Three die in firing on bus in Buttala

A bus has been fired at near the 149th km post in the Galge area on the Buttala- Kataragama road around 10.30 this morning (July 11th).

Three people have died and 16 others injured in the incident, military spokesman, Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said.

The injured have been admitted to the Kataragama Hospital.

Kataragama Joint Operations Commander, Colonel Devendra Perera also confirmed the incident.

http://www.lankadissent.com

Karuna, the “Prodigal Son” returns. Time to kill the “Fatted Calf” Pillayan?

Founder leader of the TMVP, Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan alias Karuna Amman (aka Kokila Dushmantha Gunawardena) returned to the island today (July 03rd), said the party’s spokesman Asath Moulana.

Karuna, who had arrived at the Bandaranaike International Airport at Katunayake on board a flight from the UK, has spoken to Moulana over the phone.

After breaking away from the LTTE as its eastern military leader, Karuna allied with the government and formed the TMVP.

However, he fled the country following a dispute with close associate Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan, and arrived in the UK on a forged passport.

He was arrested and sentenced to a prison term for the offence, after his request for political asylum there was rejected.

The Sri Lankan government had been implicated in the forged passport matter, which it had rejected.

Owing to good conduct, Karuna had been freed before having completed his sentence.

In the meantime, Pillayan took control of the TMVP, and reportedly murdered a number of his predecessor’s supporters.

He also contested polls for the Eastern Provincial Council in alliance with the government and presently serves as chief minister.

http://www.lankadissent.com

අපි වෙනුවෙන් RAMBO

Fasten your seat belts first. This is going to be big news. Sri Lankan Army has done something amazing. They have recruited RAMBO to fight the tigers. Don’t believe me? Wait, I will prove it. (Not surprisingly Defence.lk did not reveal it because it is still a secret)

Associated Press released this news item few hours ago, base on the information received from the Ministry of Defence.

See the numbers. Aren’t they amazing?

In Vavuniya 16 Tigers and ONLY ONE SLA killed.
In Welioya 11 Tigers and again ONLY ONE SLA killed.

Can any rationally thinking individual believe these numbers?

Yes, only if we have Rambo on our side. Of course, Rambo can kill as much as enemies he wants.

This is what Wikipedia has to say on Rambo.

Rambo is a fictional former Green Beret created by David Morrell in his novel First Blood. Morrell’s character and ideas were used in the 1980s and 2000s as the basis for a series of popular action films starring Sylvester Stallone.

The films featuring the character are: First Blood (1982), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rambo III (1988), and Rambo (2008), with Rambo V upcoming in 2009. The films focus on a troubled Vietnam War veteran and Green Beret, John James Rambo, who is skilled in many aspects of survival, weaponry, hand-to-hand combat and guerrilla warfare.

Morrell says that in choosing the name Rambo he was inspired by “the sound of force” in the name of the rambo apples which he encountered in Pennsylvania, and he felt that its pronunciation was similar to the surname of Arthur Rimbaud, the title of whose most famous work A Season in Hell, seemed to him “an apt metaphor for the prisoner-of-war experiences that I imagined Rambo suffering.”[1]

In popular culture, the name has become an eponym for a tactic of military aggression or, alternatively, a person demonstrating great heroism through extreme violence and skill, especially when outnumbered. However, the term can also be used somewhat derogatorily to describe someone who thoughtlessly charges into a fight with no regard for personal safety or careful planning.

However Associated Press journalists, not being ‘konde bandapu cheenas’, as the Ministry of Defence assume them to be, add these two paragraphs to their report.

It was not possible to independently verify the military reports because journalists are banned from the northern jungles where much of the fighting takes place. Each side commonly exaggerates its enemy’s casualties and downplays its own.

The government earlier vowed to crush the insurgents by the end of this year. However, the island’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, told reporters Monday that it may take another year to defeat the rebels.

Can fake ‘nationalists’ working with tiger sympathisers block Major General Janaka Perera’s victory?

On the verge of obvious defeat the government has made plans to use a set of their henchmen in the guide of ‘nationalists’ to undermine the role played by Major General Janaka Perera as a top military officer.  Some of these contracted fake ‘nationalists’ have already started working on their agendas, in mass media and Internet.

Simultaneously, the overseas Tiger sympathisers too have started a parallel campaign against Major General Janaka Perera.

These are some of the sentiments expressed by Tiger sympethisers:

In the mid-eighties, Gen. Perera worked in the eastern province helping to create a wedge, breaking up the contiguity of Tamil Eelam, the Tamil Nation, comprising of the North and East of Sri Lanka. The area connecting the North and East was ethnically cleansed of Tamil people. Tamil villages were evacuated at gunpoint, hundreds were murdered and others fled out of fear, to make way for State sponsored Sinhala settlements. As a reward for this ‘heroic’ act a Tamil village (Munkindimalai) was renamed Janakapura (Janaka Town). 

In 1995, he was appointed as Commander for the Welioya Brigade. Large-scale civilian killings took place in Manal Aru (Weli Oya) during this period.

President Kumaratunga’s decision to resume the war against the LTTE in October 1995 propelled Perera back into a position of power. He was appointed commander of the elite 53rd Division of the Sri Lankan army which played a key role in ‘Operation Riviresa’.

Over a thousand Tamil civilians arrested by the security forces disappeared (Amnesty International, the international rights watch dog, estimates at least six hundred while the US State Department states a figure of seven hundred), in the area under Janaka Perera’s command. Despite widespread rumors, these disappearances could not be verified because of the media ban on the war zones.

Interestingly these were the same feelings coming from some of the self proclaimed ‘nationalists’ on Internet including the typical Rajapakse lackeys like Lanka Rising.

Take the following extract by a blog post by Dilrook Kannangara, one such self proclaimed ‘nationalist’.

What changed Janaka Perera from the much loved soldier in the 1990s to a despicable traitor? Although he doesn’t seem to have the faculty to explain it to the nation, it can very well be inferred from the turn of events. Possibly there can be pettier reasons than the foregoing, which, to say the least, are not even worth exploring. It is possible that alleged war crimes petitions against him played a major role in shifting his allegiances. There were many such petitions organised by pro-LTTE groups against him.

One such allegation was ethnic cleansing of Tamils in the East and the North-East of the island paving way for Sinhala settlements that were allegedly not there previously. Mungindimaalai, a Tamil village was thus ethnically cleansed and was renamed Janakapura which has a majority of Sinhalese settlers.

There seems to be also paid writers to comment on the character of Janaka Perera. (No dearth of such people – specially the retired public sector officers who have no work and need some hard cash. They will even insult their mothers if somebody pays them thousand rupees) Here is one such comment:

The capture of Wijeweera was similar. It was an operation planned and conducted by a very capable officer, Colonel H ( Now Maj Gen), and when they were about to set off on the operation, Janaka heard about it and asked the Army Commander General Waidyaratne to permit him to accompany the troops, which he first refused, and later permitted. Janaka merely went along for the ride, but made sure, as the senior officer, to take all the credit. All this can be verified from Gen Waidyaratne’s report, which still exists, unless it was ‘censored’ by Janaka. During the UNP regime he was appointed Military Liaison Officer to the Ministry of Defence, because of his father’s very close political connection with the UNP, and particularly with President Premadasa. During this period when he had access to Ministry records, it is alleged that he falsified many officer’s personal files, cleaned up his own personal file and destroyed records that described his inefficiency.

There are few questions that arises in this backdrop.

How come these self proclaimed ‘nationalists’ share the same platform as the tigers and their sympathisers?  How come their stance on Major General Janaka Perera overnight turned from a well respected ‘War Hero’ to a turncoat traitor?

The more interesting question: Can the joint effort of LTTE and UPFA defeat Major General Janaka Perera in the provincial elections?

At least we have an answer to the last question. It would be a tough fight no doubt, government is going to put their full force, but still they will never be able to prevent his victory in the elections. For that we are certain.
 

Bomb blast at Katubedda, Moratuwa kills 21

Twenty have been killed and at least 50 injured at a bomb blast happened near Shailabimbaramaya at Katubedda, Moratuwa today morning (June 06).

According to the police sources the bomb has been exploded using a remote controlled device targeting a bus that has been travelling from Kottawa to Mount Lavinia (Route No 255).

 

Defence.lk Gobilas declare war on media

Not all Sri Lankan media is dancing to the tune the government wants them to. Obviously someone is irritated. Level of irritation is seen from the content of Defence.lk. - Yes, this is the same site has won an international reputation for its unbiased and truthful reporting (”Heavy fighting in Muhamalai. 157 tigers killed and one Sri Lankan army soldier suffers minor injuries in his left thumb”)

Before I get into the topic – brief description about this site. As said in its front page it is run by the Ministry of Defence, Public Security, Law and Order. So whoever behind is paid by the public money collected from tax payers. They have to work for public – not for a political party or political figures. Unfortunately this is not what we see from this web site. The Gobilas behind it are ready to run errands for any petty politician that supports Rajapakse government. How Defence.lk ran errands for Pillayan during the Eastern provincial council elections was a good example.

Humiliating and insulting media personnel to the level of putting their lives to danger is nothing new to the Gobilas of Defence.lk. One instance of doing this was depicting Mr. Ranjith Wijewardene, Chairman, Wijeya Newspapers, Mr. Siri Ranasinghe, Editor, Lankadeepa and Ms. Champika Liyanaarachchi Editor, Daily Mirror (both newspapers published by Wijeya Newspapers) as dogs manhandled by Prabhakaran. The message is clear. These are the traitors and you know what to do with them.  It is just the luck of these media personnel that inborn Sinhala chauvinists of Champika Ranawaka and Wimal Weerawansa type did not take it seriously. Otherwise their fate would have been not too different from that of Keith Noyahr.

The latest was to combine Sirasa and LTTE logo together. This appears on top of what looks like a long explanation to the dubious role some high ranking officers played recently. Written in impeccable English, this article unsuccessfully tries to portray the war reporting to a conflict of media and soldiers.

This is what Defence.lk says (two paragraphs reported verbatim, emphasis mine):

We have serious concerns over this “defence analyst” issue. We do not mind any person trying to make his living by writing whatever crap to the newspapers. It is the freedom of expression that we have vowed safeguard even at the risk of our lives. Yet, we too have our right to lay bare the truth of those cowboy defence analysts, for the good of the public. War is handled by officers with 35-40 years of service, who had spend most of their lives in the battlefront, we seriously do not believe that people like Mr. Iqbal Athas have any capability to question about military tactics, service promotion schemes or even about the military procurement.

For instance, some of the so called “defence analysts” in Sri Lanka have a great tendency to give misleading picture on military PROCUREMENTS. They always quote numbers and try to speculate something fishy about the deals. Nevertheless, they rarely inform the public about the needs of the soldiers and the urgency of meeting such requirements. Those speculations are much often aimed at character assassinations of the service commanders than informing the public. What these “analysts “hide form the public is that all these PROCUREMENTS are being made after a thorough analysis of expert technical evaluation boards and on their recommendations. Also, what public is unaware about these mean spirited people is that they are being highly paid by the weapon dealers for acting as the opinion makers for them.

I think the cat jumps out of the bag here. So the who issue is about ‘PROCUREMENTS’, nothing to do with war. Ha Ha Ha. How funny. It is the PROCUREMENT information they are so worried about – NOT the security details.

Anyway the threat is clear. Media have been named. It is not difficult to understand the underlying threat behind statements of this nature:

“Any discernible person who sees Sirasa TV, or reads the Sunday Leader, the Morning Leader, Iru Dina, the Daily Mirror, and the Sunday Times, Lanka Dissent, Lanka E news, etc can understand the way that the soldiers are being humiliated, scorned and blamed.”

Can we have any clearer indication where media freedom stands today?

(GOBILA is a Sinhalisation of the surname of Paul Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Public  Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, and not meant as an insult)

Eight killed in Sri Lanka blast (near Finance Minisrty and Sambodhi Viharaya at Fort Area)

At least eight policemen have been killed in a suicide bomb attack in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, the army says.

More than 70 people were hurt when a man on a motorcycle rammed into a bus carrying policemen near a five-star hotel in the central business district.

The army has blamed Tamil Tiger rebels for the attack.

Fighting between the Tamil Tigers, who are seeking an independent state, and the army has worsened this year after the government pulled out of a truce.

The blast happened near the Hilton Hotel and a twin-tower commercial building.

Ekanjith Rawwalage, head of customer services at the hotel, told BBC News that the blast happened around 1230 local time (0700 GMT) near a police checkpoint outside the hotel.

“It was a loud explosion. It felt like an earthquake,” said Mr Rawwalage.

He said some window panes of the hotel had been damaged by the explosion. He said all the guests were safe and the hotel gates had been shut.

Mr Rawwalage said he had seen ambulances rushing the injured to the hospital.

The area is also the site of the official residence of Sri Lanka’s president and has been targeted in the past by Tamil Tiger rebels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7404147.stm

TMVP wins biggest outsourcing deal in Sri Lanka (and in Eelam too)

Colombo, May 9, TMVP PLC won the largest ever outsourcing deal ever done in Sri Lanka this week, to scare pooling agents of the rivals, intimidate voters and carry out mass scale rigging at the Eastern province elections, industry sources reveal. The exact size of the deal is not known but the speculation is that could be several millions of USD and certainly bigger than the similar deal won by LTTE to intimidate voters to boycott the Presidential Elections in 2005, which was estimated to be in the range of USD 5 million by late MP Sripathy Suriyarachchi.

Acting Chairman of TMVP (Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal) PLC Mr. Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan expressed his delight over the confidence shown on him by all on his company especially by the President of Sri Lanka himself. He said many other contenders including EDPD headed by legendary Douglas Devananda tried to win this deal, but none of them could beat TMVP PLC, on its strengths. TMVP PLC employs thousands of trained professionals at its camps in the districts of Batticaloa, Ampara and Trincomalee in Eastern province which gives them the ability to carry out this assignment better than anybody else.

Chairman of TMVP PLC (currently residing in London enjoying the hospitality of HM Queen)  Mr. Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan alias Mr. Kokila Dushmantha Gunawardena alias Karuna has send a congratulatory message for his company TMVP PLC for winning this deal. “We are well equipped and geared to win this assignment and I am sure our boys will carry out it to the utmost satisfaction of our clients” Mr. Kokila Ginawardene said.

TMVP PLC will carry out this in a public-private partnership model. The public sector will assist Mr Pillayan carrying out this deal by stopping the international journalists and election observers from east, as happened yesterday. Journalists of Associated Press (AP) were yesterday prevented from entering Batticaloa at the Karavankarni junction at a check point on the claim that they have received orders from the Ministry of Defence to do so.

Nimalka Fernando of Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CAFÉ) too had been prevented from moving ahead of the Manampitiya check point yesterday.

Before Pillayan kills me…

Arugam Bay, May 03

As I wrote earlier, election campaigning is fun, but nothing can be compared to what we are doing in the Eastern province now.  This is far too dangerous than anybody in Colombo can ever think of. Though not so obvious in first looks the ominous smell of Pillayan is everywhere. It is a reality that anybody who dares to campaign in the East should live with.

I keep asking questions from myself what Pillayan could do. How strong is Pillayan’s terrorist network? How many armed cadre he has? (I saw it in papers he has about 700 gunmen but it can be more) Where are they positioned? Finally how far they would go to stop a rival winning the elections? (which is obvious by now) Will they just stop at rigging the polls with the kind assistance of the current government leaders (who will be happy to provide that support) or perhaps failing that go further and try a mass genocide?

These are some simple questions to which we have no answers.

The fact that disturbed us most is that Pillayan is no ordinary terrorist. HE IS A LICENSED TERRORIST, if I were to coin a term. In any society, no citizen is allowed to bear guns without the approval of the state. But Pillayan and his terrorist goondas bear guns, though they are not part of the security forces. The government not just shows a blind eye, but happily endorses this terrorist bearing guns and using them in the territory the government claims to be ‘LIBERATED’ as well.

The weak excuses provided by senior government ministers justifying Pillayan’s terrorist group bearing and perhaps using arms is amusing. According to them, it is for their safety from LTTE. My foot! If LTTE is still so strong in Eastern province why call it ‘LIBERATED’? No, the only reason why government happily keeps Pillayan armed is for rigging. They know they have no chances of winning without mass scale rigging.

The possibility of butchery by Pillayan cannot be ignored. He has guns and he has men trained to use them. Nobody would give evidence against him. Government’s least resistance path too will be covering up such a killing (easy to blame LTTE) than finding the real culprits. So why he should not?

The only consolation is I work in a Sinhala dominated area where Pillayan does not work directly but comes only through other political parties. JHU Akmeemana Dayaratne thero used few Pillayan’s terrorists in their campaign, but it did not look too dangerous. They just sat in the front seat of government vehicles.  Anyway JHU has stopped campaigning now. They might have given up after seeing it a dead end for them.

My only hope is the polls will be peaceful and there would be no election violence. Still it is difficult to think Kurrakan boy will let us win so easily. He knows what defeat means. That is why we should be ready for any obstacle.

Still I am optimistic that DEMOCRAY will win over Pillayan’s (government sponsored) terrorism on May 10.

Twenty six dead and sixty four injured in Piliyandala bomb blast

At least 26 people have been killed and 64 wounded by a bombing on a bus in the outskirts of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, officials have said.

The blast happened during rush hour while the bus stopped to pick up passengers in the city’s southern suburb of Piliyandala, they added.

Violence in Sri Lanka has intensified since January, when the government pulled out of a ceasefire agreement.

The bomb exploded as the bus pulled away from a stop, blowing off the roof and shattering windows on the bus and those of nearby buildings, reports said.

“There was a massive explosion, I couldn’t open my eyes. There was black smoke everywhere, there was blood pouring from my head,” Ananda Ratnasiri, the bus driver, told AFP news agency.

A police spokesman said 10 people died on the spot and another 14 died while being taken to hospital. A child and a Buddhist monk were among the dead.

Witnesses described a large fireball coming out of the bus.

“It is horrible, I saw many people laying on the ground,” RB Dharmasiry told the Associated Press news agency.

(BBC and AFP)