July 2007
In the past 18 months, over 2,000 Sri Lankans have been kidnapped or murdered, allegedly by government death squads. Now Human Rights Watch is calling for aid to Sri Lanka to be withheld.The Tamil homeland of Northern Sri Lanka is once again a war zone. The government is convinced it can crush the rebels within three years. “They only have this area left”, states Brig Prasad. As well as targeting Tamil rebels, the government is accused of thousands of; “extrajudicial killings, abductions, disappearances”. Most of the disappeared are ethnic Tamils. MP Mano Ganesan believes the abductions are; “a means of crushing the Tamil national struggle”. The capital, Colombo, teams with police and soldiers but none of the abductors have been caught.
Journeyman Pictures carries a 13 minute story on abductions and human rights violations in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s Dirty War comes at time when the latest Human Rights Watch report brings to light a number of urgent concerns on human rights in Sri Lanka. As reported in the BBC:
The group’s Asia director, Brad Adams, said the government had apparently given the green light to its security forces to use the tactics of dirty war. The report said the Tamil Tiger rebels stood accused of targeting civilians, extortion and the use of child soldiers. But Mr Adams said that was no excuse for what he described as the government’s campaign of killings, disappearances and the forced returns of the displaced.
Watch the movie here and read the HRW report, Return to War: Human Rights Under Siege, here.