TODAY'S TOP STORY

HIKKADUWA SRI LANKA : Sri Lankan school chilren stand in a queue as they wait for a free lunch offered by a charity organisation 26 March 2005 at the tourist resort town of Hikkaduwa in southern Sri Lanka as the region marks the three-month anniversary of the December 2004 tsunamis that killed nearly 400 people in the town. Nearly 31,000 people were killed in the 26 December 2004 natural disaster.

Post tsunami reconstruction apace

There were distribution of 1000 transitional houses to Internally Displaced Persons due to tsunami in Trincomalee District, on the March 26th , 2005 in order to commemorate the three-month anniversary of the tsunami.
"This will be followed by distributing another 5600 transitional houses, before the Sinhala and Hindu new year festival", according to the Government Agent of, Tricomalee, Mr. Gamini Rodrigo.
Stromme Foundation of Norway is currently focusing on livelihood restoration and also in the education sector. Their programme covers eight Districts in the North, East and the South and as its first initiative 500 micro finance loans were disbursed to a number of tsunami affected families in order to recommence their livelihood.
They have also made arrangements to help a number of poor fishermen by giving them canoes to get back to their livelihood of fishing. In addition, the Stromme Foundation provided dry rations, kitchen utensils, mats, pillows, lanterns, etc., to tsunami affected people who were leaving the welfare centres.
They implemented a unique system called "cash for work" to those who were affected, by way of giving them Rs. 500 per day up to 10 days, in order to restore their partly damaged houses.
Number of families benefited from this were 610 to the value of Rs. 2.5 million. In Batticaloa District, 600 temporary houses and the same number of toilets are being built to commemorate three-month tsunami anniversary.
Under the Economic Recovery Programme of Stromme Foundation, they have made arrangements to help 1200 poor coir rope makers in Ahungalla, by distributing coir rope making machines to them. This programme will be held at Keththarama Temple in Ahungalla on March 28th 2005 commencing 9.30 a.m.
There will be a video conference between citizens in Sri Lanka and citizens in the United States of America and Australia to discuss the tsunami relief effort.
This will take place from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on March 29th, Colombo time and is intended to commemorate the three-month anniversary of the tsunami. This will take place at the Distance Learning Centre at No. 28/10, Malalasekera Mawatha in Colombo 06.
This videoconferencing is part of an ongoing initiative by a coalition of U.S. citizen groups and international relief organizations called "Partners for Progress". Partners for Progress seeks to sustain the visibility of voices from the tsunami-affected regions over the long-term to ensure that there is long-term awareness of and support for rebuilding in the region.
According to the agenda of the video conference, time will be allocated for introductions from various cities of the U.S.A and Australia, with expressions by individuals at each site of their community's concern for the people affected by the tsunami.
Further, there will be presentations by several people in Sri Lanka giving an assessment of the situation here three months later and explaining in terms that the general public can understand what the needs are on ground and how the U.S. and Australia can help. In this part, there will also be a discussion of how U.S. and Australian students can spend their summer in Sri Lanka helping the country as it continues the rebuilding process.

Khalid

Canada frowns on LTTE

Child conscription :
For the first time in its history, the Federal Parliament of Canada has taken up the child conscription issue in Sri Lanka for discussion.
The statement made at the Sub Committee meeting was significant because it was the first time that the issue of child soldiers in Sri Lanka was formally taken up at the Federal Parliament of Canada, a press release issued by the Foreign Affairs Ministry stated.
The Canadian Parliamentary Sub Committee on Human Rights and International Development has stressed that the Canadian Government should address the issue of the LTTE's child recruitment and ensure that Canadian funds are utilised for child protection initiatives and prevention of LTTE child conscription.
In a statement issued after a meeting on March 23, Committee Chairman and MP David Kilgour said that the international community has raised major concern over the violation of the human rights of Sri Lankan children by the LTTE and the UN Security Council has discussed it in this regard.
According to UNICEF, the LTTE has even reached the government controlled areas and strengthened the recruitment drive after the ceasefire began in 2002, Kilgour, who was also former Secretary of State Asia Pacific of the Foreign Affairs Department said.
UNICEF documented 3516 cases of child recruitment by the LTTE during the ceasefire. The recruitment became so intense that less than 50 percent children went to school as many parents kept children at home in fear of the LTTE taking them away on the way.
The statement said that children who lost their parents in the recent tsunami are more susceptible to LTTE recruitment now and Canada must address this issue and ensure its funds should meet the objectives, recruitment prevention, child protection, in all areas including tsunami affected areas, relief camps and orphanages.
Deputy Chairman Stockwell Day, Foreign Affairs Critic of the Official Opposition Conservative Party of Canada referred to the LTTE's 'horrendous act' of training children to become human bombs.
He said that he raised this issue in the House of Commons and called upon the Sub Committee to act on a non partisan basis and address the child right violation by the LTTE in Sri Lanka.
He also referred to the necessity of listing the LTTE under the Canadian Anti terrorism legislation. Federal MP Joe Comartin of the New Democratic Party said that a group of Canadian parliamentarians accompanied him to Vanni recently and expressed Canada's concern over the child conscription to the LTTE.

Khalid

Law students honour two illustrious law teachers

Two distinguished legal luminaries Prof. Lakshman Marasinghe and Justice Saleem Marsoof P.C. will be honoured at a ceremony on Tuesday March 29 at 3 p.m. at the Law College Auditorium.
It will be part of the inaugural meeting of the Law Students' Muslim Majlis, which will be followed by a Symposium on the topic 'Monogamy, Polygamy and Bigamy: Some Reflections on the Abeysundere Decision' at which Prof. Marasinghe and Justice Marsoof will be the main speakers. Both speakers have contributed to the development of law through their books, book chapters and articles, and have also written comments on the controversial decision of the Supreme Court in the Abeysundere case which sought to overrule the decision of the Privy Council in the famous Reid case.
The students will felicitate Prof. Lakshman Marasinghe who has been an Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and a Director of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process, on his recent appointment as the Chairman of the Law Commission of Sri Lanka.
Having had his early education at Royal College, Colombo, Prof. Marasinghe commenced reading for a medical degree at the London Hospital Medical College, but suddenly switched to the study of law at the University College, London from where he obtained his Bachelor of Laws degree with First Class Honours in 1961, and his Master of Laws degree with Distinction in 1963.
He was thereafter awarded the Ph.D. degree by the University of London and the LL.D degree (Honoris Causa) by the University of Colombo. Since 1964 Prof. Marasinghe has been teaching law at several leading Universities abroad, but in 2002 when the Diploma in International Trade Law program was commenced at the Sri Lanka Law College, he was selected to head the local faculty. He also teaches in the University of Wales LL.M in International Trade Law program conducted at the Law College.
Justice Saleem Marsoof P.C., will also be felicitated on his recent appointment as a Judge of the Supreme Court.
He was admitted as an Attorney-at-Law in mid 1974 and joined the Attorney General's Department in September 1975 where he served for 29 years before being appointed as the President of the Court of Appeal.
In July 1998, he was made a President's Counsel in recognition of his eminence in the Bar. Justice Marsoof, who had his education at Zahira College, Colombo and Royal College, Colombo, is a Law Graduate of the University of Ceylon, Colombo where he excelled academically winning the Gate Mudaliyar Edmund Peiris prize and the Law Scholarship.
The felicitation ceremony will be chaired by the President of the Law Students' Muslim Majlis, Althaf Marsoof, who will make the welcome speech. Dr. Joe Silva, Principal of the Sri Lanka Law College, who is also the Patron of the Majlis, will deliver the inaugural address.
The felicitation speeches in honour of the two distinguished teachers of the Law College will be made by two students of the University of Wales LL.M program, State Counsel Rajiv Goonetilleke and Ranjan Sriskantha, Attorney-at-Law.

Khalid