The government has gradually been resettling around 300,000 ethnic minority Tamil people, most displaced in the final phase of the army offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended with the Tiger’s defeat in May after a 25-year war.
Various foreign aid and human rights groups, as well as U.N. officials, have criticized [...]

London, England (CNN) — China will execute a British man convicted of smuggling heroin within the next day, his family said Monday.
Akmal Shaikh, 53, has been informed by the Chinese authorities that he will be executed, said Seema Khan and Latif Shaikh, first cousins of the condemned man.
Khan and Shaikh told CNN Shaikh’s mother had [...]

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s president has given legal experts four more months to study a US State Department report cataloging alleged war crimes on the island, the presidency said in a statement Monday.
President Mahinda Rajapakse extended the December 31 deadline of the panel he appointed in November to formulate a response to the US report, [...]

By Bob Dietz/Asia Program Coordinator (CPJ)

Today marks the 100th day of J.S. Tissainayagam’s 20-year prison term. Tissainayagam, known as Tissa, was convicted of “terrorism” charges for articles documenting human rights abuses by the Sri Lankan military, as well as the difficult conditions faced by Sri Lankans displaced in the nation’s long war. His sentence was [...]

By ANDREA HOUSTON , EXAMINER STAFF WRITER
As the frigid wind whipped through Confederation Square last night, the small group of activists crowded around a candle and joined in as a local family sang a South African freedom song to mark International Human Rights Day.
The song, calledThula Sizwe, is a prayer sung during South Africa’s apartheid, [...]