IT was a desperate last phone call but it did not sound like a man who would be dead within hours. Balasingham Nadesan, political leader of the Tamil Tigers, had nowhere to turn, it seemed. “We are putting down our arms,” he told me late last Sunday night by satellite phone from the tiny slip […]
22 May 2009 The armed conflict in Sri Lanka appears to have come to an end but a humanitarian crisis continues to unfold in the country. Amnesty International welcomed the decision of the United Nations Human Rights Council to hold a special session on Tuesday to address the plight of more than a quarter of […]
– The government has denied firing heavy weapons into what had been a battlefield densely populated with civilians. But the helicopter tour the military gave U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and a group of journalists Saturday revealed widespread devastation. – Another woman, Krishnaleela, 42, said her family came under shelling from the military and one […]
By Carol Glatz , Catholic News Service (Editor’s Note: References to the specific aid organization have been deleted at the request of the agency, which is trying to protect its workers.)ROME (CNS) — Sri Lankan government forces killed or injured 25,000-30,000 civilians in the span of just a few days during its final offensive against […]
British ministers and diplomats were involved in a frantic last minute series of pleas to spare the lives of two Tamil Tiger leaders as Sri Lankan troops closed in. “..Mr Nambiar said yesterday in Colombo that he conveyed the message to Sri Lanka’s foreign secretary Dr Palitha Kohona, but was told the safe surrender of […]
Before his murderous assault on the so-called safety zone, Mahinda Rajapaksa has always been maintaining that the number of civilians there was only 70,000. But after the first bout of the capture of civilians last month, until Thursday, 247,908 civilians from the safety zone were registered in the internment camps of Vavuniyaa, Pulmoaddai, Mannaar and Jaffna. After the […]
19 ICRC / Red Cross Staff and their Family Members missing from War Zone in Sri Lanka according to a statement from Paul Castella, the head of the Sri Lanka office of the International Committee of the Red Cross. “These people were together with the population there and taking an active part in the medical evacuations. […]
As at 26th May 2009, UN local office in Sri Lanka has counted 289,915 Tamils ( excluding Sri Lankan intelligence classified screening and interrogation camps ) who escaped Sri Lankan Government bloodbath in the beaches in Vanni in 50 barbed wire detention camps and the list is reproduced below. Local UNHCR & ICRC is refusing to help locating […]
Tow top Government Officials worked in the Warzone Mr Chelliah Dayananda, a grade-I SLAS officer who was Assistant Government Agent (equivalent of Assistant Collector) of Puthukudiyiruppu and Mr Kandasamy Parthipan, Additional Government Agent of Mullaithivu, are among the senior government officials detained in the Vavuniay camp, sources told War Without Witness.
Since September 2008, Sri Lankan Government banned access for all the Independent monitors, Humanitarian Workers including UN and the media to the combat zone (Vanni) and systematically isolated the combat zone (Vanni) from the out side world and waged a genocidal war without any witness. The Times, UK on 30th May 2009 accused Ban Ki-Moon’s Chief of […]
