Recently in Sri Lanka Category

The government-backed Karuna Faction militia is using abduction as a fundraising tool at home and abroad. Dan McDougall reports

Sunday, 6 April 2008

For some refugees, finding asylum in Britain is not the end of the nightmare, but the beginning. And no one knows this better than Tamils such as Ariyathas Pushpathas.

Government Offensive Against Tamil Rebels Also Claims Civilian Victims

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 1, 2008; A10

MAHA OYA, Sri Lanka -- Under thick tropical rains on a rutted country road, a bus packed with ethnic Tamil families screeched to a stop here in eastern Sri Lanka. At a heavily fortified government checkpoint, the families were ordered off the bus.

Malaysia Sun
Wednesday 19th March, 2008
(IANS)

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Wednesday slammed the Sri Lankan foreign ministry for 'misrepresenting' its report on forced disappearances and making public some information it had shared with it confidentially.

By Ruan Pethiyagoda

The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has indicated that it is considering prosecuting former TMVP head and LTTE renegade Eastern Commander Karuna Amman for war crimes and human rights abuses on the basis of evidence forwarded to them by the Metropolitan Police, including reports forwarded by leading human rights organisations.

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Police found more than a dozen unidentified bodies, some with their hands tied behind their backs, in northern Sri Lanka on Thursday, the military and a witness said.

Rights groups have reported hundreds of abductions and disappearances in recent months after the military and separatist Tamil Tigers resumed a two-decade civil war, which has cost nearly 70,000 lives since 1983.

Police found the decomposing bodies in a grave in the north central district of Anuradhapura after a report by a local resident, a military spokesman said.

Guest Opinion

by Jim McDonald

You could be taken at any time, day or night - at home, at work, while walking on the street.

Your captors, in uniform or civilian clothes, could forcibly take you away, providing no reason or legal warrant. When relatives ask about your whereabouts, the same officials deny having arrested you or knowing your fate. You are now a victim of enforced disappearance.

This happened to Sivasubramanium Raveendranath, Vice-Chancellor of Eastern University in Sri Lanka. He "disappeared" while at a science conference Dec. 15, 2006, and has not been heard from since.

A few months before Raveendranath's "disappearance," the kidnappers demanded his immediate resignation in exchange for the release of his colleague, Dr. Bala Sugamar. Raveendranath resigned, and Sugamar was released. The university, however, wouldn't accept his resignation.

Working from the major Sri Lankan city of Colombo - because it wasn't safe enough at the university - he received several threats before his "disappearance," although it is still not clear from whom.

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