In a secret ballot of universal suffrage, conducted by a Norwegian media simultaneously in 14 centres across the country among Eelam Tamils, 98.95 percent of the voters said that they aspire for the formation of an independent and sovereign Tamil Eelam in the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka.

The voter turnout was a high 89.8 percent in the capital city of Oslo and an average 80 percent for the country, Utrop biweekly that conducted the ballot said.

The ballot gains significance not only in democratically and concretely revealing what the Tamils want, but also in telling that the so-called Oslo Declaration that speaks about internal self-determination is not up to their expectations, Tamil circles said.

A couple of days before the ballot, Norwegian Minister Erik Solheim advocated a federal solution to the crisis.

The ballot results were announced Monday noon at a press conference conducted by the Utrop newspaper.

Out of 5,633 votes polled, 5,574 votes were in favour of Tamil Eelam and 50 votes went against it. 9 votes were invalid, the paper said.

The 14 centres, 6 in the major cities and 8 in suburban and remote towns, where Eelam Tamils live in large numbers, were accessible to roughly 7,000 eligible voters aged 18 and above, the multicultural biweekly said.

A chief polling officer, lawyer by profession, handing over the results to the editor-in-chief of Utrop

Cities and towns of Norway where polling booths were organised: 1. Oslo (3 centres: Stovner, Grorud, Bryn), 2. Bergen, 3. Stavanger, 4. Trondheim, 5. Lørenskog, 6. Bø, 7. Florø, 8. Nordfjordeid, 9. Ålesund, 10. Narvik, 11. TromsøAccording to government statistics, a total of 14,431 Sri Lankans, including Tamils as well as Sinhalese live in Norway. Out of them, the number of eligible voters aged 18 and above are 8,797, according to the Statistics Norway.

The number of Sinhalese in Norway is very small. But, there is no way of differentiating their number in the official statistics. Tamil circles say that there could be roughly 300 eligible Sinhala voters.

The polling centres have covered provinces of 8,267 voters.

However, due to remoteness and transportation difficulties, the centres were not accessible to all of them, especially in the provinces.

At least around 1,000 eligible voters might have not found the polling centres easily accessible.

The ballot was on ascertaining the current validity of the political fundamentals set by the Vaddukkoaddai Resolution of 1976 that called for the creation of Tamil Eelam.

The Resolution that was declared by all the Tamil Political parties was overwhelmingly endorsed by the people of the provinces of the North and East of the island of Sri Lanka in the 1977 general elections.

After 1977, the Tamils were never able to democratically demonstrate the continued validity of this political will of theirs, as the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1979, and later in 1983 the 6th Amendment of the constitution prevented them from expressing secession.

The present ballot taken in Norway has given a unique democratic opportunity to Eelam Tamils after 33 years.

The enthusiasm was obvious in the voters who stood in long queues to vote Sunday between 11:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.

The statement for the ballot, based on Vaddukkoaddai Resolution was “I aspire for the formation of the independent and sovereign state of Tamil Eelam in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka on the basis that the Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka make a distinct nation, have a traditional homeland and have the right to self-determination”.

As in a referendum, the voters were asked to say yes or no.

Tamil protestors in London and Toronto have closed roads and brought traffic to a standstill in their cities, drawing the attention of local media which had been reluctant to cover the carnage in Sri Lanka and the protestors who have been taking to the streets daily.

Traffic in Westminster, in central London, came to a standstill as hundreds of people staged a sit-in around the Houses of Parliament.

Around 500 Tamil supporters calling for a ceasefire in Sri Lanka pushed past police lines in Parliament Square and they took up positions sitting in the middle of the road between the square and Whitehall.

Police diverted traffic and closed the approaches to Parliament Square from Westminster Bridge and Whitehall. The main Carriage Gates entrance to the Houses of Parliament were also closed off.

A total of 36 people were arrested.

Tamil supporters, including several hunger strikers, have been camped in Parliament Square since last month.

The latest protest comes after two days of shelling in Sri Lanka's northern war zone that has left over 1000 civilians dead.

Last week, representatives met Foreign Secretary David Miliband to urge him to do more to end the fighting.

Meanwhile, more than 5,000 Tamil protesters calling for intervention in the Sri Lanka civil war gathered on the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, Canada, for six hours Sunday night, shutting the vital commuter corridor down.

Organizers agreed to move from the freeway around midnight only after a representative in Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's office promised to bring up the demonstrators' cause in Parliament. But they continued to stay at Queen's Park.

The protesters are demanding international sanctions against the Sri Lankan government until it enters into a ceasefire with Tamil Tigers in the country's north.

In keeping with expectations of the demonstrators, Ignatieff said: "Our Party has raised, and will continue to raise, the plight of the Tamils in Sri Lanka in the House of Commons. We will continue to demand action by the Canadian government to address the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka.

"But the Liberal Party of Canada stands firmly against terrorism, and I restate our unequivocal condemnation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam," the statement continues.

"I urge Canadian Tamils to continue raising this issue publicly, and to give it the attention it deserves. But I implore them to do so legally and safely, by working with their elected representatives and through legal means of protest, and not through demonstrations that put public safety at risk," Ignatieff said.

Toronto police chief Bill Blair said that it was inexcusable and dangerous for Tamil protestors to bring children up on the Gardiner Expressway.

"I think that's quite reprehensible, quite frankly," Blair said. "Having children and elderly people up front in a demonstration like that, I think it creates a very dangerous situation."

At one point last night, out of concern for the children's safety, officers threatened to remove the kids. When asked about the tactic, Blair said: "There was a lot of conversation going on with people in the crowd."

The problem, he continued, is the low railing along the highway and the narrow lanes.

Sitting under a white tent on the lawn of Queen's Park, Gunam Veerakathipillai says he has been on a hunger strike for eight days. The 52-year-old Pickering resident say he won't eat anything until he has a written promise from the federal government that it will intervene to end the carnage in his native Sri Lanka.

"I have lost 18 family members to the Sri Lankan armed forces so I can't live a normal life anymore. Nobody seems to care and that is why I'm taking this very hard decision," said Veerakathipillai, lying on a mattress, his voice cracking. "I'm suffering but my suffering is nothing. My people are suffering a hundred times more than this."

Abee Raveendran, one of several dozen protesters at Queen's Park, drove to Toronto from London this morning at 2 after watching the shutdown of the Gardiner Expressway on the news. The fourth year health sciences student at the University of Western Ontario says she couldn't watch the news coming out of Sri Lanka and not do something.

"For three months we've been doing this and there's been nothing. Yesterday they really had no choice. When people take a stand like that, that's when people take notice."

"No one wants to cause an inconvenience but ... members of the (Tamil) community have seen their blood relatives massacred and killed in the most inhumane ways. If this happens after four months of peaceful protests, what else is there to do? That's a question the protesters are asking," said Senthan Nada, a spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop the War in Sri Lanka.

These closing climactic weeks of the conventional war have been accompanied by tremendous external pressure on the Sri Lankan state. This has its upside because it illuminates. It reveals to us the world as it is and how it might be. It tells us who our friends are. It tells us also who our enemy's friends are. It educates us as to what we must and must not do, including in the coming weeks and days.

Here is the rude reality. There is a three pronged campaign to save the Tiger. One is mounted from within the overseas Tamil community, the dominant pro-Tiger/pro-Tamil Eelam stream having developed into a global movement. The second prong is the West, with some functioning as the spear-point of that prong, while others are less committed. Some Western quarters are clearly protectors and potential patrons of the Tigers and the Tamil Eelam cause. The third prong is located in neighboring Tamil Nadu, with some parties now committing themselves to the cause of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka.

Luckily, this external pressure comes at a time when it cannot really affect our conduct on the ground; cannot deflect our military action. Such is the resolve of public opinion, the national leadership and the armed forces. 2009 is not 1987. For the moment we can absorb this pressure while spotting and noting where it comes from and extrapolating future trend lines from these pressures and agitations.

What is the first and most basic lesson that the mounting wave of external pressure should teach us? It is this: we are seeing a number of sources, Western and sub-regional, which would easily afford patronage and succor to the surviving LTTE and the Tamil separatist project. Furthermore it cannot be ruled out that the strength of anti-Sri Lanka /pro-Tamil Eelam elements in Tamil Nadu would have a stronger position in a ruling coalition in Delhi by early June. Therefore, it is imperative that we act decisively within the narrowing window of opportunity open to us, to eliminate the LTTE as a military force, destroying its leadership and hard core cadres who have been trapped in the Zone, after which we must wheel around and hunt down the residual terrorists who may have escaped into the jungles.

It is precisely because we are relatively weak and our enemy is relatively strong externally, while they are relatively weak and we are relatively strong domestically, that we must maximize that advantage. If we eliminate the LTTE as an army on Sri Lankan soil, we can minimize the effects upon us, of present and future patronage being offered by offshore sources. If on the other hand, we allow the Tigers to survive and escape, they will quickly regroup and be redeployed, with all the external spaces that they have access to. In short the Tigers must cease to function within Sri Lanka, and to cease to function they must cease to exist. The Tiger is a globalized creature but its head is still on Sri Lankan soil. That head must be cut off, now.

Thus the mounting external pressures on Sri Lanka must not only NOT lead to an easing of the final military campaign, but must result in its exact opposite, the determination to inflict the most complete and decisive defeat and destruction possible on the Tigers, while taking maximum precautions to safeguard the civilians.

The second lesson is that the Tamil Eelam movement is more globalized than ever; the struggle between Sri Lanka and the Tamil separatist project will continue in the global arena, on an international scale, and that the country's future in the next stage will be greatly influenced if not decisively determined in the international theatre. This includes the preservation of the military gains on the ground.

The third lesson is that there must be a shift of national emphasis and priority, to the international front. Just as the country and state matured to the point where it shifted to the correct policy stance on the war, overhauled its military machine and placed the right personnel in the right places, the same or a similar task will have to be undertaken in the domain of Sri Lanka's external relations.

The fourth lesson is that we must clearly identify and build up our "natural" international defense lines. These are the Non Aligned Movement and the countries of the global South. Within and outside the developing world, Sri Lanka's most reliable strategic friendships will have to be with those, mainly but not only Eurasian, who place high value on strong states, state sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, and within this group of states, those which have no significant Tamil populations. The ties with such states must be upgraded and solidified into a structure or system. We should for example, apply for observer status with the Shanghai Organization for Security Cooperation, a structure which includes Russia and China, and focuses on counter-terrorism.

The fifth lesson is no one, even among our friends, will countenance either an insensitive or slow alleviation of the problems of IDPs and related humanitarian questions or an absence of an immediately postwar political solution based on autonomy and equality, for the Tamil people. (We have until a new administration is sworn in, in New Delhi, to get our act together on both issues, simultaneously not sequentially).

The sixth lesson is that the Sri Lankan state has to catch up, get with the new calendar and new times, and learn to speak a new language. "Bush-speak" has no acceptance outside the USA even during his administration and now it is rejected within the USA itself and has no resonance anywhere in the world. Sri Lanka's dominant discourse has to change or it will lose the global struggle by simple default. Macho nationalism, religious majoritarianism, unilateralism and "anything goes in the struggle against terrorism" are out; the attempt to combine ethics and power, ("ethical realism") is in.

The seventh lesson is that if we are to compete with and beat the globalized Tamil secessionist project with its western patrons - better exemplified by MIA making TIME's 100, rather than by Velupillai Prabhakaran the least articulate and most corpulent guerrilla leader in the world - we have to rebuild our soft power and smart power, just as we did our hard power. This requires that we undergo a collective transformation, amounting to a revolution, in education, culture and mentality. If anyone wants to understand shifts in US policy towards Sri Lanka, they must factor in the 80-100 young US educated Tamils working on Capitol Hill as aides, researchers and staffers of Congressmen and Senators, and then contrast that with the output of our educational system as we have debased it.

It is not that Sri Lanka had no MIAs. We had better MIAs than MIA, way before MIA. Remember Yolande Bawan at the Newport jazz festival? Right now we've got DeLon who I think has a far better singing voice than MIA, but who is backing him in the USA to make a breakthrough? When a collective mentality looks to the past rather than the future, it has lost the capacity to envision and produce future excellence or achievement. As Dr Martin Luther King said in 1967, minting a phrase picked up and popularized by Barack Obama, "we are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now".

In a shop in Colombo's Bambalapitiya neighbourhood, the man stretched out on a sofa suddenly woke with a start. "They're not terrorists," he declared, correcting his friend's use of the word. "They're freedom fighters – 99.99 per cent of Tamil people support them but they are not in a position to show it."

As Sri Lanka's army squeezes the last remnants of the once potent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), such sentiments voiced within the Tamil community represent one crucial reason why this operation might not mark the end of the insurgency.

Analysts say that even if the Tamil Tigers in the country's north-east are neutralised in the coming days, the movement will retain the capacity – and perhaps the public support – to launch terror strikes and suicide attacks.

"As a viable insurgency they are finished but they will still be able to operate as a terrorist organisation," said Bahukutumbi Raman, a former security advisor to the Indian government.

Despite international calls for a ceasefire, a bloody end appears the most likely outcome for the fewer than 1,000 Tamil Tigers cornered in a two-square mile patch with up to 50,000 civilians.

A day after the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, called for a humanitarian ceasefire, the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, rejected their calls.

"The government is not ready to enter into any kind of ceasefire," he said. "It is my duty to protect the people of this country. I don't need lectures from Western representatives." The LTTE and its leader, Velupillai Pirapaharan, said they would never surrender but called for international help to enforce a ceasefire.

"If any country really cares... I ask that country to go beyond its diplomatic boundaries for the sake of saving human lives and make Sri Lanka stop this genocidal war," the LTTE's political leader, Balasingam Nadesan, told the Associated Press.

It is impossible to accurately gauge the level of support for the LTTE. Fearful of the government and equally fearful of speaking out, most Tamils talk about suffering routine discrimination. They talk of their fear when passing through the ubiquitous check-points and how the troops might arbitrarily decide to detain them.

One university lecturer, who agreed only to speak on the telephone, said: "The police are always asking us what we are doing here. Why we are in Colombo. We are scared. In public places we have to speak Sinhalese. If you speak Tamil in a bus or market, people will stare."

This, of course, does not equate to support for the Tamil Tigers' violent tactics. But on a walk through Bambalapitiya, replete with Hindu temples and flower sellers, practically everyone who agreed to speak voiced some degree of sympathy for the LTTE.

"The police... always assume we are the LTTE. Perhaps 75 per cent support the cause. There are also people who support the actions," said one Tamil shop-owner, who asked not to be named. Asked about Mr Pirapaharan, the 29-year-old replied: "Perhaps 75 per cent of people like him."

The man who had been asleep, a 60-year-old former government worker, said that a series of administrations had passed measures that discriminated against the Tamils. "My own son and daughter have gone to the UK," he said. "The government plans to kill or destroy the Tamil people."

The Sri Lankan authorities say they are seeking to avoid civilian casualties and that the ongoing operation is to rescue civilians. While the UN has estimated that at least 4,500 civilians have been killed since January, the government has rejected reports that it has fired artillery into the area, or fired at a makeshift hospital.

The  relentless massacres of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lanka state over the past few months had resulted in almost 7,000 deaths and twice that many seriously wounded by May 1. But the slaughter over last weekend is unparalleled in the brutality unleashed by the Sinhalese since independence; over two thousand Tamil lives were snuffed out in a hail of artillery shells. The makeshift hospital – blood-splattered room in a shattered house in the Mullaitivu enclave – has been blasted time and again, the accuracy of the Sri Lankan shells guaranteed by the GPS coordinates passed on by the ICRC.

All this in plain sight of the international community. Even the Western states which have – along with China, Russia and India - stood solidly behind the Sinhala state for the past three years were shaken. As the edition goes to print, US President Barack Obama has also stated the oft- repeated urging of the Sinhala state to cease its “indiscriminate” shelling. We doubt Sri Lanka, secure that China and Russia will thwart any repercussions at the UN Security Council, will pay any heed this time either.

What the Western states, operating with theories of ‘internal conflict’ and ‘terrorism’, can’t comprehend is why the Sinhala state insists on using heavy weapons on the civilians packed into a sliver of land. They also don’t understand why Sri Lanka is blocking international assistance from reaching the 190,000 recently displaced people concentrated in militarized camps. The Tamil people, of course, understand: this is genocide.

For several years the Tamils have been appealing to the international community that there is a ‘slow’ genocide underway in Sri Lanka since independence. These arguments were dismissed – laughed off, actually – as hysteria or propaganda. Yet, quite apart from the pogroms against Tamils up to 1983, in the period since, a hundred thousand Tamils have died in massacres, indiscriminate shelling and bombing, and by starvation due to government embargoes on the Tamil homeland. However, since January ‘genocide’ has not been some abstract concept. The world has witnessed it every single day since as first dozens, then scores, then hundreds of Tamils were killed and wounded. Even by Sri Lanka’s horrific standards, the rate at which our people have been slaughtered is stunning.

What has also become clear is that the international community has knowingly and deliberately allowed this slaughter to proceed. The ideological fixation with ‘fighting terrorism’ and ‘ending armed conflict’ has meant that in the interests of destroying the Liberation Tigers, any number of Tamil civilians are expendable. Notice that even though it is the Sinhala state that is pounding the civilians, blocking food and medicine and repeatedly blasting the hospital, it is the LTTE that has drawn  the focus of the UN’s condemnation?

Notice that even though the Sinhala state launched major offensive operations in April 2006 (displacing over 40,000 Tamil civilians in three days), ordered international NGOs and UN agencies out of Vanni in mid-2007, tore up the Norwegian-brokered Ceasefire Agreement in January 2008, and, even before this year’s slaughter began, had killed several thousand people in LTTE-controlled areas while abducting, murdering or disappearing over 5,000 Tamils in its own controlled areas, it is the LTTE that international actors in all this time have cursed and blamed?

Notice that even though the LTTE called for ceasefire and peace talks in 2006, 2007 and 2008 and that all these calls were dismissed out of hand by Colombo, the international community continued to look to the Sinhala state for a solution? The paradox of asking a state starving, bombing and disappearing a people to put forward political solution to meet the political aspirations of that people has completely escaped the international community.

There is only one solution for us now: the independent, sovereign state of Tamil Eelam. The rationale for that is etched out in the bloody sands of Mullaitivu. If the Tamils accept any thing short of independence, if we allow ourselves to be placed under Sinhala dominion as part of a ‘solution’, they will simply wipe us out at some point in the future. It is self-evident that the close scrutiny of the international community, the pleas and pointed warnings by powerful states and the disgust of the world has not impressed a Sinhala state, polity and people drunk with racism. Not one Sinhala political actor – not even the UNP, the darling of the liberal West – has condemned the slaughter. It is inescapable that whatever the international community does, the Sinhala state will continue to pose an existential threat to the Tamil people unless we are protected by our own borders  and security forces.

The sixty-year old struggle for Tamil liberation is entering a new phase. On the one hand the Tamil nation, going through a Holocaust of its own, is no longer under any illusions about the Sinhala state and people. The international community will never be able to reason with or restrain them. On the other hand, contrary to Sinhala expectations, Tamil militancy will remain central to Sri Lanka’s future. As the LTTE, which has transformed itself – yet again – for a new kind of war, bluntly put it last month: as long as the Tamils are oppressed, “Sri Lanka will never be able to live in peace”. 

Sri Lankan authorities arrested and deported a British news team that produced a report exposing the abuse and ill-treatment of Tamil refugees in military controlled internment camps.

Three journalists from Channel 4, Asia Correspondent Nick Paton-Walsh, producer Bessie Du and cameraman Matt Jasper, were seized and handed over to Sri Lanka's Criminal Investigation Department for interrogation, police spokesman Ranjih Gunasekera told reporters.

They were deported from Sri Lanka on Sunday, May 10.

The report, aired Tuesday, May 5 on Channel 4, chronicled the alleged abuse of Tamils in internment camps in the city of Vavuniya in northern Sri Lanka.

Officials discovered that Paton-Walsh consistently filed fabricated stories and has tarnished the country's image, according to a government Web site. Paton-Walsh's visa was canceled, the Web report said.

Channel 4 said the team -- which had been in the country with valid visas and had been reporting there independently for a couple of weeks -- has been told to leave the country.

"We will be seeking an explanation from the Sri Lankan government for this decision," an ITN official said.

Writing about his team’s deportation, in his blog, Nick Paton Walsh described a call he received from Sri Lankan defence secretary Gothabaya Rajapakse.

"Who is this? You rang me earlier? Is this Channel 4? You have been accusing my soldiers of raping civilians? Your visa is cancelled, you will be deported. You can report what you like about this country, but from your own country, not from here".

I'm missing out my interjections, but that's pretty much how you get deported in Sri Lanka, wrote Walsh.

British condemnation

The Foreign Office in London said it was "deeply disappointing" that a UK television news team had been expelled from Sri Lanka after reporting on alleged poor treatment of Tamils in camps there.

In a statement released on Sunday May 10, the Foreign Office said: "This is a deeply disappointing decision when the case for more transparency, not less, is overwhelming." 

Tamil refugees who fled Sri Lanka's war zone by boat have given harrowing first eye-witness accounts of how they were shelled by the army in a "No Fire" civilian safe zone.

The refugees were speaking from India's Andhra Pradesh coast where they landed nine days after fleeing the town of Mullaitivu in the war zone by boat. Ten of the 21 refugees, including a four year old child, died on the voyage, according to the campaign group Human Rights Watch, which interviewed them while they were recovering in hospital.

In a series of interviews, they revealed how friends and relatives had been killed in heavy army shelling of the so-called "no-fire zone" that the government had designated as a safe area for civilians.

S. Indra Kumar, one of the refugees, said his family had travelled to Puthumatalan inside the zone on the north-east coast but they soon came under heavy artillery fire.

"We were living in such fear. There was constant shelling. On April 5 or 6, our neighbours were injured in the shelling. A shell landed inside the bunker. Ten people were injured, and of them, five died. There was no anaesthesia. The doctors had to cut off a girl's hand without any anaesthesia. My small daughter was crying and scared. I decided then that we had to leave," he said.

The refugees said they had been trapped in small bunkers below houses for up to four houses during heavy shelling, and that many of the raids had followed firing from Tamil Tigers from within civilian areas.

One of the men whose wife and four year old son died during their hazardous sea voyage, said they had left because of a shortage of medicine. "In the beginning, before we came to the safe zone, the government hospital was still there. My wife just had a baby, so she needed medicine. But there was no medicine at the hospital. I waited a whole day for medicines.

"The ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] was giving tents, but they could not cope with the demand. We built a shelter with coconut thatch. And when it rained or there was shelling, we ran to the bunker. "There was shortage of food. One day, I was waiting in queue for food and there was suddenly shelling. I ran away, but later heard that 40 people had died," said Sivadasa Jagdeshwaran.

He said his wife's father had died, her two brothers had jumped overboard and she herself died after drinking sea water while weak with dehydration.

Meenakshi Ganguly of Human Rights Watch, who interviewed the survivors, said the Sri Lankan government had tried to stop stories like theirs from being heard. "These accounts must be multiplied tens of thousands of times to capture the full horror of those who remain trapped by the Tamil Tigers and shelled by government forces," she said.

The Sri Lankan government has consistently denied shelling civilians in the no-fire zone, though several Western governments and the United Nations believe they are continuing to attack the area with artillery and aerial bombing.

A New York based rights group has accused the Sri Lankan military of repeatedly attacking hospitals in the northern Vanni region in their attempt to wipe out the Liberation tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on Friday, May 8, that Sri Lankan armed forces “have repeatedly struck hospitals in the northern Vanni region in indiscriminate artillery and aerial attacks”, warning that commanders responsible for such attacks may be prosecuted for war crimes.

"While doctors and nurses struggle to save lives in overcrowded and underequipped facilities, Sri Lankan army attacks have hit one hospital after another," said Brad Adams, Asia director at HRW.

"Repeated Sri Lankan artillery attacks striking known hospitals is evidence of war crimes," said Adams.

"The government cannot hide behind LTTE atrocities to justify their own unlawful acts."

HRW again called for the situation in Sri Lanka to be urgently taken up by a formal meeting of the UN Security Council and by a special session of the UN Human Rights Council.

One of the deadliest took place on Saturday, May 2, when artillery shells struck Mullivaaykkaal hospital in the government-declared "No Fire Zone," killing 68 persons and wounding 87.

Two artillery shells fired by the SLA hit the hospital at Mullivaaykkaal around 9:00 a.m. killing 23 and maiming 34 and later several shells were fired at 10:30 a.m., killing 41 and maiming 53.

The attack took place, after the Sri Lankan military was provided with the exact coordinates of the hospital premises three days back through the ICRC, and as Sri Lanka Air Force Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was monitoring the hospital area.

The massacre is calculated to coerce the civilians said a rescue worker citing leaflets air dropped the previous day with Mahinda Rajapakse's message asking civilians to come to the SLA side.

A female volunteer doctor was killed on the spot. Three medical staff sustained injuries, one of them paralysed.

The main Out Patients Department of the makeshift hospital was attacked at 9:00 a.m. when the hospital was very busy with outpatients. There were more than 400 wounded patients accommodated in and around the building.

The second attack came as the medical staff and volunteers were engaged in clearing the attacked area of the hospital.

HRW said it had documented at least 30 artillery and air attacks on permanent and makeshift hospitals in the combat area since December 2008.

“Patients, medical staff, aid workers, and other witnesses have provided Human Rights Watch with information about at least 30 attacks on permanent and makeshift hospitals in the combat area since December 2008.”, the statement said

“Witness accounts suggest that in some cases the Sri Lankan military attacks may have been targeted at LTTE forces present in the vicinity of the hospitals, yet in other cases witnesses said there were no LTTE forces anywhere near the hospitals.”

“Hospitals, whether permanent or temporary, are specially protected under international humanitarian law. Like other civilian structures, they may not be targeted. Under the Geneva Conventions, hospitals remain protected unless they are "used to commit hostile acts" that are outside their humanitarian function. Even then, they are only subject to attack after a warning has been given setting a reasonable time limit, and after such warning has gone unheeded. The presence of LTTE medical workers or injured combatants does not affect the civilian character of medical facilities.”, the statement further said

“Since mid-February, the International Committee of the Red Cross has evacuated more than 13,000 wounded and their caregivers from the war zone by sea. Permanent and makeshift hospitals within LTTE-controlled territory continue to receive hundreds of patients daily. Many arrive wounded from the fighting, while others are sick due to inadequate sanitation, and acute shortages of food and clean water.”, the statement said.

“If the Colombo government is starving us, the world should know who is keeping us hostages. If the world’s concern is ‘purely humanitarian’ it should act this very minute to give us our means to keep the body and soul together”, is the voice of the civilian victims of Colombo’s starvation weapon, reported TamilNet, quoting hospital sources in Vanni.

Even the meagre food stock of the hospital staff depleted they said.

UN humanitarian chief, John Holmes, acknowledging the situation, said the food supply was barely enough only for a day.

But five days later, no more food shipments to Vanni was the decision in Colombo.

“When Colombo breaches its own international pledge on the use of heavy weapons against its own civilians, the world watches it. Now when it deliberately starves its own civilians to death, then also the world watches,” a political commentator in Colombo told TamilNet, adding that the loss of credibility of UN is going to be irreparable.

The Mahinda Rajapaksa government calculatedly maintains a very low figure of the civilians in the ‘no-fire’ zone in order not to send enough food. Colombo’s figures in the past were supported by India, but both were discredited later.

While Colombo maintains a figure of 15 to 20 thousand civilians, reliable reports from Vanni put it to more than 120,000. Even some international agencies and media are not doing justice in harping on a figure of around 50,000. Colombo prevents international agencies from finding out the truth.

Recently, the UN decided not to penalize Sri Lanka for what it is doing.

'Sri Lanka is a democratically elected government fighting a terrorist organization' is a view maintained by Britain and France.

However humanitarian it could be, it is an internal matter of Sri Lanka, not to be discussed officially in the UN Security Council is the stand of China, sitting on UN action.

The core responsibility now falls on US, said political observers.

Meanwhile, health officials in the Vanni appealed that if there is any meaning for the word humanitarian, the minimum humanitarian act right now is to drop food to the civilians of Vanni without wasting a minute, as an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe caused by Sri Lankan government enforced starvation engulfs the civilians of Vanni.

“The US government and the world should realise that the situation culminating in the most inhuman act of Colombo calculatedly inflicting starvation death on civilians is ultimately a consequence of the lopsided application of a US policy, and the US has every responsibility to remedy it. Failure amounts to connivance to the crime. US has to immediately airdrop food,” said a relief official in Vanni.

"Colombo, blatantly lying to the world that what takes place is only ‘hostage rescue’ and it is not using heavy weapons, is actually engaged in an all out war to kill or imprison free civilians by the use of all heavy and prohibited weapons. The worst weapon it uses is complete denial of food," complained the relief official who was engaged in arrangements with moving the hospital to a new location as Sri Lanka Army fired artillery shells have hit the makeshift hospital several times. Patients were struggling without medicines and shelter.

"The Indian Establishment is not only extending its war partnership with Colombo indefinitely, but also is believed to be pressurizing Colombo to use ‘all methods’ to win the war before the Establishment’s fate is decided in the elections in mid May. The starvation agenda is believed to be one such either to kill or to crush the will of the freedom loving people and to incarcerate them."

Refuting the Sri Lankan propaganda that artillery and shelling against the Tamil civilians was carried out by the Tigers, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the LTTE's head of international relations on Monday urged the governments of the world to prevail upon the Sri Lankan Government to prevent it from causing a collective tragedy.

"The recent developments in Vanni are very disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Sri Lanka and its partners in this war to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty," Mr. Pathmanathan said in a statement issued Monday.

“The artillery fire and fierce mortar shelling by the Sri Lankan Army on the nights of 9th and 10th of May 2009 were one of the bloodiest episodes of the war so far, killing more than 2,000 of innocent Tamils including children, women and the elderly. This is a deliberate massacre of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces,” said a statement from Mr. Pathmanathan.

“LTTE categorically rejects any allegations by the Sri Lankan Government and its military that the artillery and shelling was carried out by us,” he said.

“It is an indisputable fact that the LTTE has waged this three decade long struggle for the liberation of the Tamil people from all oppressions by the racist Singhalese regime. We will never ever turn on the very people for whose liberation we have laid close to 20,000 of our own fighters.”

“It is not an overstatement to associate the treatment of Tamils with the criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity. The recent developments in Vanni are very disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Sri Lanka and its partners in this war to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty,” he said.

“We are convinced that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the making and appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to prevail upon the Sri Lankan Government so as to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy,” he noted.

“The most brutal episode of this "collective tragedy" is what we have seen in the last two days.”

“We call upon the International Community and the UN Security Council “as a matter of urgency” to take all measures capable of genuinely preventing any further massacres of the innocent Tamil civilian population,” he said on behalf of the LTTE.

THE Government of Sri Lanka has blacklisted an official of Human Rights Watch (HRW) citing violation of the immigration and emigration laws.

Anna Neistat, a senior researcher of the emergencies division at HRW was accused Immigration and Emigration controller P.B. Abeykoon of entering the country using forged documents last February.

Tamil analysts, say Neistat is being targeted for speaking against the government’s human rights abuses.

Neistat recently testified before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on Sri Lanka. She described the welfare centers set up for the civilians reaching government controlled Vavuniya as 'internment camps with barbed wires and machine guns'.

Neistat also admitted that she managed to collect credible information about 'egregious violations by the parties to the conflict' and also that the the HRW visited the Vavuniya hospital on February 11 and interviewed patients.

Rescue workers within the Mullaiththeevu Safety Zone have counted more than 1200 bodies after the large scale slaughter over the night of Saturday 9 May and Sunday 10 May morning by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) with the use of cluster ammunition, multi-barrel rocket launchers and cannons.

The workers fear that there may be additional bodies yet to be uncovered, and the numbers killed will likely rise.

The United States said last Monday it was deeply concerned about an "unacceptably high" level of civilian casualties in Sri Lanka and called on both the government and the Tamil Tigers to prevent civilian deaths.

Meanwhile, the United Nations condemned the civilian "bloodbath" in Sri Lanka.

"We're deeply concerned. We think that there's an unacceptably high level of civilian casualties," US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told a news briefing, reacting to reports that hundreds of civilians had died on Sunday and Monday in an assault by the Sri Lankan government on the war zone.

"We've repeatedly urged the Tamil Tigers to lay down its arms and allow the civilians to leave," Kelly said.

"The government of Sri Lanka should abide by its April 27th statement that combat operations have concluded and security forces should end the use of heavy weapons which of course could cause civilian casualties."

"The large scale killing of civilians, including the death of over 100 children, over the weekend shows that the bloodbath scenario has become a reality," Gordon Weiss, the UN spokesman in Colombo, told AFP.

The Sri Lankan government blamed the Liberation Tigers, saying that they were bombing the civilian population in the war zone.

It said doctor, V. Shanmugarajah, who has been sending out most of the reports of the dead and injured, has been either indoctrinated or intimidated by the Tigers.

However, UN officials said that the doctor’s testimony had been reliable in the past and that their information also indicated that there had been a massive artillery raid on Saturday and Sunday on the “no-fire zone” where the civilians are sheltering, reported the Times newspaper.

Channel 4 Asia correspondent Nick Patten-Walsh, who was deported from Sri Lanka, said that the government’s claim of the Tamils Tigers killing their own was ‘hard to believe’. “

Stating that two weeks ago the Sri Lanka Army had claimed the Tamil Tigers had 2 artillery pieces left, before claiming there was no use of heavy weapons in the area, “today they claim the Tamil Tigers are shelling themselves,” he said.

Indiscriminate barrage of shelling by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) on the 'safety zone' is believed to have slaughtered more than 2,000 civilians including large number of women and children.

Every kind of lethal weapon such as the internationally banned cluster shells and shells fired from Multi Barrel Rocket Launchers and Cannons were used turning the so-called safety zone into a killing field.

Rescue workers said several hundreds were very seriously injured, and the critical shortage of medicine at the makeshift hospital in Mullivaaykkaal will lead to many more deaths.

Meanwhile, Mullivaaykkaal Hospital staff said, until 3:00 p.m. the number of bodies brought to the hospital was 378, injured totalled 1122. The staffers added that 106 of the dead, and 251 of the injured were children.

The entire family of a devoted nursing officer, Gracian Tharmarasa, has been wiped out in the shelling.

Dead bodies were found in bunkers and inside the tarpaulin tents.

The casualties and the seriously injured include many elderly, women and children.

The bombing which subsided until noon Sunday increased after 12:00 noon when Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) fighter jets carried out two bombing raids at 12:45 p.m. Sunday, reports from inside the safety zone said.

Rescue workers said the counting of the dead is continuing and the actual number killed in the worst-ever man inflicted carnage by Sri Lanka state will not be known for a few days.

The makeshift hospital which is now running in junior school in Mullivaaykkaal is struggling beyond words to cope with the situation, medical sources said.

"This is the first time in history where the International Community and the UN have politically experimented such a mass killing of civilians in a single day by giving an almost open consent to a government," described a human rights professional in Colombo upon hearing the news.

The large scale slaughter is believed to be a result of India prodding Colombo to finish the war before the change of government, political circles in Colombo told TamilNet.

Sri Lankan leaders have refused all international calls for a ceasefire, despite reports from the UN last month saying up to 6,500 civilians may have been killed and 14,000 wounded in fighting since January.

Human rights and conflict prevention groups on Monday urged Japan, which is Sri Lanka's largest aid donor, to "shoulder its responsibilities" and confront the worsening humanitarian crisis in the country.

The appeal was made in a joint letter to Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso from the heads of Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, Amnesty International and the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

“We believe that Japan, a powerful player on the humanitarian stage and the largest international donor to Sri Lanka, has an important role to play in saving countless civilian lives,” the agencies said.

“It is time for Japan to show that it is prepared to shoulder its responsibilities.”

"If the world continues to look away from the suffering of civilians in Sri Lanka, as it has largely done until now, it will be a failure of historic proportions," the letter said.

A separate Tamil Eelam is the only solution that will permanently put an end to the problems of the Tamil people in the island of Sri Lanka, said Tamil Nadu former Chief Minister and principal Leader of the Opposition, Jayalalitha Jayaram at an election rally in Salem city.

In a powerful, moving speech, on Saturday April 25, she resolved to fight to attain independent Eelam.

"I met Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravishankar who has just returned from the war-zone in the Vanni. He gave me CDs and photographs of the atrocities. My heart boils when I looked at it," the AIADMK leader said. If this pathetic situation of the Tamil people has to be removed, if the problems of the Lankan Tamils has to come to an end, an independent Eelam is the only solution, she added.

"We will fight to attain that independent, separate Eelam. Till today, I have never said that separate Eelam is the only solution. I have spoken about political solution, this and that. But, now I emphatically say, a separate Eelam is the only permanent solution to the Lankan conflict, “she said.

Earlier, Jayalalitha had announced at an election rally in Thirunelveali (Tirunelveli) on April 18 that if elected in all the 40 seats, the AIADMK-led alliance would have a say in the next Union Government and would strive to get Eelam if a fair political solution was not found for the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.

Jayalalitha, had in the past espoused that a solution to the Tamil problem had to be found within the constitution of Sri Lanka.

Few days earlier, in an interview to a popular Tamil weekly, LTTE political wing head, B Nadesan described the AIADMK led alliance in Tamil Nadu as ‘an alliance of friends of Tamil Eelam’ which was widely interpreted as LTTE’s endorsement of AIADMK alliance in the upcoming Lok Sanha elections in  the southern state.

Protests, hunger strikes and shut downs in support of Eelam Tamils continued and political parties upped their pro-Eelam rhetoric in the southern state of Tamil Nadu amidst election campaigning for the May 13 Lok Sabha polls gained momentum.

As the Sri Lankan Army entered the northern part of the No Fire Zone in Mullaitheevu on Tuesday, April 20, causing large number of civilian casualties, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Muthuvel Karunanidhi called for a general state wide shut down and urged central government to give an ultimatum to Colombo to declare an "immediate and permanent ceasefire" in Sri Lanka.

Issuing a "final appeal", Karunanidhi asked all Tamils irrespective of their political affiliations to join the 12-hour strike.

"I insist that the Prime Minister, UPA chairperson (Sonia Gandi) and external affairs minister give an ultimatum to Sri Lankan government for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and save lakhs of Tamils," he said in the telegrams.

"What we want now is to stop the killings of Tamils there. There should be a permanent ceasefire," he said in the statement.

"We cannot do any thing except crying for the Tamils. It is for the Centre to act now," Karunanidhi, who has come under fire from opposition parties for not doing enough on the Lankan Tamils issue, said.

On the day of the strike, shops and business remained closed in Tamil Nadu and traffic stayed off the road.

Most of the shops, including petty stalls, in the city remained shut till 6 pm. Schools and colleges across the state were closed and exams postponed.

The Tamil cinema industry also came to a standstill with all its activities suspended, including screening of films in theatres.

However, the strike call by the DMK is widely seen as an attempt to garner votes by being sympathetic to the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka.

"The strike call is a feeble attempt by Karunanidhi to show the people that he is concerned about the happenings in Sri Lanka," said Cho S. Ramaswamy, a political commentator.

The Sri Lankan war has caught India's ruling Congress party in a bind. It needs to please ally DMK and win voters, without being seen as going soft on the Tamil Tigers who are blamed for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Opposition parties in Tamil Nadu including the AIADMK and its allies, PMK, MDMK and CPM, questioned purpose of the strike, considering the DMK is part of the ruling coalition in Delhi which backs the war.

AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa said in a statement that the shut-down call was bogus, and that a general strike would only worsen the problems of the people. "The AIADMK will go ahead with its election campaign plans on Thursday," she said.

She faulted Karunanidhi for failing to send out a potent warning to the centre to bring about a ceasefire. "If Karunanidhi can't apply adequate pressure on the Union government now, when will there be a ceasefire?" she asked. "And if India, a big power in the region, did not intervene and take strong measures, which other country would do so," she said.

PMK founder S Ramadoss criticised the DMK chief for calling for a strike only to counter a protest announced by the Sri Lankan Tamils' Protection Forum, comprising pro-LTTE parties. The chief minister should take concrete steps instead of engaging in competitive politics on this issue, he said.

Meanwhile, an AIADMK activist on Thursday, April 23, set himself ablaze in protest against alleged failure of both the Centre and Tamil Nadu governments to find a solution to the Sri Lankan Tamils issue.

Mani (43), a worker in a dyeing factory in Tirupur, doused himself with kerosene on the Kulathupalayam Main road and set himself ablaze, police said.

He was immediately rushed by the public to the Tirupur government hospital, where he is being treated for 90 per cent burns, succumbed to his injuries later.

A note reportedly recovered from Mani and addressed to AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa stated that both the Centre and state governments have failed to solve the Sri Lankan Tamils problem.

Mani is the 12^th person, to self immolate in the past few months, calling for action on the Eelam Tamils issue.