Since the military victory of the Sri Lankan government over the LTTE in May 2009, there is on–going militarisation in the predominantly Tamil–speaking North and East regions of Sri Lanka. On the northern peninsula alone the force density is 200 soldiers per 1000 civilians. This exceeds the force density in Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq (during the early stage of occupation). Of the 18,000 square kilometres of the entire region nearly 8,000 have been fully acquired by the Sri Lankan security forces. The Sri Lankan government has undertaken massive structural changes in the region including establishing Sinhala settlements, military cantonments and Sinhala Buddhist shrines and by acquiring key economic and commercial centres of the region. Nearly 25,000 tombstones of LTTE combatants have been demolished and any public remembrance of the dead has been banned. In the aftermath of the war, the military is also reported to have killed workers, fishermen and other demonstrators in the southern parts of the island who protested against the government. What kind of ‘international pressure’ will work?
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Chair: Denis Halliday
Former Assistant Secretary General of the UN
Speaker 1: Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam
A leading Tamil parliamentarian during the 2002 peace process and a lawyer whose father was assassinated by ‘unknown gunmen’ in 2000
Speaker 2: Kumaravadivel Guruparan
A leading civil society activist and a lecturer at the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka
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Film: Sri Lanka: Killing Fields II
The second of three documentaries produced by Channel 4 which reveals evidence that civilians, hospitals, no fire zones and other ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) marked places were targeted by the security forces killing thousands of civilians in the last phase of the war in 2009.
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Organised by: International Peace Studies Programme – ISE/TCD; Irish Forum for Peace in Sri Lanka (IFPSL) and Pax Christi Ireland.
Funded by: The Robert & Kezia Stanley Chapman Trust.
Venue: Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin (on main Trinity campus, the old ‘Physiology’ building, beside Department of Zoology and facing rugby pitch – enter Lincoln Place Gate)
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