The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) released Wednesday a report drawing attention to one of the most crucial yet overlooked humanitarian issues of today: violence against health care.

The 24-page report is available here.

The ICRC has been documenting violence against health-care facilities and personnel, and against patients, since 2008 in 16 countries where it is working.

These are comments on Tuesday by US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland came in response to questions posed by Headlines Today television’s Washington correspondent Tejinder Singh.

Extracts from Krishan Francis’ report for AP (see the full text here):

Sri Lanka is again a palm-fringed tourist paradise, the government says. But for Tamils living in the former war zone, it is still a hell of haunted memories, military occupation and missing loved ones.

An article by Professsor Minxin Pei in The Diplomat provides some answers.

Much of the world has been watching the debt crisis in the United States with trepidation in recent weeks, but one actor has been particularly nervous: China.

Why? China is the world’s biggest lender to the US. Prof Pei writes:

China Radio International’s Tamil service enjoys the widest reach of all its channels and Tamils comprise the state-owned broadcaster’s fast-growing overseas fan base.

See the reports by The Hindu newspaper here and (video) here.

See CRI Tamil's website here.

The United States has formally told Sri Lanka that it wants the final report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) discussed at the 19th sessions of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next March, the Sunday Times reported.

The body of a prominent Sri Lankan human rights activist missing since February last year has been found, the United Nations said Friday.

Pattani Razeek, managing trustee of non-governmental organisation the Community Trust Fund, was exhumed by police on Thursday after a tip-off from two suspects arrested in relation to the case, the UN said.

See AFP’s report here.

"The Tamil people’s demand is that they exercise full powers of self-rule within their homeland consisting of a merged North and East. Once again, the Tamil people have declared that they will not relinquish their political aspirations.

"The Tamil people have – by ensuring the victory of the TNA – accepted and supported the recommendations of the UN [Panel’s report], which state that the government’s war crimes and human rights abuses require an impartial international investigation.

Below are extracts from a frontline Sri Lankan soldier’s eye witness account of what happened in the final days of the war in May 2009 (see Channel 4's report here):

"When I look at it as an outsider I think they're simply brutal beasts. Their hearts are like that of animals, with no sense of humanity.”

A Sri Lanka Army officer has given Channel 4 his account of how, following orders from Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the commander of the 58 Division, Brigadier Shavendra Silva (now Major General) gathered his officers in the closing days of the war and ordered them to take no prisone