Brace yourselves Tamils in and from Sri Lanka! The UN Human Rights Council will not grant you justice at its 19th session, February 27-March 23, 2012 or, perhaps, in any foreseeable future. Until the past few weeks it looked as though the “international community” (US, UK-Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan), the east (Russia, China, India, Pakistan, [...]

What happened to dozens of LTTE members who surrendered to the SL army together with Rev. Francis Joseph, a Catholic priest, south of the Vadduvaakal bridge on May 18 2009? “Aananthi” (not her real name), the wife of one of the disappeared, told Human Rights Watch that she saw the army load the priest and [...]

The Centre for War Victims and Human Rights is organizing a conference on International Protection of Human Rights and its challenges in the 21st century while referring a case study on Sri Lanka. We will be holding a press conference prior to our General Conference on Friday February 17th 2012 at Hilton Garden Inn, 2648 [...]

The title is inspired by the article Are Chinese Telecoms Acting as the Ears for Central Asian Authoritarians? published in Eurasianet.org, examining the probable role of Chinese telecoms firms, notably Huawei and ZTE, in espionage and surveillance. The article notes that both ZTE and Huawei have signed contracts worth tens of millions of US dollars [...]

The Sri Lankan army’s announcement that it had appointed a five-member court of inquiry to investigate allegations that its forces committed serious violations of the laws of war appears to be another SL government delaying tactic in the face of mounting international pressure, Human Rights Watch said today. The United Nations Human Rights Council in [...]

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) welcomed the announcement by the US Government to support a resolution at next month’s UN Human Rights Council.  “The TNA welcomes the US announcement which was jointly made by the two visiting US envoys, Robert O Blake and Maria Otero. The problem with the Lankan Government is that they do [...]

Australian Tamil Congress (ATC) while welcoming Australia’s response to Sri Lanka’s LLRC report, released by Foreign Minister Rudd, reiterates the need for an international independent war crimes inquiry. While we welcome Mr Rudd’s assertion that the report failed to comprehensively address war crimes allegations, we are concerned that Mr Rudd has continued to call on [...]

The Sri Lanka Mission to the UN hosted a reception/dinner to the UN diplomatic community where ambassadors, senior UN officials, delegates and UN correspondents relished the Sri Lankan food, including rice, noodles, chicken and fish curries, dhal, brinjals, patties, cutlets and watalapam for dessert. The food was catered by Sigiri restaurant, the only person conspicuous [...]

In the second and concluding part of his article on Sinhalese racism in Sri Lanka and the ethnic conflict it started, Brian Senewiratne blames the British for sowing the seeds of trouble in the island nation. The first part of the article was published on 8 Februar 2012. Britain’s only concern vis-a-vis Sri Lanka has always [...]

Twelve days after Sri Lankan alleged war criminal Shavendra Silva joining the “Senior Advisory Group on Peacekeeping Operations” of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, on Wednesday evening the question was finally put to Ban Ki-moon himself. He said, “Sri Lankan mission? It was the member states that decided,” Inner City press reports. Inner City Press [...]

Secondly a public memo by Tamil Civil Society to the TNA appears to be “closing the stable door after the horse has bolted”. We should acknowledge that the memo to the TNA is well written, but where was this Tamil Civil Society when TNA was intentionally divided by narrow minded politicians. Do they realise how [...]

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that he want the relevant agencies, such as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to review and assess the contents of the Sri Lankan report. Since the report relates to a member state, it is for the member states to decide.” A Sri Lankan journalist [...]

We would like to appeal to the Sinhala Buddhists first of all to acknowledge the crimes that they committed against their own Tamil sisters and brothers and ask for forgiveness from the Tamils. Rejoicing at the war victories, when thousands have been killed, ‘disappeared’, maimed, raped and hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced [...]