Amid police and military threats, about 200 mothers, wives and other relatives of disappeared persons held a protest on December 10 in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka, to demand information about their loved ones. Hundreds of Tamils “disappeared” during the 26-year communal war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), particularly during the military offensive before its defeat in May 2009. Despite their denials, the military, police and associated paramilitary groups are directly implicated in these abductions and murders.

women in Sri Lanka’s predominantly Tamil-speaking north and east are facing a desperate lack of security in the aftermath of the long civil war. Today many still live in fear of violence from various sources. Those who fall victim to it have little means of redress. Women’s economic security is precarious, and their physical mobility is limited.

Past the Paranthan junction we drove towards Vishuvamadu where returning civilians from the Manik Farm are struggling to restart their war battered lives from scratch. They live in squalid (tent) huts, cook in the open and are being overwhelmed by thousands of men in the uniform. Name boards, one after the other stand welcoming the travellers to this less charted part of the Wanni: ‘Welcome to the area of Infantry Division,’ one greeted; ‘Area of the Artillery Brigade,’ another read. It appeared like we were in a military cantonment but in fact we were in the Wanni, dotted with camps.

Yoganathan Rathika is twenty-six years old, and has a two year old daughter. She lives in a resettlement village in Manthai West, Mannar. Like a lot of women trying to resume normal life after the war, Rathika faces several hardships.  But Rathika has one additional burden to bear. She is a widow. There are presently 89,000 widows in the North and East, including many women like Rathika, who lost their husbands to the 30 year civil war.

WHEN Shanthakumar Kamala fled the inferno of fighting in northern Sri Lanka in 2009, she was clutching a number of glossy photographs to her chest but little else. Mrs Shanthakumar holds out the pictures now—one of a smart lad in school uniform, one of him wearing a Boy Scout kit—and sobs that she wants her son, Thanuraj, back.

The sudden demise of 40 year old Pitchai Jesudasan, the main suspect in The Sunday Leader Editor-in-Chief Lasantha Wickrematunge murder case has raised many questions. Jesudasan was arrested by the Terrorist Investigation Department (TID) on February 26, 2010 at his residence No. 31, Magastota Estate, Ruwan Eliya, Nuwara Eliya for the alleged involvement in terrorist activities.

11 men were arrested by the Vavuniyaa Police in Komarasankulam at 10.30 pm on 20th August 2011.  The men were severely beaten before arrest and at least two persons were tortured inside the Vavuniyaa Police Station. Another man was arrested when he visited the police station on 21st August to recover his vehicle, which had been taken into custody during the incident on the 20th. Two men who were tortured by the Vavuniyaa police received treatment at the Vavuniyaa Hospital. The rest were produced before the Vavuniyaa Magistrate on 23rd August and remanded to the Vavuniyaa Prison.  All 12 men have since been released on bail. The next hearing is scheduled for 12th October 2011.

Ranjini wakes up screaming. Her mother's body is on fire, her teenage sister is covered in blood and the mutilated, charred corpses of her relatives lie scattered everywhere. It's a recurring nightmare. "I see my mother's burning face ... she is calling me to help her, but I can't or I will be killed from the shelling also," says the 23-year-old, petite Sri Lankan woman, wiping the tears from her face with a blue and white chequered handkerchief.

The bright but aloof teenager who failed chemistry because he skipped nearly an entire semester. The bespectacled girl who consistently came to class an hour late and rarely wrote anything down because she took notes “with my mind.”

And then there was me, a Toronto Star reporter posing as a summer school student upgrading her Grade 12 chemistry mark so she could apply for nursing college. I was a mediocre pupil at best: I barely studied, never handed in homework and failed most of my tests.

More policies and programmes must address the needs of female-headed households in Sri Lanka's former conflict zone, experts say. "Most programmes don't take into account the unique role of women here," Saroja Sivachandran, director of the Center for Women and Development (CWD), an advocacy body based in northern Jaffna, told IRIN. "They may be providing for the families, but [women] still have to cook, look after children and do all household chores."

We believe this is not the right time for prominent international writers like you to give legitimacy to the Sri Lankan government's suppression of free speech by attending a conference that does not in any way push for greater freedom of expression inside that country…

We ask you in the great tradition of solidarity that binds writers together everywhere, to stand with your brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka who are not allowed to speak out. We ask that by your actions you send a clear message that, unless and until the disappearance of [cartoonist] Prageeth [Eknaligoda] is investigated and there is a real improvement in the climate for free expression in Sri Lanka, you cannot celebrate writing and the arts in Galle.

Tonight Channel 4 screens its harrowing new documentary, “Sri Lanka, The Killing Fields”. The film highlights massive human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war by both parties to the conflict.
Some of the more shocking imagery includes the fallout of systematic shelling of hospitals by the government.

We see families hiding in terror from repeated shelling, injured children dying as medicines run out. Channel 4 also presents previously untelevised footage, including killing and mutilation of prisoners, making this difficult if essential viewing.

Many decades ago in1947 June 5, comrade Velupillai Kandasamy a young member of the GCSU, was killed while participating in a demonstration. He was a clerical officer of the department of health and sanitary services and was killed by police firing ordered by the British police superintendent Robins.
He was participating in an orderly march of the members of the Government Clerical Services Union (GCSU).

The immediate cause of this demonstration was the interdiction of the GCSU president T.B.Illangaratne and nineteen other of his trade union colleagues for having held a meeting on the Galle Face Green in contravention of public services regulations.

It was the second anniversary of Sri Lanka’s bloody war that ended on May 19, 2009, but for 23-year-old Fathima Imsana, there were more pressing things to do than celebrate two years of peace. Early the next morning, she clutched a gray cardboard file and made her way quickly to the regional office of the Water Board in Kaththaankudi, a predominantly Muslim town in eastern Sri Lanka. She wanted to submit her application for a new water connection well and early. "We need water," Imsana told IPS as she waited in the queue. "My son should not drink the yellow substance that we get from the well."

Her son is five months old, and Imsana and her husband, who works in the Middle East, have placed all their hopes on him. Right now, there is nothing more important to her than getting her son clean and safe drinking water. "We deserve that," she said.

Human Rights Watch is concerned about the failure of the Sri Lankan government to investigate well-founded allegations of very serious abuses that took place during the last months of its decades-long internal armed conflict, which ended in May 2009.

A report released by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in April concluded that both government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam conducted military operations "with flagrant disregard for the protection, rights, welfare and lives of civilians and failed to respect the norms of international law."