This week Dateline invites you inside Jaffna’s public library, a building with a tortured history that echoes Sri Lanka’s long civil conflict. The library was once one of the largest in Asia and a source of enormous pride for the Tamil community. But the building was torched in 1981, during riots following the shooting of three Sinhalese police at a Tamil political rally. As result, almost 100,000 books were destroyed, including irreplaceable manuscripts written on palm leaves. A treasure trove of Tamil culture and history was lost forever. Almost 20 years later, the library was fully rebuilt by the government.
Description: “This collection of footage presents a nation battling decades of civil war and seeing thousands of political arrests. Years of bloodshed in Sri Lanka places todays violence in its proper context.”
Description: In this video broadcast, Bruce Fein talks about three crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government in 2006, which gives vivid expression of the ongoing genocide in order to terrorize the Tamils, calculated to deny all humanitarian aid and to frighten by removing all NGO so there will be no eyes and ears to report on the ongoing genocide. Fein also says that the highest officials in the Sri Lankan government cannot hide beyond their sovereignty as a shield to the international criminal and civil law of of all countries of the world. He also talks about a special international investigation tribunal to investigate the ACF killings.
Description: In this video broadcast, Bruce Fein traces Sri Lanka’s genocidal history against Tamils, and focuses on the urgent need to prosecute, in the U.S. Courts, high-level Sri Lankan Government officials, Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Sri Lanka’s Army Commander, Lt.Col. Sarath Fonseka, and Presidential Advisor, Basil Rajapakse for crimes against humanity
Description: Bruce Fein, a representative of US-based non-profit organization, Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), and former Deputy Associate Attorney General in the Reagan administration, on the mission and objectives of TAG. TAG was formed by Tamil Activists in the U.S. to seek criminal indictments against Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Sri Lanka’s Army Commander, Lt.Col. Sarath Fonseka, and Presidential Advisor, Basil Rajapakse, for war crimes against Sri Lanka’s Tamils
