Foods - Articles

Vanni ban leaves little to take
A note at the bottom of a circular by Sri Lanka's Ministry of Defence listing the things that are not allowed to the Vanni sent to government officials in Vavuniya, reveals the extensive and arbitrary manner in which Colombo's economic embargo is imposed on the northern region. [ Full Story ]

Heads shaved to tighten Vanni embargo
Four fishermen complained to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Mannar Tuesday that the Sri Lanka Navy shaved their heads and assaulted them severely on trumped up charges that they were defying the Vanni embargo. Fishermen in Mannar complain that the SLN arrests and beats them up regularly, accusing them of smuggling essential commodities banned under Colombo's decade long economic embargo on the Vanni region. Meanwhile the SLN’s intelligence wing began deployment in the northern coastal parts of the Mannar island Tuesday. The deployment is aimed at monitoring and curbing sea borne infiltration by the Liberation Tigers from the mainland SLN, sources said. [ Full Story ]

350,000 people in Wanni starving
The Bishop of Mannar, Rt. Rev. Rayappu Joseph, who visited the Wanni area at the weekend, declared yesterday that most of the 350,000 people living in the district are starving. The Bishop has requested the Governor of the North-East Province, Major General Ashoka Jayawardena to take immediate action to send food to the Wanni area. [ Full Story ]

Officials appeal for food
The Government Agents of Vavuniya, Mullaithivu and Kilinochchi have made a request to Sri Lanka Army (SLA) officials in Vavuniya to make arrangements to dispatch the required quantity of relief food items to the displaced population in the areas held by the LTTE, said sources. [ Full Story ]

Mass protest in Vanni -GA
At least eight seriously ill people in the Vanni have died as they had been unable to travel to hospitals in the south, due to the closure of the access route to the region, according to K.Ganesh, the Government Agent in Vavuniya. At least three thousand travellers who had come to Mannar and Vavuniya for various purposes and stranded are undergoing severe hardship without money and spare clothes to wear, the GA said. [ Full Story ]

Co-operative societies write to president on teh food crisis in Vanni
In an urgent letter addressed to the Sri Lankan president, the Kilinochchi confederation of co-operative societies have accused the pro-government Tamil groups - PLOTE, TELO and EPRLF - of playing a major part in creating food crises in Vanni where hundreds of thousands of Tamil people are starving. However the primary cause of the crisis is due to the government imposing an economic blockade on the Tamil region, the letter added. [ Full Story ]

SL Forces uprooted upto 200,000 cocunut trees
Occupying Sinhalese armed forces have destroyed over 200,000 coconut trees in occupied Jaffna. A report says the trees have been destroyed since 1995. The trees have mainly been used for army bunkers or cut down to satisfy the military's security interests. [ Full Story ]

Government cuts off Valaichenai refugee aid
The Sri Lanka Government has stopped supplying emergency relief and food stamps to Tamil refugee families settled at Vinayagapuram in Valaichenai 30 km north of Batticaloa, said Kachcheri sources in Batticaloa. [ Full Story ]

Vanni situation deteriorating: UNP
The UNP today called for an adjournment debate in the Sri Lankan Parliament on what it described as the deteriorating food and medical situation in the Vanni. The UNP had discussions with the Tamil parties in Parliament this afternoon on the matter. [ Full Story ]

Food supplies to Mullaitivu cut off
Officials at the district secretariat in Vavuniya confirmed today that food supplies cannot be sent to the eastern part of the Mullaithivu district, as the Sri Lankan army has stopped all supplies from passing on the Mankulam - Ottisuddan - Mullaithivu road. [ Full Story ]

Sri Lanka: MSF's constant struggle to keep surgical programme going
The 14 year-old war between the Singhalese-dominated government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), continues. MSF runs programmes in the government-held territory of Batticalao, Vavuniya, Jaffna and Mannar. Teams also run programmes in the LTTE-held territory of Mallavi and Madhu. [ Full Story ]

Mass protest in vanni: 75,000 Tamils hand letter to UN secretary genaral
Akkarayan (Kilinochchi) is seeing the latest eruption of mass anti-government demonstrations protesting against the Sinhala-dominated government's food-siege of Tamil Vanni. [ Full Story ]

Mass protest in Mannar - UNHCR will be handed pettition
Screened from the eyes of the world, thousands of desperate Tamils have gathered in Mannar to march against Sri Lanka's long-running food and medicine siege of Vanni, and what they perceive as a "war of extermination" against the Tamil people. Slogans and banners decry the repressive measures enforced by the Sinhala army in army-occupied areas, the regularity of rapes of Tamil women by Sinhala armed forces and the ruthless army tactics being employed to capture Tamil territory - i.e., crop burning, deliberate refugee generation and economic strangulation. The Confederation of Civilian Organisations and Union of NGOs organised the protest, which will end by a petition being handed through the UNHCR to the Sri Lankan president, who is directly responsible for this state of affairs. [ Full Story ]

Demonstrators demand food and medicine in Mallavi
Many thousands of men, women and hungry children marched to the ICRC's Mallavi office to hand over an urgent memorandum calling for a halt to the government's food and medicine siege of Vanni. [ Full Story ]

'Edibala' wipes out 12,000 acres of rice
Advancing Sri Lankan forces have burned, shelled and trampled 12,000 acres of Tamil rice fields in their recent westward march from Vavuniya. These fields, which had been ready for harvest, are now totally destroyed after a military push which was intended to cause as much damage to crops as possible. It is now becoming clear that a deliberate policy is in place of economically crippling the Tamil nation with the advantage afforded by an effective news-ban that has gone largely unchallenged by the international community. [ Full Story ]

Tamil cultivable lands and crops destroyed by Sri Lanka troops
"Sri Lanka's 'Operation Edibala' is continuing with troops setting fire to Tamil crops as they advance. So far, a string of Tamil villages between Vavuniya and Mannar have been occupied. Soldiers descended on these villages like swarms of locusts sending residents running in terror as their homes were bombed and bulldozed. Acres of rice fields have been purposelyscorched during the assault in what is becoming a more and more typical military tactic. [ Full Story ]

Sri Lanka uses food and medicine as weapons of war
"JAFFNA hospital Director Mrs N Kanagaratnam says that health facilities must be upgraded urgently in all areas of the peninsula to prevent diseases such as malaria, typhoid and diarrhoea. Damage to the Jaffna hospital has been estimated at over Rs 50 million ($1 million). The hospital lacks medicines. There are no surgeons and major surgeries are still conducted at Palaly military base. Only around 650 of the 1,200 employees of the hospital have returned to work. [ Full Story ]

Sri Lanka uses Food & Medicine as weapons of war
JAFFNA hospital Director Mrs N Kanagaratnam says that health facilities must be upgraded urgently in all areas of the peninsula to prevent diseases such as malaria, typhoid and diarrhoea. [ Full Story ]