The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, criticized the Sri Lankan Government on the issue of "accountability" and for refusing to co-operate “to our many requests for an international investigation of what we say is widespread acts of killing of civilians."

She made the comments during a speech at a press conference in Brussels.

“We have pointed out that they have in the past attempted to hold national investigations of very serious acts of killings that occurred of NGO and humanitarian workers and these investigations were dropped," said Pillay.

“They do not have a very good record in holding serious investigations. Now, I am engaged in discussions with the Secretary General over what kind of mechanism would be acceptable. But as I said the bottom-line is that the government is resisting these suggestions," said the former South African judge.

 She also mentioned that “such a request has also been made by the (UN) Secretary General and we are working very closely with the Secretary General to hold the President of Sri Lanka to his promise which he made to the Secretary General that he will look into the issue of accountability and so we want to know what kind of mechanism is he setting up."

The UN Commissioner also mentioned that the Sri Lankan Government, both publicly and to the UN Secretary General stated that they would not allow her to enter the country.

Her call was reiterated by her colleague Rupert Colville a few days later.

"We still believe that something like the Gaza fact-finding mission is certainly warranted given the widespread concerns about the conduct of the war in Sri Lanka," said Colvile, referring to recent fact finding mission into the Israel-Palestinian conflict on the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

"It seems that more clarity is likely to emerge about who did what to whom and whether or not war crimes and crimes against humanity and other very serious war crimes were committed by one or both sides," said Colville, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

"The issue of some 240,000 - 250,000 displaced people living in what are in effect internment camps continues to be of great concern... We hope the government takes serious actions to fulfill these commitments in the very near future" he added.

The statement comes after publication of a US State Department report that contained reports of atrocities committed at the climax of the war earlier this year. Sri Lanka has so far categorically rejected all calls for investigations into war crimes.

Taking a look into the new political activism of the current generation of diaspora Tamil youths, Financial Times, a premier British Daily, said the "ending [of the war] in Sri Lanka was also a beginning," and many youths experienced a political awakening after devoting a lot of time to the protests and some missing a year of their college.

"As one generation of the Tamil diaspora sees its struggle for Eelam, an independent homeland, end in failure, their sons and daughters, who have spent their formative years in the west, are taking up the struggle. But they will fight it on their terms, using their strengths, fomenting a BlackBerry revolution," the paper said.

The paper profiled two new generation expatriate Tamils, Bala Muhunthan, 22, a Tamil youth privately educated in Denmark and attending a leading business school in England, and Jan Jananayagam, a second generation Tamil activist who received a computer degree in England and a post-graduate business degree in Paris, and who ran as an independent candidate for London in last June’s European parliamentary elections.

"Muhunthan, the son of an accountant and a doctor, had responded to the Tigers’ apparent defeat with optimism – seeing it as a second chance. While disappointed to have lost a powerful ally, he now felt free to pursue the non-violent means he had always preferred. He also saw an opportunity to present his ethnic group as something other than terrorists, a label he found frustrating when dealing with fellow students," the paper said.

"You always have to explain: ‘Look, Tamil ­people are suffering," the paper said quoting Muhunthan.

"Muhunthan is one of a group of young ­people who now want to move the separatist struggle into a more diplomatic, PR-friendly – and, they hope, successful – phase. He has recently set up the Tamil Solidarity Movement, a campaigning group that rejects ­violence. The movement hopes to rely on “networking” with MPs and discouraging western companies from investing in Sri Lanka, rather than on chanting in Parliament Square," the article said on Muhunthan's new approach to Tamil activism.

"Articulate and driven, Jananayagam confirms the stereotype of the Tamil diaspora: she used to work as a bond trader at the investment bank Credit Suisse and ran her own hedge fund. She is now busy planning for next year’s British general election; she hopes to persuade MPs to show a commitment to the Tamil issue, and the Tamil community to use their ­voting power accordingly," the paper said.

Ms Jananayagam campaigned as a candidate to the European Parliament on not only a two-state solution in Sri Lanka but also on more transparency in derivatives markets.

“I am very positive about the second generation,” Jananayagam says of the Tamil diaspora’s chances of securing more western intervention. “They are so sure of their status in their country – they were born as citizens there – and they will just ring their MPs or senators to ask for these things,” the paper said quoting Jananayagam.

She is now busy planning for next year’s British general election; she hopes to persuade MPs to show a commitment to the Tamil issue, and the Tamil community to use their voting power accordingly, the paper said.

While the first generation think there is no more hope, they also recognise that their children’s “new way” presents a ray of hope. “The young ones are passionate about the struggle in a way that has surprised their parents,” an engineer who wanted to remain anonymous told the paper. “And their approach is very different – they want to use democratic and diplomatic means. It’s good. They should not make the mistakes that we did.” 

The Sri Lankan government angrily rejected a US state department report containing allegations of human rights abuses in the final days of the country's civil war, saying the document would fan further conflict.

According to accounts said by a senior US state department official to be "credible and well substantiated", government forces abducted and killed ethnic Tamil civilians, shelled and bombed no-fire zones, and killed senior LTTE leaders with whom they had brokered a surrender.

Although the US stressed the allegations in the report did not constitute an accusation of war crimes, the Sri Lankan foreign affairs ministry in Colombo accused the US of smearing its reputation.

"The allegations against the government of Sri Lanka ... appear to be unsubstantiated and devoid of corroborative evidence. There is a track record of vested interests endeavouring to bring the government of Sri Lanka into disrepute, through fabricated allegations and concocted stories."

"Thereby these interests hope to fan, once again, the flames of secessionism and to undo the concerted efforts of the Government and people of Sri Lanka, for rehabilitation and national reconciliation. The people of Sri Lanka therefore have every reason to be concerned that this report to the US Congress, may be abused for a similar end,” said a statement issued by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

"Sri Lanka’s domestic jurisprudence provides all the necessary scope for those perceiving themselves subjected to a violation of their human rights, to obtain redress through judicial directives to the concerned authorities," the statement said.

Stephen Rapp, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, called on Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of abuse by both sides.

"We want accountability in this situation," he said.

"We believe that [Sri Lankan authorities] can investigate this. We're trusting in that commitment."

The report says it reaches no conclusions on the veracity of the charges, although Rapp said the individual sources were "credible and reliable" and that allegations had been corroborated.

The US embassy in Colombo also defended the report, saying a majority of the incidents cited originated from first-hand accounts from people who had been in government-declared "no fire zones" and locations close to the fighting during military operations that concluded in May.

The US embassy said the report detailed incidents that occurred during the final months of the conflict between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that might constitute violations of International humanitarian law or crimes against humanity.

"The report compiles alleged incidents, as reported by a wide range of primary and secondary sources, involving both sides in the conflict," the US embassy said.

The US Congress report came less than three days after the European Union also submitted a report that accused the government of violating International human rights laws. 

On a cold autumn day, dozens of mortified Tamils protested in front of the UNICEF office in Toronto at Yonge & Eglinton to show their frustration of UNICEF's lack of action of the crises in Sri Lanka.

On Friday October 23, three simultaneous demonstrations occurred in the Greater Toronto Area by the Coalition To Stop The War In Sri Lanka. Dozens of Tamil activists rallied at the corner of Yonge and Eglinton, one of the busiest intersections in the Toronto area, to ask the question: “Why is UNICEF not using its mandate and its voice to save these children and their loved ones from Tamil concentration camps?”

New photographs emerged on the Internet on the same day as the protest. This time of Tamil men brutally fatally wounded. A young anonymous protester said that many of the Tamils at the demonstration were mostly there because of these latest images and to show the growing outrage among the public of the conditions in the displacement camps.

Jeevan Kumar, a spokesperson at the event, told Digital Journal that the most vulnerable people in the camps are children and that is one of the primary reasons that UNICEF needs to intervene. “A lot of them are suffering from diseases, malnourishment and now even abductions have been going on,” Kumar explained.

Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, recently stated, according to a press release that was e-mailed to Digital Journal, “The government has detained people in these camps and is threatening their health and even their lives by keeping them there during the rainy season floods. This is illegal, dangerous, and inhumane.”

One of the most pressing issues within the “death camps” in Sri Lanka are kidnappings and ransom because a lot of people try to flee the barbed wire facilities.

“The government of Sri Lanka, troops, paramilitaries that operate, if they know you have relatives back home in a foreign country, they’re kidnapping the kids so they can get a ransom. Eventually those parents communicate to relatives in foreign countries and say, ‘You know what, these kids are being kidnapped and they want a ransom.’” He further added that the United Nations has actually confirmed these incidents.

A lot of children, as many images show at these protests, are being raped, tortured and even killed by hanging. A large of number of children over the age of nine are separated into different torture camps and are slaughtered by the government of Sri Lanka.

There are 85,000 children in the camps and many of them, as Kumar touched upon, are experiencing psychological torment and need to be assisted as soon as possible. Children have to walk through dead bodies just to reach help and get to safety, “they’re traumatized.”

History has shown that foreign occupiers or rebel groups, such as the ones in Africa, try to manipulate children and re-educate them in order to abide by their way of thinking and train them to be child soldiers. Kumar told Digital Journal that a lot of these kids are being fed propaganda not just by the Sri Lankan government but by Singhalese. “The ultimate aim is to have the kids, when they grow up, to lean towards the government.” And later adding, “What is UNICEF going to do for these kids?”

Last month, as reported by The Times Online, James Elder, the official spokesperson for UNICEF, was ordered to leave Sri Lanka by the government. Therefore, like the two Canadian Members of Parliament who were denied visas to visit the former war-zone, this has made Tamils worldwide very suspicious of what the Sri Lankan President has to hide.

In June, Elder told The Australian, “The nutritional situation of children [in the camps] is a huge concern for UNICEF, and restrictions on access hinder our ability to save lives.”

Another important challenge facing the 300,000 Tamils in the internment camps is the upcoming typhoon season, which would cause serious disease and deaths. Kumar explained that money given by foreign governments would not go to potential victims in the camps, such as Norway’s recent aid of 77 million Kroner, which many Tamils feel would be kept by the Sri Lankan government and not given directly to the people who are most in need of drastic assistance.

This week, Digital Journal reported that the Sri Lankan economy is starting grow and the government stated that they can decrease their military spending because the 28-year civil has come to an end. However, Kumar stated that military expenditures are actually increasing.

“They’ve raised the military expenditures by another per cent [or so] but at the same time, they have declared the war over. And yet they’re still housing the people in camps.”

There are 1.2 million Tamils inside Sri Lanka, however, majority of them are being oppressed and are unable to function normally in everyday society, according to Sahabthan Jesuthasan, , a Toronto Tamil demonstrator.

All three men, including Shoban Jayamohan, another Tamil demonstrator in the GTA, are not at all surprised by any measures, past, present or future, taken by the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil people. But they demand action by UNICEF, UN, European Union, United States and Canadian government to stop the “genocide” and want the appropriate and affective diplomatic steps to take place.

“This is why they are rallying again for the 2nd time to remind UNICEF of their responsibilities and request that they will protect the Tamil Children and their loved ones from the Sri Lankan brutal regime and uphold the human rights for these children.”

Donors are increasingly concerned over the conditions in Sri Lanka’s camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) and are less likely to provide funding if they continue to restrict IDPs’ freedom of movement, say UN officials.

The donors are becoming increasingly "frustrated" over the closed nature and conditions of the IDP camps, said Neil Buhne, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sri Lanka.

Conditions in the illegal detention camps, where over 240,000 Tamil civilians remain forcibly held against their will, have shown no signs of improvement as the threat of flooding from monsoon rains draws ever closer, he said.

“Among the donors we talked to, there is a hesitation in terms of their assistance to camps over the next three or four months if there’s not significant progress on people returning, or larger numbers of people being allowed to leave,” Buhne told the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Menik Farm camp complex, surrounded by barbed wire and 24-hour armed security patrols by the Sri Lankan Army, is the single largest concentration of Tamils in the country.

The camp has expanded rapidly and consists of 10 zones, with a population of nearly a quarter of a million Tamil civilians.

A United Nations Common Humanitarian Action Plan (CHAP) report identified that US$270 million were needed for 15 projects, to which Buhne had said the response had been "pretty good".

However, he carried on to say “donor fatigue is really in respect to continuing these closed camps… Donors have not said no, but they have indicated their concerns to us”.

The Government vowed to release 80% of the camp inmates by the end of the year, but that target now seems increasingly unlikely.

“Large areas where people lived or used for economic activity... have been extensively mined... but demining takes time...” President Mahinda Rajapaksa said at a Ministerial Meeting of the Asian Cooperation Dialogue in Colombo. He was trying to justify the failure to release the detained persons by the promised date.

“There have been numerous promises, but there needs to be tangible change. We want concrete action instead of promises,” a senior official from a western donor agency told IRIN.

“If the camps open, then I think there will be a lot of donors willing to give more. But as it stands, the concerns are too great to continue to support a closed camp scenario,” the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The message we’re getting is that it may be difficult to sustain the amount of funding we’ve had over the last months into 2010,” concluded Mr Buhne.

This follows a recent announcement by the UK government also that it would no longer be able to provide funding for the camps.

The British decision was announced after a visit to the Menik Farm complex by the country’s international development minister Mike Foster, who was accompanied on his rare visit by BBC reporters, who were able to document the dire conditions in which the people actually lived.

"There is no water to drink. There is no water to bathe. We are going to die here," were the grim words of one of the many camp inmates.

There have been at least 2 protests by the camp inmates, both of which have been violently suppressed by the Sri Lankan Army.

One incident, according to the UNHCR resulted in several people being injured "including a child who was hit by a stray bullet and is now paralyzed".

WHEN Muthu Kumaran returned to Sri Lanka in February 2007, he had hoped, even expected, that his Tamil people were about to win independence.

An Australian citizen and civil engineer, he wanted to be there when a Tamil state was established, freed from majority Sinhalese rule, and he wanted to lend his expertise in water management, too.

Instead, the father of two from Sydney's west would endure the brutal reality of the Sri Lankan government's final push to wipe out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the militant Tamil Tigers.

Kumaran was not only swept up in the renewed hostilities of a 25-year civil war, he was also detained in one of the notorious internment camps that are still home to nearly 300,000 Tamils.

He returned to Australia in the first week of August this year, having managed to buy his way out of the largest military-run camp in Sri Lanka, at Manik Farm.

And with so many Tamils still detained in their homeland, and the Rudd government wrestling with how best to cope with those who have escaped and are seeking asylum in Australia, Kumaran has decided to speak out about his experience and the plight of his people.

"People need to know, the international community needs to know, what it is happening in Sri Lanka," Kumaran tells Focus.

"The US, Britain, Australia, they talk about democracy and human rights. Well, they cannot keep their eyes closed to these things."

Fearing retribution here in Australia as well as for his extended family in Sri Lanka, Kumaran - not his real name - has requested his identity not be revealed.

Having first left Sri Lanka 35 years ago, Kumaran had planned on staying for an extended period when he returned in early 2007, perhaps to retire there eventually.

Basing himself in the northern city Kilinochchi, the de facto Tamil capital, he initially worked alongside non-government organisations Oxfam, Solidar, Forut and ZOA on water sanitation issues, as well as helping set up livelihood projects: teaching women how to dry banana leaves and make baskets for sale and setting up street stalls. He also taught English in schools.

However, in January last year the Sri Lankan government withdrew from a ceasefire arrangement with the LTTE and the military began moving north into Tigers-held terrain in a bid to wipe them out.

By December Kilinochchi was being targeted in bombing raids and Kumaran had to flee with more than 100,000 residents.

The Sri Lankan government directed Tamils to evacuate to a designated safe zone at Visuwamadu about 10km away.

For the next 5 1/2 months Kumaran remained on the road, herded south through seven safe zones alongside hundreds of thousands of other banished Tamils known as internally displaced persons, or IDPs.

At each stop, an impromptu camp would be established in the belting heat, tents erected, bunkers, ground wells and toilets dug out, hospitals set up.

Then a few days later the bombs would resume and this mass of humanity would move again, the numbers swelling all the time.

"The roads would be chock-a-block. Lorries, tractors, bullock carts, pick-ups, motorbikes, push-cycles, people walking, everyone carrying bags. There were young children, pregnant ladies, babies, people on stretchers, you've never seen anything like it," he says.

Kumaran also says they regularly came under fire along the way from bombs dropped by the Sri Lankan air force, rockets from naval ships, long-distance shelling and rifle rounds from the jungle bordering the roadside.

He says he saw people killed and many injured. He ferried the bodies, dead and alive, to the nearest hospital or cemetery in a four-wheel drive.

"Twice my pick-up got hit, but luckily not me. I think maybe I saw a dozen people killed, maybe another 20 injured, right in front of me," he says.

By the time he left Mullivaikal in the second week of May, Kumaran was on foot, as were almost all the 300,000 Tamils, his possessions reduced to just a plastic shopping bag containing clothes and his Australian passport.

Thirty-six hours later they came to a military screening point at Vavuniya, where everyone was frisked for weapons and directed to school grounds.

There, the sprawling crowd was ordered to divide into two groups: those who were associated with the LTTE and those who were not.

"We were told if we were LTTE, to declare it and there would be an amnesty. But they said, 'We know you, if we find out you have lied, you will be severely punished,"' Kumaran recalls.

He joined the non-Tigers. They were then ordered on to buses and driven six hours to an area called Chettikulam, and a large swath of cleared jungle off the Vavuniya-Mannar Road. He had come to the Manik Farm internment camp.

Kumaran describes the camp as a series of blocks, separated from each other by a road and strip of jungle. The facility was ringed by razor wire and guarded by armed troops.

He estimates about 2500 people were held on each block, housed in 160 tents, with 16 people to each 4mx4m tent. Each block also had a community kitchen, a medical facility and four toilets each for men and women.

Conditions were primitive at best, Kumaran says.

There were no plates or utensils, so meals of dhal curry and rice were eaten off plastic bags that were reused each day. Water was limited to two 1000-litre tanks a block. Disease was everywhere.

"I volunteered to be a translator for the Sinhalese doctors at the hospital. There was a lot of typhoid, chicken pox, fever, diarrhoea, malnutrition. People had large rashes because of the lack of bathing facilities, too," Kumaran says.

"Our block, four people died while I was there, and another elderly gentleman hanged himself."

In all, he would be there for eight days. In that time he wrote to the Australian High Commissioner and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Colombo about his detention, letters a camp official agreed to send.

But before he heard back, Kumaran says he discovered via "the bush telegraph" he could buy his freedom.

He is reticent to reveal details of his escape or how much he paid, but he says he approached a local worker on his block who smuggled him out late at night two days later, hiding him in the back of a van.

He presumes the camp guards knew what was happening. "The guards stopped us, but they didn't question (the driver) very much and they let us go," he says.

They were driven to another location, where they waited until the money was transferred into the required bank account.

But it would be another six weeks before he flew out of Colombo.

He lost 25kg during his ordeal, so much that airport officials were concerned he did not resemble his passport photo and it was arranged for Australian embassy officials to meet him in Bangkok to double-check his identity.

But Kumaran says there was no pleasure, or even relief, in setting foot in Sydney in early August. Instead he felt an overwhelming sense of guilt.

"As soon as I was in the air leaving Colombo, it was a bad feeling. My heart is still there," he says, tears welling in his eyes.

"So many people made sacrifices, and yet still people are behind barbed wire, queuing to use the toilet and for food. They are not free. And I am here."

Perversely, however, Kumaran believes the turmoil of past year, including the defeat of LTTE, may bring an independent Tamil state closer to reality.

The Sri Lankan government's treatment of the IDPs demonstrates that the Sinhalese and Tamils cannot live peacefully side by side, he says.

"It will happen. I am confident still," Kumaran says. "Maybe they have done us a favour. They have created a bigger problem by what they have done and it will force the world to act. And they have only strengthened Tamil nationalism. They have not killed it."

Thousands of non-combatants, according to the United Nations, were killed in the final phase of the Sri Lankan war this year as government forces overran the Tamil Tiger guerrillas. Nearly five months after Colombo’s stunning military triumph, the peace dividend remains elusive, with President Mahinda Rajapaksa setting out—in the name of “eternal vigilance”—to expand by 50 per cent an already-large military. Little effort has been made to reach out to the Tamil minority and begin a process of national reconciliation.

China, clearly, was the decisive factor in ending the war through its generous supply of offensive weapons and its munificent aid. It even got its ally Pakistan to actively assist Rajapaksa in his war strategy. Today, China is the key factor in providing Colombo the diplomatic cover against the institution of a UN investigation into possible war crimes, or the appointment of a UN special envoy on Sri Lanka. In return for such support, Beijing has been able to make strategic inroads into a critically located country in India’s backyard.

Unlike China’s assistance, India’s role has received little international attention. But India, too, contributed to the Sri Lankan bloodbath through its military aid, except that it has ended up, strangely, with its leverage undermined.

For years, India had pursued a hands-off approach toward Sri Lanka in response to two developments—a disastrous 1987-1990 peacekeeping operation there; and the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a member of the Tamil Tigers. But having been outmanoeuvred by China’s success in extending strategic reach to Sri Lanka in recent years, New Delhi got sucked into providing major assistance to Colombo, lest it lose further ground in Sri Lanka.

From opening an unlimited line of military credit for Sri Lanka to extending critical naval and intelligence assistance, India provided sustained war support despite a deteriorating humanitarian situation there. A “major turning point” in the war, as Sri Lankan Navy Chief Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda acknowledged, came when the rebels’ supply ships were eliminated, one by one, with input from Indian naval intelligence, cutting off all supplies to the rebel-held areas. That in turn allowed the Sri Lankan ground forces to make rapid advances and unravel the de facto state the Tigers had established in the island nation’s north and east.

Sri Lanka, for its part, practised adroit but duplicitous diplomacy: it assured India it would approach other arms suppliers only if New Delhi couldn’t provide a particular weapon system it needed. Yet it quietly began buying arms from China and Pakistan without even letting India know. In doing so, Colombo mocked Indian appeals that it rely for its legitimate defence needs on India, the main regional power. It was only by turning to India’s adversaries for weapons, training and other aid that Colombo pulled off a startling military triumph. In any event, Colombo was emboldened by the fact that the more it chipped away at India’s traditional role, the more New Delhi seemed willing to pander to its needs.

Indeed, Rajapaksa deftly played the China, India and Pakistan cards to maximise gains. After key Tamil Tiger leaders had been killed in the fighting, Rajapaksa—to New Delhi’s mortification —thanked China, India and Pakistan in the same breath for Sri Lanka’s victory.

Today, India stands more marginalised than ever in Sri Lanka. Its natural constituency—the Tamils—feels not only betrayed, but also looks at India as a colluder in the bloodbath. India already had alienated the Sinhalese majority in the 1980s, when it first armed the Tamil Tigers and then sought to disarm them through an ill-starred peacekeeping foray that left almost three times as many Indian troops dead as the 1999 Kargil War with Pakistan.

India’s waning leverage over Sri Lanka is manifest from the way it now has to jostle for influence there with arch-rivals China and Pakistan. Hambantota—the billion-dollar port Beijing is building in Sri Lanka’s southeast—symbolises the Chinese strategic challenge to India from the oceans.

Even as some 280,000 displaced Tamils—equivalent to the population of Belfast—continue to be held incommunicado in barbed-wire camps, India has been unable to persuade Colombo to set them free, with incidents being reported of security forces opening fire on those seeking to escape from the appalling conditions. One of the few persons allowed to visit some of these camps was UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said after his tour in May: “I have travelled around the world and visited similar places, but these are by far the most appalling scenes I have seen...” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said recently that India has conveyed its “concerns in no uncertain terms to Sri Lanka on various occasions, stressing the need for them to focus on resettling and rehabilitating the displaced Tamil population at the earliest”. But India seems unable to make a difference even with messages delivered in “no uncertain terms”.

THE story of the loss of India’s pre-eminent role in Sri Lanka actually begins in 1987, when New Delhi made an abrupt U-turn in policy and demanded that the Tigers lay down their arms. Their refusal to bow to the diktat was viewed as treachery, and the Indian Army was ordered to rout them.

Since then, Sri Lanka has served as a reminder of how India’s foreign policy is driven not by resolute, long-term goals, but by a meandering approach influenced by the personal caprice of those in power. The 1987 policy reversal occurred after then Sri Lankan President J.R. Jayewardene —a wily old fox—sold neophyte Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi the line that an “Eelam”, or Tamil homeland, in Sri Lanka would be a dangerous precursor to a Greater Eelam uniting Tamils on both sides of the Palk Straits. In buying that myth, Gandhi did not consider a simple truth: if Bangladesh’s 1971 creation did not provoke an Indian Bengali nationalist demand for a Greater Bangladesh, why would an Eelam lead to a Greater Eelam?

Actually, the Tamils in India and Sri Lanka have pursued divergent identities since the fall of the Pandyan kingdom in the 14th century. While the Eelam struggle is rooted in the treatment of Tamils as second-class citizens in Sri Lanka—where affirmative action has been instituted for the majority Sinhalese and a mono-ethnic national identity sought to be shaped—the Tamils in India face no discrimination and have been fully integrated into the national mainstream.

Another personality driven shift in India’s Sri Lanka policy came after the 2004 change of government in New Delhi, when the desire to avenge Gandhi’s assassination trumped strategic considerations, with the hands-off approach being abandoned. That handily meshed with the hawkish agenda of Rajapaksa, who began chasing the military option soon after coming to power in 2005. “It is their duty to help us at this stage,” Rajapaksa said about India. And Indian help came liberally.

In fact, such has been the unstinting Indian support that even after the crushing of the Tamil Tigers, India went out of the way to castigate the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, in June for shining a spotlight on the deplorable human-rights situation in Sri Lanka, including the continuing internment of internally displaced Tamils. India accused Pillay—a distinguished South African judge of Indian descent who has sought an independent international investigation into the alleged war crimes committed by all sides in Sri Lanka—of going beyond her brief, saying “the independence of the High Commissioner cannot be presumed to exceed that of the UN Secretary-General.”

The costs of lending such support have been high. New Delhi today is groping to bring direction to its Sri Lanka policy by defining its objectives more coherently, even as it struggles to respond to the Chinese strategy to build maritime choke-points in the Indian Ocean region. Indeed, India has ceded strategic space in its regional backyard in such a manner that Bhutan now remains its sole pocket of influence. In Sri Lanka, India has allowed itself to become a marginal player despite its geostrategic advantage and trade and investment clout.

More fundamentally, the pernicious myth Jayewardene planted in Gandhi’s mind triggered a chain of events still exacting costs on Indian security and interests. In fact, nothing better illustrates the fallacy Jayewardene sold Gandhi than the absence of a Tamil backlash in India to the killings of thousands of countless Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka this year, and to the continued incarceration in tent camps of 280,000 Tamil refugees, including 80,000 children. In fact, even as the Sri Lankan war reached a gory culmination, India’s Tamil Nadu State voted in the national elections for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by Gandhi’s widow, Sonia Gandhi, although that governing coalition had shied away from raising its voice over the Sri Lankan slaughter.

Today, the upsurge of Sinhal chauvinism flows from the fact that the Sri Lankan military accomplished a task whose pursuit forced the mightier Indian Army to make an ignominious exit 19 years ago. Consequently, Colombo is going to be even less inclined than before to listen to New Delhi. Indeed, the manner in which Colombo played the China and Pakistan cards in recent years to outsmart India is likely to remain an enduring feature of Sri Lankan diplomacy, making Sri Lanka a potential springboard for anti-India manoeuvres.

Brahma Chellaney, a Professor of Strategic Studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author, most recently, of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan.

A small percentage of the Tamil refugees held in camps since May have allegedly been released amid growing international pressure on the Sri Lankan Government over its human rights record. But reports from the island suggested that the civilians were merely moved from one place of confinement to another.

About 5,700 refugees left the huge camp at Menik Farm, in the country's north, on October 22 to be resettled, the Government said.

Rehabilitation Minister Rishat Badurdheen told the press that 5,700 IDPs were allowed to return to their homes, claiming this was in keeping with a promise to release 80% of the inmates within a 180-day deadline.

The minister also claimed that another 36,000 would be resettled "over the coming weeks" as he spoke to the BBC.

Many of these civilians have been transferred to smaller transit camps or small shelters that have been set up in schools and other government owned buildings in other regions of the North and East, reports said.

On the same day, the US State Department released a report of possible war crimes committed during the final months of the civil war, citing actions by government forces and the Tigers between January and May 2009.

Senior Presidential Advisor Basil Rajapaksa, brother to President Mahinda Rajapakse, had led a press conference week earlier, where journalists were taken on tour and a ceremony was held to mark the release of 1,200 IDPs.

The press were told that the people would be allowed to resettle back in their original homes in the Mannar district.

The ceremony was held at Manthai West transit camp, where thousands of “released” IDPs were being held. These civilians had been taken to Manthai West from the camps in Chettikulam.

But witnesses said the displaced boarded buses that merely took them back to the camps.

Sunday Times photographer Ranjith Perera, who was amongst the journalists taken on the tour, reported that he witnessed the IDPs board a bus, said to be taking them to their homes, and then return back to the same Manthai West transit camp.

“It was more of a photo opportunity for the journalists” reported the photographer.

 “Every aspect of the exercise was a fraud designed to deflect criticism at home and internationally over the detention of Tamil civilians,” said Sarath Kumara of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

He called the event a “public relations charade”.

When government officials were asked by the paper about the IDPs of Manthai West they were told that “the original houses of the IDPs had suffered heavy damage due to the heavy fighting... it was not possible to send them directly to their homes as their houses needed repairs”.

There were also 144 Tamil students who were being held at Poonthooddam Child Protection and Rehabilitation Centre, a Vavuniya internment camp, being forcibly transferred to Ratmalana Hindu College in Colombo. Parents were told they could visit "once or twice a month".

The Sunday Times reported of another case of IDPs, originally from Mullaitivu, who the government claimed to have resettled.

It was uncovered that these Tamil civilians were being held in a transit internment camp in Thunukkai and were merely “allowed to visit their villages in Mullaitivu” and “(see) for themselves the damage caused to their houses”.

Even Minister Douglas Devananda confirmed that IDPs from Mullaiththeevu and Kilinochchi districts in Vanni are now being held in the detention camps in Mirusuvil, Kodikaamam Naavaladi and Kaithadi in Jaffna.

Separately, in Trincomalee fifteen IDPs were abducted from a transit camp located in the complex of Eachchilampathu Sri Shenpaga Maha Vidiyalayam in Seruvila division. They were all Tamil men, who were married and aged between 25 and 45.

A group of unknown persons dressed in army camouflage uniform were said to have taken them and their whereabouts are currently uknown.

This is a situation that is seen all over the North-East of Sri Lanka as these smaller indefinite ‘transit’ camps are established, observers said.

And this is now an open secret.

“The government has widely publicised recent releases from the camps yet Amnesty International has received reports that many are simply transfers to other camps where the displaced may be subjected to rescreening by local authorities,” reads a report by the international NGO.

The organisation “confirmed the location of at least 10 such facilities in school buildings and hostels originally designated as displacement camps in the north” while stating that there were “frequent reports of other unofficial places of detention elsewhere in the country”.

Places such as Poonthotham Teachers Training College have been identified as “irregular places of detention” and widely condemned.

“The danger of serious human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings increases substantially when detainees are held in locations that are not officially acknowledged places of detention and lack proper legal procedures and safeguards”, said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia Director.

Since the climax of the civil war in May, over 240,000 Tamil civilians remain forcibly held in internment camps by the Sri Lankan Government. Repeated promises by the government to send these IDPs home have been broken and pressure is mounting on Colombo to act quickly.

Increasing involvement in British politics and reciprocal openness of the British political parties was marked by a part-televised event held in Essex Sunday where several incumbent and prospective parliamentarians from the British Conservative party reached out to their Tamil constituencies and articulated their positions on the conflict and its consequences in Sri Lanka.

The event was the first one in a series planned by the recently formed British Tamil Conservative Association (BTCA).

Members of Parliament from the British party were keen to stress both their sense of fairness as well as their orientation towards action over rhetoric, according to a BTCA attendee.

Conservative candidate, Robert Halfon, echoed in his website, the sentiments expressed Sunday stressing the need for autonomy for the Tamils saying they deserved nothing less.

The event reflects the growing confidence with which this once-immigrant Tamil community is engaging with the domestic political space, a trend picked up last weekend by the cover story of the Financial Times magazine edition in London, a Tamil activist youth attending the event said.

Traditionally, it has been the Labour party in Britain that has positioned itself as the “party of immigrants” – at least in the eyes of many first generation British Tamils.

However, as the Financial Times pointed out the Tamil Diaspora for historic reasons fits a middle class stereotype, its members largely consisting of professionals and entrepreneurs.

As the Diaspora integrates in their adopted countries and with the emergence of a confident and assertive second generation, British Tamils are increasingly confident in looking for political parties that fit their values and most importantly their sense of justice and fairness with respect to foreign policy on Sri Lanka.

With general elections scheduled for next year and the political conference season over, the campaigning has commenced with some vigor.

The Labour party in its annual conference passed a resolution that condemned "the detention by the Sri Lankan government of 300,000 men, women and children" as inhumane. Tamil political analysts say the British Tamil community is watching closely for the parties to clarify a party-wide policy towards Sri Lanka, a conference resolution was an important first step.

While individual members of parliament have built close relationships with their constituents a broad policy change is required for effective action, BTCA said.

A traditional British dinner of roast lamb was preceded by a toast to the Queen, and a one minutes silence in memory of those who had lost their lives in the recent conflict in the Vanni. Raffle prizes included a book signed by Conservative leader David Cameron, and afternoon tea at Westminster, BTCA said.

After dinner the candidates and members, in a series of speeches, outlined their views on the Sri Lankan conflict and on the pressing issue of the internment camps.

James Brokenshire, the Shadow Minister for Home affairs spoke of the unacceptable nature of the internment camps in Sri Lanka . He said that the past six months of internment is six months too long. He spoke of the need for a long term solution to the ethnic conflict and in support of Tamil autonomy and stressed that while the present British government had been long on words it had been short on action.

Lee Scott, Member of Parliament for Ilford North reiterated the stand that he has consistently taken in parliament describing what was taking place in Sri Lanka as genocide. The internment camps were particularly on his mind, he said, in view of his upcoming visit to Auschwitz.

Andrew Charalambous, prospective member for Edmonton shared this view and supported a two state solution to the ethnic conflict. He was keen to rename the British Tamil Conservative Association as the “Conservative friends of Tamil Eelam”.

Robert Haflon, candidate for Harlow said of the internment camps “This desperate situation cannot continue. It does nothing to bring about peace, and if anything exacerbates long held grievances felt by the Tamils.” He too stressed the need for autonomy for the Tamils saying they deserved nothing less.

Andrew Rosindell, Member of Parliament for Romford, said his party stood for fairness and human rights. All of the speakers deplored the internment camps and the discrimination against Tamils in Sri Lanka. These included Tony Boutle parliamentary candidate for Ilford South and Gavin Barwell, candidate for Croydon Central among others.

The present and prospective Members of Parliament from the Conservative party were keen to differentiate themselves from the present Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown by stressing that they stood for action as opposed to rhetoric on Sri Lanka, BTCA said.

More than 250 000 humans are kept in concentration camps for “screening” by the Government of Sri Lanka, allegedly to discover “terrorists”. The question arises why children are kept there, even babies. These Concentration camps are called “welfare camps” by the Sri Lankan Government.

I refer to the latest report by Human Rights Watch from October 10, 2009: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/10/09/sri-lanka-tensions-mount-camp-con…. It is in agreement with other international human rights organisations’ reports. In addition, I refer to the EU Commission’s report with an evaluation of Sri Lanka on 19 October 2009: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2009/october/tradoc_145141.pdf

The following information is documented by human rights’ organisations in the field in August/September 2009. Names of the children have been left out here. The list makes it possible to follow up the fate of each child over time and makes denials by the Government of killings through neglect of children impossible. The list can be ordered from me. The world has an eye on every child listed. The list gives unfortunately only a part of the total number of children in all concentration camps.

1. Total number of children on the list: 1200

2. Names of the concentration camps and the number of children:

1. Vavuniya Anantha Kumarasami Camp: 118

2. Vavuniya Arunachchala Camp: 65

3. Vavuniya Kathirkamar Camp: 8

4. Vavuniya Sheriliana: 50

5. Vavuniya Ulukkulam Camp: 959

3. Age of the children: Youngest: 1month. Oldest: 18 years.

4. Number under 5 years: 308

5. Girls: 536 Boys: 664

6. Orphans: 1082

The following is an eye witness report with special regard to children from a prisoner in a concentration camp. The prisoners managed to get free in August 2009. The whole report was published in October 2009 (http://www.tamilnet.com/img/publish/2009/10/Living_in_Menik_Farm.pdf), but the section on children was slightly revised for this message by the former prisoner who rightly prefers to be anonymous.

"I was interned in the ---- camp of Menik Farm----. During those four months in the camp, it is the condition of the children at the camp that I found most depressing. I was too timid to go around collecting statistics though it would have been easy to collect statistics because of the proximity of the people crowded within a small area. However, I observed carefully and was overwhelmed by the wasting away of the children.

"Newborn babies are sent to the camp conditions, which are unsuitable for adults, just few days after being born. Toddlers play in the filthy area right in front of the toilets. I have never seen flies and mosquitoes in such numbers in my life. While eating, one hand is fully occupied with chasing the flies; a practice that children will not adopt thus consuming food contaminated by flies that come straight from the toilets very nearby. Children of well off families who appeared well cared for on arrival at the camp were visibly wasting away during the stay in the camp. The contributory factors were poor diet, the hostile weather, and continuous illness.

"Majority of the children including infants did not have milk (powder) except an occasional packet handed out by some charity. Once a father of a seven month old baby came begging for some sugar to put in the plain tea (black tea) to be given to his seven month old baby because the mother did not have enough breast milk and the baby was hungry. Plain tea had become the regular diet for this baby.

"The diet was most definitely inadequate for the children despite some nutritional supplement that were distributed. There was no milk, meat or vegetable in their diet. Sometimes soya bean was given but they were of rotten quality and children would hardly eat them.

"Illness among children was pandemic and it wasted them. Small injuries became infected and caused problems. Vomiting, fever or diarrhea seemed a natural condition in most children. Measures of malnutrition maybe a standard way of measuring worst affected children but it does not capture the general condition of children wasting away. When a child runs a fever most parents worry a lot fearing Hepatitis-A infection.

"The queues are very long at the OPD clinics inside the camp and the doctors work at break neck speed. I have seen a doctor writing a prescription to a 12 year old boy without finding out what is wrong with the boy. The medicines that are dispensed are arranged in a table and the total list of medicines consists of around 30 different medicines. The medicine dispensers too work with breakneck speed in dispensing them. Once an educated mother told me that she visited the doctor for treatment for her baby as well as for herself. The medicine dispensers mixed up the medicines and gave the baby what should have been given to the mother. Since the mother had some awareness of the medications she spotted it. Most mothers in the camp who do not have such awareness would have given the adult medicine to the baby. God only knows how many babies, children and even adults died due such medical negligence. Who is there in the camp to watch, monitor and investigate? Deaths are just that, deaths and no investigations are done as to the cause of it.

"Patients often queue up for doctors for hours even before the doctors arrive from outside. No one in the OPD clinic will know when the doctors are likely to arrive. One just waits around taking one’s chances. For all this the level of sickness among inmates is far higher than among the population at large and it is obvious.

"Take the eight tent group where I was staying. Five of the tents out of the eight had children under 10. One child died; one became seriously ill and taken away to Vavuniya hospital and all the other children had frequent fever, vomiting and diarrhoea. The children were wasting away and it was visibly obvious. Some of the children had persistent skin disease despite several visits to the doctors and treatment. Four of the children contracted HepatitisA and the parents were told by the doctors to just take good care of them and give lots of fruits because the hospitals had no medicine. Fruits were very expensive in the camp. There is a native treatment for HepatitisA involving a plant named “Keelkainelli” in Tamil. Even to get this plant was a struggle because it meant someone has to bring it from outside and handover to the inmates at the meeting spot as described later.

"People young and old suddenly dying after a few days of fever is a common occurrence. All of us were left puzzled as to the cause and no one gave any explanation. All of us without exception have suffered diarrhoea at least once and most of us many times.

"I used to keep telling myself during the stay in the camp how lucky I was that I do not have any young children under my care. The unhygienic living, especially the play area and the continuous illness is an ordeal for the young mothers. Even thinking about the condition of newborns and their mothers who are sent back to the camp conditions soon after birth is an ordeal. Perhaps the most telling scenes of the camp conditions and the health service can be found by visiting the OPD clinics and observing young mothers with very sick babies waiting for long time in queues with tears trickling down their face.

"Children went to makeshift schools staffed by teachers who were also interned in the camp. Many teachers have lamented how they can teach while living under such conditions. The school is made up of sheds with uneven floor covered with tarpaulin. The children cannot even place their books on the uneven floor to write. They have to keep the soft cover books on their knees to write.

"Most of the young children have to carry very heavy buckets of water to assist their parents who are also struggling to care for the children often as a single parent. The little bodies bent like a question mark under the weight surely would have done permanent damage.

"If we can tolerate the incarceration of the entire population of young children from a community which is clearly leading to long term damage to their development, how does this measure up in any of the international humanitarian/human rights laws? Can the long term damage done to them be measured and judged?"

Tamil Diaspora in Germany gathered in Berlin on October 22 to stage a protest march in an effort to draw the attention of the international community to the pathetic plight of Tamils interned in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camps.

Two youths, representing students in Tamil Nadu, T. Sreenivasa Rao and Iraa. Gnanasekaran, on their journey in Europe to take part in the UN conference on Global Warming Awareness in Denmark on 7 December, took part in the march and rally.

They have made it their duty to raise their voices for the interned Tamils, in all the countries they pass through, sources in Berlin said.

The demonstrators marched four km through the main streets of Berlin and held a meeting in front of the world famous Brandenburgen Gate.

Asia representative of the Society for Threatened People, Ulrich Dalius, Human Rights activist and German parliamentarian of Green Peace Party, Volker BecK and Ms. Shopia Deeg, Palestine journalist and writer of International Solidarity Movement spoke at the meeting.

Both Seenuvas Rao and Gnanasekaran addressed the meeting in Tamil and English condemning the Sri Lankan government for the atrocity committed against innocent Tamils interned in camps surrounded by barbed wire.

At the beginning of the march the student representatives from Tamil Nadu and Ulric Dalius submitted a memorandum to Manuel Muller, the Foreign Ministry Officer in charge of Sri Lankan affairs, which requested urgent assistance to provide the needs of the inmates in the internment camps.

Manuel Muller said that German government is not wholly satisfied with Sri Lanka in treating the Tamils detained and that it is carefully observing the conditions in Sri Lanka and the attitude of its government, the sources added.

The United States on Thursday October 22 urged Sri Lanka to probe and possibly prosecute those behind war crimes alleged to have occurred this earlier year.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly urged Sri Lanka to take steps to "thoroughly investigate" what are "credible" claims of atrocities committed by government forces and the Liberation Tigers – claims contained in a new department report.

"The government of Sri Lanka has said that they are determined to establish a reconciliation process with the people of the north, but we believe strongly that a very important part of any reconciliation process is accountability," said Kelly.

"This report lays out some concerns that we have about how this military operation was conducted," Kelly said.

The report to the Senate detailed a day-by-day account and said the alleged incidents in the final stages of war may constitute "violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) or crimes against humanity and related harms."

But it said the report "does not reach legal conclusions" as to whether such incidents actually amount to violations of the laws of war. Nor does it conclude that the incidents mentioned actually occurred.

The 70-page report was compiled from intelligence reports from the US embassy in Colombo, text messages and photographs from the war zone, foreign government sources and reports from human rights and media organisations.

The allegations are "based on reporting by the embassy, by international organizations on the ground out there, and by media and NGOs (non-government organizations)," Kelly said.

"We believe that they are... credible," the spokesman added.

“Information concerning the majority of incidents cited in this report originated in first-hand accounts communicated by persons from within the government-declared No Fire Zones and locations close to the fighting,” said a press release issued with the report.

The report was submitted in accordance with the 2009 Supplemental Appropriations Act, which directed the secretary of state to submit a report "detailing incidents during the recent conflicts in Sri Lanka that may constitute violations of international humanitarian law or crimes against humanity, and, to the extent practicable, identifying the parties responsible."

The act also instructed the U.S. government to cut off financial support to Sri Lanka, except for basic humanitarian aid, until the Sri Lankan government respected the rights of internally displaced persons, accounted for persons detained during the fighting, allowed humanitarian organisations and the media access into affected areas, and implemented policies to promote reconciliation and justice.

The report listed Common Article 3 of Geneva Conventions, statutes of International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and Rwanda (ICTR), and the statutes of International Criminal Court (ICC) as "useful foundation for reviewing the conduct" described in the State Department's report.

"Ultimately, as appropriate, (they should) bring to justice those who are found guilty," Kelly told reporters following publication of the report which was sent to Congress on October 21.

The report covered the period from January - when fighting intensified - until the end of May, when Sri Lankan troops defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

It cited reports in which government troops or government-backed paramilitaries "abducted and in some instances then killed Tamil civilians, particularly children and young men."

The report also said not enough food, medicine and clean water reached a no-fire zone and civilian camps even though the government had pledged to guarantee sufficient supplies there.

The report describes a hellish scene, in which a no-fire zone crowded with civilians was struck by sustained shelling and bombing.

One source in the no-fire zone estimated that 100 people a day were dying in Sri Lankan army shelling and bombing. Another source said hospital facilities in the area were continually struck by shells, even though their locations had been carefully reported to the government.

According to a report cited, a congested civilian area of the no-fire zone came under heavy shell attack, killing hundreds of civilians.

The report also detailed allegations in which the LTTE took boys and girls to join their force and in which government forces broke a ceasefire.

The report used Satellite imagery evidence as a tool to fill the information vacuum engineered as a result of the Sri Lankan government refusing to allow reporters and aid workers into the region.

The report cites footage of Sri Lankan forces executing nine bound and naked Tamils in January - which the government says was forged - and killings of young men rounded up in safe zones. The report mentioned that independent investigations into the footage are still to be carried out to establish its authenticity.

The report also gives prominence to the alleged execution of members of the LTTE political section while surrendering to the Sri Lanka military. The US embassy and other governments reported that Tamil political leaders were killed while surrendering, the report said.

"The United States recognizes a state's inherent right to defend itself from armed attacks, including those from non-state actors such as terrorist groups," the report said in its executive summary.

"The United States also expects states and non-state actors to comply with their international legal obligations," it added.

"This report compiles alleged incidents that transpired in the final stages of the war, which may constitute violations of international humanitarian law or crimes against humanity and related harms," it said.

“The United States looks to the Government of Sri Lanka to identify an appropriate and credible mechanism and initiate a process for accountability,” said the statement that accompanied the report. 

Legal experts pointed out that under basic rules of international criminal law, the US has to give the Sri Lankan government the opportunity to investigate itself credibly, and that, further steps are warranted by the international community, if and when Sri Lanka fails or refuses to do so, reported TamilNet.

Sri Lanka was ranked 162nd of the 175 countries in the latest press freedom ranking released by the Paris based Reporters without Borders on Wednesday October 21.

The Asian countries that least respected press freedom were announced as North Korea, one of the “infernal trio” at the bottom of the rankings, Burma, which still suffers from prior censorship and imprisonment, and Laos, an unchanging dictatorship where no privately-owned media are permitted, RSF said.

"To compile this index, Reporters Without Borders prepared a questionnaire with 40 criteria that assess the state of press freedom in each country. It includes every kind of violation directly affecting journalists (such as murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship, confiscation of newspaper issues, searches and harassment). Ánd it includes the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for these press freedom violations," RSF said in its website, explaining the details behind computing the index.

Asia’s few democracies are well placed in RSF's latest rankings. New Zealand (13th), Australia (16th) and Japan (17th) are all in the top 20.

Respect for press freedom and the lack of targeted violence against journalists enable these three countries to be regional leaders, press reports said.

South Korea (69th) and Taiwan (59th) fell far this year.

South Korea plummeted 22 places because of the arrests of several journalists and bloggers and the conservative government’s attempts to control critical media.

The new ruling party in Taiwan tried to interfere in state and privately-owned media while violence by certain activists further undermined press freedom.

Two Asian countries were included in the index for the first time: Papua New Guinea (56th), which obtained a very respectable ranking for a developing country, and the Sultanate of Brunei (155th), which came in the bottom third because of the absence of an independent press.

The report came as Sri Lanka announced plans to monitor and block websites that were "known to spread anti-government propaganda and feed incorrect information."

"Counter propaganda will be launched by the government to safeguard the present environment of peace and prevent unrest among the public,” said Media Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeyawardene at a press briefing.

“When browsing through some of these websites we wonder whether there is an insidious attempt to create a rift between President Mahinda Rajapakse and the military leaders," Yapa said.

"There has been a sharp increase in fabricated or misleading propaganda which has been a hindrance to maintaining peace and stability in Sri Lanka The screening of the news reports and feature articles would be carried out by a committee especially selected by the Information Department,” he said.

Yapa said that the mainstream newspapers and TV channels have acted with responsibility, but a section of the electronic and print media that have "behaved in an irresponsible manner."

“Through newspaper advertisements we will correct misinformation and give the government’s take on those issues while exposing websites that publish such misinformation,” Yapa said.