The online site, Tamilnet, was out of service at the weekend after experiencing effective cyber-attacks, ahead of the 19th UN Human Rights Council session.

In a statement, published Monday, Tamilnet's editorial board, said,

"Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS), identified by the service provider of TamilNet as originating from specific parts of the world, has been disrupting web traffic of TamilNet.com since Saturday."

Rallying behind the Sri Lankan government's call to arms against accountability for mass atrocities against Tamils, protests took place Monday as the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council began. 
 
In the weeks leading upto the session, government ministers have publicly denounced the "western plot". 
 
Speaking today, member of parliament for Badulla district and former deputy minister of justice, Dilan Perera told reporters, 
 
 "This is clearly international revenge on the president for his action to end a 30 year curse of terrorism,"
 

Speaking at the opening session of the 19th session of the UN human rights council, UK minister of state, foreign and commonwealth office, Jeremy Browne pledged the UK's commitment to working against the violation of human rights, and urged Sri lanka to implement the recommendation made in the LLRC. 
 
"Where states fail, institutions of the UN should act to make change," said Browne. 
 
It is "in this spirit," added Browne, that "Countries call on them [Sri Lanka] to make the implementations recommended in their Lessons Learnt Reconciliation Commission."
 

Sri Lanka's public relations minister, Mervyn Silva expressed his thoughts on a US resolution at the UNHRC.

According to BBC correspondent Charles Haviland, Silva said Monday, 

“Americans, if you want to die like dogs as Prabhakaran did, come to Sri Lanka.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) produced fresh evidence of Sri Lanka’s torture of recent Tamil deportees, on Friday, which significantly bolsters ongoing litigation to halt the UK’s continuing deportations says Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) in a litigation update released Saturday.

Spokesperson from TAG, Jan Jananayagam said,

Sri Lanka's delegation to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva due to begin Monday, assured the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, that "we [Sri Lanka] have dealt with accountability isses".

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Sri Lanka's irrigation minister, Nimal Siripala de Silva, said when Pillay has raises the issue of war crimes and the UN expert panel report, they responsed promptly.

“We corrected her immediately. We have dealt with accountability issues.”

Sri Lanka has expressed outrage at the humiliating treatment meted out to Major General Shavendra Silva by a UN committee.

Silva, who is accused of war crimes, was ejected from the peacekeeping advisory panel to Bank Ki-moon earlier this week, after widespread criticism of his selection to the committee.

"To seek to exclude him from a position in the UN is unfair and contrary to the principles of the United Nations," the Sri Lankan government said in a statement issued in New York.

A UN peacekeeping committee reportedly barred Major General Shavendra Silva of the Sri Lankan Army from attending their meetings.

"Following careful consideration and consultation with other special advisory group members, the chair, Louise Frechette, has advised Major General Shavendra Silva of Sri Lanka, that his participation is not appropriate or helpful for the purposes of this group," said a statement released by Frechette.

Endorsing the "principled stand" of Louise Frechette, the chair of the UN body who made the decision to bar Major General Shavendra Silva from the UN's Special Advisory Group on Peace Keeping Operations, Philippe Bolopion, the UN director for Human Rights Watch, called on UN member states and the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, to publicly back her decision.

In a statement released Thursday, Bolopion said,