The Sri Lankan army is to introduce a period of amnesty for all deserters, Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe told a media briefing at the Ministry of Defence on Wednesday. The amnesty, which is to take place between April 2 to April 16, would allow all deserters who have been 'Absent Without Official Leave' for more than 6 months to receive an official pardon.
The United Kingdom stated it remained committed to a Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) investigation into Sri Lanka’s (OISL), in an address to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday. Speaking at the 28th session of the council, the UK said that it “remains committed to the OHCHR investigation as part of the process of addressing the grievances of those affected by the conflict and of achieving lasting peace and reconciliation.” Stating that Britain had supported the deferral of the investigation report “on the clear understanding that this report...
The chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils, Conservative MP Lee Scott, said he was "pleased", Redbridge Council has taken the lead on calling on the UK and the UN to deliver justice for Tamils in Sri Lanka, and encouraged other councils to follow suit. Lee Scott said “it is important that the entire population of this country is informed of the positive contribution that the Tamil community makes to this country and of the issues faced by their kith and kin in Sri Lanka. I am pleased that Redbridge has taken the lead on this and I would like to see other Councils follow suit”. “On the day Redbridge Council passed this motion, I was at the United Nations in Geneva working to bring about the changes required in order to deliver justice, peace and a permanent political solution to the Tamil nation in Sri Lanka,” he added. The leader of the Conservative Group in Redbridge, Councillor Paul Canal, who proposed the motion, said he was "grateful to have received cross-party support", in the Labour-led council.
Sri Lanka’s elite police force, the Special Task Force, was formed after intensive advice from British security experts, according to a new report by the International Human Rights Association Bremen. The report Exporting police death squads - From Armagh to Trincomalee , supplementary to an earlier document detailing Britain’s involvement in Sri Lanka’s war against Tamils, says British security officials, in the early 1980s, advised senior Sri Lankan policemen on the UK’s counter-terrorism experience in Northern Ireland, even arranging for them to visit Belfast. British mercenaries are also thought to have trained the STF, which is implicated in several cases of human rights abuses, including abductions and killings, at its inception. "The new evidence reveals that Sri Lanka's Special Task Force was created only after intensive advice from British diplomats about UK counter-insurgency policy in Northern Ireland, where a similar police commando unit had recently shot dead six people. This raises important questions about UK State complicity in designing Sri Lanka's death squad,” the report’s author Phil Miller told the Tamil Guardian.
The Sri Lankan government ordered the release of 54 Indian fishermen on Monday, hours before the two countries were set to meet for talks in Chennai over the ongoing fishing issue, reports Colombo Page . The fishermen were arrested on Sunday morning by the Sri Lankan navy for alleged poaching. Ten trawlers were also seized. Related article: Sri Lankan navy arrests 54 Tamil Nadu fishermen (22 Mar 2015)
The Sri Lankan government pledged on Tuesday to return 818 acres of land in the Sampur region of the Eastern province to "original owners" by the end of April, said the Minister of Resettlement, Reconstruction and Hindu Religious Affairs, D M Swaminathan. The government also promised to release 234 acres of land, currently under the Sri Lankan navy, to its original owners, reported the state media site, News.lk , adding that the "preliminary phase of the transfer had already begun". The new pledges come a day after the government promised to release 425 acres of army occupied land in Jaffna. Commenting on the announcement, during a ceremony attended by the Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena, the Northern Province's chief minister said that whilst “we are no doubt glad a start has been made to give back our people’s lands... their expectations had been far in excess to that seen on the ground today”.
The government ally and Buddhist monk party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) rejected the government's proposed 19th amendment to the constitution as a "constitutional coup", stating that the proposal were aimed at taking power away from the executive president, and making the prime minister powerful. “The people elected President Maithripala Sirisena with a mandate to curb the arbitrary powers of the Presidency and not to make the Prime Minister the Head of the Government nor allow Parliament to override the Executive. The Prime Minister can be made the Head of the Government only if approved at a referendum,” the JHU General Secretary, and Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka, was quoted by the Daily Mirror as saying on Tuesday at a press conference in Battaramulla.
Sri Lanka's new government rejected criticism of the security it had granted the former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, stating it had given him "maximum security". Speaking to journalists the cabinet spokesperson and minister, Rajitha Senaratne confirmed that Mr Rajapaksa's security included 21 vehicles and 213 officers, including 108 Sri Lankan army soldiers. Rejecting an accusation made by Mr Rajapaksa that his security had decreased, Mr Senaratne was quoted by the Daily Mirror as saying that Mr Rajapaksa "didn’t provide any security to his predecessor Chandrika Bandaranaike and she had to go to the Supreme Court to get her security."
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed receiving 16,100 requests to trace missing persons since 1990, in a statement issued following the conclusion of ICRC Director of Operations Dominik Stillhart's five-day visit to Sri Lanka. Mr Stillhart, who met with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera on his trip, said "the ICRC’s experience from its work with families of missing persons in other countries is that their needs are multifaceted". "Their priority is the need to know the fate and whereabouts of a missing relative, without which they have no closure and a mechanism which is distinct from an accountability process is required to address this need,” he added. “But they also have other needs such as psychosocial and economic support and administrative or legal concerns arising from having to resolve pension or property rights."
India's Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijju said the government will continue to give assistance to refugees from Sri Lanka who have been seeking refuge in Sri Lanka for over twenty years. "Central Government is ready to extend whatever possible necessary help you want, but at the same time we need inputs from the state government, so it has to be a combined effort of the state and Centre," Rijiju told the refugees, accoring to ANI . "We will seek report from Tamil Nadu Government, because all the policies for your welfare have to be taken together," he added. "We wanted to...