Documentary maker Callum Macrae says Sri Lanka has continued with its “particularly sinister” arrest and intimidation of possible witnesses to a United Nations investigation into mass atrocities in Sri Lanka – including of Tamil disappearances activist Balendran Jayakumari - in a piece in the Huffington Post. Macrae, director of the documenatary 'No Fire Zone', added that whilst the intimidation of witnesses continued, Sri Lanka was “carrying out an ongoing campaign whose aim is nothing less than to permanently change the ethnic make-up of the Tamil areas in the north and east.” He added that “through the use of major strategic land-grabs, systematic sexual violence, political repression, enforced disappearances and wholesale plantation by non-Tamil families and businesses they are assaulting Tamil identity and ethnically re-engineering the entire region.”
A Tamil journalist for the Jaffna daily Uthayan described the ongoing intimidation faced by the newspaper, in a video profile by Al Jazeera. Documenting the challenges faced by journalist Thadsa in writing about the abduction of Vadivel Nimalarajah in 2007, in Sri Lanka - one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. The profile by Kannan Arunasalam is part of the V iewfinder Asia program for Al Jazeera.
Sri Lanka’s high commissioner to Australia rejected findings in a SBS investigative report that documented evidence of torture and rape of Tamil asylum seekers deported from Australia to Sri Lanka. Speaking to the SBS news channel after the report aired on Australian TV, Thisara Samarasinghe, suggested that the evidence of rape and torture was self-inflicted and labelled the documentary as a "doctored, orchestrated, biased documentary which is absolutely baseless, that is trying to portray an absolutely wrong picture of Sri Lanka." Samarasinghe further added that the documentary was "an attempt to support separatism in Sri Lanka." SBS Dateline documentary with interview of Sri Lanka's high commissioner to Australia
A man was found dead with his throat lacerated inside a house in Batticaloa, Kaluvanjikudi Makiloor on Sunday. The body, identified as 68 year old Sellathambi Thangavel, has been taken to Batticaloa Teaching Hospital for further investigations, reports BattiNews . Kaluvanjikudi Magistrate court judge Thiyogeswaran arrived at the scene to investigate. Kaluvanjikudi Police are reportedly investigating the incident. The police have however already highlighted his separation from his family for the past 35 years.
Complaints have been made to the Court of Appeal against 33 Tamil councillors in the Northern and Eastern provinces for a letter to the UN High Commissioner condemning the genocide of Tamils by Sinhala state forces, reports the Island . Petitioners, including P.G. Ravindra Nirosha of Nugegoda as well as others, complained to Court of Appeal that the IGP and Attorney General had failed to take action against the councillors under Provision 120 of the Penal Code. According to the Island, the petitioners accused the Tamil councillors of making "false claims" that "Sinhalese settlements are being set up in Tamil areas". The letter, dated 17 August 2014 and signed by 33 Tamil councillors across the North and East, was addressed to the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, and called on the UN to investigate the crime of genocide.
William Hague opening the End Sexual Violence in Conflict summit in London earlier this year. Former British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Sri Lanka's refusal to participate in the End Sexual Violence in Conflict summit was an “obvious gap”, adding its rejection of the campaign will become “more and more obvious” in the months ahead. Speaking at the sidelines of the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, Mr Hague hailed the countries who attended the summit in London earlier this year, calling it a “summit like no other”. Responding to a question from the Tamil Guardian, Mr Hague said, “Sri Lanka is an obvious gap particularly since so many of these crimes have taken place there, despite all our encouragement to the Government of Sri Lanka.”
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has refused to allow Sri Lankan High Commissioner to the UK Chris Nonis to resign, after he was assaulted by UPFA MP Sajin Vaas Gunawardena. Nonis was at a dinner with the president and several other members of the Sri Lankan delegation, when an intoxicated Gunawardena abused him and delivered a “thundering slap”, causing him to fall to the ground where Nonis was kicked several times by the MP, reported Colombo Telegraph . The high commissioner is said to have handed in his resignation but Rajapaksa refused to accept it, saying strong action will be taken against...
The British Deputy High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Laura Davies has detailed how she was monitored and people she met questioned, during her visit to Amparai, Batticaloa and Trincomalee, in the North-East of the island. In a blog post "Looking over my shoulder", published on Tuesday, Davies said several people were “too scared” to meet her. “[It] gradually became impossible to ignore the fact that I was being watched,” she wrote on the Foreign Office blog page. “Worse, it was clear that the people I was meeting were having follow-up visits or phone calls, asking what I had done and said. Some of this was almost comic: I met with one individual who had invited a large press corps to capture the moment of our meeting.”
An investigation by a researcher into Australia’s asylum seekers policies found that those deported back to Sri Lanka faced “unthinkable sexual abuse and torture". Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald , Dr David Corlett, who travelled to Sri Lanka under the guise of a tourist to establish contact with asylum seekers that had been deported from Australia and targeted by the Sri Lankan state, highlighted several accounts of rape and torture that could be attributed to the “highest levels” of Sri Lankan governance. “One woman, who says she had political problems in Sri Lanka, said the Sri Lankan military raped her before she eventually boarded a boat and fled. On her second attempt to escape, Australian border officials intercepted her vessel," said Corlett. Highlighting previous conclusions that torture in Sri Lanka could be attributed to the “highest level” of government, Corlett noted similar findings from previous international investigations, including a study by human rights Lawyer Yasmin Sooka entitled 'An Unfinished War: Torture and Sexual Violence in Sri Lanka 2009-2014'.
Tamil politicians and members of Sri Lankan civil society called for the abolishment of Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terror Act (PTA) in an interview with The Hindu on Tuesday. A Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, M. A. Sumanthiran, highlighting that Tamil activists were arbitrarily detained using the PTA, said, “It is still in existence five years after the end of the war, which the government claims was against terrorism. We demand that it be repealed immediately. It was the existence of such an act that made the detention of Ms. Jeyakumari and several others without charges possible." The leader of the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), G.G. Ponnambalam, added that the government had detained enforced disappearances activist Jeyakumari for fear that she would testify to the ongoing international probe into Sri Lanka, where enforced disappearances had become a key issue.