Sri Lanka's ministry of foreign affairs opened a new consular office in Jaffna on Thursday, with the foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera, the leader of the Tamil National Alliance, R Sampanthan and the chief minister of the northern province, C V Wigneswaran attending. 

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 repatriation of human remains from abroad, the ministry said. 

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled on Thursday that Switzerland had ‘wrongly exposed Tamil asylum seeker to torture’ in deporting him and his family back to Sri Lanka in 2013. 

Stating that the deportation violated article three of the European Convention on Human Rights, the court ordered that €30,000 must be paid in compensation. 

The man, his wife and two children were deported after the application filed in 2009 was rejected along with a subsequent appeal. The family was detained and questioned for over 13 hours on arrival in Colombo. 

Relatives off the disappeared have suspended their hunger strike after a date was set for a high-level meeting by the Sri Lankan defence minister.

A meeting at Temple Trees with the President, Defence Minister and Attorney General along with a team of ten representatives from the hunger strike campaign was promised by Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardene, visiting the fasters.

The meeting has been scheduled for February 9^th.

Prior to the minister’s visit, doctors at the scene urged political action as many of the hunger strikers, who were refusing water and medical treatment as well as food, were rapidly deteriorating in health.

A UN report describing Sri Lanka’s culture of torture should be a wake up call to the country’s president to comply with international obligations, an international justice group has said.

The International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) in a press release responding to to the UN Special Rapporteur on torture’s report on Sri Lanka, said “a UN report describing a “culture of torture” in Sri Lanka reinforced by decades of impunity is a wake up call to President Sirisena’s Government to comply with its obligations under international law and to the international community to put torture prevention at the core of its engagement with the new Government.”

Sri Lanka continues to operate under a culture of torture and should immediately repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture has said.

The report of the Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez on his mission to Sri Lanka in April-May 2016 documents that torture is still widespread in the early stages of detention, particularly to extract confessions out of detainees, and that the judiciary fails to scrutinise the practices.

Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe claimed that he has no information regarding missing persons on the island and instead suggested that many of the missing may have left Sri Lanka illegally.

Bloomberg ranked Sri Lanka among the world's high risk countries for investment based on 29 indicators which included political and economic factors. 

Commenting on Sri Lanka's predicted unemployment rate for 2017 at 5.2%, Bloomberg said, “unemployment can serve as a proxy for the overall health of the economy. Long-term high unemployment levels eventually lead to less spending power among consumers, lower tax revenues for governments and possible social unrest." 

Sri Lanka risk was also affected by its poor foreign reserves minus gold, which stand at 3.6% of GDP, which Bloomberg said was not sufficient to withstand economic adversity. 

Hunger strikers in Vavuniya continued their protest for a third day, demanding information about their missing family members.

One woman participating in the fast was hospitalised after losing consciousness.

C V Wigneswaran, Chief Minister of the Northern Province wrote to the Sri Lankan president, urging him to send a senior minister to give the hunger strikers some assurance and to set a time frame for ascertaining the whereabouts of the disappeared persons on behalf oh whom the campaign was taking place.

See the Chief Minister’s letter below.

Your Excellency,

The people of Keppapilavu, Mullaitivu held a protest to coincide with the visit of the Sri Lankan president, demanding their own lands be returned to them.

Although President Maithripala Sirisena cancelled his visit, reportedly due to poor weather, a public function was held to mark the return of some Mullaitivu lands.

However many displaced Tamils maintain that the released lands are not usually their original properties, but alternative lands.

The Keppapilavu residents protested, with boards demanding they be allowed to return to their traditional lands and homes.

The US-based Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC) met with officials from the Sri Lankan government in Colombo on Tuesday, the DailyFT reports.

The MCC, a bilateral US foreign aid agency, discussed economic growth strategies and planned solutions to eradicate poverty through growth with Minister of Finance Ravi Karunanayake and the Acting Foreign Minister Harsha de Silva.