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Government dissolves Sri Lanka cricket board
reuters.co.uk,
Mar 25.
COLOMBO, March 25 (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's cricket board has been dissolved by the government for the third time since 1999, the sports minister has announced.
A six-man interim committee of prominent businessmen headed by Jayantha Dharmadasa, who took part in board president elections in 2000, has been appointed to take immediate control of the administration.
"There have been many complaints regarding financial mismanagements at Sri Lanka Cricket and after looking at the accounts I found out that everything was not all right," sports minister Jeevan Kumaratunga told reporters on Thursday night.
More...
Published: Thu Mar 24 23:20:08 EST 2005
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USAID says “no’’ to filming tsunami victims
Charles Pathirana in Colombo,
March 24 2005 Thursday 2.48 SLT.
USAID in Sri Lanka has prevented some Bangladesh journalists from taking any
video footage of tsunami victims when they visited the tsunami ravaged
Southern coastal belt of Sri Lanka. USAID officials had told the Bangladeshi
journalists that the “victims will not like it,’’ but the Bangladeshi
journalists say it was within their rights to take video images - - as all
they wanted to do was to spotlight the plight of tsunami victims. “When
natural disasters happen in Bangladesh -- where many such disasters happen
-- they do not prevent the press from taking pictures,’’ one journalist
said. He also said that “even in Bangladesh, the victims are often forgotten
by government soon after the tragedy is driven off the front pages of the
press. The same thing seems to be happening here.’’
The group of journalists from Bangladesh are in Sri Lanka to attended an
energy conference.
Meanwhile, some tsunami victims set fire to a large quantity of “unusable
items’’ of clothing etc., from donor countries opposite the Galle Urban
council. Galle Urban Council officials, according to those responsible for
the roaring bonfire, have ‘’taken all the usable stuff -- clothing etc., and
left all the unusable items for us, such as sweaters and woollen items.’’
Galle U.C. officials deny this claim.
Meanwhile also, at a videoconference in Colombo among journalists of tsunami
ravaged countries such as Indonesia, Thailand India Sri Lanka Malaysia etc,
yesterday, Sri Lankan journalists claimed that the country’s President said
not five cents of aid has been received yet. A UN official, Michael Elmquist
participating in the conference, said that he cannot comment about aid from
various countries, but aid from the UN has certainly been received in all
tsunami hit countries including Sri Lanka. “If you are not getting aid from
any other country, the Sri Lankan media should call upon India to come to
your aid,’’ suggested one Indian journalist participating in the event.
Published: Thu Mar 24 04:06:28 EST 2005
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Voices of The Tamils against the LTTE, Stronger than before
Bandula Jayasekara in Colombo,
SLT 11.45 A.M Thursday March 24.
India's prestigious Hindu Newspaper says that armed groups fighting
political battles must not be allowed to get away with criminal violence by
legitimising it in the name of the cause. This is the
strong message from the mess in which the Irish Republican Army now finds
itself following the murder of Robert McCartney, a Catholic, in Belfast,
Northern Ireland. Public anger against the group for its alleged involvement
in the crime refuses to go away. It says, Instead, the gruesome killing has
prompted others to come forward with their own experiences of the IRA's
criminality, ranging from murder and "justice" beatings to extortion. This
is unprecedented in a place where the
IRA commanded fearful respect until recently. The public reaction forced the
group to make a statement admitting that some of its men were directly
involved.
In its hard hitting editorial The Hindu says " There is a lesson from the
IRA's current troubles for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This Pol
Potist organisation rules over the Tamils in much of North-East Sri Lanka as
their self-proclaimed "sole representative" through a campaign of terror
that has featured dozens of killings since the February 2002 ceasefire,
intimidation, extortion, and plain gangsterism. Matters are far worse in
LTTE-controlled areas in Sri Lanka than in the IRA's patch of Northern
Ireland. For one thing, the subservience of the `moderates' & constituents
of the Tamil National Alliance to the LTTE is in a class all by itself;
this cannot be compared with the relationship between Sinn Fein and the
IRA." The newspapers also say that Tamils actively canvassing international
support against the LTTE's criminal violence do not carry as much clout as
the McCartney sisters. But their voices are stronger than they used to be.
Some day in North-East Sri Lanka too, the worm will turn.
Published: Thu Mar 24 00:53:33 EST 2005
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