Sri Lankan Chief of Defense Staff General Sarath Fonseka fled the United States, hours before he was due to attend a meeting with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to discuss allegations of war crimes against Gotabhaya Rajapaksa

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has appointed a five-member high-level committee to look into a US Congress report that alleged human rights violations by both the Army and LTTE during the last phase of the 30-year-old civil war.

A boatful of asylum seekers, believed to be Tamil refugees, was detected off the shores of Australia last week, capsizing before it had reached land.

This country enjoyed a warm glow early in the life of the previous Government when it relieved Australia of some of the so-called Tampa refugees.

 

“If you write anymore, we will kill you and slice you into pieces.” These were the words of “hand written death threats”, received by two female editors of The Sunday Leader, a leading broadsheet in Sri Lanka.

"Sri Lanka refugees, we have lived in forest for one month. Please, sir, please take us to a country. It's OK if it is not Australia. It's better if any other country trades us. We can't live in Sri Lanka."

A small percentage of the Tamil refugees held in camps since May have allegedly been released amid growing international pressure on the Sri Lankan Government over its human rights record. But reports from the island suggested that the civilians were merely moved from one place of confinement to another.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, criticized the Sri Lankan Government on the issue of "accountability" and for refusing to co-operate “to our many requests for an international investigation of what we say is widespread acts of killing of civilians."

Many of the 76 migrants seized from a ship off the Canadian coast have valid travel documents and legitimate reasons to apply for refugee status in Canada, according to a lawyer who has spoken to them.

The logic of ‘dialogue amongst moderates’ amid genocide

WHEN Muthu Kumaran returned to Sri Lanka in February 2007, he had hoped, even expected, that his Tamil people were about to win independence.

A run-down of reports that made the news in the last fortnight

Children held in "welfare camps".

Sri Lanka has stepped up efforts to strengthen bi-lateral relations with Libya, with a visit to the Libyan capital by Sri Lankan Minister of Agricultural Development, Maithripala Sirisena.