Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa yesterday said that the majority of complaints, received from Tamil speaking parents, during a post-war inquiry, related to children forcibly recruited by the LTTE during eelam war IV.

The UNICEF analysis had been carried out in collaboration with the Northern Provincial Department of Probation and Child Care and the Government Agent of Vavuniya, the Defence Secretary told The Island.

He was responding to the UK’s 2011 human rights report, which alleged that UNICEF’s Family Reunif

The Bar Association yesterday called for a thorough investigation into last weeks abduction of an accused in a case, while being transported to the Colombo High Court in a prison van.

"We unequivocally condemn very strongly the recent incident where an accused who was brought to the High Court Colombo was abducted in broad daylight within the precincts of the Courts. The culture of impunity inherent in these abductions by whosoever is responsible for this should be forthwith stopped by the Law Enforcement Authorities, as it reflec

The HRC is in the process of collecting data on prisoners in death row.

"Nearly 70 per cent of the data collection process is completed," Secretary of the HRC Nimal Punchihewa said. The commission plans to present its recommendations to the government early next year.

However, Secretary to the Ministry of Prison Reforms and Rehabilitation A. Dissanayake said that the prison authorities had already requested the approval of the Management Service Department of the treasury to recruit a hangman and they had re

The adverse comments against the EPDP did not stand in the way of it welcoming a majority of the recommendations. It wanted the setting up of the Parliamentary Select Committee without further delay and with a time frame for the conclusion of its recommendations to reach a final and durable solution. "Once the select committee is in progress, our party will initiate action to have discussions with the constituent parties of the select committee with a view to promote consensus to reach early agreement."

"We

The Media Ministry, Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) and a petitioner yesterday agreed before the Supreme Court that the access control imposed on a website could be lifted on prescribed conditions arrived at following an inquiry by the ministry and the TRC on a complaint of blocking a website which belonged to a person named Shavantha Rodrigo of Pitakotte.

The inquiry was held on a direction given by the Supreme Court.

The conditions under which a website could operate are: the web site is registered

A human rights group has called on Sri Lanka's government to investigate the disappearance of two activists in the northern city of Jaffna.

Lalith Kumar Weeraraj and Kugan Muruganathan disappeared last week. They organised demonstrations on behalf of the families of missing people.

Civil society activists in Sri Lanka say they fear for the lives of the men.