Australia urged to pressure Sri Lanka on displaced Tamils

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Updated September 29, 2009 19:56:18

Four months on from the crushing defeat of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels, and nearly 300,000 people displaced in the last bitter months of the civil war are still detained in refugee camps. At the weekend, even as Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka told the UN he's making resettling the refugees a priority, government troops fired on a group of civilians trying to escape one of the camps, wounding two people.

John Dowd QC is president of the International Commission of Jurists in Australia, and also heads ActionAid Australia. He has accused the Australian government of "enormous conceit" in its failure to pressure Sri Lanka into getting the civilians home.

Presenter: Michael Cavanagh
Speaker: John Dowd QC, president, International Commission of Jurists Australia

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