Sri Lankan office of Asian Human Rights Commission. Registered organization in Sri Lanka under the Company Registration Act of Sri Lanka (GA2302).
Thursday, February 20, 2014
SRI LANKA BRIEF: When the Govt.refuses rights to the Provincial Co...
SRI LANKA BRIEF: When the Govt.refuses rights to the Provincial Co...: C. V. Wigneswaran Interviewd by Nilantha Ilangamuawa Geneva Firstly politics is done by our Parliamentary Members. They are the real ...
SRI LANKA BRIEF: Implementation Status of the LLRC Recommendations ...
SRI LANKA BRIEF: Implementation Status of the LLRC Recommendations ...: Verite Reserach Sri Lanka:LLRC!Implementation Monitor- Statistical and Analytical Review No.2 Background The Lessons Learnt and Reconcili...
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Sunday, February 16, 2014
SRI LANKA BRIEF: UNP charge- sheets Rajapaksha for not undertaning ...
SRI LANKA BRIEF: UNP charge- sheets Rajapaksha for not undertaning ...: The UNP yesterday issued the following statement: Sri Lanka is at a precipice and the Rajapaksa administration bears full responsibility f...
SRI LANKA BRIEF: TNA calls for international probe into Mannar Mass...
SRI LANKA BRIEF: TNA calls for international probe into Mannar Mass...: Ramanan Veerasingham S ri Lanka’s major Tamil party, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) on Wednesday called for an independen...
SRI LANKA BRIEF: Progress Achieved in Implementing the National Pla...
SRI LANKA BRIEF: Progress Achieved in Implementing the National Pla...: Centre for Policy Alternatives The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was established in May 2010 and the report of t...
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Sunday, February 9, 2014
SRI LANKA BRIEF: Lalith Weerathunga says appointing a Special Rappo...
SRI LANKA BRIEF: Lalith Weerathunga says appointing a Special Rappo...: Just days after his return to Colombo from the Washington visit, Weeratunga figured in ITN’s talk show Doramadalawa (Gateway). Defenc...
Thursday, February 6, 2014
SRI LANKA BRIEF: U.S. says Sri Lanka refuses visa for official afte...
SRI LANKA BRIEF: U.S. says Sri Lanka refuses visa for official afte...: Reuters COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka has refused a visa request for a U.S. State Department official, the U.S. Embassy said on Tuesday, aft...
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Facebook celebrates its tenth birthday
Feb 04, 2014 Kavinthan Shanmugarajah Local, News Ticker, Science 0
Facebook celebrates its tenth birthday
The most popular networking social networking site Facebook, which has more than 1.2 billion monthly active users worldwide, is celebrating its tenth birthday.The company was launched by Mark Zuckerberg on February 4, 2004, from Harvard University dorm room.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said on this occasion: “It’s been an incredible journey so far, and I’m so grateful to be a part of it. It’s been amazing to see how people have used Facebook to build a real community and help each other in so many ways. In the next decade, we have the opportunity and responsibility to connect everyone and to keep serving the community as best we can.”
On February 4, Facebook will be launching “A Look Back” product, an experience that enables people on Facebook to see a personalised movie or collection of photos with their biggest moments since they joined Facebook. This is a small gesture to thank the over one billion people who are on Facebook by providing a unique way to look back at some of their biggest moments.
Despite Facebook’s popularity throughout the world, it is getting challenge to retain its original base of young users after arrival of new innovative social networks such as Pinterest, Twitter and SnapChat coming to the fore. Its another challenge is from the soaring popularity of smartphone apps that let people share images, videos, thoughts or observations at any moment.
But whatever the analysts and critics may say about the Facebook, people around the world have become addicted to it and it has become part and parcel of their life. As they say, the old habits die hard, Facebook will remain on the forefront for long.
Facebook, Facebook 10 years old, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook turns 10, Harvard University, Harvard University dorm room, Social network
5th February 2014 Last updated at 16:36 Share this pageEmail Print Share this page
ShareFacebookTwitter.Vatican 'must immediately remove' child abusers - UNAdvertisement
Kirsten Sandberg from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said a "code of silence" had been imposed on children
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories
Q&A: Vatican child abuse scandal
UN confronts Vatican on child abuse
Pope Benedict doubled defrockings
The UN has said that the Vatican should "immediately remove" all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers.
The UN watchdog for children's rights denounced the Holy See for adopting policies which allowed priests to sexually abuse thousands of children.
In a report, it also criticised Vatican attitudes towards homosexuality, contraception and abortion.
The Vatican responded by saying it would examine the report - but also accused its authors of interference.
A group representing the victims of abuse by priests in the US welcomed the report.
In its findings, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said the Holy See should open its files on members of the clergy who had "concealed their crimes" so that they could be held accountable by the authorities.
Continue reading the main story
Analysis
image of David Willey
David Willey
BBC News, Rome
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The Vatican quickly moved into damage control mode after publication of the UN report.
While promising "thorough study" of the criticisms, the Holy See robustly rejects some of the points made by the UN.
The Vatican has always given precedence to Church law, called Canon Law, over local criminal law in dealing with ecclesiastical crime. It does not easily tolerate interference by civil authorities in ecclesiastical matters.
The recent case of a senior Vatican diplomat, a Polish archbishop, who was suddenly recalled to Rome from his post in Santo Domingo after serious police accusations of sexual abuse of minors there is a case in point.
The Vatican has refused an extradition request by justice authorities in Poland and says an internal police investigation is under way inside Vatican City.
It said it was gravely concerned that the Holy See had not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, and expressed its "deepest concern about child sexual abuse committed by members of the Catholic churches who operate under the authority of the Holy See, with clerics having been involved in the sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children worldwide".
It also lambasted the "practice of offenders' mobility", referring to the transfer of child abusers from parish to parish within countries, and sometimes abroad.
The committee said this practice placed "children in many countries at high risk of sexual abuse, as dozens of child sexual offenders are reported to be still in contact with children".
The UN report called on a Vatican commission created by Pope Francis in December to investigate all cases of child sexual abuse "as well as the conduct of the Catholic hierarchy in dealing with them".
Ireland's Magdalene laundries scandal was singled out by the report as an example of how the Vatican had failed to provide justice despite "slavery-like" conditions, including degrading treatment, violence and sexual abuse.
The laundries were Catholic-run workhouses where some 10,000 women and girls were required to do unpaid manual labour between 1922 and 1996.
The report's findings come after Vatican officials were questioned in public last month in Geneva about why they would not release data and what they were doing to prevent future abuse.
The Vatican has denied any official cover-up. However, in December it refused a UN request for data on abuse on the grounds that it only released such information if requested to do so by another country as part of legal proceedings.
Demonstrator outside UN human rights agency in Geneva - 16 January Many campaigners feel the Vatican should open its files on priests known to be child abusers
In January, the Vatican confirmed that almost 400 priests had been defrocked in a two-year period by the former Pope Benedict XVI over claims of child abuse.
The UN committee's recommendations are non-binding and there is no enforcement mechanism.
'Non-negotiable'
The BBC's David Willey in Rome says the Vatican has set up new guidelines to protect children from predatory priests.
Continue reading the main story
Catholic Church abuse scandals
Germany - A priest, named only as Andreas L, admitted in 2012 to 280 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys over a decade
United States - Revelations about abuses in the 1990s by two Boston priests, Paul Shanley and John Geoghan, caused public outrage
Belgium - The bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned in April 2010 after admitting that he had sexually abused a boy for years
Italy - The Catholic Church in Italy admitted in 2010 that about 100 cases of paedophile priests had been reported over 10 years
Ireland - A report in 2009 found that sexual and psychological abuse was "endemic" in Catholic-run industrial schools and orphanages for most of the 20th century
Q&A: Child abuse scandal
But, he adds, bishops in many parts of the world have tended to concentrate on protecting and defending the reputation of priests rather than listening to the complaints of victims of paedophile priests.
Meanwhile several Catholic dioceses in the US have been forced into bankruptcy after paying out huge sums in compensation to victims of abuse by clergy.
The Vatican said in a statement following the report's publication: "The Holy See takes note of the concluding observations...which will be submitted to a thorough study and examination... according to international law and practice."
But it added that it "regrets to see in some points of the concluding observations an attempt to interfere with Catholic Church teaching on the dignity of human person and in the exercise of religious freedom" and "reiterates its commitment to defending and protecting the rights of the child... according to the moral and religious values offered by Catholic doctrine".
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, head of the Holy See's delegation to the United Nations in Geneva, told Vatican Radio the report had failed to take into account the fact that the Vatican had made "a series of changes for the protection of children", and its efforts at reform were "fact, evidence, which cannot be distorted".
He added that the UN could not ask the Church to change its "non-negotiable" moral teachings.
Victims groups welcomed the report as a wake-up call to secular law enforcement officials to investigate and prosecute Church officials who were still protecting "predator priests".
Barbara Blaine, president of a group representing US victims of abuse by priests - Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap) - told the BBC that the UN report "reaffirms everything we've been saying. It shows that the Vatican has put the reputation of Church officials above protection of children".
"Church officials knew about it and they refused to stop it. Nothing has changed. Despite all the rhetoric from Pope Francis and Vatican officials, they refuse to take action that will make this stop."
More on This Story
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UN confronts Vatican on child abuse 16 JANUARY 2014, EUROPE
Pope Benedict doubled defrockings 18 JANUARY 2014, EUROPE
Pope sets up child abuse committee 05 DECEMBER 2013, EUROPE
Monday, February 3, 2014
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Old article forwarded by Reuters .(first published in 2009)
Sri Lanka hospital shelled, at least 9 dead: ICRC
By Ranga Sirilal
COLOMBO Mon Feb 2, 2009 9:33am EST
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Sri Lankan Army soldiers stand guard during a rehearsal for the Independence Day celebration in Colombo February 2, 2009. Sri Lanka will celebrate its 61st Independence Day on February 4. REUTERS/Buddhika Weerasinghe
Sri Lankan Army soldiers stand guard during a rehearsal for the Independence Day celebration in Colombo February 2, 2009. Sri Lanka will celebrate its 61st Independence Day on February 4.
Credit: Reuters/Buddhika Weerasinghe
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(Reuters) - Artillery shells struck a hospital in Sri Lanka's northern war zone, killing at least nine people and wounding another 20, the Red Cross said on Monday.
The Sri Lankan military denied it had shelled the hospital in a Tamil Tiger-held part of Mullaittivu district and blamed the rebels. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam made no comment, but a pro-rebel website accused the military of the firing.
"At least nine people were killed and at least 20 injured from the continued shelling," said Sarasi Wijerathne, a spokeswoman of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Colombo.
She said the ICRC had urged both sides to allow safe passage for scores of sick and wounded people trapped in the conflict zone.
Sri Lanka's army has surrounded the LTTE in a 300 sq km (115 sq mile) slice of jungle in the Indian Ocean island's northeast, aiming to end a war that began in 1983 and is one of Asia's longest-running conflicts.
The military, which has vowed to hunt down LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, said it had found a luxury house in the Vishvamadhu area which may have been used by the reclusive leader and his family.
Concern has grown for the safety of 250,000 people aid agencies say are trapped inside the battle zone, although the government describes those numbers as overblown.
On Monday, the government urged civilians to enter a "safety zone" it had demarcated.
"The government cannot be responsible for the safety and security of civilians still living among the LTTE terrorists," Lakshman Hulugalle, director general of the government's media center, said in a statement.
The military has said it would move in to free those trapped by the fighting after a government-declared, 48-hour truce lapsed. The military said 224 people had fled government controlled area on Sunday.
"We're shocked that the hospital was hit, and this for the second time in recent weeks," Paul Castella, head of the Colombo ICRC delegation, said in a statement.
A United Nations official said there would have been many casualties because the hospital was crowded when the shelling occurred.
"There were shells (striking) before midnight, It seems to have struck the paediatric ward (of Puthukkudiyiruppu hospital), We don't know how many killed or wounded but we know there were many casualties," U.N. spokesman Gordon Weiss said.
The military says the Tigers are firing artillery from populated areas inside an army-declared no-fire zone with the hope of creating a crisis to build pressure for a truce.
The Tigers in turn accuse the military of firing into the no-fire zone. The military says it has a policy of zero civilian casualties.
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS
It is nearly impossible to verify accounts from the war zone, off-limits for journalists except on carefully guided tours by the military.
"We don't fire shells on that area. There is no requirement for us to fire into there ... it must be LTTE shells as they are desperately firing," said military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara about the attack on the hospital
But a pro-rebel www.tamilnet.com website said the shells had been fired by the Sri Lankan military.
"Sri Lanka Army shelled Puthukkudiyiruppu (PTK) hospital Sunday night killing six civilians, including patients and their family members in the ward. More than 15 civilians were injured," the website said.
On Monday, Sri Lankan fighter jets carried out more raids, bombing rebel positions in support of the advancing ground troops in the north.
(Additional reporting by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Paul Tait)
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