[AFP]

Sri Lanka on Friday expressed outrage over the barring of one its army generals from a UN peacekeeping committee following allegations that he killed civilians during the island’s civil war.

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[AFP]

Sri Lanka on Thursday vowed to hold mass protests against US-backed moves at the United Nations to press for an independent probe into alleged war crimes during the island’s civil war.

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[BBC]

As Sri Lanka’s civil war came to a bloody end in May 2009, the BBC’s Priyath Liyanage was struck by video footage of a boy walking through the war zone holding a violin. Two years on, can this boy be traced and why did he make such a perilous journey with only a musical instrument?

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[International Crisis Group]

The International Crisis Group welcomes the public release of the report of Sri Lanka’s “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” (LLRC), presented to the Sri Lankan parliament on 16 December 2011. The report acknowledges important events and grievances that have contributed to decades of political violence and civil war in Sri Lanka and makes sensible recommendations on governance, land issues and the need for a political solution. But it fails in a crucial task – providing the thorough and independent investigation of alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law that the UN and other partners of Sri Lanka have been asking for. It is now incumbent on the international community, through the UN Human Rights Council, to establish an independent international investigation in 2012. Without such an investigation, accountability for the crimes committed at the end of the civil war is highly unlikely; without accountability, and a full understanding of the nature of the violations which took place on all sides, the seeds of future conflict will grow.

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[BBC]

Sri Lanka is close to completing a census of the number of civilians who died in the final phase of the civil war, the defence secretary has said. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said the count proves the number of people killed as a result of government action was “far too small” to constitute war crimes.

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[BBC]

Sri Lanka is still a country struggling to put decades of civil war behind it. The final stages - in 2009 - were of particular concern to human rights groups as reports suggested thousands of civilians had been killed.

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[Al Jazeera]

Almost 2,000 former rebel fighters in Sri Lanka have been released. They were among thousands of Tamil Tigers who surrendered or were arrested near the end of the country’s bloody civil war, which spanned more than a quarter of a century. At a ceremony to announce their release, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said, called on the 1,800 former fighters to move forward and work together with the government in the future. Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez reports from the capital, Colombo.

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[Global Post]

Social networkers and good old fashioned newspapers may have the unique opportunity to serve Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa a summons to answer for his alleged role in extrajudicial killings during the civil war between government forces and Tamil insurgents.

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[BBC]

It is a land that lost all its people. They retreated with the Tamil Tigers as the civil war swept through Kilinochchi more than two years ago. There are burnt-out husks of houses.

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[BBC]

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Tamil civilians are returning to their home villages in the north two years after the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka.

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