By Trevor Grant, SMH, January 20, 2013 - She thought the horrors of her life might end when she got to Australia. But it was no better, locked away indefinitely without explanation. After she told her story, she looked up with tears in her eyes and asked softly: ''Can you help me?'' I didn't know what to say. But I knew what to feel. And that is shame. Shame that I live in a big country with such a small heart.

SMH, 09 Nov 2012 - THE Sri Lankan newspaper editor told by a government official she would be killed - but who was denied protection in Australia - has fled Colombo for political asylum in another country.

By Hamish McDonald, SMH, 14 April 2012 - Kaarthikeyan is no sympathiser of the Tamil Tigers, who went down to bloody defeat by the Sri Lankan armed forces in May 2009. But like many Indians, particularly those in Tamil Nadu state, he is dismayed by the arrogance of the Sri Lankan government in victory. ''Where there is no justice, there can be no peace,'' Kaarthikeyan told me in an email this week. ''Continued injustice and discrimination against minority Tamils gave rise to the birth of insurgency in Sri Lanka … If Sri Lanka or, for that matter, any society perpetuates injustice it is an indirect encouragement for violent movements to be born and grow.''

SMH, 11 April 2012 - THE Sri Lankan-Australian political activist kidnapped in Colombo last Friday was dumped on the streets of the same city in the early hours of yesterday morning, before handing himself into police. Premakumar Gunaratnam, a former dual citizen who is reported to have been in Sri Lanka on an Australian passport under the name Noel Mudalige since September last year, has since been deported from the country, allegedly for breaching his visa conditions. Mr Gunaratnam has been a long-standing left-wing activist in Sri Lankan politics, and was about to be elected as the leader of a breakaway political group, the Frontline Socialist Party, on the day he was arrested.

By Hamish McDonald, SMH, February 18, 2012 - According to reports circulating around Sri Lanka and its diaspora, Washington officials have let it be known to the Sri Lankan government they have intelligence intercepts of the conversation in which Gotabaya Rajapaksa is alleged to have ordered the surrendering Tiger cadres be gunned down.

By Hamish McDonald, SMH, 29 October 2011 - The allegations are horrifying, the evidence credible: massed civilians shelled and bombed, enemy leaders shot down after surrendering, naked and bound male and female prisoners executed by jeering soldiers. All happening just over two years ago in a nearby Commonwealth country.

By Tim Elliott, SMH, May 7, 2011 - They're freedom fighters, not terrorists, says Professor John Whitehall. ''The UN is ineffective, but Australia should do something on its own, like revoke [Sri Lankan President Mahinda] Rajapaksa's invitation to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth in October. We should demand they let Tamil civilians go from their concentration camps. And they should allow the [Red Cross] access to all the Tiger soldiers they have in their camps. Until then, Australia should have nothing to do with this lot.''