Saturday, October 27, 2012

Sri Lankan military forcibly “resettles” Tamil detainees


By WSWS Reporters 

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The following report was compiled by a team of World Socialist Web Site reporters who investigated the conditions facing the last group to be forcibly resettled.

We travelled 85 kilometres from Jaffna to Suriyapuram, near Pudukuduirippu, where the final group of war detainees were moved. As you pass Kilinochchi town going toward Pudukuduirippu, you see many military camps. Signs on unoccupied land that read “reserved for military use” indicate that more facilities are being prepared. The entire area remains under military occupation.

People originally from Pudukuduirippu and nearby villages, including Keppapilawu and Seeniyamotai, are not allowed to re-enter their villages, which are occupied by the military. Justifying the government’s decision to keep residents out, Mullaithivu District Government agent N. Vedanayagam declared: “They can compromise national security and hence, we could not settle them in their original villages.”


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Saturday, October 27, 2012

Remembering Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields


By Gareth Evans | Project Syndicate

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One of the worst atrocity crime stories of recent decades has barely registered in the world’s collective conscience. We remember and acknowledge the shame of Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. We agonize about the failure to halt the atrocities being committed almost daily in Syria. But, at least until now, the world has paid almost no attention to war crimes and crimes against humanity comparable in their savagery to any of these: the killing fields of Sri Lanka in 2009.

Three years ago, in the bloody endgame of the Sri Lankan government’s war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, some 300,000 civilians became trapped between the advancing army and the last LTTE fighters in what has been called “the cage” – a tiny strip of land, not much larger than New York City’s Central Park, between sea and lagoon in the northeast of the country.

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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Wife presses UN over missing Sri Lanka cartoonist

AFP | Radio Netherlands Worldwide | [Photo courtesy: vikalpasl/flickr]

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The wife of missing Sri Lankan political cartoonist Prageeth Eknelygoda marked 1,000 days since his disappearance Monday with an appeal to UN chief Ban Ki-moon to intervene.

Sandhya Eknelygoda led a group of rights activists and staged a demonstration outside the United Nations offices in Colombo urging the world body to pressure Sri Lanka for information about her husband.


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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Sri Lanka Defence Secretary gets Delhi invite ahead of UNHRC session

By P K Balachandran | Indian Express

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The Indian government has invited Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa to New Delhi for talks, ahead of next month’s session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, according to informed sources. The visit is expected to take place in the next few days because Sri Lanka’s case is to be taken by the UNHRC on November 1, under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) scheme. India is in the three-nation panel which will oversee the review.

In the last session of the UNHRC in March, a US-sponsored resolution hostile to Sri Lanka was passed. In the coming session too, the council is expected to take a critical stance.


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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Brutality and violence sscalate in Sri Lanka

Kiri Westby | Huffington Post | [Photo coutesy: Rasmus Malm/Ottar.se] .............................................................................................................................................................................................

Sometimes winners lose.

It's a hard pill to swallow for any activist. After years of struggling to end a violent armed conflict, to usher one's country from a state of "war" to a state of "peace," that the post-war environment should emerge as more corrupt and less safe can be downright disheartening.

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Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Sri Lankan asylum seekers' deportation halted at last minute

Shiv Malik | The Guardian
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The high court has ordered that the imminent deportation to Sri Lanka of a number of Tamils be halted amid claims they may be tortured on their return.

Three solicitors' firms have confirmed to the Guardian that a number of their clients had been given last-minute reprieves and would no longer be flown out of the country on a specially chartered UK Border Agency (UKBA) flight that was expected to be leave on Tuesday afternoon. It is understood that a further 10 to 12 firms have also lodged last-minute appeals on behalf of their clients.

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