Sri Lanka extended its state of emergency by another month as fighting between government troops and Tamil rebels continued with 19 more deaths reported on Tuesday. It was passed in parliament with 111 members voting in favour and 14 against in the 225 seat legislature. The main opposition United National Party abstained from voting. The emergency regulation needs to be extended every month in parliament. Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremananayake, moving the motion, told Parliament that during the last month 112 security personnel and policemen and 43 civilians had been killed while 793 security personnel and 61 civilians had been injured. [ full story | comments ]

From Sri Lanka to South Korea, from Tibet to Myanmar, Asia's Buddhist clergy are in unprecedented numbers exerting their moral authority onto politics, abandoning their detachment from worldly events and giving rise to what at least one academic has referred to as a region-wide "angry monk syndrome". "In reality, there has never been one singular monk. Only Buddha himself is considered a model monk," he said. "Monks in the 21st century could be militants, activists, magicians, forest-dwelling world renouncers. All these monks wish to have their voices heard in their own ways." [ full story | comments (1) ]

Sri Lanka's inability to resolve the ethnic conflict poses dangers, a rights group has said, adding that Tamils firmly believe in the 'justice of the liberation struggle' even if they don't admire the Tamil Tigers. In its latest bulletin, the University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR) has painted a grim picture of life in Vanni, the vast region in the island's north that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) controls. 'The prospect of a (political) settlement is now prisoner to the government's obsession with its Sinhalese extremist agenda as the only means of prolonging its hold on power,' it said. [ full story | comments ]

Amid louder international calls for negotiations and a political solution to Sri Lanka’s crisis, the Sinhala leadership insisted yet again this week that the Liberation Tigers would be crushed and ‘peace’ established within a year. The Rajapakse government’s implicit call on the Sinhala people to keep the faith comes as progress on the battlefield remains painfully slow and the cost of pursuing hegemony over the northeast begins to bite harder, compounded by rising global oil and food prices. Given that the international community has hitherto done – and continues to do - what it can to support the Sinhala state’s war efforts, Tamils are justified in being cynical about this renewed international emphasis on negotiations and a solution. [ full story | comments (2) ]

Government yesterday insisted that any future peace talks would take place with the participation of all Tamil political parties in the country and not solely with the LTTE. The LTTE however ruled out such a possibility stating that it would enter negotiations with only the government, through the facilitation of the Norwegians and not with the presence of any other political party in the country. “The LTTE has been fighting for the rights of the Tamils. Such a condition laid down by the Government is just another tactic to evade peace talks”, LTTE military spokesperson Rasiah Ilanthirayan said. [ full story | comments (1) ]

Sri Lanka beefed up security on Monday and warned of possible rebel attacks around the capital Colombo as the island's Tamil Tiger rebels marked the 21st anniversary of their first rebel suicide attack. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on the weekend commemorated the 356 men and women who have blown themselves up suicide attacks since the first such attack on 5th July 1987, when the suicide bomber or Black Tiger drove an explosive-laden truck into a Sri Lankan Army garrison in northern Jaffna. [ full story | comments (5) ]

"One thing is certain," insists Martin McGuinness in his office at Belfast's Stormont Castle. "The resolution of the conflict in Sri Lanka can only happen at the negotiating table. Nowhere else." "Both the government and the Tamil Tigers believe that they can have more victories over each other possibly in advance of peace negotiations. I have to say, I think both the government and the Tamil Tigers are foolish if they believe that." Mr McGuinness' words carry authority. He is a former IRA fighter (some believe a onetime senior IRA commander), who led his movement through a complex peace process, and is now deputy first minister in a power-sharing devolved government in Northern Ireland. [ full story | comments (14) ]

Media activists in Sri Lanka are organising a boycott of the upcoming South Asian summit in Colombo in protest at escalating attacks against journalists, a report said yesterday. The Lakbima News weekly said several media outlets had agreed in principle not to cover the August 1 summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (Saarc), without naming the groups involved. “A number of local and international media organisations have agreed on the proposal to boycott the coverage of the summit as the Sri Lankan government has not ensured that journalists could perform their duties without hindrance,” it said. [ full story | comments (3) ]

Waving the flag of the Tamil Tigers guerrillas, thousands of Canadian Tamils gathered this weekend for their first rally since the federal government shocked the community by outlawing a Toronto-based Tamil non-profit group under the Anti-Terrorism Act. A statement issued by the event's organizers condemned the government for last month's decision to ban the World Tamil Movement as a suspected financial front for the Tigers, and called on Canada to recognize guerrilla-held areas of northern Sri Lanka as an independent state, called Tamil Eelam. [ full story | comments (17) ]

Just when people began to feel that the abduction saga had reached an end and the white van syndrome is a thing of the past, statistical revelations in June and the events that took place in the first week of July give lie to such thoughts. White vans roam the cities again, driving would-be-assailants and in search of their prey. Namal Perera, a former TNL journalist and Mahendra Ratnaweera, an associate member of the Foreign Correspondents' Association were two such victims. There is no doubt that July end would record more victims. To give a quick overview, according to monitoring work conducted by a government minister, some 94 abductions have taken place by June 30 excluding those who returned home. [ full story | comments (2) ]

A 24-year-old father of two was wounded Tuesday at 10:05 a.m. when two Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) bombers attacked Kugnchup-paranthan and the adjacent paddy fields along Paranthan - Poonakari (Pooneryn) road. TamilNet correspondent who visited the attack site said that the bombardment has caused extensive damage to the agricultural lands in the 5th canal. The road was also damaged in the attack. The SLAF bombers came again at 1:20 p.m. and attacked the same area with deep bombs leaving large craters. [ full story | comments ]

THE Tamils have, since the degradation of the last series of negotiations, demonstrated an extraordinary amount of patience waiting for a peaceful solution, or at least a prospect of it, to present itself. After much dilly-dallying, a somewhat notable outcome emerged from the All Party Representative Committee (APRC), appointed by President Mahinda Rajapakse. Its publicised brief was to seek out a possible consensual solution to the conflict. It was notable in the sense that the deliberations included members of many, not all, political parties across the Sri Lankan political spectrum. [ full story | comments ]

Nearly three hundreds civilians who sought protection with Jaffna Human Rights Commision (JHRC) and kept in protective custody within Jaffna prison premises are facing danger of being removed against their wishes as a result of the activities of a local judge, sources in Jaffna said. Continued threats from in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Intelligence and paramilitary operatives forced many civilians to surrender to the HRC from various parts of the peninsula during the past two years. The SLA has earlier forced protection seekers at Jaffna prison to sign a letter, stating that they were LTTE members, before accommodating them to the centre at Thellippazhai. [ full story | comments ]

When Tamils in Sri Lanka say they are being subject to genocide, the international community brushes off these protests as exaggerations or histrionics. The word ‘genocide’, is not only powerful and emotive, it carries serious legal obligations for the international community. The world’s worst genocide after WW2 occurred in Rwanda. The case of Sri Lanka’s Tamils, it is bluntly suggested, is very different to that of Rwanda’s Tutsis. It is not made clear why – except for the sheer scale of the slaughter in three months of 1994. Admittedly, this has not happened in Sri Lanka. But the parallels between Sri Lanka and pre-1994 Rwanda are striking. [ full story | comments (2) ]

The BBC's Roland Buerk in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, looks at why journalists and human rights activists there are so angry. The police dragged barricades across the road, blocking the route to President Mahinda Rajapaksa's office. Wearing black armbands, journalists and human rights activists said the freedom of the press had been undermined as the war continues between the government and the separatist Tamil Tigers (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). [ full story | comments (1) ]

Cairn India, a subsidiary of Cairn UK Holdings Limited, on Monday signed a Petroleum Resources agreement to explore for oil and natural gas in the Mannaar Basin. The signing took place in front of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa at Temple Trees between the Sri Lankan Minister for Petroleum and Petroleum Development Resources A.H.M Fowzie and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Executive Director of the Cairn India, Indrajit Banerjee, who gave USD one million as signature bond to Rajapaksa government, according to informed sources. [ full story | comments (7) ]

Srilanka on Monday confirmed an agreement with Cairn India Ltd to explore oil and gas deposits in the north-western Mannar gulf of the island. Sri Lanka’s minister of petroleum resources A.H.M. Fowzie said, “Today we signed an agreement with Cairn India, formally offering them the rights to explore oil and gas deposits at block one in the Gulf of Mannar.” Indrajit Banerjee, a Cairn India director, signed the agreement with Fowzie in the presence of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake and several cabinet ministers. The minister said arrangements have been made to accelerate all activities related to Cairn, which is expected to commence exploration by early next year. [ full story | comments ]

Sri Lankan shares inched down 0.14 percent to a 5-½ month low on Monday, a ninth consecutive fall as worries about the economy and a long-running civil war with Tamil rebels kept investors out of the market. "Economic and war worries are the main reason for the fall," said Hussain Ghani, assistant director at Asia Securities. "Investors are waiting for a market-pushing news, but unfortunately nothing has happened. If this situation continues, even better corporate results for the last quarter will also not boost the market." [ full story | comments (2) ]

LTTE leader Mr. V. Pirapaharan participated in the Black Tigers commemoration day events held Saturday in Vanni. 356 Black Tigers have laid down their lives, 254 of them in sea operations, during the last 21 years since 05 July 1987, when the first Black Tiger Captain Miller, drove an explosive laden truck on Sri Lanka Army (SLA) troops garrisoned at Nelliyadi Central College in Vadamaraadchi in Jaffna. Last year, Black Tiger commandos stormed the Sri Lankan airbase in Anudradhapura in LTTE's first combined Black Tiger and Tamil Eelam Air Force attack, destroying more than 10 air crafts. [ full story | comments ]

In Sri Lanka, when one feels that things cannot get any worse, it does. As for the plight of the media, it had been a continuous battle and deterioration. Each week the country hits a new low; the country report worsens and more journalists come under attacks of varying kinds. Journalists in Sri Lanka have been having it really tough for the past two years but the targeting of media personnel have seen a further increase in the month of June. Here, we are ready to ignore the hate speeches and sinister phone calls given, for there have been far more grievous incidents with people physically coming under attack. [ full story | comments ]