[Human Rights Watch]

“It is time for concerned governments like Japan, India, and the US to ensure that President Mahinda Rajapakse’s government and the Tamil Tigers allow the victims of this conflict to live with justice and dignity. Both sides should agree to a humanitarian corridor and otherwise respect the laws of war.” Our latest research shows that up to two thousand civilians have been killed by the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers since early January in the most recent round of fighting. We got reports of many civilian deaths, which have occurred in areas that the Sri Lankan government has declared to be “safe zones”, where the Sri Lankan army has repeatedly and indiscriminately shelled. Hospitals have been frequently hit.

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[Committee to Protect Journalists]

Sri Lanka’s journalists are under intensive assault. Authorities have failed to carry out effective and credible investigations into the killing of journalists who question the government’s conduct of a war against Tamil separatists or criticize the military establishment. Three attacks in January targeting the mainstream media drew the world’s attention to the problem, but top journalists have been killed, attacked, threatened, and harassed since the government began to pursue an all-out military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in late 2006. Many local and foreign journalists and members of the diplomatic community believe the government is complicit in the attacks.

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[Guardian.co.uk]

His life had taken him from the northern tip of Sri Lanka to a pebble-dashed semi in north-west London and finally to a cold square in Geneva. But it is for his death that the 26-year-old Tamil, Murugathasan Varnakulasingham, is likely to be remembered. A little after eight o’clock last Thursday night, the computing graduate and part-time Sainsbury’s shelf-stacker doused himself in petrol in Geneva and set light to his body outside the United Nations complex in the Place des Nations. Police officers rushed to try to save Murugathasan, who stood “burning like a torch”, but he was too badly injured.

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[CBC News]

At least 38 civilians have been killed and 140 others wounded in government artillery attacks and air raids on a tiny rebel-controlled territory in Sri Lanka, a health official says. The attack was carried out in an area that included a government designated “no-fire zone,” said Dr. Thurairaja Varatharaja, who works in the embattled region. He said 13 members of an extended family were killed early Wednesday when artillery hit their home in Idaikkadu village.

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[Associated Press]

The pro-rebel Tamil National Alliance political party said it had managed to compile a list of the civilians killed using the Tamil media, witness accounts and reports from medical authorities in the war zone. According to its count, more than 2,000 civilians were killed since December and more than 4,500 were wounded, said Rajavarothayam Sambanthan, a lawmaker from the party. “The situation is getting worse by the day. More and more people are killed and wounded,” he said.

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[Reporters Without Borders]

Reporters Without Borders today expressed revulsion at the death of a Tamil journalist in a Sri Lankan Army bombardment on the north of the country, which it described as a “war crime”. Punniyamurthy Sathyamurthy was killed during an air raid on 12 February on Thevipuram, Mullaithivu district in the region of Vanni, being fought over by the army and rebel Tamil Tigers (LTTE). He had recently filed news of the plight of civilians in the latest wave of fighting. “Army air strikes and artillery fire on areas where there are tens of thousands of civilians, including Tamil journalists, are war crimes” the worldwide press freedom organisation said.

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[The Independent]

All but hidden from view of the outside world, a bitter and savage war being waged in the north of Sri Lanka is creating a humanitarian crisis in which hundreds of thousands of civilians are at risk. In what may be the final chapters of one of the world’s longest-running civil wars, Sri Lankan troops say they are close to crushing the remnants of the once-potent Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Yet the military operation comes at a high price for civilians. Aid groups and officials say that dozens of civilians trapped in the war zone are being killed and wounded every day.

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[AP]

At least 16 patients being treated at a makeshift hospital in the northern Sri Lankan war zone were killed by shelling, the Red Cross said Tuesday, as the military accused rebel fighters of killing 19 other civilians fleeing the area.

The United Nations, meanwhile, said it was outraged by the “unnecessary” deaths of hundreds of people inside rebel territory and urged both sides to avoid fighting in civilian areas.

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