Sri Lanka’s security forces enjoy a ‘climate of impunity’ human rights groups protest.

Pointing to the ‘genocidal war’ the Sinhala-dominated state is waging against the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers this week urged the international community to “recognise the sovereignty of the Tamil people, and support the peace process in accordance with this principle.”

 

The world should “provide appropriate opportunities to the Tamil people to express their aspirations, as have been given to the people of East Timor and Kosovo,” the LTTE also said

Tamil parliamentarians pictured last year protesting against the Sri Lankan state’s indiscriminate violence against Tamils in the east.

The United States Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Robert Blake, cautioned the Colombo government, saying its victories were ‘tactical’ and urged resumption of talks.

Aid workers, like the Red Cross staffer being buried in this file photo, are at high risk.

Aid workers might see themselves as neutral providers of relief but in heavily polarised conflicts they are almost inevitably accused of bias, putting their operations and staff at risk.

 

In conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan, Western aid workers are at risk because of perceived alignment with coalition forces, while elsewhere in the world, from Ethiopia to Sri Lanka, governments accuse them of backing insurgents.

 

Some professiona

Indian HERMES Class Aircraft Carrier INS VIRAAT underway in the Indian Ocean as part of Exercise MALABAR 2005.

Sri Lanka’s government has long harassed the TRO.

The Sri Lankan government announced significant tax rises as the turmoil in the global credit markets cast a shadow over its plans to raise large sums of money through a bond issue to tackle spiraling costs and inflation.

 

According to leading global fund managers, the slump in the global credit markets and escalation of conflict between government forces and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) may force Sri Lanka’s to delay its first overseas debt offering.