[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.

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[Channel 4]

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, appointed by the Sri Lankan government last year, admitted that some isolated allegations of civilian abuses by security forces at the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009 need to be investigated further.

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[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.

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[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.

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[Al Jazeera]

The Sri Lankan civil war, which began in 1983, saw the Tamil Tigers fighting government forces to create an independent Tamil state named Tamil Eelam in the north and the east of the island. After a 26-year-long military campaign, the Sri Lankan military defeated the Tamil Tigers in May 2009. The civil war caused significant hardships for the population, environment and the economy of the country, with an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people killed during its course. Two years after the war’s end, the Sri Lankan people are still suffering, with trauma, poverty and discrimination remaining part of everyday life.

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[Human Rights Watch]

A new Sri Lankan Defense Ministry report concedes for the first time that government forces caused civilian deaths in the final months of the conflict with the Tamil Tigers but takes no responsibility for laws-of-war violations, Human Rights Watch said today. The report, “Humanitarian Operation – Factual Analysis,” issued on August 1, 2011, claims that government forces did not use artillery against populated areas despite considerable evidence to the contrary and ignores compelling evidence of summary executions by its soldiers.

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[BBC]

The film in question appears to show troops executing Tamil prisoners, but Sri Lanka’s government now says the killers were rebels in army uniform. Channel 4 rejected the idea, saying its work had been meticulously checked.

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[Reuters]

Legislators of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which backed the now defeated Tamil Tiger rebels, said supporters were chased away at a meeting in the main town of Jaffna by the military at the start of the first election campaign for 52 local bodies in northern district.

The July 23 polls are the first local government elections in the former war zone in 26 years due to a three-decade war.

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[Reuters]

A U.N. convoy carrying hundreds of people wounded in shelling between Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan military left the war zone on Thursday after being held back two days ago, the United Nations said. “The convoy just crossed the frontline with hundreds of the civilians wounded by the fighting, including 50 critically wounded children, who are being moved to a Ministry of Health hospital,” U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said. Sri Lankan troops energised by a series of major victories have cornered the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in a shrinking piece of jungle and are fighting to finish one of Asia’s longest-running wars.

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[AP]

The Sri Lankan military shelled a village and a makeshift hospital inside a government-declared “safe zone” for civilians in the north Thursday, killing at least 30 people and wounding scores, local health officials said. The military denied hitting the hospital and said it was taking precautions to protect civilians. Health officials said that at least 67 civilians have been killed in shelling since Tuesday. With the government’s offensive against the Tamil Tigers escalating, international aid groups are increasingly concerned about the safety of the hundreds of thousands of civilians reportedly living inside the shrinking pocket of rebel-held territory in northeast Sri Lanka.

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