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Sri Lanka woos Jaya: India In The ‘Killing Fields Of Sri Lanka’ sam rajappa THE Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India, Prasad Kariyawasam, now in Colombo for consultations, has sought an appointment with the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalitha, in Chennai to extend to her a personal invitation from President Mahinda Rajapaksa to visit Sri Lanka. In its attempt to pamper Rajapaksa to serve the agenda of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, India had betrayed the cause of Sri Lankan Tamils who have been struggling for equal rights with the majority Sinhalese. While the DMK, an important constituent of the UPA, remained passive content with amassing wealth, even as In…

Kurdish areas like Irbil have seen less violence than elsewhere in Iraq A group of Sri Lankan migrant workers who paid $2,000 each to secure jobs in the Gulf were duped into travelling to Iraq, according to an aid agency. They had their passports taken and were held against their will in the northern city of Irbil, the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) said. The Tamil workers realised they were in Iraq because of the cold weather. After a month they spotted a UN office and asked for help. The IOM helped fly them back to Sri Lanka on Monday. They realised they were in Iraq because the weather wasn't as good as they expected IOM s…

Sri Lanka Worst Country in the World- Human Rights Watch Report

17 November 2013 As the controversial Chogm in Sri Lanka comes to an end, Channel 4 News Editor Ben de Pear reveals why he is pulling his team of the country in the face of intimidation. Channel 4 News Editor, Ben de Pear (@bendepear) writes: Today, Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa closed what has been a controversial Chogm summit. The final communique avoided any mention of human rights - one of the central principles of the Commonwealth - instead agreeing to cooperate on a number of issues, including poverty reduction, trade and youth affairs. Tonight there will be no report from Channel 4 News on this important summit from Colombo, as despite hav…

This is the story of a beautiful island, locked in its secrets and denials: Sri Lanka. In the heart of the former combat zone, the memory of the civil war opens up, one of the most terrible and least known in contemporary history. A journalist who lived through the conflict returns to these places haunted by the memory of the massacres. Seven years after the events, the survivors are emerging from their silence. In a quest in the form of a road movie, the film takes us to meet a people and their wounds. Following the old route of the exodus through the jungle, the journalist follows in the footsteps of an implacable mechanism. Up to the setting of the final trap: the …

Sri Lanka, High-Level Segment - 7th Meeting, 25th Regular Session Human Rights Council https://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1722935254001/?bctid=3293640590001&autoStart=false&secureConnections=true&width=480&height=270

PUBLIC AI Index: ASA 37/015/2006 09 June 2006 UA 164/06 "Disappearance" SRI LANKA Rasanyagampillai Sivananthamoorthy (m), aged 35 Markandu Pushpakanthan (m), aged 26 Kandasamy Parimelalakan (m), aged 29 Vaikundavasan Vikunthakumar (m), aged 22 Ratnam Thayaruban (m), aged 19 Ponnambalam Partheepan (m), aged 22 Selvaratnam Sivanantham (m), aged 22 Ramachandran Rasakumar (m), aged 22 The eight Tamil men named above went to a Hindu temple in the north of the country on the evening of 6 May, to decorate it for a religious festival. The following morning they were reported missing and their whereabouts remain unknown. There are grave …

Sri Lanka: A Glimpse Into Our Apocalyptic Future?by Tom Plate, AsiaMedia News Daily, November 30, 2006 Tom Plate says, in our global village, we can't afford to turn away from the town burning next door Los Angeles --- You can, as smugly as you want, view the savage, desperate, dire deterioration in Sri Lanka as little more than a flashback to the past -- a kind of backslide into the dank grave of history. Those silly little Sri Lankans, how they kill one another over there in the shadow of the island's beauty, in their half-forgotten country, off the coast of India, about which no one really cares. Or -- more alertly, more sagely -- you could view th…

Sri Lanka: a paradise lost? By Irfan Husain AS THE fighting in Sri Lanka’s unending civil war has intensified, there has been a steady erosion in civil rights and democratic values. President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government, bent on crushing the LTTE, the Tamil militant group, has not been above using emergency powers to silence dissent. The latest victim of this authoritarian tendency is Keith Noyahr, a highly respected journalist and associate editor of The Nation. As he was about to open the gate to his house in Colombo at 9pm last week, a white van pulled up behind his car, a couple of men bundled him in, manacled him in handcuffs, and sped away…

January 8, 2013: The Beginning of Sri Lanka’s Year Zero On the 8th of January, the President of Sri Lanka will address a proposal to parliament to remove the incumbent Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, based on a report by a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC). The entire PSC process has been declared unconstitutional and null and void by the Supreme Court of the country. For two days, the illegal proposal will be debated in the parliament and on the 11th it will be put to a vote. The government has the required majority to get it through the parliament. Immediately after passing the resolution, the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka will be removed by force and will be p…

Press releases 14 November 2012 Sri Lanka: How UN failed during Sri Lanka’s armed conflict The UN failed to protect civilians during Sri Lanka’s armed conflict according its own report, released today, prompting Amnesty International to renew its call for an independent investigation into alleged war crimes by the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers (LTTE). The Report of the UN Secretary-General’s Internal Review Panel on United Nations Action in Sri Lanka, submitted to Ban Ki-moon and made public today, offers a strong indictment of the UN’s response to Sri Lanka’s armed conflict. It deals with a period of conflict in Sri Lanka when very grave violations of …

David Cameron has defended his decision to attend the Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka, saying his duty was to "deal with, not ignore" controversial issues. In a statement to Parliament, the prime minister said a process of "justice, closure and healing" was needed in the country after decades of civil war. Sri Lanka must begin an inquiry into alleged war crimes by March or face international intervention, he said. But Ed Miliband said the UK government "could not let the matter rest". The Labour leader questioned whether Mr Cameron had been right to attend after a boycott by the Canadian and Indian leaders. He suggested the final communique of the sum…

Sri Lanka: Looking beyond consolidation - Update No. 118 By Col R Hariharan (Retd.) [This up date may be read in continuation of SAAG Note No 367 "Sri Lanka: Revisiting LTTE's options Update No 114 " dated February 24, 2007 available at URL http://www.saag.org/notes4/note367.html] Consolidation in the East The consolidation operations of Sri Lanka Security Forces are now nearing the final stage. During the last four weeks Security Forces have made good progress both in Trincomalee and Batticaloa sectors. However, two recent incidents in the east have highlighted the type of threat the Security Forces and the public would face from the Liberation Tige…

A large number of Tamils in Sri Lanka have died while in protest demanding the government to reveal the fate of their loved ones who are victims of enforced disappearances, the UN heard. As revealed to the global rights body in Geneva by a mother leading a continuous protest that had been continuing for more than three years in the north and east of the country, almost 70 have passed away without getting any answers. “Already, 69 mothers in our protests have died due to stress and various illnesses without finding solutions to their grievances,” General Secretary of the Association for the Relatives of the Enforced Disappearance from North and East of Sri Lanka,…

There has been no shortage of distressing images emerging from the final two or three years of Sri Lanka's awful civil war. But this footage is amongst the worst I have seen, writes Callum Macrae. Warning: viewers may find footage in the below video extremely disturbing. Not because of the scale of the deaths it depicts – five deaths is a small incident in a war which saw upwards of 40,000 civilians massacred in the last few months alone, mostly by government shelling. This footage is awful because of the behaviour of the soldiers towards the bodies of the female Tiger fighters, and because of the underlying culture of systematic brutality and sex…

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- The Sri Lankan government decided Wednesday not to ban the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels at a crucial Cabinet meeting, officials close to the Cabinet said. A formal announcement is likely to be made later Wednesday. Supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had warned that a ban would effectively scupper the peace process. "...The State is compelled to make some hard choices. Prime among these issues is whether the government should reclamp the ban on the Tigers. Another is whether the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) should be rigorously reinforced," Daily News said in an editorial. "There are arguments for and aga…

SRI LANKA: Operational Developments in the Eelam War – Update No. 155 Col R Hariharan Operational fronts The security forces put two weeks of sunny weather to good use, advancing their offensive further both along the Mannar coast and the axis Akkarayankulam-Kilinochchi, southwest of the administrative capital of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). According to the security sources Task Force-I formed out of 58 Division advancing on a broad front south east of A32 Mannar-Pooneryn axis are six km short of Pooneryn on October 10, 2008. They came under heavy LTTE resistance at Palayilkulam and Uruthirapuram on way. The LTTE appears to be r…

Sri Lanka: opnieuw burgeroorlog? De Tamiltijgers op het eiland Sri Lanka dreigen de wapenstilstand stop te zetten De Tamiltijgers vormen een minderheid op Sri Lanka en willen meer autonomie. In 2002 maakte de wapenstilstand een einde aan de jarenlange burgeroorlog. http://www.vtm.be/nieuws/index_nieuwsbuite...and.shtml?p=124

8 May 2009 18:48:54 GMT Source: Human Rights Watch Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone. (New York) -Â The Sri Lankan armed forces have repeatedly struck hospitals in the northern Vanni region in indiscriminate artillery and aerial attacks, Human Rights Watch said today. Commanders responsible for ordering or conducting such attacks may be prosecuted for war crimes. 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 comb…

Sri Lanka: Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) provides refuge to 80 families displaced from Batticaloa Since recently Tamil families moving from the Batticaloa district into Vanni area to escape atrocities in the hands of the Srilanka armed forces keep on increasing to unprecedented levels. Mobilising all the resources at its disposal, TRO Srilanka has geared itself towards meeting the specific needs of the displaced families. From providing food, water, medicines and other essential non food household items to putting up houses on allocated lands to make these people as homely as possible are being looked after by TRO. Local people are seen to have joine…

Introduction In the so-called ‘post-war’ Sri Lanka context, land grabbing, Sinhalization and military occupation of the Tamil nation have become pivotal points in the political development discourse. The deep concerns that exist amongst the majority of the Tamils, which are directed towards their present and future existence, are these same issues. The political discourse within the international community is unable to keep pace with the real-time implementation and effects on the ground. The international community continues to talk about reconciliation and the Sri Lankan state seems keener on Sinhala settlements and militarization in the Tamil nation. All three actors…

Canada was clear – staging a Commonwealth leaders’ summit in Sri Lanka would be a very bad idea. The Canadians argued strongly against it, eventually deciding to boycott it altogether, and threatening a significant withdrawal of funding from the Commonwealth secretariat. After all it was only last March that the Queen signed the Commonwealth charter committing the organisation to respecting human rights; good governance; democracy; and respect for the rule of law. Selecting a country whose government has been in spectacular breach of each of these commitments to host the first summit after the signing of the charter was bound to leave a strong stench of hypocrisy hanging …

At its March 2013 session, the United Nations Human Rights Council should authorize an independent, international investigation into war crimes committed during the final months of Sri Lanka’s armed conflict, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to council members today. Since the council adopted a resolution on Sri Lanka at its March 2012 session calling for action, the Sri Lankan government has taken no significant steps to provide justice for victims of abuse and accountability for those responsible. “Over the past year the Sri Lankan government has alternated between threatening activists who seek justice and making small, cynical gestures to keep the internation…

Sri Lanka: would you holiday at a mass grave? The white sand of Sri Lanka's beaches is a lure for thousands of tourists every year - but dig a little deeper and there are many unanswered questions hanging over the country's tourist industry. Tourism is big business in Sri Lanka. Receipts from tourism nearly doubled between the end of Sri Lanka's civil war and the end of 2011 - up to $1.4bn. The direct contribution of tourism is estimated to be 3.8 per cent of Sri Lanka's total GDP, and is forecast to rise by 7.8 per cent in 2013. And the Sri Lankan government has big plans ahead for the industry. In the country's five-year plan for the sector it lists …

Built on land reclaimed from the Indian Ocean and funded with $1.4bn in Chinese investment, glossy plans for Port City inspire a mixture of optimism and alarm https://amp.theguardian.com/cities/2018/aug/02/sri-lanka-new-dubai-chinese-city-colombo