[CPJ]

The general secretary of the Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association, Poddala Jayantha, was abducted in Sri Lanka today, beaten, and dropped by the side of a road in a Colombo suburb, according to a release by the association and two colleagues who spoke to him. The attack came on a busy road during rush hour at 5:15 p.m. Jayantha’s colleagues said witnesses at the scene told them six unidentified men in a white Toyota Hi Ace van with tinted glass windows grabbed Jayantha as he was walking home in the well-to-do suburb of Nugegoda. The same type of vehicles have been used to pick up anti-government figures in the past, CPJ research has found. The journalist was left on the side of the road about half an hour later.

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[The Times]

Britain and other EU countries sold military equipment worth millions of pounds to the Sri Lankan Government in the last three years of its bloody civil war with the Tamil Tigers, The Times has learnt. Britain approved commercial sales of more than £13.6 million of equipment including armoured vehicles, machinegun components and semiautomatic pistols, according to official records. Slovakia provided 10,000 rockets worth £1.1 million, while Bulgaria approved sales of guns and ammunition worth £1.75 million, according to EU documents and officials.

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[UN News Centre]

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today reiterated his strong concerns over “unacceptably high” civilian casualties in the conflict between the Sri Lankan Government and Tamil rebels, while rejecting in the strongest terms any figure attributed to the United Nations. “I categorically reject – repeat, categorically – any suggestion that the United Nations has deliberately under-estimated any figures,” the Secretary-General underscored. “Let me also say, whatever the total, the casualties in the conflict were unacceptably high – as I have also said repeatedly,” he added.

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[The Times]

Ban Ki Moon the Secretary-General of the United Nations, visited Sri Lanka last week. He knew from his officials that at least 20,000 civilians had been killed by Sri Lankan troops in the offensive against the Tamil Tigers. Mr Ban never mentioned this figure to his Sri Lankan interlocutors. He saw, while travelling by air over a supposed “no-fire” zone, the evidence of a massacre of thousands of Tamil civilians caught between the army and the insurgents. Yet he has still not confirmed the authenticity of photographs taken from the same helicopter setting out that scene of carnage and mass makeshift graves.

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[ The Times ]

India was accused yesterday of complicity in the killing of an estimated 20,000 civilians in the last stages of Sri Lanka’s 26-year war against the Tamil Tigers. Major-General Ashok Mehta, a former commander of Indian peacekeeping forces in Sri Lanka, said that India’s role was “distressing and disturbing”. Two international human rights groups said that India had failed to do enough to protect civilian lives. “We were complicit in this last phase of the offensive when a great number of civilians were killed,” General Mehta, who is now retired, told The Times.

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[ BBC ]

Sri Lanka has dismissed calls for an independent inquiry into claims of human rights abuses by the military, saying its own courts will investigate. Foreign minister Rohita Bogollagama said the claims were being used to boost accusations of genocide against the country’s Tamil minority. Aid agencies and the United Nations have called for an inquiry. The exact number of civilians killed in the final weeks of the long-running war has not been established, but one report put it as high as 20,000.

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[ UN News Centre ]

The United Nations, along with dozens of partner agencies, are working to improve basic conditions in camps housing people who fled the recently-ended conflict in northern Sri Lanka, it was announced today. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that since the arrival of the last of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) at the camps, relief workers have been working to ease pressure on overcrowded sites, construct more latrines and improve water supply to meet international standards. Other priorities include reuniting families and improving freedom of movement in the camps.

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[ HRW ]

The United Nations Human Rights Council on May 27 passed a deeply flawed resolution on Sri Lanka that ignores calls for an international investigation into alleged abuses during recent fighting and other pressing human rights concerns, Human Rights Watch said today. The council held a special session on May 26 and 27, 2009, on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, a week after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by government forces. “The Human Rights Council did not even express its concern for the hundreds of thousands of people facing indefinite detention in government camps,” said Juliette de Rivero, Geneva advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The council ignored urgent needs and wasted an important chance to promote human rights.”

[Inner City Press]

[Inner City Press]

While the International Committee of the Red Cross went public Wednesday in Geneva with the fact that the Sri Lankan government is running interment camps to which Red Cross workers do not have access, in New York the UN’s Deputy Spokesperson Marie Okabe said that “since the Secretary General’s visit to Sri Lanka, an interim measure has been agreed” in which aid agency vehicles including trucks are allowed into all Manik Farm zones, only not in convoys and not with agency flags. Video here, from Minute 2:30. Inner City Press asked Mr. Okabe to square to the two statements, if there are camps that the UN has access to that the Red Cross does not.

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[New York Times]

Even after declaring victory in Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, the country’s leaders seem unable to distinguish between the enemy — the brutal but apparently vanquished Tamil Tiger separatists — and innocent bystanders. Despite appeals from Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, and from others, the government has not given international aid organizations full access to government-run camps, where an estimated 280,000 civilians are said to be in desperate need of food, water and medical care. The Tamil Tigers have a history of using civilians as human shields and the government claims it must screen out rebels hiding in the camps. But aid workers suspect other motives, including a desire to deny access to witnesses who may have seen abuses by government forces.

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