There has been some convergence between Tamil and international demands for an independent international investigation into the events of 2009 in Sri Lanka. The international community now largely supports the view that the manner in which the last stages of the war in Sri Lanka were fought may constitute crimes against humanity.

There appears to be no end to President Mahinda Rajapakse’s pompous self-regard. Having won the election and steam-rolled through the possibility of lifelong presidency, the president, through his ever obliging government, proclaimed the entire week, to be one of festivities, in order to commemorate his swearing in for a second term.

News that Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) has had it mandate extended by another six months was always expected, but there is an assumed logic behind Colombo's actions. The commission is the Sri Lankan state's attempt to fend off critics, buy time and forestall an independent, international inquiry.

The Sri Lankan government is  apparently abandoning the garment sector if press reports over the weekend are to be believed. Given that the EU has withdrawn its GSP+ concession and the US is investigating its version of GSP, this is perhaps just the government accepting that garments are going to be hard to sell if the country's human rights record is not improved.

The cry of “never again,” raised by so many in the years after the end of the Holocaust 1945, has rung increasingly hollow with the passing decades, Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, protested in an op-ed Friday in the International Herald Tribune.

We live in an era when the Sri Lankan state is callously trying to eradicate the Tamil nation and its identity within the borders of Sri Lanka, first through mass killings and now the forced Sinhalisation of Tamil homelands.