The Sri Lankan Government was accused yesterday of ethnic cleansing after armed police stormed workers’ hostels in the capital, Colombo, during the night and forced hundreds of ethnic Tamils to leave town.
Security officials said that the operation was part of a crackdown on the Tigers, who, they say, have infiltrated Colombo and are using workers’ hostels as bases for attacks.
– The Times
Projected on to the consul’s wall in the US embassy in London was a series of snapshots. They came from a hi-tech database somewhere in the US and they showed my face – bleary-eyed, flight-weary – as captured by the homeland security camera at the passport control desk every time I have entered the US since 2004. Beside my name the database said: “Clearance Status: Not Adverse.”
According to the most recent information supplied to me by the embassy, some 100 million people are now contained in that database, held at an undisclosed location. Last year they gave me a figure of about 60 million. At that rate of growth, they’ll have a good portion of mankind face-logged within a decade.
– The Guardian
Most recent government statements on counter-terrorism have provoked strong opposition. Yesterday’s did not. The response was low key. This matched John Reid’s tone. His watchwords were consultation, deliberation and discussion. As he told MPs, “This is a more comprehensively consensual approach than we have ever used before.”
This shift emerged during a long discussion at yesterday’s meeting of the Cabinet, chaired by Jack Straw. Several ministers said that the rhetoric needed toning down: that talk about being soft on terrorism could be counter-productive.
Moreover, some ministers were alarmed by reports in the Sunday papers about new powers to stop and question. There has been no request from the police in Britain or from the security agencies for such powers. So this has been relegated to the “very early stage” of consideration inside government.
– The Times
Turkey’s military high command is to introduce special security measures in three provinces close to the border with Iraq tomorrow, amid an intensive build-up of troops in the region ahead of a possible attack on Kurdish separatists.
The measures, in the provinces of Hakkari, Sirnak and Siirt, will allow the military to ban civilian aircraft and potentially restrict the movement of goods and people between June 9 and September 9. They are part of an intensifying battle between the military and PKK Kurdish separatists, which An-kara claims are launching attacks on Turkey from bases inside Iraq.
– The Financial Times