The Elders group launched by South African liberation fighter, Nelson Mandela, consisting of former democratic world leaders has decided to issue a statement emphasizing the need for an independent probe into the crimes against humanity that have allegedly taken place in Sri Lanka. The group is to make the statement in line with the report prepared by the panel of experts appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Sri Lanka.Former US President Jimmy Carter, democratic leader of Myanmar Aung San Su Kyi, former South African President Nelson Mandela, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former Irish President and head of the Human Rights Council Mary Robinson and Bishop Desmond Tutu are among the world leaders in The Elders group.

Q:  What is your reaction to the UN Advisory Panel’s report to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon?
A: We have seen a leaked report. We are at the first stage. It is an opportunity to find out the truth and to start a process of true reconciliation. The Report advises that an enquiry be held to hold both the Sri Lankan Government and the Tigers accountable. There has been a lot of emotional reaction from both sides – the Sri Lanka government and the Tamils. We Tamils of course welcome the report as being an objective one. It is an attempt to find out and bring out the truth so that justice can be done and a true reconciliation process can begin.

UNITED NATIONS — Sri Lanka’s decisive 2008-09 military offensive against the country’s separatist Tamil Tigers may have resulted in the deaths of as many as 40,000 civilians, most of them victims of indiscriminate shelling by Sri Lankan forces, according to a U.N. panel established by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The panel recommended that Ban set up an “independent international mechanism” to carry out a more thorough probe into “credible” allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which held more than 300,000 civilians “hostage” to enforce a “strategic human buffer between themselves and the advancing Sri Lankan army.”

The Human Rights Office team left Kandy at 09:00am and drove to Madulkelle in a minibus. The team arrived at Our Lady of Holy Rosary church at 10.15am. Whilst mass took place, setting up for the clinic began. Tables and chairs were arranged for the volunteer lawyers to hold  consultations. Banners and rights awareness posters [...]

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Sri Lanka: NSSP bereitet Falle für tamilische Arbeiter und Jugendliche vor Im letzten November machte Vikramabahu Karunaratna, Chef der ex-radikalen Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) einen Besuch in Großbritannien. Trotz seiner gelegentlichen Beteuerungen, immer noch “Sozialist” zu sein, unterstützte er bürgerliche tamilische Gruppen, die in eng mit dem britischen und amerikanischen Imperialismus zusammenarbeiten. Diese Kräfte [...]

Sri Lanka asks UN not to publish war crimes report
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka asked the United Nations on Thursday not to publish a forthcoming report on alleged war crimes during the island’s ethnic war, saying it could set back reconciliation efforts. Foreign Minister G. L. Peiris warned UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about releasing the study compiled by a panel of experts who looked into alleged rights abuses and crimes against humanity during the war which ended in 2009. “The publication of this report will cause irreparable damage to the reconciliation efforts of Sri Lanka. It will damage the UN system too,” Peiris told reporters in Colombo.

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UNITED NATIONS, April 19 — The scanned portion of the UN Panel of Experts report on Sri Lanka war crimes leaked, presumptively by the government, to The Island newspaper has been obtained by Inner City Press and is being put online here. It shows that the Panel’s three members signed off on the report on March 31, 2011. Why was it only on April 12 that it was handed to Ban Ki-moon, who on April 13 gave it to Sri Lankan Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN General Shavendra Silva? Inner City Press spoke both with Silva and with Permanent Representative Palitha Kohona on the evening of April 19, arriving uninvited at a reception at Kohona’s residence. Despite statements by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesmen that the report would be released, Kohona argued that it should not be made available to the public.

TNA statement We have read the disclosure made by the media, said to be the Executive Summary of the Report submitted by the Advisory Panel to the United Nations Secretary General (UNSG). As the democratically elected representatives of the Tamil People of the North East, who have been the worst affected victims of the recently [...]