The US State Department accused the Sri Lankan government of abuses including unlawful killings, abductions, arbitrary arrests and the denial of fair public trials in its latest Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Sri Lanka released last week.

The Sri Lankan government, however, rejected the US report and claimed it presented a distorted and exaggerated view of the situation, triggering a diplomatic row.

International and local media rights organizations last week, expressed deep concern at the attacks on journalists and militarization of state television by the Sri Lankan state.

In the past three months staff members of the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (SLRC) have been hunted and attacked on the roads of Colombo as well as in their homes.

The International Red Cross has angrily accused Sri Lanka's government of releasing confidential communications and manipulating information from the organisation to defend its rights record.

In rare public criticism of a government, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Colombo has been "misrepresenting its findings" to stave off allegations it was behind abductions and disappearances.

Sri Lankan Foreign Affairs Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama has said that kidnappings are normal in society and no one should make an undue fuss about such incidents.

He made this statement in reply to a question posed by a journalist at a news conference last Wednesday, when a journalist asked for his comments on the kidnapping of two women, one Sinhala and one Tamil, in Batticaloa on March 10.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) “is eliminating the recruitment and use of child soldiers,” the US State Department said this week in its annual human rights report. The LTTE had not complied with its promise to end the practice by end of 2007, but its policy of recruiting one person from each family targeted those 18 years or older, the report said.

The Army-backed paramilitary group, the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal party (TMVP), has won a landslide victory in the first elections to be held in eastern Sri Lanka for more than 10 years.

The TMVP or Karuna Group, set up by renegade Tamil Tiger leader, Karuna, won every local council in and around Batticaloa city, officials said.

The Canadian Parliament’s Bill C-3 came into force February 22, amending the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act 2000, just one day before a Supreme Court deadline expired.

Dear Friends,

I want to share my experience at the Hillary Clinton campaign speech in Houston, Texas on March 3rd.

It was a very well attended event. President Clinton gave a half hour speech mainly on the economy and the future of the country. My husband and I displayed placards that we prepared and took to the event.

Sri Lanka was hit by scathing criticism over its human rights record last week, with its government fingered over hundreds of "disappearances" and an influential international panel of observers storming off the island.

A team of top foreign judicial and forensic experts said it was quitting the war-torn nation because Colombo had failed to seriously investigate a string of high-profile cases including the massacre of aid workers.

Despite the biblical injunction not to answer fools, an exception can be made for you, Mr. Ambassador.

You may deny it for all you are worth, the Tamils of Sri Lanka comprise a nation. There is ample evidence to show that the Tamils have lived in the island for centuries. The Tamils have preserved a language, religion and culture with which they are identified. It is a fact of history that there are two nations in the island – the Tamils and the Sinhalese.

While in the rest of Sri Lanka nationalism means rejection of the English language, in the areas controlled by the Tamil Tiger rebels, virulent Tamil nationalism coexists with an eagerness to promote English education.

Sri Lanka’s ambassador to the United States dismissed the Tamils’ claim to self-rule.

Based on field trip between 10 and 14 December 2007, the author continues to query the much heralded liberation of the East in this the third of a three part series.

The Liberation Tigers this wee condemned the 'State welcome' extended by India to the Sri Lanka Army Chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka as well as the statements issued by Indian military chiefs in this context.

"The Indian State must take the responsibility for the ethnic genocide of the Tamils that will be carried out by the Sinhala military, re-invigorated by such moves of the Indian State," the LTTE said.