Across Asia: Sri Lanka

Detainee camps criticized

A human rights group demanded yesterday that Sri Lanka immediately free nearly 300,000 ethnic Tamil civilians held in government-run camps in the island's north, saying the detentions are illegal. The civilians were displaced in the final months of fighting in the nation's quarter-century civil war between the government, dominated by the Sinhalese majority, and the Tamil Tiger rebels, fighting for a separate state for the Tamil minority. The war ended in May.