now this location was widely expected in the us as trump was debating between singapore and the d.m.z. he ruled out the d.m.z. in days earlier singapore is seen as neutral ground for both countries it hosts a u.s. military base as well as the north korean embassy and it is a country experienced in holes in hosting these high stakes diplomatic talks at the last minute we saw that in two thousand and fifteen when it successfully hosted a summit between the leaders of china and taiwan mahathir mohamad has been sworn in as malaysia's prime minister following his unexpected election when the ninety two year old was sworn in as the seventh leader by king sultan mohammed the fifth on thursday by us here governor in the eighty's and ninety's the win makes him the oldest elected leader in the world he replaces the who was tainted by a corruption scandal rescuers in kenya searching for survivors after

a disaster that's killed at least forty nine people with several more still missing the dam in the rift valley around the hundred fifty kilometers north of the capital nairobi burst its banks on wednesday evening washing away almost an entire village the dam is one of seven in the area owned by a commercial farm and residents are concerned the more of them may be unsafe flash floods in kenya have already killed at least one hundred people since march well those are the headlines one o one east is next thanks for watching. over seven million lives in this hall and each one a story that demonstrably tool. witness documentaries to hold. on to see a. new. story lanka has used abductions as a way to instill fear since the days of its civil war. the conflict is

over but critics say of the eighty's are still kidnapping citizens who speak am. this mall island nation has one of the highest numbers of unsolved disappearances in the world. will a new investigation agency help victims and their families get justice on steve on this up a sort of one of one east we investigate sri lanka inforced disappearance is. going to wonder what it will never i see a white bread when i see a soldier or produce them i look at them suspiciously even when i think about the moment i was kidnapped it scares me. knew how serious seeing i never thought he would live to tell his story he's one of the few in sri lanka to survive an

abduction. sixty thousand others have gone missing over the past three decades. it was a sunny morning in may two thousand and nine niihau was walking near the courthouse in the capital colombo when a white van started following him soon he was surrounded and like him if i didn't put a weapon to my right hip he told me to shut up and keep walking and i got a van came up from hundred meters away and i was dragged into it. he was thrown into a gallery on a coconut a state back. over there you're going to get it all there. will be how alleges he was tortured by plain clothed men and uniformed offices.

with a true me into this corner and started to take to me. the street and me and started hitting me with metal pipes. all over already. using bricks niihau plots out a torture chamber twelve feet in length. it was an area like this no matter how much i scream no one could hear and i like them there was you remain and blood all over the place because they were in there that they took my belt and started beating my back. off the dead beat dragged me by my legs on the rocks. hit me in here and here they also hit my soles of my feet.

to get on bottom of. the dead. i feel a plastic bag with petrol and bite my head with it for two minutes until i started suffocating and just when i was about to lose consciousness they wouldn't let go. during long interrogations the office is accused of aiding the tamil tigers a separatist group who fought a twenty six years civil war against the sri lankan government. how is from the singhalese majority but the trade union publication he worked for promoted the rights of the tamil minority. was there a point where you thought you were going to die that don't want to do that then again i had no hope of living at that point be belted me so much. now says he was taken to police headquarters where he says he faced more torture to force him into making a confession. but after seven years in custody niihau was eventually released

because there wasn't enough evidence to charge him under sri lanka's terrorism laws hundreds of others have also been held in detention for years without charge or access to a lawyer. with these laws the government is able to use military personnel to get rid of threats and kidnap people and they can get rid of any trip which opposes the government. survival stories like my house provide a faint glimmer of hope some of the families of the disappeared. sandra acknowledge goda hasn't seen her husband since twenty two in. her house is filled with cartoons by the political journalist who vanished without a trace legged that. they get that dora the bus. said to the kinnick assam ever since prague it disappeared there's only been sadness and emptiness in

this house. if someone is dead you have their body you can deal with the emotions and get over their death if a person is abducted it's one of the worst crimes out there. gates cartoons an article was focused on human rights abuses and social inequality in sri lanka his work was published by a leftwing news website one of the few media outlets the criticized then president mahinda rajapaksa. where sandy says in two thousand and nine her husband started receiving death threats. to call it saying that he had received a few calls from people to cut his limbs off to that but he was never scared however a week before he went missing he was worried by one incident one of prague its

friends who worked for the government told him he was on top of the rajapaksa target list. one noisy twenty ten brigade caught his wife to say he would be home blanks. that evening brigade's neighbors sora suspicious white van driving around his house . brigade has never been seen or heard from again. except this all of your. i want truth and justice there's a lot of lies about prague in this country the truth about prague it must to mind thing what happened what did he do who did it. i cheered and ninety court appearances later she's still searching for the truth a former army officer came forward and alleged the pregame was interrogated at

a military camp eleven army officers were arrested in connection with his disappearance but would later released when they would have given it your moder. former army chief general south. has no doubt about what happened to the cartoonist brigade disappeared just five days before national elections after he publicly backed phone sika over the incumbent president rajapaksa but why do you think he would have doctored. that day was not in favor of the. with. the rajapaksa you. lord over toward the oil come to be. general fund take a loss that election but he's now a minister in sri lanka has new government which ousted the rajapaksa regime in

twenty fifteen phone sacre alleges that in the past rogue elements in the security forces conducted white van abductions to silence critics like brigade. sri lanka passed a new law renee proof which criminalizes in force disappearances and as a government minister your quite willing to reprimand people that were under your command behaved inappropriately you have no yeah i made a bad anyone in the say doesn't for me in a year. where a. stern action no man in the suite of us can murderous regimes. yes leave their need to be taken to. task. they've been legal action against them we would grow a lot of military where do they are they'll be some in the police i mean the into us agencies. who preferred to police this man and negotiate hansie team

by name what i did i suppose for the difference if it was using white then you have a better chance of big employees will who did that they didn't or do we do in the process of their. legitimate duties i would say the duties. what i want to approach former president mahinda rajapaksa who declined to comment in a statement former defense secretary go to buy a rajapaksa described phone psych as claims as baseless allegations he denies the security forces government in power at the time carried out in force disappearance it's.

a. human rights activist ricky fernando says the try to ignore this issue for decades. has the second largest number of disappearances reported that you went off to iraq. today ricky is going to document some cases in more like t.v. on the northern tip of sri lanka. in two thousand and nine this district was the front line in the final battles between the separatist tamil targets and the government forces. it was then that some of the country's most notorious disappearances happened at neverland and that that was in the end as i never. heard of i never right now and every day for the past year ten families in towns across the region have been holding vigils they say many of their relatives were

taken by the military and have never been seen again i think the pain and the grief and the tears are the same it is spending the singhalese almost anyone any other country for that matter. any busy building among these and many families have disappeared people are desperation and anger that there's been no onsets what's coming and they feel cheated. the protests began when the government backtracked on a promise to release a list of those still in custody. chelios so bob young son none to cooma is one of those still missing after surrendering to the army at the end of the war a little let alone and children must come back that's what we think not everyone. she says the women are prepared to protest in till they get answers. when what else am i to do where else am i going to go i have no one at home.

so but jim has reported his son's disappearance to the un and the red cross but she has limited evidence and can't identify the soldiers who took him. the fact that i surrendered him is the proof there is no what the proof no proof. this bridge is with hundreds of others say they handed over their family members it's a mass disappearances several hundred at least several buses several hundred people saw nothing from the bridge yes they have simply vanished in the in the custody of the army not just vanished but vanished in the custody of the army. when so badly i'm returns here the memories flood back. it happened at a perfect nine or ten in the morning it very very very very very very very bad the

one told her that i was looking at my son he was sitting by the bus window so i could see him he was looking at me he was crying. one of the soldiers took couldn't see that they would release him they said they would release him in a month they took him and went. twenty court cases regarding this mass disappearance have dragged on for the last five years no one has ever been brought to justice and the only army officer to testify offered a blanket denial. it's a absurd situation for army of a country to take its citizens. in front of their family members and in that they don't know what happened to them and the former on come on this our government minister he was the army commander when these incident happened on that

big that widows and i mean he can't just wash his hands off and say that no i don't know what happened. where have i gone i don't know. a gun. taking place during the war and the last weeks of the war we had a very weird system. we had made beautiful eight months that everybody coming and sat in the woodwork i was wondering first hundred. feet of these men and there were two. other people to be taken both north and the. store. sarath fonseka says under his command two hundred fifteen thousand tamils who surrendered in the war but probably processed. your conscience is clear yes yes because. in fifteen family members comment here that. they have gone missing

you got a big death was but a group but this is not just ten this is hundred two hundred you know a very very thin rambling ito who can do things lay there. and hand over working there needs to be more correctly what you were. thanks for having to find the truth of what happened to sri lanka's disappeared the government announced three years ago it would set up an office of missing persons sally or paris and six other commissioners but only recently appointed but the office won't be fully operational for months. he says one of the most pressing cases will be the mass disappearances on the bridge and generally one would expect that rather someone delegation would be against the sri lankan authorities i do not for one moment see that the task is going to be easy but for the moment i am confident that we have the cooperation of the thought it is. that i am confident off but the office has no criminal

powers and can only refer suspects to the attorney general one must understand the purpose of the us office on missing persons he does not believe it is to find out what happened to persons it is to trace people. so damn lisa disappear magen answer is not necessarily justice that would be by now the mechanism. i want to know but in the past similar commissions to style to solve any disappearance case. he is helping affected families right with the statements to present to the office of missing persons he says many of them don't trust the officials one of the reasons is because one of the commissioners who have been appointed is a former army major general because for many people the army is responsible for vast majority of these disappearances that is true for tamils but that is also true for single lease. the security forces have their own concerns saying the office of

missing persons who subject war heroes to unfair scrutiny it's completely but when you have people who have been critical of the army as commissioner i don't personally i would not like to go there and get related so it's a matter of. having credible neutral people in the commission rather than having activist. people who have been working for n.g.o.s major general diet pereira was the director of operations in the military jury and after the war. so you're saying that the army is not complicit at all in their disappearance i can watch and see there was no policy of such nature so you're saying the use of abductions with never used during war and never use during post war never used in war never used in post war by the army by the military this is not about honesty it

if someone thinks. that they can hide and keep a person. intuitive on picks i think here. and see if i get. that many sure lankans insists he's still using inforce disappearances to startle dissent some only feel safe talking about it from the other side of the world tamil asylum seekers here in london klein that they were abducted and abused by the authorities in the past two years. most intrusive alleges that he was abducted twice in two thousand and sixteen and more recently in two thousand and seventeen the twenty year old to pass in protests with villages complained that the army was stealing their land to build new bases one night last june he says men in

a van snatched him off the streets. and took him to a secret torture size. they had a long stick and said lie me on the ground and beat my back and feel they'd burn my back and thighs with secrets they used a quarter to sexually abuse me. newton says a local priest broken his release then his parents bought him a one way ticket out of sri lanka he claims his father and other men in his village have also been abducted tortured and then released by the police in the last two years and believes his family is a target because he's uncool support for the tamil tigers. thing and i think i could be abducted again if i went back i have no faith in our current government as they preach something and do something yes i hope and if i am forced back to sri lanka i will commit suicide. milton's lawyer says many young relatives of former

tamil tiger fighters have been kidnapped and tortured in sri lanka. the. coolest. nun represents a number of tamil men who are claiming asylum in the u.k. because they feel their lives are in danger under sri lanka's current regime that torture is systematic and widespread the purpose we can see is to instill fear among the tamils not to. revolt again or at the same time not to give evidence against the war crimes in two thousand and nine how many cases. do you have where sri lankans the been abducted and tortured under the current gun. since two thousand and fifteen since the new government came into force we have documented at least eighty cases which had been corroborated by medical evidence and other sorts

of independent evidence mostly said livy have a dozen eighteen we have at least six cases of torture. other asylum seekers in london claimed they were abducted and tortured for months before managing to escape sri lanka. this man who we'll call our juneau was accused of trying to revive the tamil tiger movement an allegation he denies. them and the other not and there was there from april to just. be of use to me and beat me many times but i can't tell you certain things about how they talk to me and i'm with two or three times i resisted but they beat me up by david on my back with a hot iron door i still have the scars. after the readings i've been.

a junior says he was held at a military base called joseph camp where he was tortured insecurely abused at least thirty times he could hear the screams of other men being tortured these tamil asylum seekers still carry the scars gina remains haunted by the experience. and people say that i scream a lot in my sleep at night i have bad dreams dreams that i am dead that i am being beaten with it. in our therapy at a london city church other tamil asylum see. has captured the beauty they knew. but i do know can't forget the horrors of war independent doctors confirmed juno and milton have injuries consistent with torture but the u.k.

home office has rejected their asylum claims. because i was working in my uncle's shop in. my father was a fisherman and i don't get paid to help him there was no economic hardship if my life was not under threat i would be in my family. the sri lankan government and the police denied there were torture sites in the country they say the asylum seekers economic refugees seeking a better life run the risk. against the border later or for. any i don't the in the newsroom for anyone. as you have on your confident that the days of the white banner. you're not after these different.

despite those denials the office of missing persons wants to investigate all white van abductions and military bases where torture is said to have occurred can you say testimony from people who have survived what. yes yes we have and there used provision even by the new league to have. them listen to weaknesses. who are not in the media presence of the commission are the same overseas it's. destroying can government is promising to provide compensation to families of the disappeared if they think it's justified future a few years will go from delay that innocent person might be morally and. go back to the gay community or the government. they can be compensated. sanjoy miller go to all families of the missing to be treated fairly.

now someone. i've learned that the bin and sadness is the same for all widows. it doesn't matter if they are from the north or south sinhalese everyone is looking for truth and justice and it cut in mexico my fear is how long will i have to fight this battle. if you face disappearances continue with impunity it's a battle that will tear more sri lankan families apart. al-jazeera is an investigative unit reveals tactics used by anti muslim organizations to instigate a fear of islam all over greater universe care. over where they're

recruiting this stuff is toxic he's a poison salesman we saw the number of attacks against women and men across the country completely skyrocket guys in front of the courts only god makes the monitors blood flowing all over my legs out zero investigations islamophobia. the nature of news as it breaks this is one of the areas that protestants had blocked the road through thing finding higher than anything else they could find with details covering. this extremely hard to stop the everyone striving for the good of the state from around the world this museum aims to be a way of posset tory over region's history and its protected war that has divided the tribes here for generations.

this is al-jazeera. you know iraq matheson this is the news our live from doha coming up in the next sixty minutes you can still cover bomb iran crossed a red line benjamin netanyahu issues a strong warning to iran and syria as president bashar al assad. donald trump welcomes home american presidents from north korea and sets the stage for his highly anticipated meeting with kim jong un. looking for a lifeline argentina goes to the i.m.f. for a loan hoping to avoid an economic crisis. and around fifty people are dead after a dam bursts in kenya now rescue workers are scrambling to find survivors.