• At least now Britain must act on Sri Lanka’s war crimes

    Jun 14

    TYO-UK (Tamil Youth Organisation - UK) welcomes the broadcast of the documentary ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields’ by Channel 4 as a harrowing but vital insight into the truth of the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka during 2009. It is an outstanding example of investigative journalism that has uncompromisingly presented the horrors that occurred. The documentary’s irrefutable evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity serves as a reminder to all journalists of the responsibility they carry to highlight such atrocities wherever they occur.

    The horrors that the documentary exposed, were repeatedly and clearly voiced by many, including the Tamil Diaspora, and international human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, throughout the first half of 2009, as events unfolded. Serious concerns were repeatedly raised regarding credible accounts of daily rape, torture, abduction and mass killings of Tamil civilians. Yet sadly, these calls were dismissed as mere rhetoric and propaganda.

  • Lifting the lid on Sri Lanka's war crimes

  • Cricket and the military

    The majority of the Sri Lanka women's cricket squad have signed up for jobs in the armed services.

    Some 90% of the national cricketers in the pool have already been recruited, with 14 out of 30 joining the air force, and 13 recruited by the navy.

    See BBC Sinhala service’s report here.

  • Cash-strapped Sri Lanka’s new extraction scheme

    Since late 2010, the Sri Lankan government has made much of the country’s soaring stock market as indicative of a post-war boom.

    The claim has also been repeated by some international analysts.

    However even by October 2010, it was becoming clear that the stock index was being boosted by the government itself.

    State-owned pension funds were doing much of the buying - even as foreign investors have been largely taking their funds out.

    See our earlier post ‘Sri Lanka’s stocks: a closer look’

    But now the chickens are coming home to roost.

  • Indians lead Sri Lanka tourist arrivals

    Indians top tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka, the country’s tourism authority says. (See Xinhua’s report here)

    68,830 Indians visited Sri Lanka between January and May this year – up 54% from the same period last year.

  • A Canadian Parliamentarian’s maiden speech - in English, French and Tamil

    Rathika Sitsabaiesan, MP, representing the Scarborough-Rouge River constituency, addressed the Canadian Parliament for the first time on Friday:

  • International lawyers condemn erosion of judicial independence
    A global group for legal professionals, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), expressed their concerns at the 'increasing erosion of judicial independence' in Sri Lanka, in a letter addressed to the Sri Lankan government. 
  • HRW: UNHRC should ensure accountability
    Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a statement during the 17th session of the Human Rights Council on the 6th June 2011 calling on the UNHRC to work towards accountability for alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka with no further delay. 
  • Tamil Nadu Assembly demands India pursue Sri Lankan war criminals
    In a show of unity, the Tamil Nadu Assembly led by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, unanimously passed a resolution calling upon the central government in India to ensure those responsible for the massacre of Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka are declared 'war criminals' by the United Nations.
  • US: Defense Attaché's remarks do not reflect US policy

     Following the US Embassy's Defense Attaché, Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith's peculiar remarks at Sri Lanka's three day seminar, the US State Department have responded swiftly in a statement describing his remarks as 'personal opinions' and stipulating that they 'do not reflect the policy of the United States Government'.

  • People have the right to resist annihilation - Arundhati Roy
    Arundhati Roy, Booker Prize winning novelist and political activist, speaking to reporters on her new book, a collection of essays on the Maoist guerrilla movement in India entitled 'Broken Republic', argues the case for violent resistance in the face of brutal oppression. 
  • CPJ: Sri Lanka fourth 'Getting Away With Murder'

    Sri Lanka ranked fourth amongst states ‘Getting Away With Murder’, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said this week. (see the 2011  Impunity Index)

  • Judge hails Mladic arrest, hopes same for Sri Lanka and Syria leaders

    Judge Richard Goldstone (former chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda), writing for the BBC on the extradition of General Ratko Mladic, said it represented yet another key milestone in the "end of the effective impunity for the worst war criminals".

  • Making it up

    Sri Lanka’s Central Bank is twisting statistics to project an unrealistic picture of economic development, an economist and parliamentarian of the main opposition said this week.

  • Who’s for and against investigating 2009 slaughter of Tamils

    At the 17th UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) meeting presently underway in Geneva, UN rights chief Navi Pillai called an international investigation of war crimes in the final months in 2009 of Sri Lanka’s war.

    Who supported: US, EU, France, Ireland

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