Sri Lanka

Amnesty International, August 28, 2008: There is a widespread pattern of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka with several hundred cases reported in the last 18 months alone. In June 2008 the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) noted that in two months 22 people had disappeared, 18 of them in May.
Families complain that fear of reprisals prevents many from reporting cases to the official bodies. By the end of 2007, 5,516 cases of enforced disappearances remained unresolved according to WGEID.

According to an August 12 study by the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, the ongoing ethnic strife between Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority has led to one of the worst crises of internal displacement in South Asia. This study was made before the recent Sri Lanka military offensive in the predominantly Tamil north of, which according to news reports have massively increased the numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
“In terms of the proportion of the population, Sri Lanka has one of the world's largest IDP populations”, concluded the study's author, Andres Angel.

By Grace S. Vanni
The Sri Lankan government’s war against the Tamil people is intensifying. Civilians are worst affected by the ongoing bloody war in the north of Sri Lanka, where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) runs its own affairs in a de facto state where close to 400,000 people live.
According to the latest reports emerging from the Vanni district in the north, half of the population have been displaced and living under subhuman condition for the past two-and-a-half months as Sri Lanka stepped up daily sea, land and air attacks on these people.

Twenty-three years ago, in late July 1983, Sri Lanka's Tamils were terrorised by angry mobs murdering, maiming and burning their homes in an orgy of violence unparalleled in the island's history. More than 3000 Tamils were killed within just 10 days, the 150,000 were rendered homeless and began a refugee flight that leaves more than 800,000 Tamils scattered all around the world today.