Two Lankans among Human Rights award winners

COLOMBO: Two Sri Lankans and a Burundian have won the 2007 Martin Ennals Award (MEA) for Human Rights Defenders, a release said yesterday.

Rajan Hoole and Kopalasingham Sritharan, co-founders of the University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR), Jaffna and Pierre Claver Mbonimpa who served as a policeman in Burundi until December 1994 are the three winners.

Often alone in exposing abuses, Hoole and Sritharan are under death sentences from the LTTE.

Since the assassination of their colleague, Rajani Thiranagama, the two have been forced to work underground for more than a decade, but their reports are well-known in Sri Lanka and abroad.

The ceremony of the Martin Ennals Award will take place in Geneva in October.