Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former British Foreign Secretary and member of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, wrote in The Times on Monday:

"How many more lives will it take before the government acts to end mandatory detention?

"How absolutely tragic, but how telling, that an accepted refugee could feel despair enough to take their own life in a detention centre."

Yet more photographs documenting executions, extrajudicial killings and the degradation of Tamil women have emerged said the president of the International Commission of Jurists Australia, John Dowd QC, on Wednesday.

Dowd confirmed the damning evidence had been mailed to him, and he had passed on the evidence to the Australian Federal Police.

India and Australia have confirmed separately that they will not seek a change of venue for the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, due to be held in Sri Lanka.

Prime Minister Gillard reassured Sri Lankan President Rajapakse at a meeting in Perth that there will be no debate on Sri Lanka hosting the next CHOGM.

Australia's foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, urged the UN Human Rights Council to examine allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka.

Drawing attention to Sri Lanka's 'LLRC report', due out next month, Rudd reiterated the importance of addressing the concerns raised in the report by the UN panel of experts earlier this year.

Australian Federal Attorney-general, Robert Mc Clelland, has halted the criminal proceedings against Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, citing diplomatic immmunity.
 
Mc Clelland's spokesperson explained that Commonwealth laws extended immunities to heads of state and heads of diplomatic missions. 

The national carrier of Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan Airlines, is at serious risk from being barred from entering European airspace due to safety concerns by the European Aviation Authority.

Sri Lanka’s The Island reported the airline is on ‘virtual notice’ and safety audits on the carrier’s planes have become almost mandatory at European airports.

The UK’s independent media regulator, Ofcom, has found that Channel 4’s documentary examining war crimes in Sri Lanka did not breach any broadcasting codes and was impartial.

The documentary, broadcast in June this year, examined the final events of the Sri Lankan government’s offensive in the Vanni, where they have been accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In a statement Monday, Ofcom said, 

"Channel 4 has a unique public service remit to provide programming that is challenging, diverse and likely to provoke debate. Consequently, the broadcaster has a history of broadcasting very challenging material from war zones (including graphic footage) and seeking out the voices and views of those who may not be represented.”

"Ofcom therefore concluded that overall Channel 4 preserved due impartiality in its examination of the Sri Lankan government's actions and policies during its offensive and there was no breach of [the broadcasting code]."

See report from the Guardian here.

Malcolm Fraser, the former Liberal Australian Prime Minister, has urged the Australian government to toughen its stance on Sri Lanka until there is an investigation into war crimes on the island.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Fraser said,

Ahead of the CHOGM in Perth, writing in the Trinidad Express on Monday, Peter Kellner, journalist and chairman of the Royal Commonwealth Society, accuses the conference and the institution of the Commonwealth of "sleeping walking into irrelevance".

An umbrella organisation consisting of 180 groups, representing over a million Canadians, passed a resolution last week expressing its support for the self-determination of the Tamil nation and calling for an immediate halt to the ongoing genocide in the Tamil homeland.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has had an indictment filed against him, in Melbourne Magistrates Court, for war crimes.

The indictiment was filed by Arunachalam Jegatheeswaran, an Australian Tamil who witnessed the government's aerial bombardment of hospitals and other civilian buildings during the height of the conflict in 2009.

The charge comes as Rajapaksa is scheduled to arrive in Australia, for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth this week.

Speaking to Australian media channel, ABC, Jegatheeswaran explained what he has witnessed:

"Patients were killed and patients who were in the hospital were killed and there were other patients waiting for treatment, they were killed.

"And there was a medical store where they kept the medicines, those were destroyed, scattered all over the place, you can see.

"Ambulances was destroyed. So I have seen that personally."

"The hospital, clearly a big red cross sign was marked on the roof, and drones usually take surveillance, so I'm very positive that they know where the hospital is and they know it'll be damaged. So, that's what I can tell at this stage.

"He's [Rajapaksa] the commander-in-chief and nothing would have happened without his knowledge or his directions, and ultimately, he should be answerable to what was happening."

See here for full interview.

Jegatheeswaran's lawyer, Rob Stary, urged the Australian government to investigate,

''The government will need to show a bit of backbone to investigate it, but there is absolutely no reason on the face of it why they should not pursue it.

"It's incontrovertible in our view that war crimes have been committed."

Stary confirmed the hearing is scheduled to take place on the 29th November.

The Global Tamil Forum and Australian Tamil Congress co-hosted an international conference in Sydney, reaffirming the role of the international community in pressure Sri Lanka to address human rights violations that occurred during the war on the island. 

The conference, held on the 20th October in Sydney, was entitled “Accountability in Sri Lanka: Common Justice in the Commonwealth” and saw a vast array of distinguished speakers from all over the world, including MPs from Malaysia, South Africa, Australia and Sri Lanka.

Geoffery Robertson, an eminent QC, who was appointed by the UN Secretary General as one of the three distinguished jurist members of the UN’s Internal Justice Council and part-time appeal judge at the UN-backed court for war crimes in Sierra Leone was also in attendance, along with guests from Amnesty International (Graham Thorn - AI's Australia Refugee Coordinator, and Senthorun Raj - NSW president of AI Australia) and diplomats, including, Sisa Njikelana, an MP from South Africa's ANC (African National Congress).

Prof Suriyanarayanan of India, member of the National Security Advisory Board of the Government of India during 2008-2010, also spoke at the event, which recognised that “India must revisit its approach and strategy towards Sri Lanka.”

Other notable speakers included Lionel Bopage, former general secretary of the JVP in Sri Lanka who resigned from the party on principle as he disagreed with the party's approach to the Tamil issue; Professor Damien Kingsbury from the Schoool of International and Political Studies at Deakin University, and Associate Professor Jake Lynch, the director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney.

Those who have witnessed first hand alleged war crimes and human rights abuses that took place were also present, including, Meena Krishnamoorthy, who was caught up in the No-Fire Zone and two Malaysian MPs, Manogaran and Ramakrishnan, who visited Vanni shortly after the conflict unofficially.  

The conference was held ahead of the 2011 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, the conference called for Sri Lanka to be denied privileges such as hosting the 2013 CHOGM and 2018 Commonwealth Games until the issues of war crimes and crimes against humanity were effectively dealt with. Furthermore, they called on the international community to “take all necessary steps to implement the UN Panel recommendations in its entirety”.