Sri Lanka Army Media Director V.U.B Nanayakkara, USP has sent the following response to an article which appeared in The Sunday Times under the headline “Life in Jaffna: The seen and the unseen, the told and the untold”

Norway last week urged India to play a more proactive role in the Sri Lankan conflict by mediating between the Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and said it stands ready to fully support such an initiative.

However Sri Lanka dismissed any Norwegian involvement in future peace efforts and said it will not issue a special invitation to its ‘big brother’ to play the role of mediator.

Tamil Nadu leaders, including Chief Minister of the state called on the Indian government to stop supplying weapons to the Sri Lankan state and assist in finding a last solution to decades long ethnic conflict.
Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi suggested that India organise negotiations between the warring parties in Sri Lanka to bring peace to the island nation.

Despite continuing human rights violations including intimidation of media personnel, abductions and killings attributed to state security forces, the US has announced $ 12 million in aid to Sri Lanka.

The U.S. government announcement comes, even as the U.S. congress ruled out Sri Lanka for a debt cancellation programme due to its human rights situation.

Sri Lanka’s garment industry is worried that the duty free access it enjoys to European markets will soon be cut due to the gross human rights violations related to the government’s pursuit of a military solution to the long-standing ethnic conflict.

Rev. Father M X Karunaratnam, the chairman of the NorthEast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR), was killed in a Claymore attack carried out by a Deep Penetration Unit (DPU) of the Sri Lanka Army on Sunday, according to initial reports from Tamileelam Police.

Officials at the NorthEast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR), in a press release issued Sunday, expressed "profound shock and loss," and condemned the assassination of NESoHR's chairman, Fr. M. X. Karunaratnam.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has warned that a combination of poor rice harvest, rising global food prices and the escalating civil war are increasing food insecurity for hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans.

In a statement released on 9 April 2008 the UN agency said, only half the country’s 20 million people are receiving the minimum daily calorie intake of 2,030, according to the latest poverty assessments compiled by the government.

As the polling day for the Provincial Council election nears, election related violence is on the increase according to media reports.

Complaints regarding at least 49 incidents of violence related to the forthcoming provincial elections have been lodged at various police stations in Eastern province until Saturday, May 3, according to the Police.

A panel of top international legal luminaries told Sri Lanka's government on Tuesday to clean up its human rights record, saying an escalating war against Tamil Tigers had brought with it grave abuses.

The Sri Lankan Defence Ministry has come under attack for engineering a health disaster in LTTE administered Vanni by blocking medical supplies to the region.

A French aid agency that operated in conflict areas in Sri Lanka and lost 17 of their local workers in a single incident two years ago has labeled the massacre as a ‘war crime’ and decided to withdraw from Sri Lanka.

I had a rare opportunity to come to know closely of the details of a Black Tiger Thurairathinam Kalairaj (Ilam Puli), who became a Martyr, when the Anuradhapura Air Base was attacked by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

More than security concerns, the sentiments of Tamil Christians and their mistrust of Sri Lankan State seem to be the impelling force behind the decision of taking away Our Lady of Madu from her abode. Those who could look at how Kathirkaamam was confiscated from the predominance of Tamils and how the ancient temples behind the Tamil Saiva myth are inside ‘High Security Zones’, could understand the fear of Tamil Christians.