Word: lankan
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...Lankan army has Asia's longest-running insurgency on the ropes: The separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) movement, long been considered one of the world's most fearsome guerrilla armies, lost its last stronghold at Mullaittivu on Jan. 25, and government officials are now confident of a decisive victory in the civil war that has claimed some 70,000 lives and displaced over a million people since...
...LTTE is short on supplies and fighters, and has gone to ground in an ever ever-shrinking pocket of jungle in the northeast of the country as government forces advance. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Sunday called for the LTTE's surrender, but there is little chance that a rebel movement whose fighters over the years have chosen suicide over capture will go down quietly. (See pictures from inside Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger territory...
...Lankan military denied shelling any hospitals, and has blamed the LTTE for civilian casualties. The government said Monday that the military campaign was in a "decisive stage", and that it could not "be responsible for the safety and security of civilians still living among LTTE terrorists". Colombo claims the rebels trap civilians in order to use them as human shields. Although the government has demarcated a safe zone north of Mullaittivu, it's unclear how non-combatants might be able to reach the sanctuary. While aid agencies clamor for access to those displaced, neither they nor most journalists have been...
Wickrematunge could not accept that kind of thinking. Even a wartime government, he believed, ought to be held accountable to its citizens. Stories in the Sunday Leader raised questions about who benefited from military aircraft contracts, needled Sri Lankan Cabinet officials for extravagant trips abroad and, in one infamous exclusive, accused the Defense Minister of arranging false travel documents for a former LTTE leader who is now part of the government. The Defense Ministry has denied any involvement...
...problems for many years has been the problem of impunity," says Robert Blake, the U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka. "They always say that they're going to investigate these things, but nothing ever happens." The U.S. State Department has condemned the murder and called for a Sri Lankan government probe, adding to a chorus of similar requests from human-rights groups and other nations...