Ninety-five persons including two women have disappeared without trace in Batticaloa district since Sri Lanka Army (SLA) occupation of the district, according to Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, P. Selvarasa. The youths who had left the Liberation Tigers and married leading a normal life and persons who had been supporters of the LTTE had been arrested or abducted by SLA Intelligence Wing with the assistance of Tamil paramilitary group of Pillayan and Karuna. These persons are among those gone missing. The abductors arriving in white vans during nights had taken away the persons who had disappeared since then, the MP said. [ Full Report ]

    It was a typically hot, humid day in this eastern coastal village. The sun burned down from a cloudless sky, roasting the skin as an angry sea breeze swatted the faces of the few foolish enough to venture out onto the deserted main road that runs through town. But it was far from a typical day for some 100 people who sat, waiting patiently by the side of the road in front of the main government office here in Vaharai, some 65 kilometres north-west of Batticaloa. [ Full Report ]

    In Sri Lanka, land has been a critical factor in the ethnic conflict that intensified and resulted in the outbreak of a war that spanned over two decades. In a post-war context the Government, political parties, civil society and citizens at large are faced with an unprecedented opportunity to address the root causes of the ethnic conflict and long-term grievances faced by different communities. The report titled “LAND IN THE EASTERN PROVINCE: POLITICS, POLICY AND CONFLICT” by CPA highlights the gaps and shortcomings in several areas including the existing Constitutional, Legal and Policy framework, the practical challenges to accessing, owning and controlling land, land disputes and conflicts as well as boundary issues between administrative divisions and current initiatives addressing landlessness and compensation/restitution. [ Full Report ]

    A group of young former combatants recently received canoes, outboard engines, water pumps and tool kits from IOM at a ceremony in Batticaloa, on the east coast of Sri Lanka, 300 km from the capital Colombo. The equipment, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), was to help them start new livelihoods as fishermen, farmers or the owners of small businesses. [ Full Report ]

    Local Councils headed by eastern Province Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan’s Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) are being probed for alleged financial irregularities, misuse of state vehicles and illegal appointments following a fallout with the government. Eastern province Governor Mohan Wijewickrema said yesterday an ‘audit probe’ on various irregularities was being carried out. The probe came after Chief Minister Chandrakanthan’s party refused to contest the April 8 parliamentary elections on the UPFA ticket and contested on its own. This caused a split in the vote and the UPFA reportedly lost a seat each in the Batticaloa and Trincomalee districts, a UPFA official said. [ Full Report ]

    Former Tamil rebels and ex-paramilitary troops were given fishing gear, carpentry tools and agricultural equipment as part of a rehabilitation programme, officials said yesterday. Some 500 ex-combatants received the aid in the eastern Batticaloa district under a programme funded by the US Agency for International Development with the International Organisation of Migration (IOM). The programme plans to reintegrate up to 1,000 former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and a paramilitary group known as the TMVP, which was made up of a breakaway faction of the rebels. [ Full Report ]

    The bus service between Battialoa and Jaffna was inaugurated after 30 years Monday by Battialcaloa SrI Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) Depot Manager, Thurai Manoharan, from Batticaloa Main SLTB terminal. Meanwhile, it has been announced that a bus services will operate between Kalmunai and Jaffna from 1st January. The bus to Jaffna from Batticaloa will leave at 5:00 a.m and reach Jaffna at 4:30 p.m daily. Another bus service will operate daily from Jaffna to Batticaloa on the same time shedule. The bus service between Kalmunai and Jaffna will operate similar to Batticaloa-Jaffna bus service. [ Full Report ]

    The Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), the largest political party in the East, now wants voters to support “a candidate who has the backing of a political party” that would resolve Tamil grievances. This official position of the party was declared in a statement (issued in Tamil) by the TMVP after a politburo meeting on Friday. This announcement retracts the TMVP’s declaration on December 2 that it would support President Mahinda Rajapaksa. That declaration came after a TMVP delegation led by Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan, Chief Minister of the Eastern Province and TMVP leader, had a lengthy meeting in Colombo with Senior Presidential Advisor Basil Rajapaksa. [ Full Report ]

    We cannot be satisfied by the manner in which the government is handling the IDP issue. In the name of settlement, the government simply takes the people out of the camps and abandons them without providing proper infrastructure facilities. They have no housing or a source of income. They do not have jobs as they cannot engage in fishing or farming. Many people have been sent to Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee and Mannar, though they were originally living in the Wanni. I have reliable information that in the Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts, the government is bringing outsiders and settling them in villages. This was one of the main causes for the rise of Tamil militancy. [ Full Report ]

    IN ANDIMUNAI, it feels that everybody wants to leave. The normal population of the sleepy fishing town on Sri Lanka's west coast is about 10,000. But locals say at least 2000 of them have gone overseas by boat. Another 1000 or so have returned after being deported from places including Europe, North America and Australia. Many of them will try another getaway. ''Each family has someone who has left, come back and tried to go again,'' says Arun Raj, a Tamil from Andimunai who made a failed bid for Europe and now wants to catch the next boat to Australia. Andimunai is one of many towns along the Sri Lankan coast with a long tradition of ''irregular migration''. [ Full Report ]

    Vakarai is a dust bowl of a village, right at the edge of the coast in Sri Lanka’s east. The last three decades have not been too good for this fishing village — located about 300 kilometres east of the capital Colombo — and its inhabitants, mostly from the minority Tamil community. From war and disaster to a state of normalcy, this village of about two thousand inhabitants has come full circle. But that is getting ahead of the story. Since the late 1990s the village had been caught in fighting between the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government forces. The latter was in control of the village from the late 1990s till January 2007, when they were finally dislodged by government forces. [ Full Report ]

    Displaced Tamil people released from the camps in Vavuniya are still in camps, local political leaders say. R Thurairatnam, a member of the eastern provincial council, told BBC Sandeshaya that 123 families released from Vavuniya camps are still kept in camps in Batticaloa. 360 people are currently kept in two schools, Sinhala Maha Vidyalaya and Kurukkalmadam Vidyalaya, in Batticaloa in early morning on Saturday. Correspondents say the internally displaced people (IDPs) earlier released from Vavuniya camps were allowed to go home or visit their relatives. [ Full Report ]

    There has always been concerted efforts both local and regional, to give an undue religious twist to disputes in Kattankudi much to the annoyance of the community. Speak to anybody in the area and they say that it is all part of a paranoid spy network of a regional power which is out to destroy foreign investment opportunities in the Eastern Sri Lanka with a view to getting a firmer foothold there. [ Full Report ]

    Sri Lanka's once volatile Eastern Province held by various extremist groups is to be free of firearms next month, defense officials announced on Tuesday. The Ministry of Defense has set a rigid deadline of July 2 for all extremist groups holding firearms to surrender the weapons. "The government has asked all groups to surrender weapons," A. L. M Hisbullah, a provincial government official told the media. The police said the directive was aimed at some Muslim groups carrying firearms in the Batticaloa district's Kathankudy area. [ Full Report ]

    A Presidential Commission tasked with investigating abductions, killings and disappearances in all parts of the country on Tuesday (June 16) said that though the situation in the Ampara and Trincomalee districts had improved, Batticaloa remained a cause for concern. Retired Justice Mahanama Tilakaratne yesterday told a press conference at the BMICH that the police deployed in the Batticaloa district had to depend on the army to maintain law and order. He said that differences between various Tamil groups, particularly factions headed by Karuna Amman and Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, had caused trouble. [ Full Report ]

    Just over a month after 6 year old Jude Varsha, a student of St. Mary’s Girls School in Trincomalee was abducted and murdered by a group of TMVP cadres, TMVP men once again have been accused of the abduction and murder of another schoolgirl in Batticaloa. Both girls were initially abducted for ransom. For the return of 8 year old Dinushika Sathishkumar, a grade 3 student at the Kottamunai Kanishta Vidyalaya in Batticaloa, the abductors had demanded Rs 3 million as ransom. [ Full Report ]

    Last year, in a village in the east of Sri Lanka, Selvi Ratnarajah opened her door to find three masked men pointing guns at her face. They pushed inside and screamed at her to turn off the lights. When she refused, they shouted for her husband, Ravanana, dragged him into the street and forced him at gunpoint on to the back of a motorbike. "I went out of the house and ran and ran through the bush," she said, fingering her husband's tattered ID card. "I could see the lights of the motorbike ahead and I saw them stop by a bridge. Then I heard shots. I ran towards the noise and I could hear someone breathing. ... [ Full Report ]

    Eastern Province Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan yesterday slammed non cabinet Minister of National Integration and Reconciliation Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan alias Karuna Amman for his “interference” in matters relating to the eastern province. Mr. Chandrakanthan told Daily Mirror that Minister Muralitharan had “no right” to talk about the east as he was not selected as a leader by the people in the area. [ Full Report ]

    The government has decided to disarm the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) before the end of this month. Accordingly, security forces officers have formulated a programme for disarmament and have directed senior security forces officers in the East to initiate the programme after March 10. Thus, the disarmament process will take place from the 10 to the 31st of March. The security forces have already informed the leader of the TMVP’s Karuna faction, Parliamentarian Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan and leader of the TMVP’s Pillayan faction, Eastern province Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan that all weapons belonging to the TMVP must be handed over before March 31, a higly placed security source said. [ Full Report ]

    The camp is an eye sore in Kalmunai. Around 61 families share just three toilets. Out of the nine toilets that were temporarily erected by the government immediately after the tsunami victims were moved in, six had to be shut down after they overflowed. The victims are forced to manage with the balance three toilets and this, the majority of the Muslim inmates say, is both unhealthy and extremely inconvenient.. Chicken pox and measles are fast spreading in this camp. Men, women, young and old, have been struck down with these diseases... [ Full Report ]

    UNHCR is concerned over the deteriorating situation in Sri Lanka's east following a significant increase in the number of killings, abductions and injuries in areas of return during the last few months. In November alone, the United Nations recorded 24 civilian deaths in the Batticaloa district. We're also worried about the negative impact these security incidents may have on the sustainability of the return process. [ Full Report ]

    Every morning and evening, Velmurugu Kangasuriyam gathers his 2 1/2 year-old daughter and his wife and confronts the wreckage of his former life. His wife, Thaya, lights an oil lamp on the mantle of a dark, bare concrete room. Kangasuriyam presses his hands together and closes his eyes. Little Theresa follows in imitation. For a long minute his new family stands in silent prayer. Thaya places orange flowers in front of pictures of Hindu gods. She lays several more before a picture of Kangasuriyam's parents. [ Full Report ]

    Four years after the tsunami hit the East coast and destroyed hundreds of homes in the Ampara district, displaced families are still living in so-called “temporary” shelters and waiting for the new homes they have been promised. At Saintamarutu, Ampara, 300 families are packed into 18 refugee camps, while another 400 families are being accommodated by relatives. Poor living conditions make life even more difficult and depressing at the refugee camps. The buildings are deteriorating by the day, and the toilets are in a filthy state. [ Full Report ]

    More than a year and a half after the government retook all inhabited territory in the east and dismantled the LTTE’s administrative apparatus there, the periodic reports of violence and killings continue to be a problem in that former war zone. There is an informal travel advisory against foreigners travelling to the east on account of the absence of security guarantees, and government members do not travel there without special security. When the National Peace Council held its Human Rights Day event in Ampara in the east on December 10, I found myself duty bound to participate, despite family concerns about safety. [ Full Report ]

    The government says that the 'liberated' east is an example of democracy in action and a model for areas recaptured from the LTTE. The reality is anything but. Killings and abductions are rife, and there is total impunity for horrific abuses. On November 25, 18 people were killed within 24 hours in Batticaloa District alone. Following a claymore mine attack which killed two Sri Lankan military personnel in Eruvil, three members from the same family were killed (grandmother, father and a son) in the village. [ Full Report ]