The Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry will open an office in Jaffna this week. The Regional Consular office will be located in Jaffna’s District Secretariat and will provide certain services that were previously only provided in Colombo. According to the ministry’s website, the office will provide services ranging from attestation of birth, marriage and death certificates as well as educational certificates for their use abroad; extending assistance to family members of Sri Lankans who may be stranded abroad; facilitation of redress and compensation claims of families of migrant workers; and...
A pregnant mother was violently murdered in Kayts on Tuesday. 27-year-old Ramsika Mary Gnaneswaran, seven months pregnant and mother-of-one, was beaten to death while home alone on Siruvil Road, Kayts. Two suspects, reported to be steel traders from outside the area were arrested after Kayts police chased their auto down, and two further arrests were later made. There were agitations outside Kayts police station, as furious locals demanded the suspects be handed over to them. While police are investigating, the murderers’ motives are yet unknown. Blood stains found around Mrs Gnaneswaran’s...
Sri Lanka's Court of Appeals has reinstated an appeal filed by the wife of Tamil MP Nadarajah Raviraj, against a verdict passed last month acquitting all of the suspects accused of his murder. Shashikala Raviraj, the wife of the murdered MP, challenged the Colombo High Court's decision last month, but her initial appeal was dismissed on January 19th. However the appeal will now be taken up for support by the Apellate Court on March 3rd. On December 23rd a unanimous decision was made by an all Sinhala special jury, to acquit three navy intelligence officials and two members of the Karuna group...
Three fishermen from Neduntheevu (Delft) were assaulted by Sri Lankan navy officers last week. Thiyogupillai Yesuthasan, Sahayan Selvan and Mariathas Vasantharaj were forced to land ashore on Kachaithivu, after their boat ran out of fuel on Friday. The three were arrested by navy officers stationed at the island and beaten severely with batons. After being kept overnight at the camp, the fishermen were ejected from the island still with a fuel-less boat. The stranded group were found at sea by fellow fishermen and helped back to land, three days after they had set off. The incident has been...
Following days of protests, Tamil Nadu has passed a new bill allowing Jallikattu – a controversial bull-taming sport that is central to the harvest festival. In 2014, the Supreme Court banned Jallikattu on the grounds of animal cruelty. Animal rights activists say that the practice causes stress to the bulls as they are released into a crowd and try to fend off people that try to ride them. However, the government temporarily lifted the ban on Saturday. On Monday thousands of protestors remained in Chennai and refused to leave the city’s Marina beach. The state-wide demonstrations have been...
Relatives of missing persons and the forcibly disappeared have begun a hunger strike in Vavuniya. In an open letter to the Sri Lankan president, the signatories said they had exhausted all other avenues in the search for information about their missing loved ones, including countless domestic commissions and probes. The hunger strikers in the letter said, Are our relatives alive or not? If they are alive, which secret torture camps are they being held in? If they are not alive, what happened to them? Who killed them? How? Where were they buried after being murdered? If our missing and...
China’s Foreign Ministery urged the new US administration to adhere to the “one China” policy when dealing with Taiwan in a statement made on Monday. Speaking at a regular press briefing in Bejing, China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, said, “We urge the new administration to fully understand the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue and to continue pursuing the one China policy.” The spokeswoman stressed that the policy was the “political foundation” of future relations between the United States and China, reports Reuters. The Spokeswoman added that the US government had the...
A United States navy vessel has departed from Colombo, following a five-day visit to the island, starting last week. The US Naval Ship 'Hopper' arrived in Sri Lanka on Thursday, where it was greeted by the Sri Lankan Navy. According to Sri Lanka’s ministry of defence , the American crew took part “in a number of programmes organized by their Sri Lankan counterparts during their stay here”.
A large scale grant-based Sinhalese settlement will be built on public land in Naavatkuli, Jaffna, despite local opposition. 250 Sinhalese beneficiaries have been chosen to receive houses built on land owned by the National Housing Development Authority in Naavatkuli. After the end of the war, Sinhalese people had settled with temporary buildings in Naavatkuli, and were later granted land permit documents by the Rajapaksa government. The foundation stone for the scheme will be laid by housing minister Sajith Premadasa at the end of the month, and the project is expected to be completed within...
The Right to Information Act will be enacted on February 3rd, the Sri Lankan government said last week, issuing a gazette notification. "Information officers are currently being trained and after they are stationed in government institutions, the general public will be able to access important information that affects their daily lives," the minister of parliamentary reforms and mass media, Gayantha Karunatileka was quoted by Ceylon Today as saying. Promising to provide as much information through the Act as possible the director general of the government's information department reportedly...