Day: 7 August 2016

Tamil political prisoners have decided to go ahead with a protest fast tomorrow despite a meeting held with the Tamil National Alliance yesterday. Tamil National Alliance Parliamentarian Selvam Adaikalanathan met the prisoners at the Anuradhapura prison yesterday. The inmates had handed over a letter to the Parliamentarian to be handed over to Tamil National Alliance leader R. Sampanthan. In the letter the prisoners had noted that the Government has failed to keep to its word on the political prisoner issue. The prisoners had staged a similar hunger strike in December last…

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BY Mirudhula Thambiah The term ‘Ex-LTTE cadre’ is taboo in the Northern and Eastern Provinces as most of the former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres have been rehabilitated four to five years ago. However, society has neglected them. The rehabilitated cadres say that the government has neglected them without giving them any relief or livelihood sponsorship. Also, there had been a situation of panic as most of their colleagues had been subjected to sudden deaths. Even the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian Sivagnanam Sritharan in his recent speech…

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COLOMBO: The Chief Minister of the Tamil-majority Northern Province of Sri Lanka, C.V.Wigneswaran, has said that accountability for the war crimes allegedly committed in the last phase of Eelam War IV must be established before the Sri Lankan government formulates a new constitution to address the basic political question. Addressing the Tamil Peoples’ Council in his capacity as its co-chairman in Jaffna on Sunday, Wigneswaran said that the constitution planned by the government will not be drafted to the Tamils’ satisfaction unless accountability issues were satisfactorily addressed prior to that.…

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Manjula Fernando Democratic Cadres, a political party consisting of ex-LTTE members yesterday urged not to politicize alleged incidents of mysterious deaths of rehabilitated LTTE cadres, which had been referred to the Government for action. Party spokesman C. Chandralingam told the Sunday Observer that they had sought Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne’s intervention to investigate and carry out medical tests on all ex-cadres to verify these claims. Chandralingam, said some political figures have requested that medical tests be carried out by foreign medical experts since they could not rely on local doctors…

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By Madhawa Kulasuriya – Vavuniya Five human skeletal remains, and what have been identified as splintered human teeth, were retrieved from an abandoned well in Thirukedeeshwaran, Mannar, last Wednesday. The well lies close to the Thirukedeeshwaran mass grave discovered in 2013. This follows the discovery of 88 skeletal remains in December 2013 in what was tagged the Mannar Mass Graves Discovery. Acting under orders from Mannar Magistrate A. G. Alexraja, given in response to a petition filed in the Mannar Magistrate’s Court, Police and personnel from the Archaeological Department began…

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By Ishara Ratnakara Though Additional Colombo Magistrate Nishantha Peiris had ordered the arrest of Joint Opposition (JO) and SLFP Hambantota District MP Namal Rajapaksa on charges of having carried out illegal transactions at the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) using political clout, the Police have failed to arrest him to date though nine days have elapsed since the Court Order was given. The Colombo Additional Magistrate issued order for the arrest of the suspect on 28 July this year. The Attorney General (AG) had named the JO MP as the chief…

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It has been decided that the current consensus government will run for its full term of five years until it fulfills its pledges given in August 2015. Initially, the UNP and the SLFP had agreed to work together for two years and to decide the future, depending on how it works during that period. However, due to various reasons, they have now extended the cohabitation even before the two year period is over. The initial pledges given to the people included working jointly to resolve the ethnic issue and taking…

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