Sri Lanka: A grim search for the missing

By Amantha Perera (IPS) | Relief Web

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A bloody civil war was reaching its climax but this Tamil family, who had already experienced the conflict intimately, had one last decision to make that would prove to be the hardest one of all.

Fighting during the early months of 2009, in the last phase of Sri Lanka’s 30 year-long civil conflict, was so intense that a Tamil couple in their sixties was forced to make a heart-wrenching choice when they fled the bloody warzone: whether or not to leave behind Thangamathi, the elderly unmarried sister in the family who had been mentally handicapped since birth and required constant care.

Tiger Country: A rebel stronghold becomes an unlikely tourist trap

The Economist

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In a war-scarred pocket of jungle in north-eastern Sri Lanka are the remains of the last stronghold of the rebel group, the Tamil Tigers, before they were wiped out by the armed forces in 2009. It looks like a godforsaken place: just to get there busloads of people drive through a swelteringly hot landscape of bombed-out houses, emaciated cattle and mangled cars. But then, surreally, appears a swimming pool, 25 metres long and seven metres deep. This was where government photographs once showed Velupillai Prabhakaran, the pudgy leader of the Tigers, taking a dip and reclining on a lilo.

As wartime propaganda goes, the images were unbeatable. In fact, the pool also had a serious purpose. The frogmen of the rebels’ crack naval wing, the Sea Tigers, trained there, learning to destroy ships by attaching magnetic mines to their hulls.

University teachers strike continues

By Dasun Edirisinghe | The Island

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University teachers were disappointed that Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga had not called them for the third round of discussions, which was earlier scheduled to be held on Monday or Tuesday evening, at the Presidential Secretariat.

President of the Federation of University Teachers Associations (FUTA) Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Devasiri said that their strike was continuing as the government authorities had failed to address their demands so far.

Sri Lanka's envoy must be recalled

By Bruce Haigh | The Canberra Times

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Fairfax senior correspondent Daniel Flitton reported on July 18 that the AFP had dropped an investigation of war crimes into the Sri Lankan High Commissioner, former Admiral, Thisara Samarasinghe.

Samarasinghe joined the Sri Lankan navy in 1974 and retired in 2011, after his appointment to Australia became known. Samarasinghe was Chief of Staff of the Sri Lankan navy in 2009 when the navy carried out the shelling of Tamil women and children in a safe zone designated by the Sri Lankan defence force, in the north of the country, at the end of the civil war between the Tamils and the Sinhalese.