Get on the Bus for Human Rights (GOTB) is an annual day of human rights education and activism organized by AI USA Group 133 of Somerville, MA and a dedicated team of volunteer community organizers. Now in its seventeenth year, GOTB draws upwards of 1,200 participants down to New York City to take peaceful action [...]

Sri Lanka is to launch a fresh investigation into the massacre of 17 aid workers of a French Non Government Organization (NGO) during the war in 2006, a SL government official said on Tuesday.  He said that the government is awaiting a report from the Attorney General’s Department in Sri Lanka before commencing the investigations. [...]

The Sri Lankan Jaffna Security Forces Commander Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe said that the strength of the Security Forces personnel in the North has been reduced from 27,000 to 16,000 and that would not reduced further. Hathurusinghe was speaking at an event on Sunday, he said the security situation in the North has improved remarkably. [...]

Members of Parliament belonging to the Congress Party who were part of the Parliamentary Delegation to Sri Lanka said on Saturday that a report about the visit would be submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. An Indian Parliamentary Delegation led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Leader Sushma Swaraj visited Sri Lanka on 16-21 April to [...]

India’s High Commissioner Ashok Kantha hosted a dinner for the visiting Indian Parliamentary delegation last week. It was attended by politicians from both the Government and the Opposition. Lankan Minister Basil Rajapaksa, TNA leader R. Sampanthan and Indian Communist Party MP T.K. Ranga Raajan were sharing their experiences. TNA leader Sampanthan said, that he met [...]

The visiting Indian Parliamentary delegation today called for the urgent implementation of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) with regard to informationon missing persons and detainees, investigation of cases of disappearances andabductions, promotion of a trilingual policy, reduction of high security zones,return of private lands by the military and demilitarization, including phasing out of [...]

Two days after welcoming the idea of a referendum for a separate ‘Eelam’, DMK chief M Karunanidhi today said the “blood spilt and the sacrifices made by Tamils” in Sri Lanka would not go waste and a separate nation will come into existence some day. “A separate Tamil Eelam rings  in the ears of Tamils [...]

CPJ’s 2012 Impunity Index spotlights countries, where journalists are slain and killers go free. NEW YORK Deadly, unpunished violence against the press rose sharply in Pakistan and Mexico, continuing a dark, years-long trend in both nations, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in its newly updated Impunity Index. The global index, which calculates unsolved [...]

In a landmark event in Canadian politics and among the Eezham Tamil diaspora in Canada, Neethan Shan, vice chair of the NCCT, was elected as the President of Ontario New Democratic Party. The 33 year old Eezham Tamil activist, who is also the Executive Director of the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians, won the [...]

Twenty years ago Mahinda Rajapaksa was a fiercely dedicated human rights lawyer and, along with Mangala Samaraweera, a pillar of strength to Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike who was heading the Mothers’ Front in southern Sri Lanka. The latter was a frontal organisation to fight for justice for the thousands of Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) members killed [...]

Residents in the islands of Jaffna said that candidates from the Sri Lankan paramilitary group, Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) had threatened and harassed them, the Colombo media reports. One of the recent suspects in a rape case was an EPDP candidate, they charged. ‘When an election comes up, the politicians make promises, but they [...]

Introduction It is often stated that the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) came into effect because of the international pressure that was exerted on the LTTE after 9/11. But the facts prove otherwise. That is, [...]

Two large earthquakes struck western Mexico, shaking buildings as far away as the capital and sending people rushing out of offices onto the streets, the U.S. Geological Survey said, Reuters reports. There were no reports of major damage after the first of the two tremors. The USGS said the first quake on Wednesday evening in [...]

The second annual conference of the Global Tamil Youth League held on 7th and 8th April in the UK passed resolutions calling for an independent, international accountability mechanism into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Sri Lankan state and to advocate against the genocide of the Eezham Tamil nation. Emphasising that Tamil [...]

The Sri Lankan war criminal Major General Prasanna Silva, defence advisor to the Sri Lankan High Commission in London is reportedly returning to Sri Lanka in the wake of a law crime dossier forwarded to the British Foreign office by disapora Tamil organizations over Maj. Gen. Silva’s culpability in alleged war crimes committed in the [...]