Writing on the online sit for Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), the Tamil journalist, J.S. Tissainayagam, criticised Rajapaksa's intentions on his recent trip to the UK. See here for full article. Extracts reproduced below: Sri Lanka’s president hoped to enhance his image as an acceptable leader through his remarks at the Commonwealth Business Forum. Rajapakse’s visit was therefore the use of diplomacy both as hard power and soft power. As far as hard power went it would indicate to his enemies – especially the influential Tamil Diaspora in the UK – that he possessed the means to counter Diaspora activity because as Sri Lanka’s head of state he was essentially on par with the British monarch. Therefore, Rajapakse went to the UK with an agenda and to use his power to influence certain outcomes. For the Tamil Diaspora this meant it had to not only to thwart Rajapakse’s agenda, but substitute it with its own. While the objective of thwarting the Sri Lankan president’s agenda is understandable, why did the Tamil Diaspora choose the form of outraged street protests to do so? The display of outrage was partly because negotiations with British and Commonwealth authorities to prevent Rajapakse from attending the jubilee had failed. Further, outrage was the natural outpouring of sentiment from people whose brethren in Sri Lanka were killed and stifled from expressing their feelings or thoughts due to draconian control exercised by the Colombo government. Humiliating Rajapakse was to the Tamil Diaspora pay back to Sri Lanka’s president for the humiliation his government was heaping on the Tamils. Finally, outraged protests are good for the cameras. The Tamil Diaspora’s campaign in the UK to thwart Rajapakse’s agenda has earned rich dividends. Autocratic leaders crave acceptance by association with symbols of legitimacy – the British monarchy, Oxford University – and strengthening themselves using hard and soft power potential of diplomacy. This, the Tamil Diaspora was able to overturn. Even a cursory glance of the British newspapers bear testimony to this.

The Sri Lankan Army has rejected a statement from the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) which accuses it of breaking a UN convention on discrimination against women, released last week. The statement from the ECCHR said that women in the North-East were subject to harassment and abuse from military and police personnel, who have a huge presence in the Tamil homeland. The human rights group also criticised the country’s Prevention of Terrorism Act which they said, “makes it easier for police and military members to carry out body inspections and ‘searches’ without...

The United States State Department has stated that displaced persons and war widows are more likely to be victims of human trafficking in Sri Lanka, with young boys being forced into prostitution, in their annual report on human trafficking. The report , released on Tuesday, stated that, "Within the country, women and children are subjected to sex trafficking in brothels. Boys are more likely than girls to be forced into prostitution in coastal areas for domestic child sex tourism . " It also went on to say that, "Internally-displaced persons, war widows, and unregistered female migrants remained particularly vulnerable to human trafficking. " Earlier reports have stated that war widows were being forced into prostitution in the North-East, with rackets taking children from the North-East into tourists resorts in the South being uncovered . The report acknowledged government complicity in running prostitution rings, noting, "Government employees’ complicity in trafficking remained a problem. There were allegations that police and other officials accepted bribes to permit brothels to operate; some of the brothels exploited trafficking victims. Many recruitment agencies were run by politicians or were politically connected. Some sub-agents cooperated with Sri Lankan officials to procure forged or modified documents, or real documents with false data, to facilitate travel abroad. There were no reported law enforcement actions taken against officials complicit in human trafficking." A leaked US embassy cable from 2007 stated that Tamil paramilitary groups ran prostitution rings to “take care” of Sri Lankan soldiers , as well as kidnapping and trafficking minors to prostitution rings throughout India and Malaysia . It was reported that some women were forced to have sex with between 5 and 10 soldiers every night. See our earlier post: Sri Lanka’s leaders complicit in forced prostitution and child sex trafficking (22 Dec 2010)

India’s National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon will visit Sri Lanka later this month, in order to follow up a UN Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka which was passed in March. Officials told the Hindu that the visit was, “a follow-up to the United Nations Human Rights Council vote against the island nation in its last session.” At the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council in March, India voted in favour of a US-sponsored resolution calling on Sri Lanka to implement recommendations for the government’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. The vote was hailed by...