The ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) emerged victorious in both the Western and Southern Provinces. The UPFA emerged victorious by beating the Opposition by 388,977 votes in the Southern Province and by 683,993 votes in the Western Province, with an overall lead of 932,292.
The UN Human Rights Council concluded its 25th Session today with important resolutions on Sri Lanka, DPRK, Iran, Syria and Burma.
Senior Foreign Office Minister Baroness Warsi said:
The UK welcomes the strong action which the Human Rights Council has taken on Sri Lanka, DPRK, Iran, Syria and Burma at this session. I am also encouraged by the Council’s effective response to a range of other critical human rights situations including Ukraine and South Sudan.
It has taken nearly four years of sustained pressure from the family and supporters of Mr Mubenga, and much public outrage, for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to finally bring criminal charges against his G4S killers.
An inquest in 2013 heard how three G4S guards deporting Mr Mubenga on a British Airways flight, violently restrained him in a position known to cause asphyxia. Having considered the evidence of Mr Mubenga’s harrowing death, the jury found that he had been “unlawfully killed”.
The South African Tamil Federation (SATF), which represents more than 650 000 South Africans whose mother tongue is Tamil, has supported moves by the United States, United Kingdom and other countries to call for an international and independent commission of inquiry into the allegations of human rights violations of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The SATF's support is contained in a letter submitted on Monday this week to the United Nations Human Rights Council session which is currently being held in Geneva, Switzerland.
Members of the United Nations Human Rights Council should vote for a resolution calling on the UN’s human rights office to investigate allegations of war crimes by all sides during the final months of Sri Lanka’s civil war, Human Rights Watch said today. The vote on the resolution is expected this week.
The Sri Lankan government has failed to seriously respond to two previous Human Rights Council resolutions seeking national investigations into violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the last stages of fighting with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which resulted in the deaths of as many as 40,000 civilians.
Amritsar- Asserting that like Tamils in Sri Lanka, Kashmiris and Sikhs face similar situation in India, the Dal Khalsa has urged the United Nations to intervene in India also to ensure justice and protection of rights of Sikhs and Kashmiris particularly their right to self-determination.
Realizing that UN intervention in South Asia has been negligible, the party’s secretary for political affairs Kanwar Pal Singh has sent a letter addressed to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Navi Pillay seeking the UN intervention.
The heavy militarisation of Sri Lanka’s northern province after the civil war’s bloody end in 2009 has been the subject of growing domestic and international concern, says International Crisis Group, working to prevent conflict worldwide.
The large numbers of military personnel in the north, and the deep involvement of the military in the province’s governance, endanger the re-establishment of democratic institutions that is necessary to lasting peace (see our November 2013 report Sri Lanka’s Potemkin Peace: Democracy Under Fire).
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), has received new information and requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in Sri Lanka.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has accepted a request made by the Most Venerable Mahanayaka Thera’s to brief them on the ongoing Human Rights sessions in Geneva.
The Government information department stated that accordingly the meeting will be held tomorrow.
The request for the meeting seeking an update about the US sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC session was made by Mahanayaka Thera of the Malwathu Chapter Most Ven. Thibbatuwawe Sri Sumangala Thera and Mahanayake of the Asgiriya Chapter Most Ven. Udugama Sri Buddha Rakkitha Thera.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom said he has secured the full support of the European Union for the UN resolution on Sri Lanka UK co-sponsored with the United States.
Addressing the press conference at the close of European Council on Friday (March 21) Cameron said Sri Lankan President\'s failure to properly address the issues of accountability for the past and bring reconciliation in the country has necessitated the international investigation called on by the resolution.
As the Sri Lanka draft resolution at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva had the reference to demilitarization dropped, the government has arrested two human rights defenders, Ruki Fernando and Praveen Mahesahn, who is both a pastor and director of a rights group.
The UN had no comment when Inner City Press asked on March 17, nor at the UN noon briefing on March 21. But now later on March 21 US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki has issued this, link added here
A shocking report detailing the ongoing sexual violence and torture in Sri Lanka, some as recent as February 2014, was launched by international human rights lawyer, Yasmin Sooka, the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (BHRC) and The International Truth & Justice Project, Sri Lanka, this Friday 21 March in the Canadian High Commission, Macdonald House, 1 Grosvenour Square, London W1K 4AB.
The event was chaired by Geoffrey Robertson QC.
The conduct of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka figured in complaints received by a Sri Lankan government commission probing disappearances during the country\\\'s civil war, a senior official said today.
The complaints against the IPKF was received during the sitting of a 3-member disappearances probe panel in the former conflict zone in the eastern province. \\\"We began our sittings in Chenkaladi and called some 60 cases. There were also new cases numbering 250,\\\" HW Gunadasa, panel\\\'s Secretary said.
Chairman Menendez wrote UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay to express his support for a resolution at the current session of the UN Human Rights Council that calls for an international investigation into Sri Lankan war crimes committed during that country’s civil war.
Two hundred and five Tamil Christian priests from North and East including Mannar Bishop have written to the members of UN Human Rights Council calling for international investigation on Sri Lanka’s war crimes and human rights violations. The priests call for a strong and action oriented resolution on Sri Lanka at the 25th session of the UN Human Rights Council.
In early 2009, Government Accountability Project (GAP) in Washington reports it began to hear from anonymous whistleblowers in Sri Lanka who were concerned about official misconduct with respect to IMF funds. After regularly providing updates on several political and judicial developments in Colombo, GAP released two reports that chronicle a series of unlawful transactions involving privatization. Both transactions transferred valuable revenue-producing enterprises from the public to well-connected corporate ownership. The reports are Unlawful Privatization in Sri Lanka: The Role of the Auditors, and Corrupt Privatization Does Not Deter IFI Lending to Sri Lanka.
Following a recent meeting with Hugo Swire MP Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; The All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPG t) represented by Lee Scott MP and Siobhain McDonagh MP (Vice Chair) hosted a meeting yesterday, the 10th of February 2014, at Parliament which was addressed by senior representatives from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in order to receive an update on the proposed resolution to the 25th UNHRC session in March.
Britain's future king Prince Charles has endorsed his commitment to charity projects in countries like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka with a plan to launch a charity for South Asia.
Prince Charles made the announcement at the annual fundraiser of the British Asian Trust at Victoria and Albert Museum in central London yesterday.
"I am someone who can't help believing that people of common purpose and good spirit can achieve so much more when they work together," CHarles said.
I am addressing this letter to you as part of a project initiated by the Fullbright Commission of Sri Lanka to commemorate the 6oth Anniversary of the Fullbright programme in Sri Lanka. The Project called for Fullbright awardees over the years to write a letter to the Presidents of their countries indicating how their period of academic study abroad and the broader experiences gained through that exposure to the United States, its government, culture and people, influenced their subsequent careers.
Today was day 42 of Baloch’s LongMarch from Karachi and 69 from Quetta to Islamabad.
The Baloch Long March started walking 10 Kilometre away from Muhammedpur and reached 4 Kilometres away to Jampur area of Baloch territories in Punjab.
The participants of VBMP have been chanting slogans for release of abducted Baloch and urging UN and international media to raise their voice against disappearances, continuous military operations and kill and dump policy of state in Balochistan.
Nunavit: in 2014 most Canadians, individually, are strongly resistant to tuberculosis. Yet, on May 8, 2013, Night’s Lantern noted the tuberculosis rate for Inuit people as 186 times the rate for non-Aboriginal people. After James Anaya’s visit in early October, 2013, the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous rights found the Aboriginal peoples “in crisis.”
The causative problem remains: successive Canadian governments serve the interests of resource extraction corporations rather than the people of the land.
More than 250 people from across England joined a demonstration on Saturday 11 January outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square to mark the twelfth anniversary of the opening of the extralegal prison camp at Guantánamo Bay and to call for its closure.
After 12 years, 155 prisoners remain held there, almost wholly without charge or trial, and many have been engaged for almost one year in a hunger strike against their ongoing arbitrary detention and conditions of detention. The hunger strike has prompted Obama to remember his broken promise to close the prison in 2009, yet his recent actions remain half-hearted and insincere.
On 6 January 2014 legal aid solicitors and barristers joined together in an unprecedented and historic show of solidarity against the government’s determination to impose further legal aid cuts.
At 9.30 a.m. at Westminster Magistrates’ Court a demonstration was held coordinated by The Justice Alliance, to demonstrate widespread opposition to the proposals. Across the country criminal law barristers refused to attend court until 2:00 p.m. which meant the criminal courts system was effectively stopped. The purpose was not to cause chaos, but to show the government that if they do not re-think their proposals which would likely results in an increase in miscarriages of justice, lawyers were prepared to take action to save the criminal justice system.
On 8 April 2013 the UK Government announced a further round of cuts to legal aid in the Transforming Legal Aid consultation. The consultation received around 16,000 responses. A response to the consultation was published on 5 September 2013 and the Government has started to enact secondary legislation to implement the proposals. On 13 December 2013 the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) published its report on “the implications for access to justice of the Government’s proposed legal aid reforms”.
Justice Alliance has set the following information out where we are now with the changes.
IFJ reports 108 killed in 2013 and calls for action for 2014
The international organisation representing journalists, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), has called for all governments to respect journalists¹ safety and press freedom as it published the list of journalists killed in 2013. The National Union of Journalists for the UK and Ireland (NUJ) has denounced the unnecessary deaths of workers in 2013. The union and its global federation continue to campaign for the end of impunity for those who have killed journalists and media workers.
