Retired Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh has stated the Australian has been turning a blind eye to genocide, as he criticised the Australian government’s engagement with Sri Lanka.

Haigh, who was also member of the Refugee Review Tribunal, criticised Australia’s acceptance of “fiction” on the island, and went on to state that Australia’s asylum seeker policy, which deports Tamils to face torture in Sri Lanka, may make them complicit in the crime of genocide.

Extracts have been reproduced below. See the full piece in the Canberra Times here.

"Former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr and his successor Julie Bishop view the world as they want it to be rather than as it is. Bishop, like her predecessor, has engaged in transparent and clumsy denial in order to placate what she likes to term Australia's friends."

"The Australian government has adopted the fiction that the minority Tamils were the aggressors in the civil war, that the majority Sinhalese won the war, peace has been restored and the surly defeated Tamils must now accept the status quo and get on with life, accepting their position as a minority within mainstream Sinhala society."

The US Pacific Army’s Humanitarian Mine Action team has concluded a three-week programme to train new and current deminers at the Boo Oya army camp on Vavuniya.

Sri Lanka’s Presidential Adviser on Reconciliation Rajiva Wijesinha indignantly dismissed calls for an international investigation, in a heated interview with Al Jazeera this week.

In a 5-minute interview, where Wijesinha frequently clashed with the Al Jazeera presenter whom he refered to as "my dear lady", he stated that there was “no question” of an international investigation into human rights violations. 

He went on to chide the presenter for echoing calls for an international investigation, stating that he "reject(s) totally" claims that the Sri Lankan government has been unable to independently investigate itself.

The Sri Lankan MP also went to slam British Prime Minister David Cameron, stating he doesn’t “run the world” and accusing him of “talking rubbish”, before labelling Gordon Weiss, who helped co-author an ICEP report released this week, “a very clear liar”.

Even Al Jazeera was lambasted by Wijesinha, who he accused alongside of having a “disease”, alongside people of the West for focussing on accountability for war crimes.

Extracts from the interview have been reproduced below.

The United Nations has stated that it has made clear the need for accountability on Sri Lanka, but refused to comment on whether an international investigation will take place.

Answering questions in Parliament, Britain’s Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Hugo Swire, once again stated that Sri Lanka has until March 2014, to begin credible domestic accountability processes before the UK will call for an international investigation.

Tamil children in the North are increasingly dropping out of school, reports IRIN news service.

The situation is mainly aggravated by lack of meaningful job opportunities, with poor families needing all able-bodied members to find odd jobs or agricultural work to make ends meet.

Sri Lanka has rejected the allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, made by an Australian NGO on Wednesday.

India will extend its visa-on-arrival facility, from initially eleven countries to 180, meaning tourists from nearly all countries will not have to apply for a visa in advance form an Indian embassy, reported Zee News.