blessings of Sirisena loyalists in the COPE and found former Governor of the Central Bank Arjuna Mahendran, who is known to be a close friend of Premier Wickremesinghe, as directly responsible […]

The deaths of two Jaffna university students, Vijayakumar Sulakshan and Nadaraja Kajan, allegedly in a Police shooting still remains a mystery for the people in Jaffna as Police and human rights groups are still in the process of conducting investigations into the students’ death to give a clear picture about the incident that triggered a sense of uneasiness among the Northern community for the first time after the end of war in 2009. Why Police shot at these two innocent students, when they were travelling in a motorbike in the night, and why the Police allegedly responsible for the incidents tried to hide the truth by posing this incident as an accident, are the glaring questi ons that need immediate answers for the people in […]

The Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s Tamil-speaking Northern Province, C.V.Wigneswaran, has appealed to the people of the province, especially the youth, to be calm as they mourn the killing of two university students by the police. In a statement released from London, the Chief Minister said that while conveying his condolences to the bereaved families, he would appeal to the people not to express their anger and grief in ways which would have unpleasant consequences. Wigneswaran said that he would not comment on the incident before the court had given its verdict. All that he would say now is that the apparently, doctrine of using minimum force had not been observed by the police. University students Nadaraya Kajan and Pavunraj Sulakshan, who were on a […]

Student murders and attack on cops – Rajapakse conspiracy to kindle a ‘war’ that is long dead in Jaffna -High rung police officer who served in Jaffna reveals with evidence (Lanka-e-News -24.Oct.2016, 4.00PM)  The killing of two Jaffna university students yesterday , and the subsequent  attack launched  yesterday (23) causing injuries to two police officers of the intelligence division is a result of a conspiracy of the pro Rajapakses , a high ranking police officer who was serving in the Jaffna police for a long time revealed with supporting evidence to Lanka e news inside information division. The shooting down of the University  students yesterday was the first incident of killing of civilians by the police after 1983 in Jaffna . Even during the war […]

Law and Order Minister Sagala Rathnayake walks Out of Press Meet When Asked Whether “AAVAA” Gang in Jaffna is Linked to Military Intelligence Ava Group was created by Maj. Gen. Mahinda Haturusinghe! It has now been revealed that the Ava Group, the gang of criminals in motorcycles in Jaffna, was secretly created during the Rajapaksa regime by the then north’s security forces commander Maj. Gen. Mahinda Haturusinghe, sources say.  In the course of investigations into the death of two university students in a police shooting, it has been found that this gang was created after the war in a well-organized manner. However, the police have been instructed from the top not to reveal anything about this to the media. Sources say that several other gangs […]

By P K Balachandran The President of the Jaffna University Arts Faculty Students’ Union ,K.Rajeevan, on Wednesday returned a letter sent to him by the Northern Province Governor, Reginold Cooray, because it was written in Sinhalese, the language of the majority in community in Sri Lanka. It was a copy of a letter the Governor had written to Sri Lankan President Maithipala Sirisena requesting the latter to conduct an inquiry into the incident on October 20, in which two Jaffna University students were killed. Earlier in the day, teachers and students of the university had submitted a memorandum to the Governor calling for an impartial inquiry. The memorandum was in three languages, English, Sinhalese and Tamil. When the Arts Faculty Students Union President Rajeevan received […]

by Saman Indrajith The TNA yesterday demanded that an investigation be conducted into the killing of two Jaffna university students to find out how the rider of the motorcycle, and not the one on the pillion, had suffered gun shot injuries if they had been fleeing. Making a special statement, TNA leader R Sampanthan said: “On Oct 20, 2016 two Third-year students of the University of Jaffna were shot at by the Police at Kulappidi Junction, Kokkuvil. They were both riding a motorcycle at that time. “Initially the Police reported these two young men had died as a result of a road accident.  But the next morning it became clear that they had been shot by the police on the road. The rider of the […]