earth to home or saving googling to yes tell stories of creative people and a can of aid of projects around the world ideas to protect the climate and boost green energy solutions by global ideas being by a series of global 3 goals and on t.w. and online. they were forced into a nameless mass of. their bodies near tools of. the history of the slave trade is africa's history. he describes how the 4 hour and profit plummeted an entire continent into chaos and violence. the slave system created the greatest planned accumulation of wealth the world had ever seen up to that moment in time this is the journey back into the history of slavery. i

think will truly be making progress when we all accept the history of slavery as all of our history. our documentary series slavery routs starts march 9th on d w. this is the news a show coming up the continuing tragedy of civil war the government says tens of thousands missing from the conflict are actually dead but that's little comfort for the families still subject for justice plus. the rising number of children suffering in conflict and war zones we look at the situation enough by mistake.

welcome to do that dear news asia it's good to have you with us. nearly 3 decades long civil war devoured some 100000 of its citizens and by the time it ended in 2920000 were missing but those missing aren't missing any more they are dead shouldn't cause a new president go to buy a rajapaksa said so last month his statement means the death certificates can now be issued to families of the missing something that is expected to help with legal matters but for the mostly tamil families who lost so much their president's words mean little 10 years of waiting to hear what they most feared provides scant closure phnom a qantas army has just a few chickens to provide an income in sri lanka the elderly are usually looked after they extended family. but her daughter son in law and grandchildren have been

missing since the end of the civil war i've been in that one and i know when my son in law surrendered and just like many of the tamil separatists my daughter and 2 grandchildren went with him and the girl was to the boy he was for them to this day we don't know where they are really we're still searching for them one bit of and. qantas ami also lost 2 sons a bomb killed one of them the other was kidnapped there's no trace of his whereabouts her husband has since become completely withdrawn he hasn't spoken in years. our forces fought for liberation but now the battle is over we're hoping that the president's anger will subside and we can see our children again. but president go to buy a rajapaksa has other plans he has declared all the missing persons from the civil war dead that means families will never know what happened to their relatives.

bacha paxo was defense minister during the final years of the war. the un has accused him of serious human rights violations such as kidnapping and murder. at a protest in the north of sri lanka these women are calling for justice to be served they say they've been ignored since the war ended a decade ago. they belong to the tamil minority that fought for independence for nearly 30 years they're still looking for their missing children and their children's children and. i get it did we refute the president's claim that no one has gone missing since the civil war our children turned themselves over to government troops we've not killed anyone else on their site since the war but what happened to our children and the way i you know predicted and. then an army.

bulldozer disrupts the protest and tries to disperse the crowd since june of last year sri lanka has offered compensation of nearly 30 year 0 sum month for each missing person the payments for the government are overseen by sally f.p.s. he says there are between 14 and 15000 missing people a number that the un strongly disputes the courts have yet to resolve a single case the law says if we feed the poor and i find it has been completed we can now after consulting the families. refer that matters to the prosecuting authorities that's what sandia acknowledged go to tried to do her husband journalist was kidnapped he remains missing to this day it's the only case to have been brought before a court and it was subsequently suspended the chief investigator fled to switzerland and 700 officials from his agency were suspended after president rajapaksa took office. my husband parget was kidnapped twice the

1st time was in august of 2009 he said he uncovered the use of chemical weapons in sri lanka to carry out genocide. acknowledged holds exhibitions of her husband's drawings to honor his memory she hasn't heard anything from him since 2010 and there are no signs he's still alive and someone has told a story of. some months journalist and author of the book this divided island which profiles post-war salonga some of this really good to have you on the program with us now in writing your book you met many like some there are crossed. did you get a sense from them that they really believed they would get from the government on what happened to their loved ones. i felt that there was a split kind of psychology working over here i think like at

a larger level everybody knew the kind of state that they were dealing with the reluctance of the state to divulge any details about the kind of people who are missing but at the same time it's human psychology and this is not this is where not just in sri lanka but from the world in conflict zones it is human psychology to want confirmation of your loved ones see it even if it is a confirmation of that death so that in my eyes and i felt that you know that little human part of them was still holding out for news or confirmation or some kind of signal that the government knew exactly what had happened to them you speak about human psychology and hope now the different government has admitted that more than 20000 people who disappeared are dead what does that do to these people when i don't know if it does anything i mean this you don't can government to sort of slack east made this statement without conducting the kind of investigation at least as far as we can see conducting a kind of investigation that is necessary to confirm these numbers you know to say that somebody is dead without exactly saying how or when or why they died is not

really any kind of confirmation that a human being looks well when you're talking about their loved ones so if you don't leave sort of invoke some provokes more frustration on the part of these people when they just told us flat out without being given any more information i mean you say that knowing mr gerson that one can at least see was conducted that begets the question if the sri lankan government was ever really serious about sourcing for those who disappeared. it's difficult to know i mean when when my end up rajapakse our last election last time when the new government came into power headed by mike the pilot said a santa the government did so on the promise that they would conduct investigations not only into corruption in the previous regime but also into the disappeared that never happened they were given a full 5 years and they never really got that act going which was a source of immense disappointment and frustration to to activists to people who had lost these relatives and friends and of course a lot of boxes are back and for them to say that they would conduct an

investigation is to admit that they would conduct an investigation into their own practices which as we all know from governments all over the world is not something that anybody ever guys so it's difficult to believe that there was ever a good state intention of investigating and really probing what happened to these people now you have the roger talk shows back and bob what about other parts i was defense chief during the finer leo's of the civil war and he was elected with a vast majority in the elections or in the recent elections what does that mean for sri lanka and sri lanka he ordered was. it's plenty of they want to heal old wounds electing rajapakse i was not afraid to do it i mean it's a good i'll bet i like that sense was accused of 7 wall crimes he has somehow evaded all these investigations into his war record and now he's back in power and years known to be an authoritarian leader and quite a violent one of that and so to has him head of the government at

a time when minorities are vulnerable as they always have been in sri lanka is that is a particularly problematic thing to happen you spoke about the minorities are being vulnerable and it's something that you allude to in your book as well but i'd just like to know from you is true lanka an island for have a divided along racial ethnic and language lines. well i would hesitate to say forever i mean you know we have examples of countries around the world that have somehow made. it happen you know how knowledge the fact that it is actually stays and that which is that religions and despite that managed to survive as a functioning democracy that provides equal rights to everyone so so i would hesitate to say it but i mean that's to say to mistake but certainly in this regime in the rajapaksa regime it's difficult to see how a man who was so dismissive of minority rights during his previous sort of stint in power would suddenly come around to the view that minority rights need to be protected over the next 5 years i find that difficult to believe some months over

among them pleasure talking to him thank you very much. the brutality of the conflict in sri lanka hit its children as well exploited as side soldiers by the time of rebels and also as victims of the war it's of it's a theme that extends to another conflict too of climate a report on that side of the save the children says it is one of the top 4 countries in the world of where children are living in a conflict zone no belief that number is some 415000000 children that's one in 6 children worldwide joining me now for more is of honest on country director for save the children on off on mon and mr monaghan monem thanks for making the time written what roughly 20000000 children in afghanistan who've known nothing but wall their entire lives how has this impacted them.

this is correct because it has been more than 18 years right now that the latest episode of the conflict that's been has been going on and obviously you can imagine that one as a child you are experiencing conditions of war and conflict for such a long period it's going to have an impact on you. your motion only and on your development as well with with the constant all of when you go outside as to whether something will happen. unexploded ordinance of iranians of war. and laying about that can and can hurt you almost every family in afghanistan has lost a member of their family or friends or as in any way a form being affected by the conflict do you see hope on the horizon the things can improve. and what we always want to keep hope and of course there are

a number of initiatives that are that are ongoing it's not for us as an ngo to to comment on the on the political situation but of course we have hope for the next generation for the future generation of afghanistan that peace will come soon and that they will have the opportunity to to continue their lives in peace and without fearing for their lives and all for that does happen so on on off on mon and thank you so much for speaking to us. that's it for now head over to our website the double dot com forward slash to this show online and for other stories from the region. where this image behind. shows the daily threat of violence. with a look at life for a generation that's known nothing. about.

the coronavirus is hitting the tourism industry hard across asia chinese visitors are critical for many results and businesses especially. fails to profit from boeing 737 months prices and books an ugly last 2019 a 3600000000 year old corruption penalty has finally hit the bottom. of the show the world's biggest mobile technology exhibition is canceled concerns

over the coronavirus for the mobile world congress to keep its doors closed this year. place is business. on today's asian and global business story. january usually the top of the tourist season in thailand with beaches and major tourist attractions packed with visitors especially from china out of almost 40000000 arrivals last year a quarter word chinese this year many places are quite empty after china suspended tours abroad in response to the corona virus outbreak. the routine is comforting to practice. every morning at 8 he prepares his boat for the day the vessel can carry up to 12 passengers and.