Word: humanity
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...facto government that controlled more than 15,000 sq km of territory in the north and east of Sri Lanka and had its own system of taxes, roads and courts. By the final weeks of conflict, he was believed to be using thousands of Tamil civilians as human shields against the advance of the Sri Lankan military. At the time of his death, 250 core LTTE members stood with him. Few will mourn the end of a man who ruthlessly ordered the murder of his opponents, demanded absolute fealty and pioneered the use of suicide bombings...
...country where death squads operate with impunity and where only one in 10 homicides reach court, human-rights groups worried that the killings were a throwback to the bad old days when police took matters into their own hands. "We had two fears," says Eloisa Machado, a lawyer with the Conectas human-rights organization. "That public-security officers had abused their power and summarily executed people, and that these cases would be hushed up." She then claims, "Unfortunately, both these fears have been confirmed." (See pictures of São Paulo's attempts to clean itself...
...report highlighting the abuses carried out during those eight bloody days in May has galvanized relatives and human-rights workers who refuse to let the matter fade away. The report, drawn up by experienced researchers in Rio de Janeiro and backed by the São Paulo police's own ombudsman, alleges that law-enforcement officers, many operating as hooded assassins, went after civilians and settled scores. Thirty-three officers were killed during the first two nights of attacks on police stations and other targets, according to data compiled by researchers at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. More...
...families of those killed are frustrated at what they believe is the police's refusal to more seriously investigate their claims and say that if the federal government does not intervene they will go to the Inter American Court of Human Rights and put Brazil on trial. More than half of the cases have been officially closed by the authorities, in some instances even after relatives pointed out discrepancies in the officers' reports...
...guerrilla movement escalated into full-scale civil war in July 1983. The LTTE killed 13 Sri Lankan army troops in an ambush in Jaffna. In retaliation, as many as 3,000 Tamils, mainly in Colombo, were killed in several days of violence at the end of July. Human-rights groups and other researchers say that Tamil homes and businesses were systematically targeted by organized mobs. The 1983 violence, known as Black July, marked the beginning of Sri Lanka's civil war and the rise of Prabhakaran from radical nationalist to feared terrorist. "The '83 July holocaust has united all sections...