Day: 17 May 2015

Three brothers arrested for alleged rape and killing

Karu

Three brothers from the same family in the Jaffna peninsula have been arrested over the alleged rape and killing of an 18-year-old school girl and remanded until next Thursday, police said. Initial investigations have revealed that a long-standing dispute between the two families had allegedly led to the abduction of the girl while she was on her way to school on Wednesday morning. The suspects were produced before Kayts Magistrate Lenin Kumar. The girl was later allegedly raped and been dumped in a scrub jungle. Her hands and feet were…

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Commemorating Mullivaikkal Day 2009 Tamil Diaspora poised for massive demos

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by Sulochana Ramiah Mohan Almost the entire Tamil Diaspora in France, US, Canada, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Australia, UK and elsewhere will take to the streets globally tomorrow (May 18) to commemorate Mullivaikkal Day or the last phase of the war that ended on May 18, 2009, the day LTTE supremo Prabhakaran was killed. Despite Sri Lanka opting for a conciliatory re-naming of “Victory Day” as ‘Remembrance day’ on May 19 in a bid to encourage the reconciliation process that the government is working on, and to recall the sacrifices…

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Teaching the Brits a thing or two

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During our student days many, many moons ago, we were taught that British colonialism did some good things in what was then Ceylon while many of the unsavoury acts tended to be interred with the inglorious history of the Raj and British rule elsewhere in the empire. So that cliché about how Britannia ruled the waves but waived the rules. Fortunately — for the British that is — there were no international conventions on civil and political rights and no Human Rights Council to which injured parties and militarily subjugated…

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TGTE to reveal names of alleged war criminals

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by Sulochana Ramiah Mohan The Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) said it will release the first batch of names of Sri Lanka’s alleged war criminals at tomorrow’s (May 18) 5th anniversary commemoration ceremony in the USA, that will revisit the final phases of the war in which they claim the ‘killing of a large number of Tamils’. The TGTE says the first batch of names will include important political and military leaders who were allegedly responsible over the years for killing large numbers of Tamils. A TGTE media release…

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Swiss bank exposé: Names of 40 Lankans revealed

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Some 40 Sri Lankans stashed away around US$ 50 million in secret Swiss bank accounts, according to details made available exclusively to the Sunday Times by the US based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The details were obtained by the ICIJ from the French newspaper Le Monde and led to many collaborative projects by the ICIJ in what came to be known as Swiss Leaks. The Sri Lankans are among 100,000 clients of the HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) worldwide. The names and account details are in a trove of 60,000…

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Stolen assets probe begins in US

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by Manjula Fernando The unearthing of possibly billions of rupees worth of assets syphoned off from Sri Lanka and stashed away in the United States of America begins with the return of the high-powered US investigative team that was in Colombo last week. A team of US prosecutors and investigators was in the country to assist their Sri Lankan counterparts to trace and recover the stolen assets stashed in financial institutions in the United States. “The team comprised officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Justice, US…

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White Flag and war crimes issues: Solheim testifies before UN

Karu

By Sulochana Ramiah Mohan Former Norwegian peace facilitator Erik Solheim said he had testified before the UN probe panel on the events that took place during the final phase of the war and the white flag issue in Sri Lanka. Last year Solheim told Ceylon Today that he ‘would go before the International Criminal Court or any recognized International Tribunal to give evidence against Sri Lanka on alleged war crimes’. He said, “Yes, I told all what I knew to UNHRC panel about the final phase of the war and…

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Will Sambanthan and Sumithiran join the celebration of killing 40,000 Tamil civilians?

Karu

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) will boycott the military parade set to be held on May 19 in Matara to mark six years since the end of the war. TNA MP Suresh Premachandran said that the TNA has taken a clear position not to take part in the event which has been held every year since the war ended in May 2009. It is claimed by UN officials that more than 40,000 Tamil Civilians and LTTE Leaders were killed in May 2009. It is also claimed that more than 1000…

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Balasingham was disappointed with Prabhakaran – Vithyatharan

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By Hasitha Kuruppu One time Editor-in-Chief of Uthayan and Sudar Oli newspapers, Nadesapillai Vithyatharan, is known as a person who has comprehensive knowledge about the inner workings of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). He also acted as a go-between at one time, taking messages between South and North. As the sixth anniversary of the end of the war will be commemorated in just two days, Ceylon Today spoke to Vithyatharan about the final days of Sri Lanka’s bloody war. Following are excerpts: ? Anton Balasingham was one of…

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Is trouble brewing for Lanka across the Palk Strait?

Karu

by a special Correspondent Is trouble brewing for Sri Lanka across the Palk Strait with the Tamil Nadu firebrand Jayaram Jayalalithaa, poised to resume charge as Chief Minister of the South Indian state? With her back in the saddle in Chennai, would the Sri Lankan Tamil issue, lying dormant in Tamil Nadu since her incarceration in a corruption case in September last year, be re-kindled? Or are there mitigating factors which could ensure peace in the region? One major reason for her stoking the fires of the Sri Lankan Tamil…

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Four musketeers set for showdown

Karu

My dear Wimal, Vasu, Dinesh and Udaya, I am writing to congratulate you on your recent work, staging rallies in cities around the country trying to convince people that we should all get together to try and bring back Mahinda maama so that he can save the nation once again, although it is only a few months since he was voted out of office. I am told the most recent meeting at Kurunegala was a ‘huge success’ because dozens of blue MPs and thousands of people attended the meeting. I…

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