Tamils

The UN human rights commissioner didn’t mince her words this week when she accused the Sri Lankan government of “triumphalism” in the Tamil north, home of the vanquished Tamil Tiger insurgency.

General Sarath Fonseka has yet to concede, but it’s pretty clear he’s lost Sri Lanka’s presidential election. The indication is that President Mahinda Rajapaksa won by a substantial margin, although the opposition is crying foul. The general is now holed up in a hotel in Colombo.  He has reasons to be fearful.

Sri Lanka has dismissed a US State Department report into alleged war crimes as unsubstantiated. The report does not accept Colombo’s assertion that a video broadcast by Channel 4 News apparently showing the execution of nine Tamil captives was a fake.

Eyewitnesses interviewed during a week-long undercover investigation for Channel 4 News told of thousands of civilian deaths as government forces advanced on the Tigers’ final stronghold. The deaths, they said, were the result of government shelling. The Sri Lankan president and senior government ministers have repeatedly denied causing a single civilian death in what the…

Sinhalese Sri Lankans are so relieved their war is over that most appear blinded by patriotism, drunk on victory and deaf to the clamour from outside their island for investigations into possible war crimes. The country’s pliant media speak with one voice, exhorting their loyal compatriots to celebrate this great triumph over terror. But the…

It’s not often that the most powerful man in the country rings you. I’d spoken amicably to defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa 45 minutes earlier about getting some better access to Sri Lanka’s 25-year war. But this time he was calling me, and seemed to have remembered something. “Who is this? You rang me earlier? Is…