Last week, I went to Mullikulam, a beautiful and resourceful village in the Mannar district, which has been illegally occupied by the Navy for more than 7 years. It was my first visit for more than a year. The people didn’t seem to have any fresh hopes of reuniting as one community, regaining their lost… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Human Rights
Legal Case of Tamil Genocide
Legal-Case-of-the-Tamil-Genocide_30-December-2014 The Legal Case of the Tamil Genocide January 6, 2015 by UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic Leave a Comment Full PDF version available here By UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic The UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic, an impact litigation clinic of American University Washington College of Law, has advocated and litigated… Read more »
Helping Sri Lanka’s New Democracy
Sri Lanka’s voters shocked themselves and the world this month by tossing out their president, who crushed the Tamil insurgency in 2009 and then led the country, along with his brother as defense secretary, to the brink of authoritarianism. The new president has promised to restore freedom of the press, independence of judges, and the… Read more »
Amnesty USA’s HR Concerns
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/sri-lanka Sri Lanka Human Rights Human Rights Concerns Sri Lanka’s brutal 26-year civil war between the government forces and separatists from the Tamil minority ended with a government victory in May 2009. During the war, both sides committed gross human rights abuses, including war crimes, for which no one has been held accountable. Enforced disappearances… Read more »
No Justice for Kumar Ponnambalam
No justice for assassinated human rights lawyer Kumar Ponnambalam, 15 years on Fifteen years after Kumar Ponnambalam, a prominent human rights lawyer and leader of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) was assassinated in a busy Colombo suburb during Chandrika Kumaratunge’s government, his killers have not been brought to justice. Mr Ponnambalam, who was renowned… Read more »
A Century of Silence
by Raffi Khatchadourian, ‘The New Yorker,’ January 5, 2015 …The news of the city’s changed atmosphere came quietly, five or six years ago, with the unlikely talk that Sourp Giragos was going to be rehabilitated as a functioning church—even though there was no congregation for it anymore. Then, in 2011, an item in the Armenian… Read more »
Cosmetic Fixes
by Taylor Dibbert, ‘Foreign Policy,’ Washington, DC, October 31, 2014 SOUTH ASIA Sri Lanka’s twenty-six-year civil war was a brutal conflict that pitted the Sri Lankan government forces against the Tamil Tigers, a group that fought for a separate state in the country’s northern and eastern provinces. Though the government defeated the Tamil Tigers in… Read more »
OHCHR Condemns Persistent Disinformation Designed to Discredit UN investigation on Sri Lanka
GENEVA (7 November 2014) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Friday criticized the continuing attacks by the Sri Lankan Government on the integrity of the UN Human Rights Office’s ongoing investigation into alleged grave human rights violations and abuses in Sri Lanka, and condemned the intimidation of human rights… Read more »
CBK Waged ‘Mother of All Wars’ – Rev. Dr. Emmanuel
Last week, The Island partly dealt with Rev. Dr. S. J Emmanuel’s thoughts on the collapse of talks between the government of the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, in April 1995. The priest blamed Mrs. Kumaratunga for the breakdown of talks. Rev. Dr. Emmanuel’s views, on the conflict, are relevant,… Read more »
The Road to Justice
by Committee to Protect Journalists, New York, October 28, 2014 The lack of justice in hundreds of murders of journalists around the world is one of the greatest threats to press freedom today. While international attention to the issue has grown over the past decade, there has been little progress in bringing down rates of… Read more »
Amnesty: UN Review Highlights
by Amnesty International, London, October 30, 2014 Amnesty UN review AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC STATEMENT Index: ASA 37/014/2014 30 October 2014 Sri Lanka: UN review highlights ongoing human rights abuse and impunity The UN Human Rights Committee review of Sri Lanka has once again highlighted the vast disconnect between Sri Lanka’s promises to Sri Lankan citizens… Read more »
Status of SL Commission on Disappearances
Media Freedom in Sri Lanka
Watch this powerful talk by Lukshmee Saravanapavan on media freedom in Sri Lanka at the Amnesty International USA conference in St. Louis, Missouri on Oct. 25. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152822022459948&set=vb.682819947&type=2&theater or http://youtu.be/a72EU396Z_I —————- For more information on Amnesty’s concerns in Sri Lanka, please visit www.amnestyusa.org/srilanka
Sri Lanka: Where Disappearances Served as a National Security Imperative
Thomson-Senanayake’s study explores these historical fault-lines through the manner in which disappearances served as an integral part of a system of state power and patronage during 1971-2002, ‘to enable the political elite to immobilise all political opposition.’ This is a reading of history which peels away the skin of ideological preoccupations and exposes the truth for what it is, simply a ruthless appropriation of ancient mistrusts and convenient mythologies to serve the political purposes of governments and oppositions.
Compilation of all NESoHR Reports 2005 – 2009
by NorthEast Secretariat for Human Rights, 2014 NESoHR-Compilation-of Human Rights Reports With-Page-Numbers 2005 to 2009 http://nesohr.org/nesohr-reports-2005-2009-january/ In this current climate of investigation by the OHCHR on Sri Lanka, the NESoHR reports issued during the period from 2005 till January 2009 is here republished as a single file for ease of access. These reports were written… Read more »
Deadly Alliances Against Muslims
On his 79th birthday in July, the Dalai Lama appealed to Buddhist extremist groups in Myanmar and Sri Lanka to stop instigating attacks against Muslim minorities that have killed scores. Instead, in an affront to Buddhism’s core message of compassion, leaders of those groups announced an alliance to make common cause against Muslims. “The time… Read more »
Amnesty: UN Review Highlights Empty Rights Promises
Press releases 7 October 2014 Sri Lanka: UN review highlights empty rights promises Sri Lanka must stop making empty promises to the international community and the Sri Lankan people on improving the country’s still desperate human rights situation, Amnesty International said ahead of a UN review of the country’s rights record. The UN Human Rights… Read more »
Video of Young Reporter at Uthayan
Amnesty Briefing on Sri Lanka for ICCPR Review
Amnesty UN INT_CCPR_CSS_LKA_18252_E Amnesty International has submitted a 40-page briefing on Sri Lanka to the U.N. Human Rights Committee in connection with the Committee’s review during this month of Sri Lanka’s fifth periodic report on its implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The briefing can be found at http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/LKA/INT_CCPR_CSS_LKA_18252_E.pdf INTRODUCTION Amnesty… Read more »
Forty New Cases of Post-War Torture Documented in Past 8 Months
http://www.freedomfromtorture.org/news-blogs/8068 In light of its latest evidence, published today, Freedom from Torture is calling on Sri Lanka to allow free and unfettered access to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as a matter of urgency and for the new Commissioner Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein to include ongoing torture in his investigations. Freedom from… Read more »