For several decades now the Sri Lankan people have been exposed to extraordinary acts of separation, large scale forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture, illegal arrest and detention. This and large scale displacement of people from their homes by way of internal displacement or by leaving the country altogether and the disappearance of even elementary forms of protection available to people within the legal and social sphere are among the many issues that have caused massive forms of trauma in the population as a whole.

Demonstrations led by a Sri Lankan government minister to protest a United Nations expert panel show the government’s open hostility to investigations of alleged war crimes in the Tamil Tiger conflict that ended last year, Human Rights Watch said today. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s creation of and support for the three-person Panel of Experts on justice mechanisms – despite persistent Sri Lankan government opposition – shows important new resolve to promote accountability for war crimes, Human Rights Watch said.

RAJ, a Sri Lankan Tamil granted asylum in Australia last November, wants to tell his story. But, like several other Tamil refugees who spoke to the Herald, he says having his full name or a photograph of his face published would pose grave risks for his family in Sri Lanka. Raj, 33, says he is worried they could be tortured or kidnapped by government soldiers or anti-Tamil paramilitary groups as retribution for him speaking out.

If you tour Jaffna and happen to visit the Jaffna railway station, you will not miss a family of three residing in one of the abandoned office rooms of the station. Selvaratnam Jayalingam (48) his wife Jayarubi and their girl child Dharshika (4) have been living there for the last four months surviving on the food and money given by visitors of the South who are going in large numbers to Jaffna these days and also soldiers who are in the vicinity.

Communities in Sri Lanka's Eastern Province - a region of 1.5 million people still recovering from civil-war violence - fear they have been forgotten as humanitarian agencies shift recovery efforts to the north. "There are no jobs here. I have to support my family with what I earn here," said Ravidranathan Valarmadhu, 18, from Pillumallai Village of Batticaloa District.

After 37 years of civil war, business is slow in Jaffna for the few taxi drivers with their collection of Austin Cambridges, Ambassadors and Morris Minors. For Rs10,000, Mohan will take me for a day's drive to Ki'linochchi, about 60 kilometres to the south down the dangerous A9, a road that has only been reopened to civilian traffic — as long as you have permission from the Sri Lankan military to travel it.

Sarah's smiling face lights up the dark office of this children's home on the side of the A9 on the outskirts of the small town."We have 40 children here," she says. "Most of them lost their parents in the fighting and there is nowhere for them to go." The children's home is collection of outhouses, all scarred with bullet marks, with grass trying to grow on a dirt playground in the shadow of some swings badly in need of bright paint.

The military checkpoint here is sponsored by the Colonial Group, pipe and steel manufacturers based in Colombo. It's a well-built structure allowing soldiers to stand guard behind sandbags, neatly felled palm tree trunks and some steel railings. A soldier with a whistle stops traffic on the A9 allowing visitors to cross the road. Elephant Pass, 2.5 metres above sea level, as the sign on the A9 says, is now a tourist attraction.

For many decades now, international journalists have interpreted every story that has emerged from Sri Lanka to be some kind of war story. Some journalists have proposed that Sri Lanka’s use of overwhelming force was able to eradicate terrorism in the country, and that other countries such as the United States, should follow suit. The pathetic failure of international journalism is demonstrated by these endeavours.

As a young woman, Ranjani (not her real name), a 32-year-old Tamil from Sri Lanka’s eastern Batticaloa district, only had bright hopes for tomorrow. Then her dreams were dashed in an instant. In 1990 a group of secessionist Tamil fighters came knocking on their door, looking for additional warm bodies to beef up their forces. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tigers, as the combatants were also known, was then fighting a bloody protracted war against the government for a separate state for the minority Tamils.

I was born in Nagamachi village in Devakkottai district on March 2, 1938. I went to Sri Lanka in 1943 to join my father who was working in a tea estate in the island, I was granted Indian citizenship under the Sirimavo Shastri Pact, but I could not get repatriated to India. During the communal holocaust in July 1983 my family lost all its belongings, so I came to India with my family members as refugees. I arrived in Rameshwaram on May 24, 1984.

One year after the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan government claims that life is returning to normal in the war-ravaged Vanni region. But as our reporting team found during their recent visit to Ki'linochchi, that is far from the case. Tens of thousands of civilians who lost everything during the fighting have been “resettled” in the area with little government assistance.

I was born and raised in a little community in Kuliyapitiya, a typical agricultural area with three small tanks (wewa), which watered paddy fields, within walking distance on three sides of my house. Of course, there were also three Buddhist temples, almost within walking distance from each other. It was a typical village in the North-Western province, a part of which is known as bat kooralee or ‘rice province’.

Sri Lanka's new Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, to look into the armed conflict that ended last year, falls far short of minimum standards sought by the United States, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On May 28, 2010, the Sri Lankan external affairs minister, G.L. Peiris, is scheduled to meet with Clinton. In the letter, Human Rights Watch urged Clinton to call for an independent international investigation into violations of the laws of war committed by both government forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Ganeshwary Santhanam, 31, is one of thousands of women who joined the now defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which fought for an independent Tamil homeland for more than 25 years. She joined the movement - branded a terrorist group by many - and left during the ceasefire, got married to another fighter and gave birth to a son, before being pressured to rejoin the LTTE in 2006. Like thousands of Sri Lankans returning to their homes today, she hopes to build a new future.