Heavy casualties and flooding of battle zones due to heavy rain has forced a pause in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) operations in the north, specifically in north-western Mannar region.

Over 55 SLA soldiers were killed in heavy fighting between the SLA and the LTTE on Saturday, March 22 at Iththikkandal in Paalaikkuzhi, Mannar.

Flash floods triggered by torrential rain have affected more than 170,000 people in the war-torn Mannar and Batticaloa districts of Sri Lanka.

Over 50,000 people in Mannar and 120,000 in the eastern Batticaloa District have been affected by flooding caused by heavy rain which also left five dead, the National Disaster Relief Services Centre (NDRSC) said on 19 March.

Political parties in Tamil Nadu, including ones in the India’s coalition central government, have said that military aid to neighboring Sri Lanka should be stopped.

The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), constituents of the Dravidar Munnetra Kazhagam -led DPA in Tamil Nadu, on March 13 accused the Central government India of functioning in contravention to Tamils' expectations on the Sri Lankan issue.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from its Head Quarters in Vanni March 10 released a statement condemning the Indian 'State welcome' extended to Sri Lanka Army Chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka and the statements made by Indian military chiefs in this context.

"The Indian State must take the responsibility for the ethnic genocide of the Tamils that will be carried out by the Sinhala military, re-invigorated by such moves of the Indian State," the statement said.

Carrying the red and yellow flag, an impressive number of South Africans of Indian Origin, demonstrated outside the Indian Consulate in Durban on Thursday, March 20, to register their collective opposition to the military oppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan Government.

FOR 25 years, the dirty little war on the island in the Indian Ocean has stretched its octopus arms across the world. The ethnic Tamil diaspora has provided vital funding for separatist Tamil Tigers; remittances from Sri Lankan workers abroad have propped up the economy; the government has relied on foreign assistance to battle the insurgency.

ALL too many regions of the contemporary world are afflicted with recurring outbreaks of warfare between nation-states and ethnic or sectarian minorities. One of the worst has been festering for the past quarter-century in Sri Lanka, where 70,000 people have perished in intermittent fighting between a government dominated by a Sinhalese Buddhist majority and minority Tamils, who are mostly Hindu.

Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a "hell-disaster".

Expatriate Tamils in London last weekend held a remembrance ceremony for Rohan Rajasingham, an accomplished sportsman who strove against institutionalized Sinhala majoritarianism to better the conditions for aspiring Tamil sportsmen and women in Sri Lanka. Rajasingham passed away on January 8, 2008 after a brief battle with cancer, aged 50.

An emerging picture in recent times in Europe and North America is the active and successful participation of Tamils in the local politics. The new impetus seems to be coming from the younger generation of Eezham Tamils. Twelve candidates of Tamil origins have been elected to the local bodies of Paris and suburbs in the local government elections concluded last Sunday in France.

The European Union has expressed "very serious concerns" about human rights violations in Sri Lanka and warned that existing trade concessions could be at risk if the rights abuses continue. The EU also requested diplomatic access to Vanni to deliver key messages to the Liberation Tigers.

Sri Lankan Foreign Affairs Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama has said that kidnappings are normal in society and no one should make an undue fuss about such incidents.

He made this statement in reply to a question posed by a journalist at a news conference last Wednesday, when a journalist asked for his comments on the kidnapping of two women, one Sinhala and one Tamil, in Batticaloa on March 10.

Despite international concern and calls for the Sri Lankan government to reign in the deteriorating human rights situation, abductions and disappearances in war-torn Northeast and in the capital Colombo, blamed on the Sri Lankan security forces, has increased in recent weeks.

Jaffna, a peninsula surrounded by sea, except for a narrow strip of land joining it with the rest of the island of Sri Lanka, has always had a special history of its own. For more than one and a half years now, this peninsula has been cut off from the rest of the island, after the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) closed the only land route through the narrow strip of land, thus isolating its more than 400,000 residents.