[National Post]

The Tamils’ situation in Sri Lanka brings to mind the old legal maxim, inter arma enim silent leges - essentially, in times of war, the law falls silent. Most unfortunate for all Tamils is the continued cynical silence of the international community on this troubling ongoing ethnic conflict.

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[Toronto Sun]

Tamils still suffer human rights violations two years after the civil war in Sri Lanka ended, protesters at Queen’s Park said Saturday.

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[ABC]

The primary focus of Australian diplomacy towards Sri Lanka is to prevent Tamils from getting onto boats and coming to Australia.

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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]

“Shoot! I am telling you, shoot! Shoot and run!”Seelan bellowed. Seelan was demanding that his childhood friend Aruna kill him and escape. Aruna saw tears in Seelan’s eyes as Aruna pointed the gun and fired. Seelan collapsed dead.

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[BBC]

About 90 Sri Lankan refugees are still refusing to leave a ship anchored in Indonesian waters, a week after the vessel was stopped following mechanical difficulties.

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[AP]

The assailants broke in after the fighting between ethnic rebels and the military erupted again into full-scale war, storming through his family’s home and calling his name. Thanabalasingham Surendran, a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil ethnic minority, fled to the capital, Colombo. But unknown “messengers from military intelligence” kept calling and demanding extortion money. So the shop owner paid a smuggler to get him out of Sri Lanka. As the government claims it is coming close to winning a quarter-century war with the Tamil Tiger separatists, many ordinary Tamils are giving up on their country.

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[AFP]

Thousands of Tamils marched in Paris on Saturday to denounce what they termed the Sri Lankan government’s genocide of the island’s ethnic minority in its bid to wipe out Tamil Tiger rebels. Police put the number of marchers at 2,500 while organisers said some 3,000 participated in the demonstration. The marchers shouted slogans such “EU impose a truce”, and “The Sri Lankan president is a murderer”, and “Stop the Tamil genocide”.

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[AFP]

Thousands of members of the Tamil diaspora rallied Friday outside the White House to demand US pressure on the Sri Lankan government as it pursues a major offensive against Tiger rebels. The rally was met by a smaller counter-demonstration, mostly by members of Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese community, who called for the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to end their trademark suicide attacks. The protests came just as the LTTE carried out a kamikaze-style air attack on Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, bombing the main tax building and killing two people.

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[Reuters]

About 20,000 Tamils from across Europe are expected to protest in Geneva on Friday at Sri Lanka’s military offensive against Tamil rebels, the United Nations said on Thursday. Police in the Swiss city, which is home to the U.N. European headquarters and to many Tamil immigrants, said 200 buses from across Europe were expected to bring protesters in. Demonstrators were expected to wind through Geneva in the afternoon and then rally in the public square in front of the U.N.’s Palais des Nations complex, where Tamils held smaller protests in past weeks as fighting intensified in Sri Lanka.

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