[Canada News Centre]

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird today issued the following statement on the final report of Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission:

“Canada notes the public release of the report of Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. Although we are still studying the report, the commission has addressed and provided recommendations in some areas of concern, including reconciliation, the rule of law and demilitarization.

[Full Story]

[National Post]

The Tamils’ situation in Sri Lanka brings to mind the old legal maxim, inter arma enim silent leges - essentially, in times of war, the law falls silent. Most unfortunate for all Tamils is the continued cynical silence of the international community on this troubling ongoing ethnic conflict.

[Full Story]

[National Post]

This isn’t a column about the Middle East. But to make my point, I’m going to start by asking readers to imagine a scenario from that part of the world.

[Full Story]

[AFP]

Sri Lanka’s foreign minister Sunday condemned a “preposterous” UN-commissioned report alleging war crimes in his country, revealing he stopped Canada raising it at a Commonwealth meeting.

[Full Story]

[The Globe and Mail]

On Australia’s western shore, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is upsetting the Commonwealth tea party. It’s not just that he declared that Sri Lanka’s human-rights record, so far, would make it an unfit host for the 2013 Commonwealth summit. It’s that those statements have made Sri Lanka something of an example for the broader debate on whether the Commonwealth will enforce standards on human rights and democracy.

[Full Story]

[Reuters]

A confidential experts’ report to Commonwealth heads of government, obtained by Reuters, called for wide-ranging reforms that it said are essential if the organization is to make a real difference to improving the lives of its people.

[Full Story]

[AFP]

The 37-year conflict raging in Sri Lanka was borne out of “repressive” governments in Colombo, Canadian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs said Thursday. “I am sure all Canadians share the government’s revulsion at the continuing humanitarian catastrophe in Sri Lanka, a civil conflict born of a succession of repressive Sri Lankan governments, which in turn spawned the terrorist organization known as the Tamil Tigers,” Kent told the House of Commons.

[Full Story]