Nirmala Rajasingam, founder of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum and who is based in the United Kingdom speaks to Newsclick about the challenges faced by the civil society and democracy activists in Sri Lanka. She appeals to the Tamil speaking people in India, the international civil society and the Left in India, to be cognisant of the new challenges faced in post-civil war Sri Lanka, where militarisation, military triumphalism, neoliberalism and Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism have created new discontents apart from the still un-rehabilitated and traumatised Tamil populations - both in the North and the East and in the plantations and the hill country.

Spokesperson of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, Ahilan Kadirgamar talks to Newsclick over phone from New York. He argues that the "Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka" brings about valid recommendations, which if heeded by the otherwise triumphalist and denialist Sri Lankan government could pave the way for true reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka following the brutal civil war in 2009.