[BBC]

A commission set up by Sri Lanka’s president to investigate the conduct of the civil war has said the government did its best to protect civilians. It concluded the military gave the “highest priority” to protecting civilians and said Tamil Tiger rebels had had “no respect for human life”.

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[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.

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[Amnesty Australia]

Amnesty International is outraged that the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth has utterly failed to hold Sri Lanka to account over allegations of war crimes and other grave human rights abuses arising from the 2009 conflict.

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[Radio Netherlands Worldwide]

First a damning UN report accused both sides in the country’s 30-year civil war of atrocities – a claim the current government refutes categorically. Then in June British TV station Channel 4 broadcast a devastating account of the closing weeks of the conflict in 2009. At this time, the programme said, the Sri Lankan military systematically murdered thousands of civilians. Colombo says the evidence is ‘fabricated’. Distinguishing truth from artifice is problematic in a country where the free press claims it is under constant threat. RNW sent a team to Sri Lanka to investigate.

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[Channel 4 News]

The Twenty20 game takes place amid international controversy over alleged war crimes committed at the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war. A UN report earlier this year suggested actions by both the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Earlier this month Prime Minister David Cameron called for further investigation into the alleged atrocities after a Channel 4 documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields screened new evidence.

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[New York Times]

In April 2009, we travelled together as foreign ministers to Sri Lanka, as 25 years of fighting between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers neared its end.

The remaining fighters were trapped in the northern most part of the country — along with large numbers of civilians. U.N. estimates put the numbers of civilians there in the last few months of the war at over 300,000.

Our purpose was simple: to draw attention to the human suffering, to call for humanitarian aid and workers to be allowed in, and to call for the fighting to stop.

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