Four more Tamils cleared for release
December 30 2009 – The Globe and Mail
Four more Tamil migrants from a freighter discovered off the B.C. coast have been cleared to move to Toronto once they arrange for someone to put up a financial bond and they meet conditions intended to ensure they are not involved in terrorism.
The migrants were among 76 men who were taken into custody in October. So far, the Immigration and Refugee Board has ordered 27 men released, but it is not clear how many have met the requirements that would allow them to leave the detention cells.
Ottawa has tried to keep eight of the 27 in custody but has not publicly revealed why it doesn’t want the men freed.
The federal government has applied for judicial reviews of the IRB decisions. The applications are to be heard in Federal Court in January.
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Sri Lanka: Questions that will not go away
December 30 2009 – UPI
Colombo, Sri Lanka — The issue of war crimes has come to the fore once again in Sri Lanka, due to an assertion by one of the two main contestants in the civil war, former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, regarding the killing of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam leaders.
During the war against the LTTE the Sri Lankan government took stringent action to ensure that minimal information relating to its battlefield tactics and costs seeped out to the public. Claiming it was to ensure the safety of non-combatants, the government restricted access of international agencies and media to the battle zones. Even the International Committee of the Red Cross was not permitted access to the battle zones.
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‘Sri Lanka cannot escape war crime charges’
December 30 2009 – Express Buzz
COLOMBO: Although Sri Lanka is not a signatory to the Rome Convention which set up the International Criminal Court (ICC), the island nation can still be dragged before the ICC without its consent, senior cabinet minister and a former Professor of Law, G.L.Peiris, has said.
He told The Sunday Island on December 20, that the UN Security Council had the right to request the Chief Prosecuting Officer (CPO) of the ICC to embark on an investigation of the complaints it had received with a view to prosecution. The CPO could, on his own, seek the approval of the Pre-Trial chamber of the ICC to conduct investigations.
In the Sri Lankan case, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Extrajuicial Killings and Arbitrarty Executiuons, Philip Alston, had called for clarifications on the allegation that the Sri Lankan army had killed three top leaders of the LTTE and their families when they had come to surrender waving white flags as per a prior arrangement between them and the Lankan government. The allegation had been made by no less a person than Gen.Sarath Fonseka, a former Army Commander who is now a candidate in the January 26 Presidential election.
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SRI LANKA: A Nation Struggles to Forget a Tragedy
December 30 2009 – IPS
PERALIYA, Sri Lanka, Dec 29 (IPS) – Waves hitting a train and carriages half submerged in water. Scores of men, women and children leaping above the water, hands outstretched, bodies strewn all over.
These images were captured on a mural that became a crucial part of the memorial at Peraliya, a village 90 kilometres south of Colombo, right next to the coast. Yet, images of post-tsunami impacts that are not depicted on the mural run the gamut of emotions.
On Dec. 26, 2004, at 9:25 a.m., a south-bound train was hit by gigantic waves here, killing over 1,500.
Little Lahiru Mihiram has no clear memory of this father, just a thought that he must be one of those many scared faces on the mural. He was less than four months old when his father ran to the train after hearing the screams of panic-stricken passengers as the first waves came flooding inland. He was never found thereafter.
December 30 2009 – IPS
PERALIYA, Sri Lanka, Dec 29 (IPS) – Waves hitting a train and carriages half submerged in water. Scores of men, women and children leaping above the water, hands outstretched, bodies strewn all over.
These images were captured on a mural that became a crucial part of the memorial at Peraliya, a village 90 kilometres south of Colombo, right next to the coast. Yet, images of post-tsunami impacts that are not depicted on the mural run the gamut of emotions.
On Dec. 26, 2004, at 9:25 a.m., a south-bound train was hit by gigantic waves here, killing over 1,500.
Little Lahiru Mihiram has no clear memory of this father, just a thought that he must be one of those many scared faces on the mural. He was less than four months old when his father ran to the train after hearing the screams of panic-stricken passengers as the first waves came flooding inland. He was never found thereafter.
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Illness spreads on vessel as 16 Tamils head for Australia
December 30 2009 – SMH
FEARS of a disease outbreak are causing tensions to rise among asylum seekers on a boat moored at the Indonesian port of Merak since October.
The 12-week stand-off continues as a further 16 refugees from the Oceanic Viking head to Australia for resettlement.
The Sri Lankan Tamils, including women and children, were among 40 refugees from the Australian customs ship due to fly out of Jakarta last night.
Of the others, 21 were headed for the US and three to Norway, through a United Nations centre in Romania
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