Little Vathani celebrated her eighth birthday a few months ago in Visvamadhu, a village in war-torn northern Sri Lanka. The next morning, her village was attacked by aerial bombardment and artillery. The terrified girl was running through the paddy fields when she was hit by a shell, which blew her leg away.
Entries Tagged as ‘Sri Lanka Conflict’
May 6, 2009
Sri Lanka: Feeding 12,800 people 3 times a day
By Dolores Bachmann, Caritas Emergency Response Team Leader, Colombo, Sri Lanka Caritas is providing much needed food and other assistance to the many displaced in Vavuniya and Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka. More than 188,000 people have now crossed into government-controlled areas and are in camps in Vavuniya , Jaffna and Trincomalee. Up to 1,700 [...]
April 28, 2009
Injured Caritas Vanni director moved to Colombo
His Grace the Archbishop Oswald Gomis in a letter on 27th April 2009, appealed to Hon. Gotabaya Rajapaksh, Secretary of Defence requesting to grant him to permission to the relevant authorities to transfer Rev. Fr. Vasanthaseelan from Vavuniya Hospital to Colombo General Hospital. Fr. Vasanthaseelan, sustanied serious injuries in shelling on Thursday 23rd April, in [...]
April 23, 2009
Fear reaching terrifying proportions in Sri Lanka
Representatives of four non-governmental organizations yesterday called on the United Nations to speak out on the situation in northern Sri Lanka and urged the Security Council to take up the matter under the concept of “responsibility to protect”. Speaking at a Headquarters press conference where they discussed the situation in and around the “no-fire zone” [...]
March 16, 2009
Sri Lankan baby born with sharpnel wound
Innocent people have been caught up in Sri Lanka’s civil war, raging in the Vanni district. None more innocent than Baby S. Thankfully this story has a happy ending. Her mother was wounded in the tummy when still carrying Baby S on 2 March. She went into labour a few days later and the beautiful [...]
February 2, 2009
Stop the human tragedy in Vanni! Say bishops.
The Bishop of Jaffna and clergy from the Jaffna peninsula, are holding a hunger strike to draw attention to the thousands of men, women and children caught up in fighting in north eastern Sri Lanka. A fierce battle, between the security forces of the Government of Sri Lanka and The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam [...]
December 15, 2008
Introducing the first blind Tamil lawyer
We’d like to share this happy news. Atputharajah is a blind boy. He came to Caritas Sri Lanka’s branch in Jaffna in the north for educational assistance with his mother in 1999. They are from a very poor family. Fr.Jeyakumar’s brother Jeevan helped his education from then till his graduation through Hudec- Caritas Jaffna. Atputharajah [...]
December 3, 2008
Happy Birthday Caritas Sri Lanka
Caritas Internationalis Secretary General Lesley-Anne Kinight at 40th Anniversary celebrations for Caritas Sri Lanka COLOMBO, SRI LANKA, 3 DECEMBER 2008 Caritas Internationalis Secretary General Lesley-Anne Knight today opened the Caritas Trade Fair and Exhibition in Sri Lanka’s capital city Colombo, with the country’s Minister for Science and Technology, Professor Thissa Vitharana. The fair, which is [...]
