A Coalition of six US-based Human Rights Organizations in a letter to U.S. President Obama wrote: "[t]o address abuses associated with the recent fighting [in Sri Lanka's north], there is an urgent need for an independent, international commission of inquiry into many credible allegations of laws of war violations, including possible war crimes, by both sides, as well as illegitimate detentions. Mr. President, we urge you to publicly call for an international commission of inquiry and to take necessary steps to achieve it. We also urge you to take steps for the full protection of internally displaced persons, including independent access to camps, former areas of conflict and to conflict-affected civilians by humanitarian and human rights organizations and the media."

The Coalition included the Carter Center, American Jewish Council through its Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), International League for Human Rights (ILHR), Freedom House (FH), and Amnesty International (AI) representatives signed the letter.

"Despite repeated warnings by several international organizations of impending mass killings of civilians and despite strong statements of concern by you and several other world leaders, more than 20,000 civilians are reported to have been killed. The Times of London and Le Monde have published investigations, based on reliable data, and suggested that most of the civilian deaths were caused as a result of shelling by the Sri Lankan government," the Coalition said in the letter.

The letter warned that "[t]he failure of the international community to take concrete action to protect civilians in Sri Lanka has given the green light to regimes around the world and has signaled that there is nothing that the international community will do when a government kills its own people under the cover of sovereignty."

On the 300,000 Tamil civilians still held in internment camps, the HR Organizations appealed to "urgently address the plight of those in de facto internment camps and to initiate action to hold accountable those responsible for the mass killings. There are reports that some in the camps have already died from starvation or malnutrition....there are consistent reports of widespread and serious human rights violations facing the displaced people, including enforced disappearance, extrajudicial executions, torture and other ill-treatment, forced recruitment by paramilitary groups and sexual violence."

Pointing out that "the Sri Lankan government’s record on investigating serious human rights abuses is poor and impunity has been a persistent problem," and that "[t]here have been serious ongoing violations of human rights and a backlog of cases of enforced disappearance and unlawful killings that run to tens of thousands," the letter drew attention to the the past failed efforts to address violations through the establishment of ad hoc mechanisms in Sri Lanka, such as presidential commissions of inquiry, the letter urged Obama to take steps to initiate an international inquiry into "allegations of laws of war violations, including possible war crimes, by both sides."

In the background of the failure of the United Nations to take any punitive action and realizing that effective leverage can only be exercised by the U.S., the letter said, "[i]t is now imperative that the United States assume the leadership necessary to mobilize the international community to protect the surviving civilians and to hold accountable those responsible for mass atrocities. Failure to do so would encourage governments to commit mass atrocities without fear of consequence. That is why your immediate action is important at this juncture," the letter said.

The Sri Lankan Government is trying to siphon off millions of pounds of humanitarian aid by imposing a tax on all funding for aid groups, The Times newspaper reported Monday.

Aid workers told the paper that Burma was the only other country that they could remember imposing such a tax — one of several new measures hampering their efforts to help victims of Sri Lanka’s civil war.

Colombo is backdating taxes to 2005, the paper also said.

The government has started to insist that local and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) should pay the 0.9 per cent tax on all their funding.

That could amount to several million pounds, as there are at least 89 such international and local organisations in Sri Lanka, mostly helping victims of the 2004 tsunami and the civil war.

The new tax regime was unveiled in 2006 but not enforced immediately, the paper said.

Most agencies did not comply, as they hoped to persuade the Government to change it, according to aid workers.

In the past year, however, the Government has grown increasingly hostile towards foreign aid groups and Western donors, accusing many of sympathising with the Tamil Tigers, it said.

“If it’s non-profit work, it shouldn’t be taxed — there should be incentives to work in particular areas instead,” Jeevan Thiagarajah, the executive director of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, told the paper.

The Government says that the tax is designed to crack down on NGOs that abused Sri Lankan law and squandered their funds on their own staff after the tsunami.

Aid workers, however, say the new rules do not grant tax exemption for all the work they are doing — and want to do — to help 300,000 Tamil refugees in army-run camps.

Some say the tax contravenes the international disaster response guidelines drawn up by the Red Cross in 2007 with the participation of 140 countries, including Sri Lanka.

“This is money on which people have already paid tax in their own countries and which is supposed to be helping people in need,” said one aid worker. “This is a desperate money-making measure by the Government.”

Another charity worker said: “This runs contrary to everything that the humanitarian aid community stands for.”

Most aid groups already have to pay tax on imported equipment, such as vehicles, as in many other countries.

In 2005, Oxfam was forced to pay more than £600,000 in tax for importing 25 Indian four-wheel-drive vehicles to Sri Lanka for tsunami relief — despite the Government announcing a temporary waiver for aid groups.

World Vision, the US-based Christian relief group, has paid $120,000 for 2005-06, and made advance payments of $200,000 for the following three years, according to its accounts.

“There are vast discrepancies between individual agencies,” said Mr Thiagarajah. “There’s quite a few whose tax files are still open.”

MEDIA groups in Sri Lanka have urged the government to scrap moves to re-establish a media panel which could jail journalists. The reactivation of the Press Council is being seen as a means to control the media in a country where concerns have been voiced about intimidation and pressure on reporters critical of the government.                

The government's move to revive the powerful Press Council was announced by the Sri Lankan media minister, Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena.

The Press Council was staffed with government appointees. It had the authority to hear complaints about inaccurate reporting or defamation and fine and jail journalists if found guilty.  It ceased operations in 2002, after it was criticized as an anti-democratic tool to suppress criticism of the government.

The government says it reactivated the body after a parliament committee found that council salaries were still being paid and office space was still being rented. Minister Abeywardena says the media has nothing to fear, and it has no intention of gagging the press or imposing restrictions on it.

But the move to restore the Press Council has provoked concern among journalists in Sri Lanka.

Seven media bodies, headed by the Editors Guild, have in a joint statement to President Mahinda Rajapakse, saying that a media culture cannot be based on placing charges against journalists, fining them or sending them to jail.

Vincent Borsell of the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders calls the decision to restore the Press Council another step to suppress the independent media.

"It's very dangerous and also is unfortunately a new step in all this campaign against free media in Sri Lanka," he said. "I think the government should consider it again."

The Press Council is being considered in the wake of a number of threats and attacks on journalists who have been critical of the government and its handling of a war against Tamil Tiger rebels.

The war ended last month, raising hopes the situation would improve. But some people fear that may not be the case.

Just two weeks after the war ended, a strong advocate of freedom of expression, Poddala Jayantha, was abducted and assaulted in Colombo. 

Vincent Borsell says there has been a spate of attacks on journalists, in recent years, dealing a blow to investigative and independent reporting.  

"Since the war has restarted in 2007, there is a lot of incidents," he said. "It starts from killings, beatings, kidnappings and death threats. But it also goes on to pressure on the media, so it means now there is no let us say direct censorship in countries like Burma, but there is a huge self-censorship, especially on all the issues related to the army, and all sensitive issues. They are victims of self censorship on issues that were very well covered by the media."   

The government denies any interference with the media and says that police are investigating the attacks on journalists. It also says it is prepared to discuss any changes to the Press Council suggested by rights groups.

Amnesty International says at least 14 members of news organizations have been killed by suspected government paramilitaries and the defeated Tamil Tiger rebels since 2006. Twenty journalists critical of the government are said to have fled the country. 

ALL the local newspapers of Jaffna that defied publishing an anonymous and defiling notice against the LTTE came under attack by an armed group in the early hours of Thursday.

The notice was brought out in the name of 'Tamil Front Protecting the Country' allegedly linked to a paramilitary group operating with Colombo.

Thousands of copies of the local newspapers, Valampuri, Uthayan and Thinakkural (Jaffna edition), were burnt down wholesale in huge flames by the armed group allegedly operated by the Sri Lankan military intelligence at Aanaippanthi and Kannathiddi junctions at 5:00 a.m. Thursday, June 25, while the newspapers were being taken for distribution.

The distribution workers were also brutally attacked.

A distribution worker of Thinakkural, 26-year-old Anojan, who was physically attacked was also robbed of his belongings by the armed men.

Newspaper editors of Jaffna were intimidated to publish the notice and warned of dire consequences the previous day through anonymous telephone calls. However, the editors sceptical of the contents of the notice decided not to publish it.

The Managing Director of Tamil-language newspaper, Uthayan, the biggest seller in the northern district of Jaffna told the BBC that his staff in Jaffna have been ordered to quit their jobs or be killed.

'Tamil Front Protecting the Country in a warning notice, delivered by men in helmets on a motorbike, accused Uthayan of being a "mouthpiece for terrorists" and of aiming to destroy peace, said Saravanapavan.

The security forces have laid on extra protection but Saravanapavan said he was especially worried about the ordinary workers and newsagents who, he said, should be able to operate without fear.

He said it was incumbent on the government to ensure no one was harmed.

Saravanapavan said that one of his colleagues had spoken to President Mahinda Rajapaksa who had promised to take necessary steps to protect media freedom.

Commenting on the attack, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarians Mavai Senathirajah and Suresh Premachandran at a press conference said: "We do not believe that the elections are going to be free and fair. The burning of newspapers on the eve of nominations raises a big question about the circumstances under which the elections are going to be conducted,"

The government is fully responsible for the attack on newspapers that took place when two of its ministers are camping in Jaffna said Suresh Premachandran MP.

After the burning of the Eezhanaadu newspaper along with the public library in 1981 by the Sri Lankan forces, and again the burning of Eezhanaadu by the Indian military (IPKF), this is the third major burning of the newspapers of Jaffna by occupying forces.

In 1981, the burning of the public library and the newspaper office took place while two of Colombo's ministers were present in Jaffna and it is alleged they had a direct hand in orchestrating that. The present attack on newspapers took place when Sri Lanka's Education Minister and General Secretary of Mahinda Rajapaksa's ruling UPFA alliance, Susil Premajayantha and Social Welfare Minister Douglas Devandanda were camping in Jaffna.

Meanwhile, a Tamil journalist was kidnapped from outside her home in the capital Colombo and held for a day by people claiming to be the police.

Krishni Ifam, a Tamil reporter who works for media development NGO Internews, said the men had warned her to give up journalism altogether.

According to Ifam, men claiming to policemen forced her to get into their vehicle outside her Colombo home early on Wednesday and drove for several hours while keeping her blindfolded. She was then released in the central city of Kandy late on Wednesday, June 24 with a tiny amount of cash.

Ifam said the abductors took her belongings, asked if she was writing articles for foreign media outlets and warned her to give up journalism altogether before releasing her.

Ifam used to write for a prominent Tamil-language newspaper.

Earlier this month Poddala Jayantha, a press freedom campaigner, was abducted and assaulted while returning from work.

According to Amnesty International, at least 14 Sri Lankan journalists and other media workers have been killed by suspected government paramilitaries and rebels since the beginning of 2006.

A number of others have been detained, tortured or have disappeared, and at least 20 more have fled the country because of death threats, according to Amnesty. 

Former UN head of Humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland has accused the UN and the international community of letting the Sri Lankan state get away with denying the Tamils protection and access to humanitarian relief.

"Sri Lanka is the latest example of the world community letting a government get away with denying access, to witnesses, humanitarian relief, protection of civilians," Egeland said on Tuesday June 23.

Egeland further said that the Responsibility to Protest, enacted by the UN in 2005, was "not upheld in Sri Lanka, the heads of state have failed."

Predicting that conflict will brew as injustice against the Tamils are continuing, Egeland added, that he was not saying this as a UN official, that he is now with the Norwegian Institute on International Affairs.

Egeland who was in New York for a UN Colloquium on Conflict Related Sexual Violence in Peace Negotiations, told the media that we can "safely assume... horrors" in the treatment of "women in Sri Lanka, Tamils," due to the continuing denial of access not only to humanitarian review but also "witnesses."

Egeland’s comments were in contradiction to current UN humanitarian coordinator John Holmes, who has commended the Sri Lankan government for how they are running the UN-funded camps where they have detained 300,000 Tamil civilians.

Civil society sources in Jaffna raised accusations against United Nation (UN) Jaffna officials for releasing facts and statistics, related to the detainees held in the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) internment camps, provided by Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and SLA, instead of the true situation prevailing in the camps, to the outer world.

For instance, the UN officials in their June 15 report said that only four detainees had died in the past six months in Jaffna camps where as many have died including a woman due to septicemia, in a meeting held in Jaffna town Thursday, participants in the meeting said.

The meeting was attended by UN Jaffna officials and organizations working with the UN in Jaffna.

The UN report created a furore among the representatives of civil organizations attending the meeting who said that the UN officials in Jaffna are helping the government and the SLA to hide the true situation in the camps from the world.

Another glaring misrepresentation in the UN report was the number of Vanni civilians held in Thellippazhai SLA Special Rehabilitation Camp (SRC).

The report says that only a hundred detainees from Jaffna camps, where there are around 11,223 detainees, have been taken to Thellippazhai SRC while the number of young men and women detainees held there is around 800 hundred, civil society representatives said.

Apart from this, Education Officials who had visited Thellippazhai SRC say that more than a hundred children between the ages of 14 to 18 are detained there.

Particularly, June 15 June report does not mention these children and pregnant women held in Thellippazhai SRC.

The UN officials in Jaffna have betrayed the Tamils by having failed to collect the true facts and figures related to the condition of the detainees in the camps and to have helped the government and the SLA to release reports based on false statistics fed by both, civil society representatives raised accusations.

Meanwhile, 35 types of infectious diseases have been observed in the camps and among these typhoid fever and jaundice are found to be spreading fast, health officials said.

Cases of tuberculosis too exist in the camps but no action has been taken to isolate these from others let alone providing the needed medical treatment or preventive measures, they said.

Malnutrition, particularly among the children and elderly in all the camps in Jaffna is conspicuous and the condition of the victims may prove critical in the coming days, they added.

The United Nations’ continued silence on the abuses being committed by the Sri Lankan state was once again demonstrated with its handling of UN staff arrested by the Sri Lankan military.

Instead of demanding the Sri Lankan state to release it staff who have immunity, according to media reports, the UN has "hired a lawyer who has visited" the UN staff, who are "still detained in Colombo."

This is in complete contrast to its action in Kosovo. The UN Mission in Kosovo actively invoked immunity on June 26 in favour of a person charged with genocide. When Agim Ceku was arrested in Bulgaria, based on an Interpol warrant, it is reported that a UN documentary showing was made in order to get Ceku released.

In Sri Lanka, however, UN spokespersons and officials gave conflicting claims over the immunity status of the arrested staff.  Whilst the Associate Spokesperson Farhan Haq in New York acknowledging the immunity staus of the two local staff members who were grabbed up by the government using unmarked vehicles, John Holmes, the UN humanitarian chief said that immunity only applied to international staff.

The head of the UN Refugee Agency in Sri Lanka Amin Awad went one step further than Holmes and issued a statement saying that the Sri Lankan government is free to detain UN staff as long as procedures are followed.

The UN Staff Union has disagreed with Holmes and countered that national staff have immunity within the scope of their work. It also criticized Awad's statement.

Accusing the UN of running scared of Sri Lanka, the Inner City Press reporter, Matthew Russel Lee, questioned rationale behind the immunity for those charged with war crimes and genocide, but non defense of immunity for UN staff in Sri Lanka.

What kind of violence has the Sri Lankan state been committing against its Tamil civilian population as the island‘s civil war ended; on what scale and with what intentions? Martin Shaw explores the difficult terrain where war, atrocity and genocide meet.

The civil war in Sri Lanka is receding from the international headlines, as crises in Iran and celebrity deaths occupy the media's limited space and attention-span.

A very large number of its Tamil victims are still, more than six weeks after the fighting ended, confined in government forces in a complex of forty camps in the north east of the country.

An estimated 280,000 civilians - originally displaced from their homes by the fighting between the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers / LTTE), and in some cases fleeing from the brutal regime in the LTTE's former "liberated" zone - are being held, generally against their will.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in his "victory speech", told Sri Lanka's parliament that "our heroic forces have sacrificed their lives to protect Tamil civilians", and he took "personal responsibility" for protecting Tamils.

Yet his government is now scandalously confining this huge population - who have already suffered not only from the LTTE but from Sri Lankan bombardments which caused probably tens of thousands of deaths and injuries - in squalid conditions.

The government has officially backtracked, under international pressure, on plans to hold the displaced, while screening them for potential "terrorists", for up to three years; it now says that 80% will be resettled by the end of 2009.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) comments: "The government's history of restricting the rights of displaced persons through rigid pass systems and strict restrictions on leaving the camps heightens concerns that they will be confined in camps much longer, possibly for years."

In the shadows

The eruption in Iran has in a twisted way done the Sri Lankan government a service.

In any case, Colombo has been ruthless in restricting international journalists and rights organisations: in May 2009 even the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was barred from Menik Farm, the largest camp, and Channel 4's Nick Paton Walsh was deported.

Sinhala nationalism remains oppressively dominant within the majority population, and critics of the government face an atmosphere of intimidation and even terror: Sri Lankan journalists have frequently been murdered, assaulted and detained.

Although human-rights organisations and western governments have continued to protest at the situation, the Sri Lankan government has found friends in the United Nations’s new Human Rights Council; it was able to pass a resolution there on 27 May 2009 praising its own commitment to human rights (endorsed by such notable bastions of freedom as China, Cuba, Russia, Pakistan and Egypt).

The vigorous campaigns by members of the Tamil diasporas have ensured that the situation has not been entirely forgotten, but the interned Tamils don't have the mobile-phone access that (in the early post-election stages at least) so embarrassed the Iranian regime.

There are some pictures of the camps on the internet, but no iconic images of Tamil suffering have entered the commercial, established media in the manner of Iran's Neda Soltani - or indeed of Fikret Alic, the emaciated prisoner pictured behind barbed-wire in the Trnopolje camp in Bosnia in summer 1992.

A dire predicament

It is often said that pictures tell their own story.

However what is important is the media narrative and the momentum behind the issue: in both the Iranian and Bosnian cases the crises were much more strongly established in the dominant media (and the exposure of the experiences of Neda Soltani and Fikret Alic) fed this.

In the case of Sri Lanka, sadly, the level and intensity of coverage - despite the impressive Tamil campaigns - has not matched these.

Moreover, what was important in Bosnia was that Trnopolje was described as a "concentration" camp - so the image facilitated the connection between the atrocious treatment of Bosnian Muslim prisoners and the murderous history of concentration camps in Europe under Nazism.

The Bosnian-Serbian government that was responsible for Trnopolje naturally disputed this appellation, describing it merely as a holding centre for "refugees"; today the lowest-common-denominator descriptor seems to be a "detention" camp.

The Sri Lankan government also prefers its camps to be seen as "refugee" camps.

However once people are detained, camps are clearly more than that; and where there is a sustained policy of concentrating detainees then the term "concentration camp" applies.

In war, these camps - invented at the beginning of the 20th century to describe the enclosures in which the Spanish detained Cubans and the British detained Boerfarmers and their families during the South African wars - are usually designed to corral a civilian population seen as potentially sympathetic to a guerrilla enemy (as Tamils evidently are still seen despite the LTTE's defeat).

Totalitarian regimes, including Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, have also used camps to concentrate other civilian groups - actual and potential political opponents, trade unionists, and ethnic "enemies" such as Jews.

The complication in using the "concentration camp" category is that such regimes went on to develop their camps into something more - in the Soviet case, labour camps, in the Nazi case, extermination camps.

Clearly, not all concentration camps are "death" camps in the Nazi sense; but all concentration camps tend to produce death, as well as widespread physical and mental harm.

Since their premise is enmity towards the interned civilians, the history of concentration-camps has been marked, from the Boerwar onwards, by callous disregard for their welfare, and often worse.

As Human Rights Watch remarked of the Sri Lankan situation on 11 June 2009: "Virtually all camps are overcrowded, some holding twice the number recommended by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Food distribution is chaotic, there are shortages of water, and sanitation facilities are inadequate. Camp residents do not have access to proper medical services and communicable diseases have broken out in the camps."

What is more, "the military camp administration has imposed numerous restrictions on humanitarian organizations working in the camps, such as limiting the number of vehicles and staff members that can enter the camps, which has delayed the provision of much-needed aid. The military does not allow organizations into the camps to conduct protection activities, and a ban on talking to the camp residents leaves them further isolated.'"

If reports of violence and disappearances are added to this, the situation of the interned Tamils appears dire.

A "rolling" genocide?

The western fixation with the Nazi holocaust means that there is an obvious political temptation to link all anti-civilian violence with the Nazi model.

The pro-Tamil United States-based academic Francis Boyle, in his posts, sees a sixty-year "rolling" genocide in which Sinhalese governments of Ceylon (the country's name at independence in 1948) and Sri Lanka have sought "to annihilate the Tamils and to steal their lands and natural resources.

This is what Hitler and the Nazis called lebensraum - "living space" for the Sinhala at the expense of the Tamils."

In this perspective, the camp system is all too clearly the latest stage of genocide - although other Tamil advocates date genocide back to the anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983 in response to which the LTTE campaign began.

The idea of "rolling" genocide, applied by Madeleine Albright to distinguish the Sudanese campaign in Darfur from the "volcanic" genocide in Rwanda, suggests discontinuity in a history of genocide - albeit, in the Darfur case, within two or three years rather than six decades.

However in many cases, there may be genocidal "moments" (as the genocide historian, Dirk Moses, has suggested of colonialism) in stories of oppression - decades or even centuries long - which do not, taken as a whole, constitute processes of genocide (see A Dirk Moses ed., Empire,Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History [Berghahn, 2008]).

There may be sporadic genocidal massacres, rapes and expulsions, or even sustained campaigns, at particular points in these histories.

Something like this seems to be true in the Sri Lankan case: no one doubts the long history of Sinhalese nationalist oppression against the Tamil community since independence, which includes moments like 1983 which can be plausibly seen as genocidal outbursts.

But the history as a whole is not simply one of genocide.

Indeed the dedication of the LTTE to armed struggle against the Sri Lankan state helped turn a history of oppression and resistance into one of brutal insurgency and counterinsurgency (see The trouble with guns: Sri Lanka, South Africa, Ireland", 10 June 2009).

We know however that counterinsurgency is one of the most common contexts of genocidal violence.

It remains to be seen - since most of the survivors are locked away from the world's media and the Sri Lankan government is blocking all attempts at independent investigation of the recent violence - how far the Sri Lankan army went in the direction of deliberate atrocity as opposed to brutal disregard for civilians.

Here, indiscriminate allegations of a long-running Sri Lankan genocide paradoxically blunt the real questions: what kind of violence did the Sri Lankan state commit against its Tamil civilian population in the concluding prosecution of the war, on what scale and with what intentions?

The continuing concentration of over 250,000 people in the camps both blocks the search for answers to these questions, and itself constitutes a most serious crime.

If the doors are not opened quickly, this will raise questions of whether the government seriously intends a restoration of Tamil society in the conquered zone.

This would indeed pose a question of genocide, in the sense of the deliberate destruction of a population group in its home territory.

Martin Shaw is a historical sociologist of war and global politics, and professor of international relations and politics at the University of Sussex. His books include War and Genocide (Polity, 2003), The New Western Way of War (Polity, 2005), and What is Genocide?(Polity, 2007).

Sri Lankan police arrested an astrologer after he predicted serious political and economic problems for the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse.

Chandrasiri Bandara, who writes an astrology column for a pro-opposition weekly, was taken in on Thursday June 25, police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara said.

"The CID (Criminal Investigations Department) is questioning the astrologer," Gunasekara said, adding that they wanted to find out the "basis" for the prediction.

The astrologer had predicted that a planetary change on October 8 will be inauspicious for parliament and the government may not be able to arrest rising living costs -- a prediction already made by private economists.

Sri Lankan politicians take astrology seriously and most have their own personal seers who decide the auspicious times to launch any new programme or work.

Rajapaksa’s popularity has soared, with some supporters hailing him as a modern-day king, since the army defeated the Tamil Tigers last month, bringing an end to a 26-year civil war.

Politicians in his ruling party have gone so far as to propose giving him a second six-year term without holding an election — or perhaps changing the constitution to make him President for life.

The opposition United National Party condemned Bandara's arrest and accused the government of heading towards a dictatorship.

“The crime committed by Bandara is not making predictions favourable to the Government,” the party said in a statement.

Three Tamil College students from Canada are on a 1000-mile walk from Chicago to Washington D.C. to "raise awareness with the general American population to what is happening in Sri Lanka,” Illinois Times reported. More than 50 people assembled on the steps of the Capitol Friday, wearing tan, gray and blue T-shirts that carried their message: Break the Silence in Sri Lanka, the paper added.

"Despite the afternoon’s stifling heat, these Sri Lankan natives and descendants showed up to rally behind Kannan Sreekantha, Vijay Sivaneswaran and Ramanan Thirukketheeswaranathan, three college students who are walking from Chicago to Washington, D.C., to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka," the paper said.

The crowd – with members young enough to ride in strollers and old enough to be grandfathers – chanted “Stop the genocide” and “We want justice.” They wielded American flags and handmade signs that reported the number of deaths, rapes and detainees in the war-torn island country. They even hit the street, passing out fliers to drivers stopped at the intersection of Second and Capitol, according to Illinois Times.

From Springfield, the three men will travel east through Indianapolis; Cincinnati; Dayton, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Cambridge, Mass. Wheeling, W.V.; and Pittsburgh before reaching Washington, D.C., during the week of Aug. 9., the paper further said. 

It is time for all Eelam Tamil freedom fighters to realise that there is no credible alternative other than taking up the matter directly to the people concerned for a mandate to reaffirm the political fundamentals and to direct the course of action.

Incumbency, elitism and adventurism are no answers to the gravity of the situation that needs handling with legitimacy not only the genocidal regime of Colombo but also an entire world.

It is heartening to see moves being discussed towards the formation of a global structure for Eelam Tamils, but how to evolve it mass orientated, how to make it responsible to the people and what is the relationship of this body to the already existing infrastructure are the questions.

All freedom fighters with a record of service to the Eelam Tamil nation have a historic responsibility in this regard to come forward united in forging a neutral interim body with full commitment to execute conducting a mandate among Eelam Tamils in forming a government, even if it is going to be bereft of territory at the moment.

Fortunately the Eelam Tamil nation’s resources and organizational infrastructure are intact in the diaspora. But these have to be immediately transformed with unity and consensus into backing the formulation of the much-needed political structure. Any failure will only see the hijacking of the cause by the same forces that crushed Tamil nationalism militarily.

Some feedbacks to our earlier columns questioned the legitimacy of the diaspora in forming a government and hinted that the future politics of Eelam Tamils will surge up from the conditions of the internment camps.

While not denying the fact that the nature of politics is going to be determined by the ground realities of oppression in the homeland, a parallel political stream in the diaspora is not a liability but contributory to the Tamil nationalist cause. The diaspora on one hand cannot be idling at a historic responsibility in meeting the demands of the homeland and on the other hand has to look after its own needs of identity, self-respect and emotional integrity as well.

No one should forget that the diaspora, especially of those who migrated after the 1972 constitution have a say on Tamil Eelam, as the Eelam Tamils have not accepted the Sri Lankan state and have become the diaspora largely as a consequence to it.

Many readers may wonder why TamilNet doesn’t cover ongoing factional news and debate on Tamil politics. A media is expected to do that, but as an alternative media committed to a cause TamilNet wishes to refrain from contributing to confusion.

It is our earnest hope that an environment will be created soon, conducive for all freedom loving people of the nation to participate in unison in upholding the struggle.

It may be the worst of times but it is also the best of times for Phoenix-like regeneration.

Government of Sri Lanka turned away the ship, MV Captain Ali, carrying relief supplies to the Tamils held in internment camps, after keeping the ship under Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) custody for nearly 4.5 days, and after admitting that the ship carried purely humanitarian supplies, a press release from the Mercy Mission Head Office in the UK said.

While the Government of Sri Lanka has been appealing for funds from the International Community to provide food and other assistance to the 300,000 Tamils being detained in the camps, it is surprising that Colombo would reject 800 tons of relief supplies, the Directors of the Mercy Mission said.

"This Mercy Mission ship, the product of the hard work of thousands of volunteers in the UK and Europe and donations from tens of thousands of Tamils throughout the world, could have been, and in fact, should have been, used by the GoSL as an opportunity to show it’s bona fides and engage with the Tamil Diaspora as a means to begin the process of reconciliation in, in the government’s words, “post-conflict” Sri Lanka," the press release said.

An ex-Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) monitor, Mr. Kristjan Guðmundsson, from Iceland, doctors, and humanitarian workers have accompanied the humanitarian relief on board the ship.

The Captain Ali, a Syrian-registered ship, was seized as it entered Sri

Lankan waters on June 4 by the country's navy, who suspected it  contained logistical equipment for Tamil Tigers.

After escorting the ship to Colombo, Sri Lanka detained 13 crew members and 2 passengers – including one Briton – for questioning.

"The ship had tried to enter Sri Lankan waters without following the proper procedure," a military official told reporters in Colombo.

However, later Sri Lankan authorities admitted the ship only carried a cargo of food and medicine.

"We are extremely disappointed that the Sri Lankan government has turned away this mercy mission that was only carrying aid," said Arjunan Ethirveerasingam a spokesperson for Mercey Mission.

"There are 300,000 people in internment camps in the north of the island who desperately need this aid.”

"The ship is currently headed westerly away from Colombo. When it reaches international waters we will work out how we can get the food and aid into Sri Lanka. Whether we take it to another country and ship it in containers or work with a partner organisation, we will have to decide, but we will find a way of getting the food to the people who need it." Ethirveerasingam added.

Earlier, Mercy Mission made a public appeal to the Sri Lankan government, urging it to allow Tamil Diaspora relief to be distributed to the Tamils held in internment camps in northern Sri Lanka.

“Mercy Mission (UK) implores the Government of Sri Lanka to engage with the Mercy Mission in order to overcome any paperwork errors and ensure that the emergency humanitarian relief (food & medicine) donated by the Tamil Diaspora are delivered to the internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the camps.” The appeal said.

“To that end, Mercy Mission seeks the GoSL’s permission to allow the ship and her cargo to enter into Colombo Port, be cleared appropriately, and handed over the Government Agent - Vavuniya, a local NGO, or a GoSL Ministry for distribution to the IDPs.”

“The GoSL has itself repeatedly pleaded with the international community for assistance with the humanitarian catastrophe that has overwhelmed them. With the sole objective of providing this desperately needed emergency humanitarian relief to the 300,000 IDPs in the camps and in the spirit of “engaging”, “reconciling” and “building bridges” with the Tamil Diaspora, Mercy Mission (UK) appeals to the Government of Sri Lanka to please let this assistance reach those who are in such desperate need.” The statement further said.

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York based media watchdog, in a special reported, said Sri Lanka topped the list of countries that drove the largest number of journalists into exile.

Even after the end of the decades long war, Sri Lankan state has continued to intimidate and attack journalists. Independent journalists in Sri Lanka say they still feel threatened and intimidated.

"At least 11 Sri Lankan journalists were driven into exile in the past 12 months amid an intensive government crackdown on critical reporters and editors," the report said, adding the number worldwide totalled 39.

Of these journalists, 29 were driven out of threat of violence, 7 threat of imprisonment, and 2 out of harassment, the report added.

"This is a sad reality in countries throughout the world where governments allow attacks on the press to go unpunished." Joel Simon, CPJ executive director said.

Sri Lankan journalists have faced severe retribution for producing critical coverage of government military operations against the Tamil Tigers.

Upali Tennakoon, editor of Sinhala-language weekly Rivira was driving to his office when four men on motorcycles smashed his car windows, beating him and his wife with metal bars.

Though his paper was pro-government, Tennakoon had criticized a high-ranking army official.

Following his release from the hospital, Tennakoon’s wife fielded a menacing phone call urging her husband to quit journalism.

Fearing for their safety, the couple left for California, where they had family to receive them.

Tennakoon has followed the investigation of his attack from afar, but no progress has been made.

“Without information about who did this and why, I don’t think it is safe to go back,” he told CPJ in a recent interview.

The Free Media Movement (FMM) says that the government should take responsibility for the recent spate of attacks on the media.

The group accuses the government of failing to take any concrete action against the killings, abductions and threats.

"We have to point the finger at the government as it has a huge responsibility to stop these attacks but has failed to do so," FMM Secretary Sunil Jayasekara told the BBC.

However, the government says it does not intervene in police investigations.

Media minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardene admits the investigations over attacks on the media sometimes are lacking in progress and focus.

"As a person who is regularly in touch with journalists I am genuinely shocked," he told the BBC Sinhala service. "But it is up to the security services to investigate and we do not intervene."

At least nine Sri Lankan journalists have been murdered this decade without a single conviction being won against an assailant, according to CPJ research.

Following the end of the war, in a television discussion, Sri Lankan police Chief Jayantha Wickramaratne said there was evidence that some journalists, especially Sinhala nationals, were on the payroll of the Tamil Tigers.

"Although the police are aware of this treason I do not like to reveal the names as it might obstruct our investigations. They betrayed the noble profession and not only distorted and misreported against Sri Lanka but also worked for cash and other benefits," Wickramaratne said on 28 May.

Amid a growing state media campaign over the issue, Poddala Jayantha, a key activist of the Sri Lankan Working Journalists Association, was abducted and assaulted in Colombo.

He was a strong advocate of freedom of expression and a visible participant in protests against threats to media - but had avoided playing an active role in criticising the government over the past few months.

Jayantha was one of many journalists who fled the country following the killing of Sunday Leader Editor-in-Chief, Lasantha Wickramatunge in January 2009. However, he returned to the country after three weeks.

Many leading journalists are yet to return and the fear is such that many do not wish to speak even while living in exile. 

The world welcomes the end of the civil war that has ravaged Sri Lanka for decades. Unfortunately, questions have emerged about how the conflict was brought to a close and whether war crimes were committed in the final bloody days of fighting. The Colombo government has dismissed the allegations as unfounded; the defeat of the Tamil Tigers has overshadowed charges that the guerrillas used civilians as human shields. An investigation is required: If war crimes were committed — no matter which side is responsible — perpetrators must be held accountable. No government or rebel group must believe it is immune from the rule of law.

The Sri Lankan conflict was a long civil war that claimed 80,000 to 100,000 lives. Both sides inflicted indiscriminate damage on civilian populations — the government by resorting to artillery and air power, the rebels by their suicide attacks. The guerrillas even used Tamil compatriots as human shields.

During the last weeks of the conflict, the number of civilian casualties increased as the Tigers retreated to an ever-shrinking area. Rebels claimed civilians joined them out of fear of government forces; the government countered that the refugees had been uprooted at gunpoint. The government said civilian-occupied areas were no-fire zones for heavy artillery; the rebels insisted that pledge was a sham, providing various pieces of evidence to support their allegations. No definitive proof was available as the fighting reached its conclusion; the government kept journalists and human rights groups from the war zone, and Tamil Tiger claims were viewed with suspicion and often dismissed as propaganda.

Since the fighting ended, however, independent observers have been able to examine the war zone and what they have found is disturbing. A strip of beach where thousands of civilians retreated was pockmarked by craters that, in the words of one expert, look to be the work of "a very large" shell.

The civilian casualty list is long and growing. The number of refugees exceeds 265,000; some say it tops 300,000. Equally troubling is the death toll. The government says civilian deaths were unavoidable, adding that the military did not use heavy artillery as alleged while the Tamil Tigers used civilians as shields and in some cases even killed civilians themselves.

Officially, the United Nations has estimated that 7,000 people were killed in the final offensive. Unofficially, however, it has been reported that the death toll for the last month of fighting could exceed 20,000 civilians. The discrepancy has prompted calls for an investigation into whether war crimes were committed. Ms. Navanethem Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, rightly noted that "victims and the survivors have a right to justice and remedies." As she explained, "establishing the facts is crucial to set the record straight regarding the conduct of all parties in the conflict." The European Union's human rights commissioner agrees.

The Sri Lankan government has dismissed any criticism of its actions. Officials say they should be applauded, not censured, for ending one of the world's most vicious insurgencies. Mr. Palitha Kohona, the minister of foreign affairs, firmly rejected the allegations, arguing that "We would have finished this war months ago if we hadn't cared about hurting civilians." The local press was even more succinct: "The time has come to tell the salmon-eating international busybodies to go home."

The diplomatic response has been more restrained. When European governments brought a motion before the U.N. Human Rights Council, calling for an international investigation into whether war crimes had been committed by either side, the council instead passed a resolution commending the government's victory and urged it to protect minorities.

Colombo is no doubt aggrieved that its victory has been sullied. It is upset that Western governments, which demanded support in their war against terror while permitting the Tamil diaspora to fund the Tiger rebels, would demand that Sri Lanka be held to account. But the laws of war and the notion of crimes against humanity are premised on the belief that there are limits to how combatants conduct themselves in conflict.

If anything goes, then all conflicts could be ended much quicker. But we insist on standards to restrict the behavior of combatants, and it is only the prospect of their enforcement that gives them force and utility. Laws that are disregarded when they are needed most are worse than useless, because they endanger those who rely on them for protection.

If the government is telling the truth, it should have nothing to fear from an investigation. A complete, unvarnished international assessment of its conduct would vindicate its counterclaim that the Tamil rebels are the real criminals. Stepping forward would also demonstrate the government's readiness to reach out to its long-aggrieved Tamil community, a vital first step toward true reconciliation and enduring peace in Sri Lanka.