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.
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.
“I call upon the Australian government to stand up and complain bitterly until something is done”, said Justice John Dowd, Vice President of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), stressing his point that it is “to not speak up but yell” in order to save the Tamils in the concentration camps.
Former UN head of Humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland has accused the UN and the international community of letting the Sri Lankan state get away with denying the Tamils protection and access to humanitarian relief.
Updating its travel advisory to Sri Lanka, Britain warned its nationals “against all travel to the north and east of Sri Lanka, and to Yala National Park and the areas around it.” The new advisory was issued with an update on new surveillance measures at Bandaranayake International Airport related to A (H1N1) Swine Flu.
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.
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.
A Tamil staff of United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and another Tamil staff of the UNHCR, both attached to the UN offices in Vavuniya, have been reported missing since Thursday June13 after being arrested by Sri Lankan authorities, the UN announced on Sunday June 21.
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York based media watchdog, in a special reported, said Sri Lanka topped the list of countries that drove the largest number of journalists into exile.
Republican Congressman Heath Shuler has come under criticism from Human rights advocates for taking a trip to Sri Lanka, paid for by the Sri Lankan government, during which he praised the treatment of Tamils held in internment camps.
The Eelam Tamil nation doesn’t need words to explain the current situation because everybody feels it in the core of their heart. This is a situation that warrants no one else but only the members of the nation to rise up to the occasion. Unprecedented catastrophe awaits unprecedented response from the nation.
An independent international commission must be set up to investigate human rights violations in Sri Lanka over the last 20 years, as successive governments have failed to account for abuses such as torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings during its civil war, Amnesty International said.
