"The entire world knows about the war crimes against Sri Lankan Tamils. The Tamil Nadu chief minister has raised this issue with the prime minister. We want an answer from the prime minister... will they support the UN resolution."

"Traditional position of India has always been, not only in respect of this case, that we normally do not support any country-specific resolution. But what view on this issue will be taken will be determined as and when the time will be finalized in respect of the meeting of the Human Rights Commission."

In a report, 'Locked away: Sri Lanka's security detainees', released Tuesday, Amnesty International (AI) highlighted the ongoing arbitrary, illegal and often incommunicado detention of Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka.

Sam Zarifi, AI’s Asia-Pacific Director said,

“A lack of accountability for alleged war crimes gives the green light to Sri Lankan authorities to act with impunity. Meanwhile the message coming from the Sri Lankan government is that those who dare criticise it risk harassment, or even disappearance.”

If Sri Lanka is serious about ending impunity and committed to reconciling communities torn apart by conflict, the rule of law needs to be a large part of that equation.  While governments have the right to address national security concerns, human rights abuses are never justified.

“The war crimes alleged in Sri Lanka in the final stages of the war are of such magnitude that if unchallenged risk fundamentally undermining international justice mechanisms - the UN must support an independent international investigation into these alleged crimes.”

In a statement, AI said,

"Reports of illegal detentions persist. Since October 2011, 32 people have been ‘abducted’ or subjected to abduction-style arrests."

In a statement released Monday, Reporters Sans Frontieres, detailed the "violence, threats and propaganda aimed at journalists and media defenders seen as government critics" since 2011.

Extracts reproduced below:

In a joint statement and resolution, 12 Tamil diaspora organisations, called for an independent, international investigation as the only mechanism to ensure accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as a lasting political solution that reflected the nationhood of Eelam Tamils.

Writing in the online site, OpenDemocracy, Sivakami Rajamanoharan from the Tamil Youth Organisation UK argues that the failure of reconciliation in Sri Lanka is as a result of "Sri Lanka’s refusal to accept the Tamil identity as a rightful and equal part of the island" and that the Tamil nation's desire fo

Addressing a public meeting in Colombo, Sri Lankan government Minister Wimal Weerawansa has called for a boycott of all American products, including the use of Google.

The Tamil people should not keep quiet anymore. Their mass organisations and civil groups should realise their duties and the fact that the unfolding scenario has no room for individual issues.

It is futile for the Tamil political leadership, positioning itself against the aspirations of the people, to again and again get trapped in the old ways of polity. The next stage should be a mass struggle.

“What is happening in Sri Lanka is a systematic genocide. It has been happening for the last 60 odd years. What happened in the last stages of the war was taking that genocidal project to its extreme.

Sri Lanka’s government has extended its censorship to text messages, reports BBC Sandeshaya.

News outlets that send SMS alerts to customers must now get prior approval from the Media Centre for National Security (MCNS), if the messages are related to national security, the military or the police.

An umbrella body named the Group of Concerned Citizens (GCC), representing fifty-one NGOs based in India, has urged Malaysia to support a resolution on war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan security forces.

In a statement, GCC's coordinator, K Arumugam said that Malaysia should not support Sri Lanka as it did in 2009.

Writing in the Independent, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields Director Callum Macrae has revealed some of the new evidence of summary executions that they have uncovered whilst making their follow up documentary, “War Crimes Unpunished”.

Extracts have been reproduced below. See the full piece here.

For more information on the upcoming documentary “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished”, see here. It will be broadcast on Channel 4 this Wednesday the 14th of March at 10.55pm.

“A 12-year-old boy lies on the ground. He is stripped to the waist and has five neat bullet holes in his chest. His name is Balachandran Prabakaran and he is the son of the LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. He has been executed in cold blood. Beside him lie the bodies of five men, believed to be his bodyguards. There are strips of cloth on the ground indicating that they were tied and blindfolded before they were shot – further evidence suggesting that the Sri Lankan government forces had a systematic policy of executing many surrendering or captured LTTE fighters and leading figures, even if they were children.”

“In one incident, legally significant because it is well documented, two international UN workers leading the last UN overland food convoy became trapped near a temporary hospital in a village primary school in Uddiyakattu, in the first of the government's No Fire Zones.”

“With the help of other civilians they began to dig bunkers to provide some protection from incoming shellfire. As was standard practice, one of the UN workers, an Australian called Peter Mackay, took precise GPS co-ordinates of the site, and these were supplied to the government. But if that had any effect, it was certainly not the desired one. Over the next couple of days the camp was subjected to a massive, sustained barrage of incoming shellfire, much of it falling directly on or near to the UN bunker. Dozens were killed – and many more horrifically injured. It was all photographed by the UN workers.”

“In a sense, it was just one relatively small incident in the ongoing carnage of the war, but it is potentially significant because it provides specific evidence linking the Sri Lankan government's chain of command to knowledge of targeted attacks on civilians – attacks that appear to constitute war crimes.”

States debated the draft resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday, during an informal session chaired by the US ambassador, Eileen Donahoe.

Rejecting the consultation as a "farce", Sri Lankan officials refused to engage in any dialogue on it.