DESPITE the end of the long drawn conflict, Sri Lanka will recruit 50,000 personnel to increase security in areas captured when LTTE were defeated last month, the military has said.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has told a Cabinet meeting that he would not be averse to Canada and the European countries granting asylum to the internally displaced Tamil civilians.

he Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is calling on the government of Sri Lanka to mount a thorough investigation of the murders of three Members of Parliament, two of them Tamils.

The Sri Lankan Governments thinking that “the concept of Tamil autonomy or freedom or even culture should be beaten to its knees and never rise again” can be compared to the actions of Joseph Stalin, said leading Australian Pediatrician Dr John Whitehall, describing government internment facilities as “concentration camps”, and saying the imprisonment of 300,000 refugees was much more sinister than he originally thought.

A Coalition of six US-based Human Rights Organizations in a letter to U.S. President Obama wrote: "[t]o address abuses associated with the recent fighting [in Sri Lanka's north], there is an urgent need for an independent, international commission of inquiry into many credible allegations of laws of war violations, including possible war crimes, by both sides, as well as illegitimate detentions...

MEDIA groups in Sri Lanka have urged the government to scrap moves to re-establish a media panel which could jail journalists. The reactivation of the Press Council is being seen as a means to control the media in a country where concerns have been voiced about intimidation and pressure on reporters critical of the government.

Sri Lankan authorities appear to be building permanent camps to house many of the 300,000 refugees from the last phase of the war with the Tamil Tigers, despite promising to resettle 80 per cent of them by the end of the year.

Three Tamil College students from Canada are on a 1000-mile walk from Chicago to Washington D.C. to "raise awareness with the general American population to what is happening in Sri Lanka,” Illinois Times reported. More than 50 people assembled on the steps of the Capitol Friday, wearing tan, gray and blue T-shirts that carried their message: Break the Silence in Sri Lanka, the paper added.

What kind of violence has the Sri Lankan state been committing against its Tamil civilian population as the island‘s civil war ended; on what scale and with what intentions? Martin Shaw explores the difficult terrain where war, atrocity and genocide meet.

A new group of eminent Tamil people in Sri Lanka has made a plea for those held in government camps to be given a timetable for their release.

A SLA soldier was killed and two wounded in a clash that erupted at Kiraankulam in Batticaloa lagoon area in the early hours of Saturday, July 4 sources in Batticaloa said.

About 15-20% of the 30,000 to 35,000 children housed in the Sri Lankan government run camps are suffering from ‘acute malnutrition’ according to NGOs and the UN.

Health experts warn that the expected rains could increase the risk of waterborne diseases for tens of thousands of IDPs in camps in northern Sri Lanka.

An opposition MP in Sri Lanka has condemned the state of the internment camps in which Tamil civilians are being held.