Writing in the Dawn newspaper, former BBC foreign correspondent based in Sri Lanka and Iran, Frances Harrison, highlighting the "living hell" experienced by Tamils during the finally stages of the armed conflict in 2009, argues that "without the truth, reconciliation and forgiveness are simply not possible and the grievances that led to conflict in the first place remain dangerously unresolved".
A German tourist has lodged a complaint with Sri Lankan police, stating that she was raped in her hotel room whilst staying in Dikwella in the Matara district.
Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has been under fire for failing to respond to Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission report, despite assurances that he would.
Prasad Samarasinghe, a Major General in Sri Lanka's army and former military spokesperson to the Sri Lanka High Commission in London informed the US about the Rajapaksa adminstration's use of abductions as "political retribution against those though to be disloyal to the Rajapaksa administration", and the prosecution of scapegoats to "appease the international community", according to a US embassy cable, dated 6th June 2007.
Major General Samarasinghe is also the chief signal officer of the army and chief controller at the centre for research and development at Ministry of Defence. He was also the commander for three separate brigades in Jaffna, vanni and Trincomalee, Colonel General Staff, 22 Division Headquarters, Trincomalee, Colonel General Staff, Directorate of Operations, Army Headquarters, Assistant Military Secretary, Army Headquarters and the Centre Commandant, Sri Lanka Signal Corps.
The US State Department said on Monday two senior diplomats are due to visit Sri Lanka later this month for talks about war crimes committed during the final months of the military conflict against the LTTE.
An ITN team have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, for producing Channel 4’s documentary “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields”, a film that revealed the atrocities committed against civilians during the dying weeks of the civil war in 2009.
The nomination for the 2012 Nobel Peace prize was put forward by British Member of Parliament Siobhain McDonagh and Australian Senator Lee Rhiannon, after they wrote to the selecting committee on the 1st of February.
With graphic evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed against civilians, the documentary was first broadcast in July 2011 clocking over 1 million views in the UK. It has since been screened on national television in Australia, India, Denmark, Norway and Belgium. A follow-up film entitled "War Crimes Unpunished" will reveal more evidence of the atrocities committed during the war and is set to be screened later this year.
The letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee details “timely and ethical journalism” displayed by the team and states,
“At a time when the failure of existing UN institutions is increasingly noted in relation to safeguarding human life and preventing brutal wars, the contribution of a documentary such as ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ in bringing to light not only this failure in the context of the war, but also promoting the need for reviewing and revitalising the UN’s capacity in cases similar to the Sri Lankan war, are immense."
“By bringing to light the breaches of international conventions by the Government of Sri Lanka in a bold manner and by piecing together numerous forms of evidence in a coherent way, the value of independent journalism to the building of a peaceful global order in the century ahead has been amply demonstrated by the ITN team.”
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), widely criticised for its perpetual dithering, slammed the 13th Amendment to Sri Lanka's constitution as "full of flaws" on Saturday.
The TNA's spokesperson, MP Suresh Premachandran, said,
The Vice President of the International Executive Service Corps stated that the “biggest issue” in providing loans for US enterprises to carry out projects in Sri Lanka, is the much berated expropriation bill.
The bill, which allows the government to acquire enterprises and assets deemed to be underperforming, has been criticised by numerous organisations, including Moody’s credit rating agency and the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa laid the foundation for a Buddhist Stupa dedicated to Sri Lankan Army soldiers in Anuradhapura earlier this week, the first of such religious monuments to be built across the country.
