‘A moment of opportunity’: fall of Sri Lankan president raises victims’ hopes

Posted on July 29, 2022 by Admin

Rights groups say they have a dossier of evidence against Gotabaya Rajapaksa – and a renewed appetite to bring him to account

It was a warm April day in 2019 and Gotabaya Rajapaksa was enjoying the afternoon with his family in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles. Rajapaksa, relaxed in his chinos and polo shirt as he strolled through the car park of the popular American supermarket Trader Joe’s, looked surprised when a woman sidled up and shoved a brown envelope into his hands. “You’ve been served,” said the private investigator before rushing away.

The charges inside that brown envelope, a civil suit alleging complicity in torture and killings, would not make it far in the courts. Seven months later Rajapaksa, a member of Sri Lanka’s most powerful political dynasty, would be elected president, and be granted immunity from prosecution.

Tamil refugees detained by UK on Chagos Islands go on hunger strike

Posted on May 20, 2022 by Admin

Forty-two hunger strikers are part of group of 89 Sri Lankans whose boat was intercepted in Indian Ocean by UK military

Dozens of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who have been detained for more than seven months in a military base on an overseas territory claimed by Britain have gone on hunger strike in despair at their plight.

The 42 hunger strikers are part of a group of 89 Sri Lankans, including 20 children, whose boat was intercepted and escorted to Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean by the British military after running into distress while apparently headed to Canada from India in October.

Federal police blame ‘oversight’ for delay in Australian review of Sri Lankan war crime allegations

Posted on March 30, 2022 by Admin

AFP not aware of ‘administrative oversight’ until letter from justice groups seeking update on 2019 complaint about Jagath Jayasuriya

Federal police blamed an “administrative oversight” for huge delays in reviewing war crime allegations against a Sri Lankan man as he travelled to and from Australia, documents show.

In 2019, human rights groups wrote to the Australian federal police warning that Jagath Jayasuriya, a retired Sri Lankan general, “has entered Australia and may still be in the jurisdiction”.

Tamils fear prison and torture in Sri Lanka, 13 years after civil war ended

Posted on March 26, 2022 by Admin

The threat of a bullet in the leg or having his fingernails ripped off was the ordeal faced by one man

The sun had barely risen the morning that the military turned up for Vijay*. Grabbing him from his home in a village in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka while his pregnant wife and baby lay asleep next to him, they blindfolded him and drove him deep into a jungle.

For the next 12 hours, in a small dark shack away from prying eyes, they interrogated Vijay. Pliers were repeatedly brandished, with threats that his finger nails would be removed if he did not give the army officers the information they wanted.