[United to End Genocide]

Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war ended in May 2009 when the Sri Lankan military defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). For more than 25 years, the LTTE had been fighting for a separate state for the nation’s minority Tamil population.

[Full Story]

[Human Rights Watch]

The United Kingdom should suspend deportations of ethnic Tamil asylum seekers to Sri Lanka and immediately review its policies and information about the country’s rights situation used to assess their claims, Human Rights Watch said today. Research by Human Rights Watch has found that some returned Tamil asylum seekers from the United Kingdom have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and torture upon their return to Sri Lanka.

[Full Story]

[The Economist]

WHEN Shanthakumar Kamala fled the inferno of fighting in northern Sri Lanka in 2009, she was clutching a number of glossy photographs to her chest but little else. Mrs Shanthakumar holds out the pictures now—one of a smart lad in school uniform, one of him wearing a Boy Scout kit—and sobs that she wants her son, Thanuraj, back. Like hundreds of other children, he went missing in the harrowing final months of fighting between Sri Lanka’s military and the Tamil Tigers (known as the LTTE) in 2009. Inspired by a few children who have been found by their families, his mother continues her desperate search.

[Full Story]

[SOS Children's Villages Canada]

During the final Months of conflict in 2009, while the Sri Lankan military and the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) rebel group experienced the final showdown in the contested north of the small island nation, frightened civilians escaped the embattled north in an attempt to find safety in government territory.

[Full Story]

[Independent UK]

His name was Abi, he was six, and the last his family glimpsed of him was in the frenzied moments after deadly shells struck close to the bunker where they had been sheltering. His sisters were gravely injured, his mother too, and the young boy put his arm around her. “Mother,” he sobbed three times.

[Full Story]

[ABC]

The security clearance industry is just that – an industry. In theory and more often in practice the more sophisticated a society the more efficient and streamlined is the process for obtaining a security clearance.

[Full Story]

[Human Rights Watch]

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for inviting Human Rights Watch to testify at this timely and important hearing. Over the last two decades, my organization, Human Rights Watch, has documented human rights violations in Sri Lanka, especially violations committed by security forces and the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) during the conflict which ended in May 2009. Today I will talk about the lack of accountability for alleged war crimes, particularly in its final stages, and also about the current human rights situation in the country.

[Full Story]

[Journal of Foreign Relations]

Led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, post-war Sri Lanka is a sad place. In May of 2009, the Sri Lankan government achieved a resounding military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

[Full Story]

[Amnesty]

This briefing is submitted to the Committee against Torture (hereafter the Committee) prior to its consideration of Sri Lanka’s combined third and fourth periodic reports on its implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (hereafter the Convention). It details Amnesty International’s concern about a persistent pattern of torture and other ill‐treatment of detainees, including individuals detained under the Emergency Regulations or the Prevention of Terrorism Act on suspicion of links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), as well as individuals arrested in the course of civil policing — criminal suspects as well as those wrongfully arrested at the behest of third parties engaged in personal disputes.

[Full Story]

[Al Jazeera]

Seriously injured in a shell attack, his Tamil Tiger comrades dead, Mano (pseudonym) tried to end his own life by biting on the cyanide pill that, like all hardened fighters, he wore around his neck. But an elderly woman nearby rushed to give him water and he survived. Alone, he languished on the sand for six days, surrounded by the bodies of his friends and the ruins of war.

[Full Story]