LTTE May Day rally in Paris, a show down with French authorities?
Elaborate arrangements have been made by agents of the Tamil Tigers in Paris to exploit May Day rally as a protest against the arrest of the 19 Tamil Tiger cadres on April Fools day by the French anti-terrorist squad. Usually the May day rally in France is organized by CGT (confederation General du Travail) a leading trade union confederation in France. Any organizations interested in participating on the May Day rally and march are normally allowed to participate. Tamil Tiger have participated in the name of Tamil Coordinating Committee Tamil Tigers in France. Earlier Tigers participated in the May Day march as a publicity campaign for the Tigers. This is the first May Day rally after EU declared LTTE as a proscribed organization.
The ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) pushed for the abolishment of Executive Presidency in favour of Parliamentary & Cabinet System of government on April 30 in Colombo. It also proposed a second legislative chamber called the 'Senate' that was somewhat similar to the independent Sri Lanka assembly of 1948. Released on April 30th May Day rally at Colombo 'CMC Grounds' by Party Secretary-General Minister Maithripala Sirisena, the proposals are made by the SLFP to the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) of Sri Lanka.
“Working with allies and partners across the world, through coordination and information sharing, we have created a less permissive operating environment for terrorists, keeping leaders on the move or in hiding, and degrading their ability to plan and mount attacks,” according to the 2006 Country Reports on Terrorism, released April 30. The State Department prepared annual report to the Congress includes analyses from the National Counter Terrorism Center, and the report admits that there was a 25% increase in terrorism worldwide in the year 2006.
Many people in Sri Lanka and friends of Sri Lanka everywhere are dismayed at the Eelam War -4 now being waged under a façade of ceasefire. It is taking the country and the people away from finding a workable solution to the ethnic problem in the near future. The ostensible objective of this war of the government side is to "bring peace and freedom for the people" in areas not under the control of government. On the other hand the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have reverted back to their avowed military aim of "freeing Tamils from Sinhala racists" promised earlier by their leader Prabhakaran. It is clear that both sides have reduced 'peace and ceasefire' as nothing more than propaganda cliché for the consumption of the international community.
On March 29, 2007 the Tamil Tigers killed five Indian fishermen off the coast of S. India. Then on April 28, 2007 – the day Sri Lanka was playing the finals in the World Cup – the Tigers bombed a petroleum facility owned jointly by Indian Oil Corporation and the Sri Lankan government. Tigers also bombed another petroleum depot owned by Shell. The well-informed Tiger intelligence would have known what they were bombing and who owned them. Tigers, who had pre-planned the bombing earlier, were taking a calculated risk knowing that they were bombing Indian and Western investments in Sri Lanka.
Amnesty International’s recent ‘cricket ball campaign’ against Sri Lanka during the World Cup in the West Indies has raised two key issues in respect of human rights campaigning in general. The first is whether it is correct to use any forum to launch human rights campaigns even if the issues are correct? The second is about the ethical validity of the ‘use of shaming’ as a weapon in human rights campaigns by Amnesty or any other.
Sri Lanka Government was fully prepared and capable of meeting any challenges posed by the Tamil rebel outfit – Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Furthermore Government has taken all effective steps to thwart attempted attack by the LTTE. Sri Lanka foreign Minister denounced the recent attacks by the LTTE. He pointed out LTTE was an international threat and a united effort was needed to defeat that threat. Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama briefed representatives of the Colombo-based Diplomatic Corps this afternoon (30th) on matters of current interest to the diplomatic community especially relevant to security issues.
The Information Technology workforce in Sri Lanka is expected grow. The job growth depends on collaboration between the private sector, government, educators and donors so that the workforce will have the skills it needs to fill these often well-paid positions. The potential for more jobs are there, a survey revealed. U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission Director Rebecca Cohn said Friday that the information technology (IT) sector has tremendous potential to bolster the Sri Lankan economy, but taking advantage of the opportunity depends on collaboration between the private and public sectors, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission Director Rebecca Cohn said Friday.
HNB Stockbrokers in their weekly review indicated that the indices showed a positive trend this week though activity levels remained depressed. All Share Price Index (ASPI) closed the week at 2824.6 points up by 2.11 percent compared to last week while the more sensitive Milanka Price Index (MPI) stood at 3890.4 up by 3.6 percent. JKH this week managed to become the largest contributor towards weekly turnover by a considerable margin. JKH during the week contributed Rs.227 million toward market turnover.
Somalia has caught the attention of the international community as more than 70 innocent nomadic herdsmen were killed when a US gunship hunting Al-Qaeda suspects ‘mistakenly’ attacked a village in Southern Somalia. The US found, no “wanted” Al-Qaeda terrorists, dead or alive in the village though the attack was in line with the speculation that after Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be Somalia’s turn to face the US fury. For the last few years, Washington’s Somalia policy has hinged on the hunt for Al-Qaeda terrorists, and particularly the men wanted for killing 225 people in the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam and the 2002 attack on Israelis in Mombasa.
At a press conference in February, the Sri Lankan military boasted that it had broken up a major terrorist conspiracy. Officials played the video taped confessions of three men detained less than 48 hours earlier, admitting to being members of a previously unknown group, the Revolutionary Liberation Organization (RLO), to having received training and arms from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and to plotting terrorist acts in the south of the island. These lurid claims were very convenient for the military, which had been under intense local and international pressure over its abuse of democratic rights, including the detention, disappearance and murder of hundreds of people over the past year.
The diplomatic community which attended the briefing session by the Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama.
Sivaraj Yathevan (36), the Tiger agent in charge of "Eela Murasu," a Tamil community paper, and Arooran Vignanamoorthy (32), the righ-hand man of Yathevan were arrested by Australian Federal Police today and produced before a magistate court in Melbourne, Australia. Both men were charged with intentionally being a member of a terrorist organisation, knowing the organisation is a terrorist organisation, contrary to subsection 102.3(1) of the Criminal Code Act 1995.