[Channel 4 News]

Last year Channel 4 broadcast Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, a critically-acclaimed and RTS Award winning forensic investigation into the events of the last few weeks of the decades-long war between the government of Sri Lanka and the rebel forces of the Tamil Tigers (LTTE), presented by Jon Snow. It featured devastating video evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity captured on mobile phones by both victims and perpetrators - some of the most horrific footage Channel 4 has ever broadcast.

[Full Story]

[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.

[Full Story]

[National Post]

This isn’t a column about the Middle East. But to make my point, I’m going to start by asking readers to imagine a scenario from that part of the world.

[Full Story]

[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.

[Full Story]

[Channel 4 News]

Over the last two years Channel 4 News has broadcast footage that the UN says constitutes “credible evidence of war crimes” in Sri Lanka. In the final stages of 26 years of civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, and better known as the Tamil Tigers), the United Nations estimated up to 40,000 civilians were killed.

[Full Story]

[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.

[Full Story]

[Boston Globe]

THE SHELLING of a hospital pediatric ward Sunday in Sri Lanka gave the world a glimpse of the scorched-earth offensive Sri Lanka’s government has been conducting against the secessionist Tamil Tigers. UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross expressed shock that the hospital was shelled, leaving children and their mothers mutilated, dead, and dying. It does not matter whether the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse or the Tiger leadership is most to blame for the suffering of 250,000 civilians trapped in the war zone.

[Full Story]

[IRIN]

As Sri Lankan government troops close in on the rebel Tamil Tigers, the UN has reported a rising number of civilian deaths in the northern battle zone. At least 52 people were killed in shelling in Suranthapuram village in the northeastern district of Mullaitivu when the area came under 16 hours of heavy shelling, including a cluster bomb attack, on 3 February, UN spokesman Gordon Weiss said, quoting UN staff stationed in the area. “We don’t know who is responsible or how many shells hit,” Weiss said, adding that patients in the only functioning hospital in the district had been evacuated on 4 February.

[Full Story]

[BBC]

As Sri Lanka’s military takes control of key territory held by the Tamil Tiger rebels, Chris Morris in Colombo reports on a deepening mood of determination and defiance on both sides of the conflict. Getting through to the Tamil Tigers isn’t easy these days. Their world is getting smaller. Surreptitious messages. Crackling phone lines. “Can I talk to him now?” “It’s difficult.” “Why?” “There’s heavy shelling. Please call again later.” Eventually I make a connection with the Tigers’ political leader, B Nadesan. He sounds remarkably calm for the spokesman of a group which has lost most of the land and all the main towns it controlled a year ago.

[Full Story]

[ CBC News ]

Thousands of protesters flooded onto one of Toronto’s busiest downtown streets at rush hour on Friday in opposition to a Sri Lankan government offensive aimed at crushing the separatist Tamil Tigers. The protesters formed a human chain outside Union Station, a main transit point for commuters catching trains, subways and buses out of the downtown core. The flood of protesters and commuter traffic clogged the area as the rally began to disperse at 6 p.m.

[Full Story]