Posts Categorized: Other

This is the devastation left behind after 26 long years of civil war. Thousands died in Sri Lanka during the government’s clash with the ethnic Tamil people, fighting for their own homeland. Now the war zone is a wasteland, its earth scorched and pocked by craters. Cars and trucks lie overturned near bunkers beside clusters… Read more »

Repression-of-Dissent-in-Sri-Lanka-June-2014-English-07Aug2014 http://srilankabrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Repression-of-Dissent-in-Sri-Lanka-June-2014-English-07Aug2014.pdf Summary: June 2014 will be remembered in Sri Lanka for the communal violence in the towns of Aluthgama and Beruwala in Southern Sri Lanka, that resulted in 4 persons (three Muslims and one Tamil) being killed, more than 80 injured and widespread damage to property, mainly of Muslims. The widely held belief, including… Read more »

Having recently emerged from a long war and still mired in a host of issues relating to that conflict, including the unsettled question of Tamil political aspirations that first gave rise to it, Sri Lanka could have done far better with the opportunity it had to remake itself. Instead, the narrow political ambitions of its leaders to consolidate majority sentiment seem to be driving the Sinhala nationalist desire for new enemies.

SITTWE, Myanmar — Minura Begum has been in labor for almost 24 hours, and the baby is stuck. Worse, it’s turned around, one tiny foot already emerging into the world in a difficult breech delivery that threatens the lives of mother and child alike. Twenty-three years old and delivering her first child, Minura desperately needs… Read more »

  “The sovereignty of Sri Lanka is very much intact. And we want it to remain intact. We are Sri Lankans… And we don’t want Sri Lanka’s sovereignty to be impacted upon.” R. Sampanthan (Leader of the TNA), Al-Jazeera, 26 March 2014 Sri Lanka’s post-war politics has come to be defined by her inability to… Read more »

by Sarah Stodder, ‘The Diplomat,’ April 9, 2014 Sanjeev sits nervously in a scuffed plastic chair, half-listening to the sounds of the road outside the displacement camp where he lives. Seven years have passed since his involvement in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the militant separatist organization that claimed a homeland for Sri… Read more »

by Human Rights Watch, February 26, 2014 (New York) – The United Nations Human Rights Council should adopt the recommendation of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay to create an independent international inquiry into war crimes and other serious abuses committed during Sri Lanka’s armed conflict. The Human Rights Council will discuss the report during… Read more »

As elaborated in the attached situation and incidents reports,militarization was and continues to be the major impediment to the enjoyment of civil, political and socio-economic rights in the province.The exercise of the franchise is no exception to this. CMEV as well asother monitors recorded a number of complaints of threat and intimidation allegedly by members of the security forces including the Civil Defence Force, Their involvement in the campaigns of ruling party candidates – four in particular were mentioned in this regard- and even intimidating presence on election day. Militarization was underscored in the remarks made by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the end of her visit to Sri Lanka just under a month before the election – 25-31 August 2013- and as required by the March 2013 resolution on Sri Lanka in the Council, in her oral remarks to the Council just after the election. The High Commissioner expressed her grave concern that civilians who had met with her had been questioned by the military before and after their meeting with her.The extent of militarization in the daily lives of the civilian population and the political objectives it serves, attests to its embedding and institutionalization in the context in which the election campaign andpolling was held. In this respect militarization clearly undermined the integrity of the electoral process, with the overall voter turnout figure and result representing a popular backlash in defiance against it.

http://amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA37/021/2013/en/228da3d6-d328-426d-ace4-7c2fc5dcd04f/asa370212013en.pdf Amnesty No Accountability Aug 28 2013 Amnesty’s Live Wire blog film on “Sri Lanka’s Authorities Must Tell the Trut” 29th August 2013 Index Number: ASA 37/021/2013 UN Human Rights Council Twenty-Fourth Session 9th-27th September Item 4 Still no human rights accountability in Sri Lanka: still no end to serious human rights violations Sri Lanka… Read more »

There is a lesson for Tamils in the Syrian “great game”. Until recently Syrian regime was tolerated by the west and the Israel. Assad was seen as a known devil and in the name of stability, confrontation was avoided. If there was no public protests, they may have been content to maintain the status quo.

How did that policy change?

Recent weeks have once again seen the Sri Lankan military enjoying cordial ties with several members of the international community, including states that have led the call for accountability and justice, as well as been at the forefront of criticising the present militarisation that pervades the North-East and the island as a whole. The US… Read more »

Tamil asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat are in many cases the lucky ones – many who suffer cannot leave, as these photographs from Shelley Morris show. Warning: graphic images Despite the armed conflict finishing in 2009, the humanitarian situation in Sri Lanka remains grim, and human rights abuses continue. The government of… Read more »

History bears witness to the fact that no community can be kept in subjugation for long. India has rightly taken the stand that the amendment needs to be strengthened to instill greater confidence in the minds of Tamils that their interest lay in a united, peaceful Sri Lanka.

The ethnic divide in Sri Lanka is ingrained in all aspects of life, even mourning the dead. The conflict between Tamils and the Sri Lankan state has cost over 100,000 lives, the vast majority of which are Tamil. The 18th of May, the day the armed conflict ended, has become one of the most important… Read more »