News

(New York, April 7, 2011) – The Sri Lankan government should account for everyone who was taken into custody at the end of Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long armed conflict in May 2009 and are feared to have been “disappeared,” Human Rights Watch said today. Despite numerous requests from families for information about their relatives, the authorities […]

Dr. P. Saravanamutthu Over the last so many weeks and still continuing, there have been a number of critical reports on the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA)- the election monitoring body of which CPA serves as the Secretariat, the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (MEV), in particular – the National Peace Council (NPC), and Transparency […]

By Sandun A. Jayasekera Minister of Youth Affairs and Skills Development Dulles Alahapperuma said it was regrettable and a matter of shame that the development of the construction industry has been stunted due to corruption and quality failure while other countries have shown tremendous progress in this sector. Addressing a ceremony held after laying the […]

Tamil National Alliance MP for Batticaloa, Pakiaselvam Ariyanethiran, Tuesday night told media that Sri Lankan forces were staging search operations in the three districts of Eastern Province to justify Colombo’s “need” to extend the Emergency in the island. The Sri Lanka Army with the SL Police on Tuesday launched major cordon and search operation simultaneously […]

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States said Tuesday that future cooperation with Sri Lanka depended on improvements in its human rights record and an accounting of the bloodshed at the end of the island’s civil war. With its strategic location and contributions to global peacekeeping, Sri Lanka “is poised to be a capable and willing […]

Devolution promised for N&E, disenfranchising South – Tissa Attanayakeby Zacki Jabbar The UNP is to institute legal action against a government move to convert five local bodies in Colombo into a Corporation.General Secretary of the UNP Tissa Attanayake told a news conference in Colombo yesterday, that they will move Court to ensure that the Mahinda […]

April 5th has significance to Sri Lanka due to the JVP uprising of 1971. The word uprising has been used for this event by way of an exaggeration. The exaggeration came mainly from the then-government and its propaganda machinery, supported also by UNP, who were the main opposition party, in unleashing unrestrained repression to suppress […]

Reaffirming India’s support for the Sri Lankan Tamils, Congress president and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday said New Delhi would continue to press Colombo for constitutional amendments to ensure equal rights and status to ethnic minorities in the island nation. “In our neighbourhood, there is no issue closer to our heart than the Sri […]

The people from Jaffna face interference by the troops in their family affairs, as such the fear-psychosis which usually prevails among the Jaffna residents has not declined, Sri Lanka troops have been poking their noses into the family and social issues of the people of the Jaffna peninsula, said Father Paul Natchchaththiram to the muti […]

Urgent Amnesty International Action/ Student fears for safety after deaths threatsA Sri Lankan student who complained that his law school’s final exams were being managed unfairly was abducted, interrogated and threatened with death before being released. On the morning of 4 March law student D.M. Thushara Jayaratne was waiting at a bus stop in the […]

Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has instructed residents of Vellaveli in Batticaloa district to register with the village level officers (Grama Niladhari-GN), civil society sources in Batticaloa said. The SLA has directed the GN to submit all names of residents of the village in forms supplied to them. SLA has also directed the villagers to indicate […]

 The London based human rights watchdog Amnesty International has expressed concern over the lack of proper investigation into the abduction of a whistle blower.DM Thushara Jayaratne, a final year Law College student was abducted, interrogated and threatened with death on 04 March, according the rights watchdog. The Human Rights Commission in Sri Lanka (SLHRC) has […]

By Sandun A. Jayasekera Changes in legislations are on the cards whereby the Elections Commission would be vested with the authority to fix dates for elections and make re-poll compulsory in the event of an annulment, sources said. These are the major proposals among others made to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Electoral Reforms, (Committee) […]

Police in Sri Lanka say that they have arrested four people suspected on an attack following a the protest threat by a cabinet minister. Superintendent of Police Prishantha Jayakody told BBC Sandeshaya that the suspects were remanded until the 15th of March.”This was a clash between two groups and the situation is under control,” he […]

By Shamindra Ferdinando In the run-up to the imminent release of a controversial UN report on alleged ‘war crimes’ committed during Eelam War IV, particularly in the final phase of ground battles on the Vanni front, a section of Sri Lanka’s undergraduates belonging to the JVP is seeking UN intervention to restore democracy in the […]

According to the Police Department there had been over 50 disappearances in Jaffna District during March 2022. 12 bodies who were disappared had been found in the vicinity which had been brutally murdered. According to the Police amd the Government, these murders and disappearances are being carried out by organized gangs. But an army of […]

By Tisaranee Gunasekara “….doing violence to the spirit of thousands of laws without actually running afoul of so much as a city ordinance.”— Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens Of Titan) The campaign to replace popular sovereignty with Rajapaksa sovereignty swung into top-gear last week. The regime announced that the Colombo Municipal Council and four other local […]

The appointment of a convicted criminal to the Board of Commercial Bank by the government has raised eye brows among senior bankers in the country. Lakshman Hulugalle, the Director General, Media Centre for National Security has been appointed to the Board of Commercial Bank by the government. In 1989 Hulugalle was given a two year […]

“If you remember, when you came into power you said, about opening up the economy, that you saw no harm in letting the robber barons come. Now you are trying to make barons out of robbers.” Two days ago, Sam Wijesinha, former Secretary-General of Parliament, had reportedly given a talk at the Open University of […]

While the Tamil Youth Organisation in UK was engaged in an awareness campaign for boycotting genocidal Sri Lanka in international sports, a cricket-related euphoria of the Sinhala students in the Eastern University of Sri Lanka in Batticaloa resulted in attack on Tamil students and indefinite closure of the university. Inebriated by euphoria of Sri Lanka’s […]

Thousands of occupying troops of Sri Lanka Army rounded up the village Uduththu’rai in Vadamaraadchi East and are engaged in search operation since Thursday early morning. A similar operation is simultaneously being undertaken in Mullaiththeevu also. Vanni IDPs were recently resettled in both the places. The operation is said to be following an alleged incident […]

These days there is considerable discussion about investigations into some NGOs in Sri Lanka. The president himself is talking in public about this issue and already implying that there is some kind of wrong doing on the part of some NGOs. This has also been followed by several media channels. Therefore some simple reflections on […]

India has instructed Sri Lanka’s main Tamil political party, The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to go beyond the 13th Amendment when they hold discussions with the Sri Lanka government on power devolution. Jaffna District TNA Parliamentarian Mavai Senadhirajah said however, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has categorically informed that the police powers would not and could not […]

We wish to question what human rights protection experience and credentials they bring to the Human Rights Commission. In short, the criteria that may have been used for selection is highly suspect. The Friday Forum is an informal gathering of public spirited persons who are dedicated to promoting peace and development in Sri Lanka within […]

KILINOCHCHI, 23 February 2011 (IRIN) – Former female combatants in northern Sri Lanka face a tough time returning to civilian life, with fewer marriage, education and job prospects due to stigma, say aid workers and activists. “Former female child soldiers are just not being perceived positively by society,” said Thaya Thiagarajah, a senior official with […]

By Wilson Gnanadass TNA parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran said the mandate the party has obtained from the people is to find an immediate solution based on a federal system and this fact must now be honoured by the present government. The TNA that had been branded earlier as the ‘LTTE’s proxy’ won 12 councils of the […]

Alan Keenan   1. The need for an international investigation The International Crisis Group, like others concerned with a sustainable and just peace in Sri Lanka, has been calling for the establishment of an independent and international commission to look into the many credible and well-documented allegations of war crimes in the final months of Sri Lanka’s […]

United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) Colombo district Parliamentarian Duminda Silva was discharged by High Court Judge Sunil Rajapakse on March 24, on charges of rape and engaging in sex with an under-age girl. The judge accepted the request made by State Counsel representing the Attorney General that the latter has agreed to withdraw the indictment […]

By Manopriya Gunasekara Questioning the Attorney General’s withdrawal of murder charges and acquitting the accused in the Nampamunuwa murder case – former MP Chandana Kathriarachchi and three others – lawyer J.C. Weliamuna, watching the interests of the deceased said that the action was illegal. Former MP Kathriarachchi and three others were charged for murdering a […]

By Chris KamalendranThe Tamil National Alliance wants the Government to grant the Northern Province police powers besides the right to manage land and forest reservations. This request will be placed before President Mahinda Rajapaksa through a government committee in the course of periodic consultations. The TNA points out that these subjects are already listed in […]