“About 12 to 15 members of the Pakistani Armed Forces, including four or five from the Pakistan Air Force, are stationed in Colombo to guide the Sri Lankan security forces in their counter-insurgency operations” - Mr. B. Raman

An estimated 60,000 Tamils displaced by Sri Lankan military attacks in the eastern province are caught in a humanitarian crisis which aid workers say is being deliberately deepened by the Colombo government.

So much for international standards.

The UN could have prevented the deterioration in human rights security in Sri Lanka this year. But it had another political priority.

What are international guarantees worth now?

Milk and clear honey, wild rice and lentil

Sri Lanka’s state is embarking on a slow pogrom

Even as an unofficial war between the Liberation Tigers and the Sri Lanka government claimed hundreds of lives (see pages 1-5), low-intensity violence continued to claim the lives of civilians and combatants alike in the island’s Northeast.

The army told us, if there was any incident, any violence by the militants, they would come and kill my wife, kill my child'

Karunanidhi calls for unity against ‘Sinhala racists’

US authorities this week charged eight men with providing material support to the Tamil Tigers the US Justice Department said. The LTTE has said the individuals, all expatriate Tamils, have nothing to do with it.

Amongst the charges are conspiring to buy surface to air missiles for the Tamil Tigers and bribing US officials to have the LTTE removed from a list of terrorist organizations and to obtain classified intelligence, a statement said.

A Tamil newspaper editor and former member of parliament was killed outside his home on the besieged Jaffna Peninsula late Sunday, international and local media reported.

Sinnathamby Sivamaharajah, managing director of the Tamil-language Namathu Eelanadu newspaper was shot dead in Vellippalai. Police are investigating the murder, according to news reports. The motive for the killing is unclear.

A doctor, his wife, two nurses and the driver of an ambulance belonging to Nedunkerni hospital, were killed on the night of August 8 when a Sri Lanka Army (SLA) Deep Penetration Unit (DPU) attacked the ambulance with claymore fragmentation mines.

The next day a civilian bus with 75 passengers narrowly escaped another claymore attack 10 kilometres from the Nedunkerni ambush site. A medical vehicle that was following the bus was hit, but no one was wounded.