Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

WASHINGTON The International Monetary Fund said Friday its executive board approved the release of 329.4 million dollars to Sri Lanka, the second portion of a loan to help the country weather the economic crisis.

The IMF said the board completed the first review of Sri Lanka`s economic performance under a 20-month standby loan.

This allows the immediate disbursement of the second tranche, bringing total disbursements under the arrangement to 658.8 million dollars.

(AFP) 3 hours ago

COLOMBO The leader of a boat of Sri Lankan asylum seekers held in Indonesia is a known people smuggler previously deported from Canada, the government said Friday, a charge he has strongly denied.

Alex, who emerged as the spokesman for the 255 Sri Lankans whose boat was detained last month en route to Australia, is Kulaendrarajah Sanjeev, a 28-year-old who worked out of a base in India, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

CHENNAI: In a gruesome honour killing, a 21-year-old woman was brutally murdered by her father and relatives in Tirupur district of Tamil Nadu on Wednesday for marrying a Dalit youth.

Sripriya, who belonged to the backward Kallar community, had fallen love with A Badhrakali, while she was doing an internship for her B.Ed course.

The couple eloped and got married in Salem on September 29. Police and relatives said Sripriya`s father Srinivasan and two relatives came to Madathukulam, near Udumalpet in Tirupur district, on Wednesday. The newly-wed couple was staying with Badhrakali`s sister in Madathukulam. Srinivasan asked Sripriya to come to Trichi to visit her mother who was ill.

The Immigration and Refugee Board has ordered a Sri Lankan Tamil migrant to remain in custody after agreeing that the young man - one of 76 who sailed into Canadian waters last month - could have ties to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, viewed by Canada as a terrorist group.

The Canada Border Services Agency had been arguing that the men must be held until their identities are verified. Now, it has switched tactics, arguing that the migrants must be kept in custody while investigators determine whether some have links to the Tamil Tigers.

The Tamil Tigers organization hopes to use Canada as a strategic base to continue the fight against the government of Sri Lanka, according to an authority on the alleged terrorist group.

`I cannot think of any other country that is more important for the Tamil Tigers as Canada, to regroup and continue their campaign against Sri Lanka,` said Prof. Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, a Singapore-based think-tank.

AS a dual Australian Sri Lankan national, what has struck me most about the ongoing debate in Australia about Sri Lankan boat people is the abysmal ignorance about Sri Lanka`s geography and distribution of peoples. This has led to the inability of Australians to put Tamil migration in its historical context and instead to uncritically accept tales of Tamil persecution and even genocide that are patently untrue.

[TamilNet, Thursday, 30 October 2003, 12:37 GMT]
Heroes cemeteries in Tharavai in Batticaloa district and Vakarai Kandaladi are being renovated in preparation for the Heroes day (`Maaveerar Naal`) celebrations to take place on the 27th November. Work on the heroes day memorials in other parts of Vanni, Jaffna and Trincomalee are also in progress, according to sources.

VISAKHAPATNAM: Union home minister P Chidambaram`s assertion that the naxalites are acquiring arms from abroad is only the tip of the iceberg, as
central intelligence agencies have found fresh evidence of joint training camps and meetings conducted by the Maoists with Tamil Tigers in the forests of south and central India.

In fact, the central intelligence top brass has warned Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Orissa on the alleged intrusion of Tamil Tigers into Indian territorial waters. According to the sources, a well-trained 12-member group of Tamil Tigers has recently sneaked into India to join hands with the Maoists.

VANCOUVER -- Handcuffed and shackled in leg chains, more Sri Lankan asylum-seekers were back before immigration officials in Vancouver on Monday, pleading for release from detention.

But proving their identities continued to be a significant impediment for most of the men, who were among a group of 76 ethnic Tamils apprehended on a mysterious ship off Vancouver Island earlier this month.

Several of the men arrived with no authentic documents to prove who they are.

Bundelkhand, India (CNN) -- The cattle slowly drag the old-fashioned plow as a bone-thin farmer walks behind, encouraging them to move faster with a series of yelps.

It is a scene from times of old, but still the way many farmers operate in rural India, where the harvest often determines feast or famine.

The region is called Bundelkhand, spanning the two northern Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. It is here that drought, debt and desperation have pushed people to extremes.

A SENIOR member of the Australian Tamil community says former Tamil Tiger fighters are definitely among the influx of boatpeople to arrive on our shores.

Australasian Federation of Tamil Associations secretary Victor Rajakulendran said the high proportion of young men on the boats, coupled with the risks faced by the Tigers in Sri Lanka, made it certain some arrivals were members of the defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

By Tim McGirk Monday, Oct. 19, 2009

`I want to see the world,` I told a boatman in Dubai Creek, and pulled out my map. He waved me on board his little wooden boat with no hesitation. I could have told him I wanted to sail up the river Styx, and he would have agreed. Times are tough in the Persian Gulf emirate, and my Bangladeshi boatman had spent hours chugging up and down the creek looking for a fare. It was his bad luck that his passenger appeared to be crazy.

`The World,` I repeated. Again he nodded, this time rolling his eyes slightly. He tried distracting me, asking me if I wanted to visit the Ali bin Abi Taleb mosque or ogle the colossal white yachts lining the waterfront like beached Moby Dicks. I pointed out our route down the creek to the harbor and into the Arabian Sea. There, three miles offshore, was a cluster of 300 man-made islands shaped like a map of the globe. Each was named after a country or a city. The massive archipelago stretched across six miles and supposedly had been constructed with more than 5,000 tons of coral, making it the largest artificial reef on the planet. `See?` I said. `This is the World.` (See 10 things to do in Dubai.)

One of the 76 migrants who arrived off the British Columbia coast in a cargo ship last weekend is wanted in Sri Lanka for terrorism, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.

The sources said the man was Kartheepan Manickavasagar, a 26-year-old who is the subject of an Interpol notice issued by Sri Lankan authorities. He is wanted for an unspecified terrorism offence.

Meanwhile, the mysterious migrant ship that arrived in Canadian waters early on Saturday under the name Ocean Lady has been identified as the Cambodian-flagged Princess Easwary, a government official said. The ship is owned by Ray Ocean Transport Corp., a company registered in the Seychelles, although its mailing address is in the Philippines, according to shipping records kept by Lloyd`s Register.

For 50 years, the small but cunning warrior Asterix and his podgy stonemason pal Obelix have been battling the armies of Julius Caesar in their remote village on the Brittany coast the only part of ancient Gaul never conquered by the Romans.

The latest episode in the pair`s comic-strip adventures will be released in France on Thursday to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first Asterix story, written by Ren Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo for the magazine Pilote in 1959. The highly anticipated new book, The Birthday of Asterix and Obelix, is the 34th in a series that was created as a way to keep American comic strips from taking over France. These days, however, Asterix is a global brand in itself: more than 325 million of the comic hero`s books have been sold in 107 different languages around the world, proving without a doubt the lasting and universal appeal of the plucky French characters.

Canadian investigators have confirmed they are working with the government of Sri Lanka to determine the identities of 76 men taken into custody on a boat off Vancouver Island over the weekend.

Most of the men are believed to be Tamils from Sri Lanka, fleeing the aftermath of the country`s violent civil war.

That makes the men`s nationality and whether they might have links to the Tamil Tigers, a group listed as a banned terrorist organization, a sensitive issue for the Canadian government.