Opening of Human Rights Council 25th Session (UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe)

Calls for an independent investigation into crimes in Sri Lanka featured strongly on the first day of the 25th UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva.

The Indian government said today that the meeting between Manmohan Singh and Mahinda Rajapaksa may occur “only on the sidelines” of the BIMSTEC summit in Burma, and that it would not be an exclusive meeting; PTI quoted Union Minister V Narayanasamy.

DMK stalwart M Karunanidhi had slammed the Indian prime minister for agreeing to a meeting with Rajapaksa.

Sources in Burma also said that India was looking for much more progress on reconciliation on Sri Lanka.

"We have found nine skeletons of mostly women with burn injuries,"

"Three local people have said the bodies were dumped in this land on February 9, 2009, after they were killed in an army multi-barrel shell attack, and that there is another mass grave 200 meters from this. But we don't know the truth."

‘Raise Your Voice’, an event held by the Tamil Student Initiative (tsi) to showcase and empower emerging creative talent, proved to be an apt reminder of the growing creative versatility within the Tamil student community.

An Italian appeals court has ruled that the LTTE should not be considered as a terrorist organisation, according to the Uthayan.

The ruling relates to the case of 28 Italian Tamils who were cleared of terrorism charges by a court in Napoli in 2011, as the LTTE cannot be described as a terrorist organisation.

A challenge against the European Union’s proscription of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has been heard at the European Court of Justice last week.

According to TamilNet, the hearing exposed serious flaws in the evidence used to proscribe the organisation in 2006.

The European Council reportedly drew on Indian anti-terror law as a suitable precedent and used Wikipedia articles as a source of information.