Radio Times poll provokes online battle for Baftas

Fierce opposition to al-Jazeera's Bahrain documentary generates a million votes

This year's Bafta award for the best current affairs television programme, to be awarded later this month, has provoked an international struggle to undermine the content of at least one of the four powerful documentaries on the shortlist – a film about the uprising in Bahrain last spring.

A fortnight ago the Radio Times magazine launched an online poll to allow readers to vote for their...

Continue reading

Repressive regime forced to release abducted activists

Protest in response and release of the two shows potential for united struggle

CWI
The brutal government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) is undoubtedly behind the abduction of two activists, Premakumar Gunaratnam and Dimuthu Attygalle of the Frontline Socialist Party. After three days of interrogation at some kind of camp to which they had both been taken separately, they were released yesterday. Dimuthu Attygalle was dropped by her captors from one of the infamous white vans, only when the Sri...

Continue reading

Who Picked Ban’s Google+ Hangout Guests, Soft on UN, No Cholera or War Crimes Qs?

Continue reading

South and Central Asia: Sinhala and Tamil New Year’s Greeting

Sinhala and Tamil New Year's Greeting
Press StatementHillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State Washington, DC
April 12, 2012

On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I am delighted to send best wishes to Sri Lankans around the world as you celebrate Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

This celebration brings people together to renew bonds of friendship and family. It also gives Sri Lankans of all backgrounds, living inside and outside the country, an opportunity to help build...

Continue reading

Sri Lankan diplomat may avoid questioning on war crimes claims

Diplomat facing allegations of crimes against humanity is set to return to Sri Lanka, raising fears he will avoid questioning

The Foreign Office has been warned it is running out of time to take action against a senior London-based Sri Lankan diplomat who is facing allegations of complicity in crimes against humanity.

Last week, the Guardian revealed that an organisation representing the Tamil diaspora was launching legal action against the FCO over its failure to...

Continue reading

William Hague faces legal action over Sri Lankan diplomat war crimes claim

Tamil group to bring judicial review against foreign secretary over refusal to declare military attache persona non grata

An organisation representing the international Tamil diaspora is taking legal action against William Hague over the Foreign Office's failure to confront a senior Sri Lankan diplomat accused of complicity in crimes against humanity during the final stages of the island's civil war.

The Global Tamil Forum has instructed the law firm Birnberg, Peirce and Partners to bring a...

Continue reading

Sri Lankan conservationists battle national park highway

Threat to wildlife posed by Chinese-funded road through Wilpattu park is cause celebre in island's postwar tourist boom

As Sri Lankans prepare to celebrate the Sinhala or Buddhist New Year in April, conservationists will be quietly praying that a proposed major road through Wilpattu national park will finally be ruled illegal. Controversially funded by the Chinese government, the road has been the centre of a case sitting with the Sri Lankan supreme court for nearly...

Continue reading

Journalists are ‘traitors’, says Sri Lanka’s state TV

Sri Lanka's state-controlled media has described journalists as "traitors" following the UN human rights council's call for an investigation into the country's alleged abuses during its war against Tamil separatists.

In an attack on Sri Lankan journalists, both at home and in exile, state television accused them of "betraying the motherland."

Although the broadcaster did not name the journalists who had participated in the human rights council sessions, it screened "thinly disguised photographs of them" and said...

Continue reading

Letters: Resolution of the Sri Lanka conflict

At the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva a US-led resolution is being debated, which seeks to help resolve the outstanding issues of accountability and reconciliation resulting from the...

Continue reading

India to Back Human Rights Resolution Against Sri Lanka

Under domestic pressure, India's prime minister says the country may back a United Nations resolution this week criticizing Sri Lanka for alleged human rights abuses. Human rights groups accuse Sri Lanka's army of deliberately attacking tens of thousands of civilians in the final months of its decades-long struggle against Tamil separatist terrorists.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced the possible support for a vote against Sri Lanka Monday in Parliament. “I may assure the House that we are inclined to vote...

Continue reading