Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen will head to Sri Lanka today for a three-day visit, to strengthen cooperation among the two nations on the issue of people smuggling. But Human Rights Watch is calling on the Minister to question the Sri Lankan government over its treatment of rejected asylum seekers during his trip as well. Phil Lynch, the executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, says asylum seekers who return to Sri Lanka are subjected to arbitrary detention, torture and other serious human rights …

The U.K. Foreign Office, in its latest human rights report, prepared from the accounts of Human Rights activists, said that despite significant steps by the Sri Lankan government to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, sexual exploitation of children remained a problem. “According to local media, in 2011 police recorded the highest number of child abuse and rape cases ever seen in Sri Lanka. Some estimates also suggested that up to 6,000 children were exploited for commercial sex. The Department of …

Whether it’s concentration camps, people ‘disappearing’, young girls being raped by the Army, widespread torture, extortion, extra-judicial murders, child recruitment (by government backed paramilitary groups) and the murder of journalists, Sri Lanka has it all! The Tourism industry and the textile industries have help fund a genocidal war and continue to help fund a genocidal government with an appalling human rights record. The Sri Lankan government continue to break International law by illegally detaining up to 300, 000 internal refugees. The Sri Lankan government have …

A public awareness campaign asking shoppers in Britain to boycott products made in Sri Lanka and sold in popular stores like Marks & Spencer continued last week with several members of the Tamil Youth Organisation (TYO) handing out leaflets and talking to shoppers on Oxford Street Saturday. Similar TYO events took place over the Christmas period in shopping centres in London’s suburbs, mirroring Tamil activists’ campaigns in other parts of the world, and those of other UK-based organisations like ‘Act Now’. In the midst of …