"It is well documented that the Sri Lankan government was responsible for mass human rights violations towards the end of the civil war in 2009. The Australian government has not done enough, either at the international level or through our bilateral relations, to ensure that these crimes are independently investigated and that perpetrators are held to account."

"Serious human rights violations did not end in Sri Lanka with the cessation of the civil war. Arbitrary arrest, detention and even torture remain systematic and widespread, particularly against the Tamil minority."

"In recent months, evidence has emerged that asylum-seekers returned to Sri Lanka are at particular risk of rights violations. Human Rights Watch has documented at least eight cases in which people who unsuccessfully sought asylum in Britain were returned to Sri Lanka and endured serious abuses, including torture and rape. There have been similar claims by Tamil asylum-seekers returned by Australia. This corroborates a May 2010 report by the Edmund Rice Centre that claimed asylum-seekers returned to Sri Lanka were detained and assaulted by Sri Lankan police."

"Despite this, Australia works closely with Sri Lanka - including through financial assistance and intelligence co-operation - in preventing people from fleeing the country. The Sri Lankan Department of Immigration and Emigration receives Australian aid, and Australia's last federal budget included almost $11 million to deploy Australian police officers to Sri Lanka and elsewhere to "combat people-smuggling"."

"At best, this undermines the spirit of the Refugee Convention, which gives people the right to flee persecution and seek protection. At worst, it involves Australia, at least indirectly, in exposing people to torture and other serious human rights violations. It is time for Australia to recalibrate its relationship with Sri Lanka to put human rights at the core."

Address by Jan Jananayagam of Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) at Black July remembrance event in London, 2012.

The intemperate attacks against the Tamil Diaspora that accompanied India’s predictable decision to re-proscribe the LTTE earlier this month reflects more than anything the dismal failure of India’s attempts to shape a political solution to the island’s ongoing and escalating ethnic conflict.

Indian approaches to the Tamil crisis in Sri Lanka have long been driven by the belief that the LTTE and particularly its senior leadership remained the singular obstacles to an equitable political solution to the conflict. To this end the Indian political and military establishment provided unqualified support for Sri Lanka’s military efforts to crush the Tamil struggle.

However, three years after the end of the war and the military destruction of the LTTE, amidst Sri Lanka’s horrifying slaughter of Tamil civilians, the prospects of a political solution to the ongoing ethnic conflict are by all accounts remote.

The Tamil writer, J.S.Tissainayagam, writes in the online site, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS). Published 19th June 2012.

See here for original article. Reproduced in full below:

Speech by Jan Jananayagam of Tamils Against Genocide at the Mullivaikal Remembrance event at Traflagar Square, London on the 19th of May 2012.

The Tamil Youth Organisation UK's address at the third Mullaivaikkal remembrance event held in London on 19th May 2012.

On this day, we the Eelam Tamil nation around the world, gather together to remember one of the darkest days in our nation’s past.

The British Tamils Forum speech at the third Mullivaikal remembrance event in London on 19th May 2012.

Ladies and Gentlemen

Statement by the leader of the UK Labour Party, Ed Miliband MP, in remembrance of Mullaivaikkal 2009. The statement was published on the website, Tamil Canadian, on 18th May 2012.

Mullivaikal Remembrance Day: Message from Rt. Hon Ed Miliband MP

Today we commemorate the third anniversary of the end of the armed conflict in Sr Lanka.