Troops from the Sri Lankan military orchestrated a religious ceremony and placed 28 Buddha statues in a newly constructed Buddhist vihara building in Kilinochchi last week .
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe brushed off claims that his government had come under pressure to sign the Rome Statue and join the International Criminal Court (ICC). Colombo Gazette reported the prime minister as saying, “No one can put pressure on us and no one has put pressure on us”. He went on to state that Sri Lanka would not be joining the ICC and reports of mass atrocities, as outlined in a UN report earlier this year, would be addressed through a domestic accountability mechanism.
Commenting on the former Sri Lankan president's claims of setting up a war crimes court in January, Taylor Dibbert questioned how such an effective court could be set up without proper victim’s consultations and failure to ratify international law. Full opinion reproduced below. Sri Lanka has recently announced that it will create a new court to examine abuses which allegedly transpired during the country's civil war. The government has noted that this is going to be a domestic mechanism, but hasn't ruled out the possibility of some international involvement. The abrupt announcement of this special court came as a surprise to many. Former president Chandrika Kumaratunga has stated that the court will commence its work either later this month or in January.
The International Monetary Fund is considering Sri Lanka’s request for a standby agreement after the country’s foreign exchange reserves fell to a two year low. The IMF’s response will depend on an assessment of Sri Lanka’s macroeconomic vulnerabilities, the nature of the balance of payments said the IMF’s representative in Colombo. Responding to emailed questions, Eteri Kvintradze said, “We have not formally entered into program negotiations nor do we have any new missions to Colombo scheduled outside of technical assistance and regular surveillance.” Even if Sri Lanka meets its 2015 deficit...
President Maithripala Sirisena said that appointing the liberation Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam defector Karuna Aman as a minister and as Sri Lanka Freedom Party Vice President was the right decision. Speaking during the committee debate on the budget, criticised extremist elements of criticising his government when the Rajapaksa government had acted in the same way. Drawing on the Tamil Political Prisoner situation he asked how groups could point their figures at the new government for releasing a small amount of political prisoners when the previous government had released 12,000 detainees...
Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe has a private meeting in parliament on Friday. According to dailymirror.lk Mahinda Rajapaksa spoke in parliament immediately after the meeting. Mahinda Rajapaksa addressed parliament for the first time since the parliamentary elections on Friday.
Sri Lanka is committed to peace building and supporting world peace, said the country's president, Maithripala Sirisena, this week. Mr Sirisena made these remarks to a delegation from the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) who he met at his Colombo residence, the Colombo Page reported. See more here .
The Sri Lankan finance minister, Ravi Karunanayake, made clear on Wednesday that the ban on foreigners buying freehold land in the country, would include China's port city project, reported Reuters. The project, which was initially agreed by the former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, has been suspended pending further discussions since the new government came to power. "There will be no granting of outright land ownership for foreigners. Investors will be able to obtain land on a 99-year lease arrangement. This provision will also be applicable to the port city project," Mr Karunanayake said as...
The former Sri Lankan president and chair of the newly established Office for National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR), Chandrika Kumaratunga, called for some political prisoners to be released. Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Ms Kumaratunga described the prisoners as falling into three categories and stressed that those who she called "LTTE murderers", could not be released "just like that". "There are only about 300 political prisoners who are in prisons, and the thousands who were reported missing are not imprisoned in secret camps; perhaps they have disappeared for good.These 300 have been categorised into three," she was quoted by Ceylon Today as saying.
The British Tamils Forum called on Tamils in the UK to aid those suffering due to the severe floods in Chennai by donating to the public aid appeal initiated by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. "We are devastated to learn of the unprecedented destruction brought about by floods in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu including Chennai. Two weeks of non-stop torrential rain has created a humanitarian crisis with 269 people dead, more than 700 people critically injured and tens of thousands of people made homeless and displaced," the BTF said in a statement released on Thursday, adding that further rain was expected over coming days.