Salem-News.com Sri Lanka articles Page 3

Successful Resolution and Sabotage by Tamil Stooges!

Has the USA now proved that they can manage anything and everything in that region without the help of India, Pakistan and China?

(PARIS) - With so many discussions, obstacles, sabotages and hidden agendas, the resolution on Sri Lanka in the 25th session of the Human Rights Council – HRC has finally gone though.

Two days before the vote, as I predicted in an interview to one of the media, the final result was for the resolution ‘Yes’ 23; against the resolution ‘No’ 12; neither ‘yes nor no’, abstentions - 12.

Sri Lanka: 100,000 Death Toll Must be Revised

100,000 has become a stubborn comfort figure that has stuck in the rusted and disabled count clock. Even the UN claim of 40,000 deaths in the final confrontation in 2008/09 did not shake the clock to move upward.

(LONDON Sri Lanka Guardian) - The count clock of the war dead in Sri Lanka since 1997 is jammed at 100,000. It never moved even a point upward since. Many thousands have been killed ever from that year.

We have seen daily accounts of deaths and there were large numbers of casualties in major confrontations and random killings by the warring parties. The military’s actions against the Tamil civilians are many folds than actions of the LTTE and the civilians were treated as fodders to execute the war agenda.

Demilitarisation, Human Rights, and Indo-US Interests

This balancing act of managing legitimate security concerns of Sri Lanka with human rights and interests of India can be complex.

(LONDON) - The US is reported to have requested a military installation in Sri Lanka as part of its “Pivot Towards Asia”. The Pentagon stated that approximately 60% of U.S. Navy assets will be involved.

Sri Lanka is currently under increasing international pressure for violations of international law and views the continued U.S. sponsored resolutions at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) against the island nation as interference in its domestic affairs...

SRI LANKA: Navi Pillay`s Introductory Speech at UNHRC

Introduction to the Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka (A/HRC/25/23)

(GENEVA) - The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay introduced the Sri Lanka Report and reiterated that nothing positive had happened since may 2009.

“Almost five years since the end of the conflict, it is important for the Human Rights Council to recall the magnitude and gravity of the violations alleged to have been committed at that time by the Government and the LTTE, which left thousands of civilians killed, injured or missing,” Pillay noted.

`I cried every day`: inside Sri Lanka`s `No Fire Zones`

It was an extraordinary coup for the government – and has been used to this day to counter allegations of war crimes. Only now has a very different story emerged.

(LONDON Channel 4) - Five years ago Dr Varatharajah Thariajah was given his freedom in exchange for refuting war crimes allegations against the Sri Lankan government. Today he tells Channel 4 News a different story.

At the end of the Sri Lankan civil war the government of Sri Lanka held a press conference, writes Callum Macrae. Five doctors who had been trapped in the war zones – and had told the world of the awful suffering of the trapped civilians - were paraded in front of the world's media.

Human Rights Council to Investigate Sri Lanka for Human Rights Abuse

Upwards of 10,000 demonstrators demanded that any resolution should guarantee an international independent investigation into war crimes.

(COPENHAGEN) - Five years after the ethnic civil war in Sri Lanka was won by the Sinhalese government, with massive killings of Tamil civilians in the last few months, the UN Human Rights Council authorized the High Commissioner of the HRC to investigate if human rights abuse occurred.

On a vote of 23 for, 12 against and with 12 abstentions, the HRC voted to promote reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka...

Arrest of Tamils Goes on Unabated

The SL military has carried out massive house-to-house search operations summoning former LTTE members, their families, friends and relatives.

(MELBOURNE) - While the discussion in the UNHRC on the resolution on Sri Lanka is going on, arrests of Tamils are also proceeding on unabated under the guise of the LTTE are now regrouping themselves.

Anybody who wants their lost loved ones back, is described as an ex-LTTE. The 13 year old Vibooshika fell into this category and is now retained in a government home. It is the international scrutiny that has spared her; otherwise, she may not have lived to see the day.

Drama in Room XIII, No One to Defend Sri Lanka

There was no one to espouse the Government’s cause.

(GENEVA Sunday Times) - Room XIII at the Palais de Naciones in Geneva, home for the UN Human Rights Council, was half packed last Tuesday. It was perhaps the final informal consultation convened by the United States to discuss the improved text of its draft resolution on Sri Lanka. The deadline for amendments was 1 p.m. on Tuesday.

Taking the chair was the United States together with Macedonia, Montenegro, Mauritius and the United Kingdom. As the meeting got under way, a delegate from Singapore rose to a point of order.

General Secretary Threatened in the UNHRC

While Rajapaksa’s government asks the diaspora to come and see the country and invest in so-called development projects, Kirithi Warnakulasooriya of Divaina newspaper, threatens them with imprisonment and implies that they will be killed in Sri Lanka.

(GENEVA) - A briefing organised by the International Buddhist Foundation in the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday 21 March, ended up in heated arguments and debate between proxies of Rajapaksa, the organisers and Tamils.

When Mr Dharamalingam Logeswaran a Tamil from Switzerland started to attack all diaspora Tamils as proxies of the LTTE, our General Secretary, Mr Visvalingam Kirupaharan who was in the same meeting, argued with Logeswaran.

Sri Lanka Blames US for Pressuring Other Countries to Support UN War Crime Investigation

Sri Lanka's Genocide of Tamils broke all barriers, and the fact that the government targeted and killed journalists for years has taken away the myth of Sri Lanka's innocence

(SALEM) - Sri Lanka is launching a desperate tactic to try to squeeze out from under the long arm of international law for its horrendous, countless crimes of Genocide against the minority Tamil population.

The latest line from the administration of President Majinda Rajapakse is a claim that most of the 47 member countries of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) are receiving pressure to lend support to a tough US-sponsored resolution calling for an international probe into the above cited human abuses during the country's war with Tamil Tigers.