Recent NGO & rights groups coverage on Sri Lankan conflict

UN calls on Tamil rebels to ensure free passage for world body’s staff

22 January 2009 – The United Nations has issued its strongest possible protest to the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for refusing to allow the world body’s national staff and dependents who were travelling with a UN aid convoy to return from Sri Lanka’s northern Vanni area.

“The staff are part of a UN convoy which traveled to the Vanni on Friday, 16 January, delivering urgent food and emergency supplies to displaced populations,” according to a statement issued by the Office of the UN Resident/Humanitarian Coordinator in Colombo.

Due to fighting between the LTTE and Government forces, the convoy has only been able to move safely today.

ICRC facilitates handover of wounded soldier to authorities

Colombo (ICRC) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) today facilitated the handover to the government authorities of a wounded Sri Lanka Army soldier who had been receiving treatment in the Puthukkudiyiruppu hospital, in the LTTE-held area.

The ICRC visited the soldier in the hospital on several occasions to check on his physical well-being and provide him with toiletries, clothing and bed linen. In its role as a neutral intermediary between both parties to the conflict, the ICRC was able to arrange for the soldier to leave the LTTE-held area to receive specialist medical treatment in the government-controlled areas.

Global Media Rights Groups Condemn Culture of Impunity and Indifference

The International Press Freedom Mission today condemned a "culture of impunity and indifference" over killings and attacks on journalists in Sri Lanka. Since the beginning of 2009, the killing of a senior editor and the attack on the facilities of a popular independent TV channel have led to a total paralysis of the media community.

Launching a new report, Media Under Fire: Press Freedom Lockdown in Sri Lanka, the International Mission criticised Sri Lanka’s Government over its inaction and failure to take the attacks, murder and assassination of reporters seriously. This has in turn led to an almost total blackout of independent and objective reporting from the North and East of Sri Lanka, which have seen the worst of the country’s long-running civil war.

Highlight of HRW World Report 2009

On January 2, 2008, the Sri Lankan government formally pulled out of its ceasefire agreement with the secessionist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The agreement had effectively been a dead letter since mid-2006, when major military operations by both sides resumed. Since then, the human rights situation in the north and east of the country has deteriorated markedly, with numerous reports of killings, abductions, and enforced disappearances by government forces, the LTTE, and paramilitary groups.

All parties are responsible for harmful and unnecessary restrictions on humanitarian access to populations at risk. The LTTE has continued bomb attacks on civilians in several cities, including the capital Colombo.

The government's state of emergency continued in 2008, with increasing numbers of arrests and detentions taking place under emergency regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The culture of impunity deepened, with investigations and inquiries into human rights violations failing to bring significant results, and a group of prominent international figures pulling out of an inquiry into grave human rights abuses because of "an absence of political and institutional will" on the part of the government.