Tamil Diaspora organisations Friday condemned the killing of Tamil parliamentarian K. Sivanesan Thursday in a fragmentation mine attack blamed on Sri Lankan commandos and called for international action against the Colombo government.

Amid numerous reports of small victories and LTTE casualties—all undoubtedly exaggerated—the military has failed to gain a great deal of ground.

“They started beating Thiyagarajah. They took his T-shirt off and stuffed it into his mouth. The neighbors came out to help, but they pushed them away. His wife was crying and shouting, and they hit her with a gun butt. She was nine months pregnant. They were accusing Thiyagarajah of having bombs in the house, and forced him to dig the ground around the house. They searched the house, turning everything upside down, but didn’t find anything.

International Human Rights Monitoring Mission Urgently Needed

Chinese aid grew last year to nearly $1 billion, eclipsing Sri Lanka’s longtime biggest donor, Japan. India’s aid reached $500 million.

Why should the Tamils expect a change in international conduct?

Jaffna District Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, K. Sivanesan, was killed in a Claymore attack on his vehicle carried out by a Deep Penetration Unit of the Sri Lanka Army lying in ambush along the A9 highway in Tamil Tiger controlled Vanni.

His driver was also killed in the attack in which the DPU soldiers exploded four Claymore mines in a row, Tamileelam Police officials said.

Britain will be pressing Sri Lanka’s hardline government for greater access for senior UN officials and would join European allies in taking a stronger position against Colombo over human rights abuses.

In a meeting with Tamil Diaspora representatives at the British Foreign Office on February 25, Foreign Minister Lord Malloch-Brown said he would personally be attending the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva to press the point.

The Indian central government last Saturday gave a clean chit to the Dravida Munnetta Kazhakam (DMK) regime in Tamil Nadu, saying it had done “better than others” in curbing security threats to the nation and there was no LTTE infiltration in the state.

Tamil leaders of Sri Lanka have rejected the island nation government’s devolution package aimed at ending the 25-year-old ethnic conflict saying the move was ‘a joke played on Tamils’.

The All Party Representation Committee (APRC), formed by the Mahinda Rajapakse government to counter LTTE’s struggle for separate homeland for Tamils in Sri Lanka, had submitted its report to the government last month.

Sporting red T-shirts, with an Eelam map Australian Tamil youth from Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne gathered on February 12 in the Australian capital, Canberra, to voice support for the Tamil struggle and to highlight the worsening humanitarian situation in the northeast of Sri Lanka.

The 200 fans arrived wearing red "Voice of Tamils" T-shirts bearing the slogan "Where is the Humanity", and set up a party outside the gates with drummers, dancers and whistles before play.

India has not only announced its continuing economic support for Sri Lanka this month, it has also put numbers, and signatures on the table.

During a business focussed visit to Colombo, an Indian Minister announced that over 2 billion dollars of investment was being lined up from businesses in his country who wished to invest in the island nation.

Western countries this month called for a political process as the only means to end the bloodshed in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka's former colonial ruler Britain has called for a "political process" to end Sri Lanka's spiralling violence and condemned the latest wave of bombings against civilians.

Unless Sri Lanka’s hardline government abandons its militarist path, the EU should impose sanctions, Germany said this week, adding that an EU-Troika will travel to Sri Lanka in early March to assess the situation.