A Sri Lankan court has dismissed a court case filed against Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the island’s former defence secretary accused of orchestrating mass atrocities, as he filed his nomination papers for the upcoming presidential elections earlier this morning.

<p>Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals in September is down 27.2% compared to last year, reports Sri Lanka’s tourism bureau on Monday.</p> <p>This continues a record of poor performance for six months as foreign visitors are hesitant to visit the island after the Easter Sunday bombings in April.</p> <p>Sri Lanka's tourism industry has already come under fire from human rights organisations around the globe, which has often supported the country's military.</p> <blockquote><p>

<p>Jaffna residents have been concerned by reports that the Sri Lankan army is taking steps to erect a Buddhist Vihara under a sacred fig tree in the centre of Jaffna Fort.</p> <p>The tree is by an army base which locals have long called to be removed, and for the fort - a historical and touristic site - to be returned to civilian use.</p> <p>Troops had established a small shrine under the tree and had begun digging trenches to build a larger temple but were stopped by local employees of the Sri Lankan archaeology department.</p>

<p>No incoming president of Sri Lanka would provide a political solution for the Tamil people in defiance of Buddhist chauvinism, TNA MP Charles Nirmalanathan said last week.</p> <p>Speaking at a press meet in Mannar, Nirmalanathan referred to the Neeraviyadi incident where a Buddhist monk was cremated in a Hindu temple despite a court order banning the cremation.</p> <p>The MP said that the incident showed that courts were powerless before Buddhist monks and Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism, and that Sri Lankan police would also not take any action against Buddhist chauvinism.</p>

 

Gareth Thomas, MP for Harrow West, speaking in British parliament on 3 October asked the government if the Foreign Office will apply pressure on Sri Lanka to allow an international investigation. 

An inquest at a British coroner’s court heard how Sri Lankan authorities conducted an investigation into the deaths of two British rugby players that “did not sit right” and was riddled with inconsistencies this week.

Thomas Howard and Thomas Baty both died in a Colombo hotel last year, after being found unresponsive in their beds at the Kingsbury hotel.

Though pathologists said that it seemed “highly likely” the cause of death was “opiate toxicity”, it remained unclear how the two men - who were not habitual drug takers - had come to consume such amounts.

The Chairman of the UK’s All Partiy Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPGT) has written to the United Nations requesting that the government end its use of Sri Lanka troops in peacekeeping missions

Tamil National Alliance leader, R Sampanthan, briefed visiting UK Minister of State for the Commonwealth, UN and South Asia, Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, and complained of Sri Lanka's broken promises.

Sampanthan highlighted that a decade after the conflict, Tamil grievances remain unfulfilled and expressed his concerns over the unwillingness of political parties in Sri Lanka to provide a solution to the national question. 

An ongoing strike carried out by lawyers across the North-East was suspended last Friday as the Sri Lankan Attorney General responded, acceding to the lawyers' demands to investigate incidents surrounding the cremation of a Buddhist monk in a Hindu temple in Mullaitivu last week.

Amparai (and above)

The Federation of Saiva (Hindu) Temples UK expressed their dismay at the cremation of a monk in the grounds of a Hindu temple, despite a court injunction prohibiting the funeral rites from being carried out on the temple's premises.

The Federation strongly opposed the cremation as Hindu temples and their grounds are considered to be sacred and called on the President of Sri Lanka to take responsibility "for the sacrilege acts of the Buddhist monk pardoned by him."