Shehan is a friend of our family who has been diagnosed with ALL-Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Shehan is just 33 years and has a 3 month old baby. He is in urgent need of a peripheral blood stem cell transplant. He is Sri Lankan by nationality and due to his ethnicity finding a donor from the National Donor registry for Shehan has posed a problem. Both his brothers were tested and proved to be no match.

AUSTRALIA has approved the controversial appointment of a former naval commander as Sri Lanka's high commissioner, prompting Australia's Tamil community to accuse the government of protecting a war criminal.Retired Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe was appointed as high commissioner to Australia on Friday.Since learning of his nomination for the role earlier this year, Australia's Tamil community has lobbied the Gillard government to reject Admiral Samarasinghe in response to Sri Lanka's refusal to allow an international war crimes tribunal.

Australia has accepted as Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner former Navy commander Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe, according to some press reports. Admiral Samarasinghe was commander of the Navy during the final phase of Sri Lanka’s war, including the final months in which tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were slaughtered. The recently released UN panel’s report states that “[f]rom as early as Feb 6 [2009], the SLA continuously shelled within the area that became the second NFZ from all directions, including air, land and sea.”

RISE is concerned about the portrayal in the mainstream media of the latest protests by asylum seekers incarcerated in Sydney’s Villawood immigration detention centre. The images of fires and other distressed acts carried out by incarcerated asylum seekers coupled with sound bites from mainstream media commentators, radio shock-jocks and politicians are being used to whip up flames of hysteria in the Australian community at large.