Sri Lanka: Free Civilians From Detention Camps – Human Rights Watch

The Sri Lankan government should immediately release the more than 280,000 internally displaced Tamil civilians held in detention camps in northern Sri Lanka, Human Rights Watch said today. The government, in violation of international law, has since March 2008 confined virtually all civilians displaced by the fighting between government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers […]

AAAS Satellite Image Analysis Points to New Graves, Shelling, and Human Displacement in Sri Lanka

Beside a green lagoon on Sri Lanka’s northeastern coast, on a sandy spit of land less than 8 miles long, violence reportedly erupted 9-10 May as military soldiers clashed with rebel Tamil Tigers.Now, a detailed AAAS assessment of high-resolution satellite images seems to confirm descriptions of intense fighting within Sri Lanka’s “no-fire zone”—revealing a landscape […]

A View from Behind the Barbed Wire Camps in Sri Lanka- by A Canadian UNHCR worker

During the final months of Sri Lanka’s civil war, the island nation’s government barred the media and other observers from entering the war zone. As a result, first-hand accounts of the conditions facing the hundreds of thousands of Tamils forced to flee their homes, and later interned in internally displaced peoples (IDP) camps, were practically […]

Sri Lanka: UN rights expert calls for probe into video of alleged executions

28 August 2009 – A United Nations human rights expert today called for the immediate establishment of an independent inquiry into the authenticity of a video which purportedly depicts the extrajudicial execution of two naked and helpless men by the Sri Lankan military and the presumed prior executions of others.Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur […]

Sri Lankan court jails Tamil journalist Tissanayagam who criticised war for 20 years

A Tamil journalist Tissanayagam who wrote articles criticising the Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tamil Tigers was today sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour under the country’s anti-terrorism laws. Tissainayagam’s defence lawyers said their client would appeal, maintaining he had always fought for human rights. The journalist’s case has attracted international attention, with President […]