[Global Post]

The Sri Lankan government’s efforts to erase from history the final months of its 25-year-long war against Tamil separatists hit a snag this week, as humanitarian organizations blasted the report of an internal probe into alleged human rights violations and possible war crimes as a whitewash.

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[Amnesty International]

The Commonwealth risks becoming ‘irrelevant’ if its leaders allow Sri Lanka to become its next host, Amnesty International said today ahead of the organization’s biennial summit.

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[UNHCR]

UNHCR is expecting the first returns of Sri Lankan refugees by commercial ferry from India to start on Wednesday, 12th October. The returns are part of a voluntary, facilitated repatriation programme, supported by the governments of both India and Sri Lanka. A welcoming ceremony at Colombo port is planned with Sri Lankan government officials, port and shipping authorities and UNHCR.

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[The Economist]

ARPUTHAM AMMAL, a pensioner with curly silver hair and a wheezing cough, is an abolitionist. Perched in a gloomy warehouse in Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu, as young men bustle over an exhibition against the death penalty, she explains why. “It is not needed. The ultimate victims of the death sentence are the backward, the minorities and the weak.”

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[Huffington Post]

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to India this week offers a vital opportunity for the world’s two greatest democracies to jointly promote their common values supporting freedom and civil rights in South Asia — a region where extremism and China’s influence continues to grow. More specifically, the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue must include a strategy for protecting human rights and fundamental democratic principles in Sri Lanka. Two years have passed since the end of the island-nation’s 26-year civil war, yet little has been done to address the underlying causes of the conflict.

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[International Crisis Group]

Two years since the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Sri Lanka is further from reconciliation than ever. Triumphalist in its successful “war on terror”, the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has refused to acknowledge, let alone address, the Tamil minority’s legitimate grievances against the state. The regime destroyed the Tigers by rejecting the more conciliatory approach of prior governments and adopting the insurgents’ brutality and intolerance of dissent. Now, contrary to the image it projects, the government has increasingly cut minorities and opponents out of decisions on their economic and political futures rather than work toward reconciliation. As power and wealth is concentrated in the Rajapaksa family, the risks of renewed conflict are growing again. Partners, especially India, Japan, the U.S., UK, European Union (EU) and UN, should send a strong message against increasing authoritarianism, condition aid on transparency and restored civilian administration in north and east and support accountability, including an international inquiry into alleged atrocities by both sides in the war’s final stages.

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[AFP]

India on Friday urged Sri Lanka to examine claims made in a British documentary that said it targeted civilians while crushing Tamil Tiger rebels two years ago. The Channel 4 documentary, “Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields” aired last month on British television contained footage of what it said were prisoner executions.

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[BBC]

India has urged Sri Lanka to scrap far-reaching emergency powers and probe allegations of human rights violations. The emergency remains two years after the government’s military defeat of the Tamil Tigers on 18 May 2009. The Indian call came in a bilateral communique issued after talks in Delhi between the two countries’ foreign ministers, SM Krishna and GL Peiris. It is an unusually frank message to the island nation from its closest international ally. The statement quotes the Indian side as saying that Colombo should ensure the resettlement of all internally displaced people and promote “genuine reconciliation”.

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[ 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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[AFP]

Sri Lanka needs true devolution of power to minority Tamils if it wants to permanently end its long-running ethnic war, Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said Wednesday. Menon, who was in Washington for talks, said the U.S. and the Sri Lankan government itself both agreed with regional power India on the need to quickly restore daily life in war-torn areas. The Colombo government says it is on the verge of crushing the Tamil Tigers, who have been waging a campaign since 1972 to create a separate Tamil homeland on the Sinhalese-majority island.

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