News vom 02.05.2006

[srilanka1998]

UN agencies begin aiding Sri Lankans who fled recent fighting
[ UN ] [ 00:30 GMT, May. 2, 2006 ]


United Nations agencies have started delivering food, safe water and other basic needs to the over 10,000 Sri Lankans displaced by recent clashes between the Government and the separatist Tamil rebels, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today. A joint UN assessment team had gone to the Trincomalee district of northern Sri Lanka on Friday following clashes with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and military air strikes last week. The team reported that on April 21, some 8,500 people were displaced as a result of explosive attacks in the town of Muttur, according to a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).


The Big Question: Is Sri Lanka once again on the brink of full-scale civil war?
[ Independent ] [ 00:31 GMT, May. 2, 2006 ]


Why is there so much concern about Sri Lanka? Barely recovered from the 2004 tsunami, Sri Lanka appears to be sliding inexorably back towards civil war. There has been a drastic increase in violence between government forces and the Tamil Tiger rebels since December, culminating in government air strikes on Tiger positions just outside Trincomalee . The air strikes came after the attempted assassination of the Sri Lankan army chief by a suspected Tiger suicide bomber. More than 100 people have died in the last two weeks alone. How serious is the threat of war? Very. At least 64,000 people are believed to have died in the two-decade civil war on Sri Lanka, making it one of the bloodiest in the world.

 

[srilanka1998]

Sri Lanka seeks truce talks despite bloodiest month
[ AFP ] [ 10:06 GMT, May. 2, 2006 ]


Sri Lanka has stepped up moves to revive face-to-face talks with Tamil Tiger rebels despite the bloodiest month since a ceasefire took effect four years ago, a senior official has said. The bombings and attacks over the past month killed at least 200 people, but Colombo has been pressing peacebroker Norway and aid donors to help bring the Tigers to the table, the government's top official handling the peace bid said. "We are optimistic. I am an optimist," Palitha Kohona told AFP late Monday. "We hope the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) will come for talks in Switzerland at the earliest. We are awaiting responses to the proposals we have made."


S.Lanka Tigers say shelled as violence simmers
[ Reuters ] [ 10:09 GMT, May. 2, 2006 ]


Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels said they were shelled on Tuesday morning by government artillery, but the army denied taking any action as violence threatened a 2002 truce and planned talks remained deadlocked. Local police said it might instead be a clash between the Tigers and breakaway faction the Karuna group, which the rebels say is government backed. But the rebels clearly blamed the army for attacking them near the northeastern port of Trincomalee. "It is from the Sri Lankan military," local Tiger political leader S. Elilan told Reuters. "We retaliated and fired shells back." Reuters witnesses in Trincomalee town, across the harbor from Tiger territory hit by government air strikes last week, said they had heard explosions and shooting.


Sri Lanka's war battered north fears more violence
[ Reuters ] [ 11:34 GMT, May. 2, 2006 ]

For residents of Sri Lanka's already war-battered north, who suffered bombing and fled their homes during two decades of war, recent violence raises fears it could all happen again. Dominated by minority Tamils, now controlled by the almost exclusively Sinhalese army and cut off from the rest of the island by rebel territory, the northern city of Jaffna has changed hands several times and seen fierce fighting. "In the last 20 years, my life has been filled with adventurous events and misery," says Tamil businessman Selvadurai Kailasavillai, 56. "Life was in total darkness. There was no electricity for more than 10 years. There was bombing and shelling every day. My wife still suffers from that misery."


Trapped in the middle of crisis
[ Milton Keynes Today ] [ 12:07 GMT, May. 2, 2006 ]


Plucky Jacqui Watson and her three female co-workers travelled to the island to help victims of the tsunami – little knowing they would be caught up in another major crisis. "The aerial bomb attacks happened just three days after they arrived and caused devastation," said city GP Dr Sam Muthuveloe, whose charity, HOMSA, has raised hundreds of thousands to help the people of his native country. He has managed to contact Jacqui, who lives in Potterspury, and establish she is safe and well. "But we have no idea what will happen now and I am worried we may not be able to get her home. When the military take the law into their hands in emergency situations it is anyone's guess what will happen," he said.


Gunmen 'kill two' at Jaffna paper
[ BBC ] [ 15:51 GMT, May. 2, 2006 ]


Gunmen have shot dead two people in an attack on a Tamil-language newspaper in the northern Sri Lankan town of Jaffna, the paper's editor says. Both of those killed in the attack were staff, the editor of the Uthayan daily, N Vidyadharan, told the BBC. Two other employees were seriously injured. He said masked men wearing black had burst into the paper's offices and opened fire indiscriminately. Recent violence in northern and eastern Sri Lanka has derailed peace talks.


Sri Lanka “A Deathtrap for Journalism” Warns IFJ in Media Safety Alert After Killings
[ IFJ ] [ 17:02 GMT, May. 2, 2006 ]


The International Federation of Journalists today said that Sri Lanka and its major Tamil-dominated cities have become a “deathtrap for journalism” following the brutal assassination of two media staff in the northern city of Jaffna. Earlier today at 6pm local time, two unidentified gunmen entered into the offices of the Tamil daily nationalist newspaper, Udyan, killing Ranjit Kumar, a machine operator and Suresh a marketing manager. Three journalists were badly injured in the attack, with two in critical condition. “With at least 7 media deaths, beatings and arrests of reporters in the last year, Jaffna has become a deathtrap for journalism,” said Christopher Warren, IFJ President, speaking at the opening of a UNESCO conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka.