[ 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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[ Inner City Press ]

Just back to the United Nations from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s surreal tour of Sri Lanka, Inner City Press asked UK Ambassador John Sawers if the UN paying for interment camps for Tamils rounded up from throughout northern Sri Lanka compiles with international humanitarian law. Ambassador Sawers, rather than answer, said that there has been a “high level of attention” to the issue by the UN, by envoy Vijay Nambiar, humanitarian chief John Holmes and the visit of the Secretary General over the weekend. There’s been not report to the Security Council yet, Sawers said, we look forward to that and “we’ll have to consider steps after that.” Video here, from Minute 6:15.

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[The Times]

The Tamil Tigers came for Rajibalan in February during a rare pause in the shelling. Every family in his village, Palamattalan, inside the besieged no-fire zone, was to give a son or daughter for the fight — taken by force, if necessary. There would be three more months of fighting until the war was over and 18-year-old Rajibalan and his family would wade together across the Nanthikadal lagoon in surrender. When they did, they were met by government troops at the Omanthai checkpoint. “The soldiers announced that all the LTTE people would have to register separately from the civilians,” his sister, Sentura, recalled. “They said if they did so, they would be released, but if they did not, they would get 15 years in jail.”

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[ The Guardian ]

In Britain, interfering in Sri Lanka’s future is looking like a poisoned chalice. As the burning effigies of “white Tiger” David Miliband on the streets of Colombo last week demonstrated, our help is not always welcome. As an old Whitehall colleague put it to me this week, “we’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t, aren’t we?” Mulling this question is not just costing lives, it is burning up goodwill in the Tamil community. Warm words from the Sri Lankan government aside, progress on the ground is slow, with horrific human cost. And more impatient protesters in Parliament Square than ever are eschewing peaceful slogans - and this time they’re directed at the British government, the US and the UN.

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[ Wall Street Journal ]

Before reaching the corrugated metal shelters of a refugee camp here, Noroshan Nallathambi and his family faced a dilemma: disclose what they say was his forced conscription to the Tamil Tiger rebels or keep quiet. In the end, the 21-year-old Mr. Nallathambi decided to step forward at an army checkpoint 10 days ago, according to his family members. They haven’t seen him since. “We don’t know where he’s gone,” says the young man’s 60-year-old grandfather, Shivasubramaniam Indrani.

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