Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

This is Siobhan McDonagh at the British Labour Party Conference condemning the inhuman treatment of 300,000 Tamil civilians by the criminal Rajapakse Government.

`As the shells fell, we tried to save lives with no blood or medicine`Damilvany Gnanakumar witnessed Sri Lanka`s bloody conflict from a Tamil hospital - then spent months detained in a camp. She tells Gethin Chamberlain her story

Gethin Chamberlain talks to Damilvany Gnanakumar, a 25-year-old British Tamil who witnessed the horrors of the conflict

Damilvany Gnanakumar watched as she tried to make a decision. Around them, thousands of people were picking their way between bodies strewn across the road, desperate to escape the fighting all around them.

`This is a political judgement`. It follows that Tissaianayagam is a political prisoner of the Rajapakse regime.

Comments to the Media by H.E. Mr. David Miliband, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the UK H.E. Mr. Bernard Kouchner, Minister of Foreign Affairs of France and H.E. Mr. Michael Spindelegger, Federal Minister of European and International Affairs of Austria, on the situation in Sri Lanka, the Middle East and other matters

AlJazeeraEnglish
May 11, 2009

The United Nations says a `bloodbath` is taking place in northern Sri Lanka, as government troops launch attacks on Tamil Tiger separatists.

One medic in the war zone has reported that 370 bodies were delivered to his hospital over the weekend.

Al Jazeera`s Harry Fawcett reports

The Sri Lankan government has ordered Channel 4 News`s Asia Correspondent Nick Paton Walsh to leave the country, after taking exception to a report broadcast on Channel 4 News on 5th May

Nick Paton Walsh was part of a three-person team that has been reporting from the country for Channel 4 News since April 19th. All three were told they were being deported by the country`s Defence Minister earlier today.

Updated on 5th May 2009.

By Nick Paton Walsh

UK Channel 4 TV News reports from a camp in the northern Sri Lankan city of Vavuniya, where Tamil refugees have been taken.

Shocking claims have emerged of shortages of food and water, dead bodies left where they have fallen, women separated from their families, and even sexual abuse.

This programme obtained the first independently filmed pictures from the internment camps set up by the Sri Lankan government to house Tamils who have fled the country`s civil war.

Sri Lanka`s government has admitted to Al Jazeera that its military bombed an area held by separatist fighters and now crowded with trapped civilians.

The admission follows the leak of satellite images taken by the UN which show signs of aerial bombing inside the `no-fire zone`.

The government insists no civilians were in danger, but in the latest report from the area the AP news agency quotes one health official as saying 10 civilians were killed on Friday by Sri Lankan military shelling.

Channel 4 News has obtained footage from inside the `safe` zone which shows what is said to be the aftermath of an artillery attack on people queuing for milk and food by the Sri Lankan Government.

Einstein and Eddington is a British single drama produced by Company Pictures and the BBC, in association with HBO. It featured David Tennant as Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, and Andy Serkis as Albert Einstein. This is the story of Albert Einstein`s theory of general relativity, his relationship with British scientist Sir Arthur Eddington, and the introduction of this theory to the world, against the backdrop of the Great War.

At the outbreak of the First World War Eddington is appointed chief astronomer at Cambridge by Lodge and instructed to research Einstein`s work and defend the Newtonian status quo, whilst Einstein is tempted back from Zurich to the Prussian Academy of Sciences[2] in Berlin in an attempt to aid the war effort by embarrassing Britain in disproving the work of its great scientist Isaac Newton. In Berlin, with his marriage already under tension, Einstein falls in love with his cousin Elsa.

This is the American black singer Billie Holliday with `Strange Fruit`, about the bodies of two African American men being hanged during a lynching. It was first recorded by her in 1939. In December, 1999, Time magazine called it the song of the century. Here are the lyrics:

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

The motivation of GOSL for doing away with Lasantha at this particular point in time is not clear. Possibilities are:

(1) As a warning to the CJ, Sarath N. Silva
(2) GOSL expects an imminent crash in the economy, and wants to eliminate all free media before that.

Who is worse, Prabhakaran or GOSL?

A cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe hit 6,000 and killed more than 500.

[Yesterday riot police were called into the capital, Harare, to break up a protest march by doctors and nurses angered at the worsening outbreak.

Parirenyatwa was also quoted as saying Zimbabwe`s main hospitals `are literally not functioning`. The deputy water minister Walter Mzembi says his ministry has only enough chemicals to treat water for another 12 weeks.

Authorities had previously said the cholera outbreak was under control.

It may be a bit early for Christmas, but this song by a Sri Lankan singer has just been re-uploaded to Youtube.

Thanks to jacob99 for drawing my atention to this song. His version of the Nimal Mendis song was sung by Vijaya Kumaratunge. This one is sung by the up-and-coming Sri Lankan singer Gresha Schuilling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresha_Schuilling