he United Nations Committee against Torture says that secret detention centres are in existence in Sri Lanka.

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) quoting human rights organisations says that secret detention centres are in existence in Sri Lanka.
The 47th Session of the CAT met in Geneva on Tuesday with the Sri Lankan Delegation where Sri Lanka's commitment to upholding rights was severely questioned.
Several committee members accused the Sri Lankan government of not providing detailed information requested in advance.
She said that the allegation on 'secret detention centres' suggests the need for an independent investigation.
"Sri Lanka Army and affiliated Para military groups have run and made possible to run secret facilities which torture and extra judicial killings, have it is claimed, perpetrated" she said.
She said that Amnesty International had cited 7 torture detention sites in northern Sri Lanka; five in Vavuniya and two in Mullaitivu.
Poonthottam Maha Vidyalaya, 211 Brigade headquarters, Vallikulam Maha Vidyalaya, the PLOTE paramilitary detention centre and Dharmapuram as five camps in Vavuniya while two camps were named from Mullaitheevu.
Miss Gaer said that there are allegedly five compounds in Dharmapuram detaining more than 700 men and women in abandoned buildings and houses, holding 80 top levels LTTE people and 300 civilian supporters.
The UN Working Group on Disappearances has identified Sri Lanka as having the second largest most number of disappearance cases in the world, she informed the session.
"While many of these cases have been clarified there are more than 5,000 that haven't been" states Miss Felice Gaer.

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US-UK responsible for ‘killing field’ war on Eezham Tamils: papers ?

“The war on terror served as a justification for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries which ten years latter are still shattered and fractured, with a rather bleak future. It seems that it has, under the eyes of the International community, also been used as a cover up for a conflict that was nothing more than a racist war,” says Anissa Haddadi writing on Sri Lanka in International Business Times, Friday, asking the question, “Is the US war on terror responsible for Sri Lanka Killing Fields?”

"We strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes, as it constitutes one of one of the most serious threat to international peace and security", this UN resolution was adopted in 2005 and set international background in which the Sri Lankan civil war was fought, the International Business Times article said.

“The horror that slowly unfolded in Sri Lanka only became possible because of the silence that surrounded it. In the last phase of the civil war, which was the most violent and brutal, there was almost no reporting in the mainstream international press of what was really taking place there,” the article further said.

Meanwhile, the spokesperson of Campaign Against Arms Trade (Caat) in UK, Kaye Stearman said "David Cameron and the UK government are calling on the Sri Lankan government to investigate the atrocities but we also need a proper investigation of the UK government's own complicity in selling arms to Sri Lanka, despite knowing how they were likely to be used,” Morning Star reported on Thursday.

Citing UK’s arms sales to Colombo amounting to 18 million pound sterling during the Vanni war and such sales continuing to this day, the Caat spokesperson said, "UK arms sales confer support and legitimacy on the Sri Lankan government, just as they do to Middle East governments who use UK arms against their own people."

At the height of the war, the British Ambassador to the UN said the LTTE was long blighting the Sri Lanka government.

To what extent this policy is changed now, ask Eezham Tamils in UK, citing the UK Defence Secretary calling on Rajapaksa in London when he was not wanted at Oxford, and the UK High Commission in Colombo choosing the eve of the broadcast of the Channel 4 programme to legitimise the Sri Lanka Army, by announcing the ‘reintegration’ of the ex-LTTE combatants through the genocidal Army.

The US embassy in Colombo not only legitimised the Sri Lanka Army, but also approved the paradigm set by it, by participating the genocidal military’s international conference on disseminating the paradigm, last month.

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