Geneva, 31 October 2012 - Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review Working Group is currently holding its 14th session in Geneva from 22 October to 5 November 2012. Review of Sri Lanka is sheduled for Thursday, 1 November 2012 from 14h30 to 18h00. Several countries have submited advanced questions to Sri Lanka.

AHRC, June 8, 2012 - The former Attorney General, Mohan Peiris, last November told the United Nations CAT Committee that he knew personally, through a reliable source that Prageeth Eknaligoda was living in a foreign country. However, last week when giving evidence before the Homagama Magistrate's Court he said that he does not know whether Prageeth Eknaligoda was dead or alive.

/EINPresswire.com/ June 6, 2012 - "While the Sri Lankan President is visiting you to get your blessings, his government is killing and disappearing Catholic priests and threatening the Bishop of Mannar. We urge you to ask for the whereabouts of the abducted Catholic priests and secure a guarantee for the protection of Bishop Dr. Rayappu Joseph, said Rudrakumaran." His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI was urged by the Prime Minister of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) Mr. Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran to raise abduction and killing of Catholic priests and threats against the most reverend Dr. Rayappu Joseph, the Catholic Bishop of Mannar, with the visiting Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse.

BBC, 05 June 2012 - A senior Sri Lankan official has said that he has no idea about the whereabouts of a disappeared journalist seven months after saying he believed the man was alive and living abroad. Human rights activists say that the remarks of former Attorney-General Mohan Peiris betray insensitivity to the plight of missing people. They say that is especially so at a time when disappearances are ongoing. Several dozen of such cases have been reported since October.

AHRC, 18 May 2012 - The former Attorney General, Mohan Peiris, has been ordered to appear before the Homagama Magistrate's Court and to reveal what he knows about the whereabouts of Prageeth Eknalilgoda, the journalist who has been missing since January 24, 2010. At the official session of the United Nations Committee against Torture, held last November, the former Attorney General representing Sri Lanka as a state party told the Committee that he had learned that Prageeth Eknalilgoda is living in a foreign country. Prageeth Eknalilgoda's wife, Sandaya Eknaligoda, through her lawyers made a request to the Magistrate's Court inquiring into the circumstances of the disappearance of her husband, to summon the former Attorney General and to request him to divulge the information he has on the whereabouts of her husband. The state represented by a solicitor general objected to this request. Yesterday, May 17, the court made order allowing her request.

COLOMBO, 18 May 2012 (IRIN) - Three years after the government of Sri Lanka declared an end to decades of civil conflict with separatist rebels, thousands of people are still missing, according to the UN and Sri Lankan activists. The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) of the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded 5,671 reported cases of wartime-related disappearance in Sri Lanka, not counting people who went missing in the final stages of fighting from 2008 to 2009.

By Charles Haviland, BBC News, Colombo - Three Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebels who took part in a rehabilitation ceremony last year may subsequently have been taken away by the authorities, a rights campaigner has said. It has emerged that parents saw photos of their children at the ceremony attended by President Rajapaksa but now know nothing of their fate.

Weekend Leader, 11 May 2012 - The Roman Catholic Bishop of Mannar, Bishop Rayappu Joseph, has come under the scanner of the Sri Lankan regime’s Criminal Investigation Department, which has earned notoriety for employing third degree methods of questioning in its infamous ‘fourth floor’ office in their headquarters in Colombo. According to reliable sources, two CID officers visited the Bishop’s office in Mannar on May 8 with prior appointment and questioned him on his submission to the LLRC regarding the ‘disappearance’ of 146,679 people during the last stages of the civil war in the period 2008-09.

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.''

ABC Melbourne, 11 April 2012 - An Australian man says he was sexually tortured by security forces after being abducted in Sri Lanka. Speaking in Sydney on his return home, Kumar Gunaratnam claimed he was abducted at gunpoint by secret police in Colombo on Friday, assaulted, tortured and left to fear for his life. He was released after the intervention of the Australian Government following a public appeal by his wife.