[ New York Times ]
The United States accused Sri Lanka on Wednesday of causing “untold suffering” among civilians in its push to win a 25-year-old conflict with Tamil separatists. People continued to pour out of the war zone, and the government announced the surrender of two prominent rebels.“I think that the Sri Lankan government knows that the entire world is very disappointed that in its efforts to end what it sees as 25 years of conflict, it is causing such untold suffering,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday.
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[Inner City Press]

Despite having been sent as the UN’s envoy to the “bloodbath on the beach” in Sri Lanka, Ban Ki-moon’s chief of staff Vijay Nambiar is now reluctant to give the Security Council even a closed door briefing on the crisis, sources told Inner City Press late Tuesday. One well-placed Council diplomat said that despite all 15 members, including China and Russia, agreeing to an “informal interactive dialogue” with Mr. Nambiar, who has just returned via India from three days in Sri Lanka, they were told that Nambiar views the matter as “too sensitive” even for discussion behind closed doors. Nambiar argued that as a “mediator,” what he discussed with Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brothers was “confidential,” even from the Security Council.

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[ The Independent ]

A senior UN official has met leaders of the Sri Lankan government amid reports that food supplies for civilians trapped in the northern war zone are running short and that up to 4,500 people may have been killed in the past three months. As photographs emerged from the so-called “no-fire zone” that show scenes of utter misery and hardship, a government health official in the region claimed that at least five children were dying every day from diarrhoea and malnutrition and that many mothers were too emaciated to nurse their babies. The government in Colombo has denied claims that people trapped there are suffering from malnutrition.

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[AFP]

Tamil protesters who staged a seven-day hunger strike outside the Australian prime minister’s home have announced the end of their protest following assurances their demands had been heard. The five men called off their fast late Friday after a mass demonstration involving up to 8,000 people outside the foreign affairs department in Canberra, a spokeswoman for the protest movement said. Sam Pari said the men ended their hunger strike as a department representative “had been receptive to their calls and had assured them the Australian government would do what it could to pressure Sri Lanka.”

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[BBC]

Sri Lanka has rejected a fresh appeal by the UN to give civilians more time to leave a safe zone in the north-east, the defence secretary says. Only a few hundred civilians used the two-day unilateral government truce with Tamil Tiger rebels to escape. Between 50,000 and 100,000 civilians are still thought to be trapped in the zone - about 20 sq km (8 sq miles) of coastal area in Mullaitivu district.

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[Metro News]

From some of the fuss about the demonstrations by Tamil supporters in front of Parliament Hill, you’d think we’d never seen a protest here in the nation’s capital. The most eccentric one I ever witnessed was a single bedraggled man standing motionless just outside the gates of the parliamentary precinct and favouring the Peace Tower with a silent one-finger salute. I didn’t ask what his point was, but I think I got the gist. The most tense was those held during the G20 summit in November 2001, as massed anti-globalization protesters faced phalanxes of cops in riot armour. The entire scene was suffused with post-9-11 paranoia, but mercifully the peace mostly held.

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[Times Online]

The Sri Lankan immigration officer’s eyes narrowed as soon as she swiped my passport at Colombo’s international airport last week. “Come this way,” she said, leading me into a side room, where a colleague typed my details into a computer. A message flashed up on his screen: “DO NOT ALLOW TO ENTER THE COUNTRY”. With that, my passport was confiscated, I was escorted to an airport detention room, locked up for the night, and deported the next day.

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[ New York Times ]

Sri Lankan government has “rebuffed international appeals to protect civilians trapped in a war zone in its northeast.” Now some visual evidence of the damage that fighting has caused is coming to light. This bloody war, now possibly in its last throes, has been taking place largely out of sight of the international media. As in the final months of the war in Bosnia, the failure of the combatants to refrain from shelling encircled, densely-populated civilian pockets is producing shocking results. Since Sri Lankan authorities have barred journalists from the war zone, these images, shot by an aid group working with victims of the fighting, are a rare glimpse of the toll the fighting is taking on the civilian population in northern Sri Lanka.

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[UPI]

The government’s propaganda agents ridicule all international agencies that attempt to draw attention to this situation. Meanwhile the freedom of the press in the country is suppressed and large numbers of journalists have even fled the country, thus preventing any local attempts to provide information to society on such deaths, and keep society involved in trying to overcome the present situation. In Sri Lanka the distinctions between misfortune, tragedy and catastrophe have been lost. By whatever name, what goes on is a saga of limitless misery with no foreseeable possibility of any end. Life is just a dip into a highly polluted river, but no one seems to worry about it anymore.

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[Ottawa Sun]

Tamil-Canadian protesters took down their flags once again yesterday, hoping to facilitate a meeting with the federal government. But Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon’s office dashed their hopes by refusing to meet. Protesters have been on the sidewalks along Wellington St. in front of Parliament Hill around the clock since April 7 and vow to stay until the government helps achieve a ceasefire in Sri Lanka. The protest includes people who have been staging a hunger strike since April 8.

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