The Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and Home Minister N. Chinarajappa said surveillance was to be stepped up in an attempt to stop boats of Eelam Tamil asylum seekers leaving the Indian coast towards Australia. Speaking to reporters in Andhra Pradesh, Chinarajappa said more marine police stations would be opened up to stop the Eelam Tamils, who have fled from Sri Lanka, from boarding boats along the coast in a bid to reach countries such as Australia. Earlier this year, a group of over 150 Tamil asylum seekers were stranded at sea, after they left the South Indian coast attempting to reach Australia. After more than a month of being held at sea by Australian authorities, the group were brought to a detention centre in Western Australia before being transferred to Nauru.
The Sri Lankan government has repeatedly re-assured India of its commitment to implement the 13th Amendment, stated a spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) today. Responding to a question on India’s stand on the 13th Amendment at a media briefing on Monday, spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said, “Our stand is that any decision that has been taken by the Sri Lankan people and which their leaders have assured to us on repeated occasions (that it) should be implemented.” “And we have been assured and re-assured by the leaders of Sri Lanka that they are committed to full implementation of the 13th Amendment and we will go by what they have told us.” See from 42:30 onwards below. Despite Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling on Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to go beyond the 13th Amendment, Rajapaksa has repeatedly stated that he would refuse to devolve land and police powers to the Tamil North-East of the island, a key component of the amendment.
Thousands of Tamils from across Europe demonstrated in Geneva on Monday, demanding justice for the genocide and a referendum on independence.
The Canadian government has denied visas to two of Sri Lanka’s leading prison department officials, due to the country's human rights violations, The Island reported on Friday. A senior prison officer told The Island he was surprised that the Canadian High Commission had made such an allegation as the prison officers were engaged in rehabilitating LTTE cadres and reintegrating them into society. The officials were due to attend World Prison Day celebrations in Victoria.
The Sri Lankan president, will address the UN General Assembly and chair two Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meetings at the side-lines of the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly, reports Colombo Page . Mahinda Rajapaksa, is due to chair a meeting on reform within CHOGM and address the General assembly on the post-2015 development agenda in New York on September 25. The Commonwealth has faced staunch criticism, by British and Canadian government officials, over the appointment of the Sri Lankan president as the chair of the Commonwealth. Mahinda Rajapaksa, recently missed the...
Western forces are trying to destabilise the country using the upcoming presidential election charged Minister Weerawansa, accusing the West of imposing the name "Sri Lanka" on what he described as the "lion blood" nation. "We have to be very careful. The Western countries need only a weak President for Sri Lanka. I don’t think that even the government has realized this danger," he told The Nation in an interview published Sunday. See here for full interview. Extracts of his responses reproduced below: "At the last presidential election, Western countries had a plan and they worked and funded it. It was finding a person who could give a good fight to President Mahinda Rajapaksa there by diverting the support of the parties like the TNA and JVP to that candidate. They found former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka and went according to the plan, but failed as the people had confidence in the President," he added.
Tourist resorts on the island are now required to inform their local police station regarding all bookings made by domestic guests, reports Sri Lanka's Sunday Times . Details including the names, addresses and dates of arrival and departure of the guests will be passed on to the police. The data is passed on to the State Intelligence Service (SIS) at Cambridge Place, Colombo, via the District Intelligence Bureau (DIB), the paper said citing a well-informed source. "we don’t like the idea of compromising the privacy of our clients. However, that is a new requirement by the Police and we have to comply. Otherwise they find fault with us," a resort manager told the paper.
A non-violent campaign to effect the merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces, and other issues raised at the recent Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi convention, will be conducted if the Sri Lankan government does not address them by the end of the year, said Tamil National Alliance MP MA Sumanthiran in an interview to the Sunday Leader . The MP said “deliberate state sponsored colonisation” was ongoing, with a view to “change the ethnic demography of the area”. Sumanthiran said that the northeast is the “historic habitation of Tamil-speaking people, and “systematic state-sponsored colonisation of Sinhalese” has been ongoing in the east. “Sinhala settlement growth rate in East was several times higher than the birth rate of Sinhalese in the country,” he said. “It is unethical and deliberate alteration of the demography. This has been a historic issue.” Sumanthiran said that the TNA will carry out protests if the issues which were addressed at the recent ITAK convention are not addressed by the end of the year.
The exclusion of some NGOs from a human rights conference at the behest of the Sri Lankan government was criticised by the Sri Lanka Campaign, who say the conference, in its current form, will do damage to human rights on the island. The conference, entitled 'Enhancing Human Rights and Security in the Asia Pacific', organised jointly by the University of Sydney, the Kathmandu School of Law and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the University of Colombo, was due to include human rights organisations from Sri Lanka, along with representatives from the Sri Lankan military. Sri Lanka’s...
The Sri Lankan army is in the midst of constructing a statue of a mythical Sinhala giant, who fought against the Tamil Chola King Ellalan in a Tamil village in the Vanni. Sri Lankan Commander Lieutenant General Daya Ratnayake toured the area last week, with the army publicising the building of the statue of the mythical giant, known as “Nandimithra” on its website . The construction is taking place in a Tamil village known as Kokkachaankulam, an area which has now been renamed to “Nandimithragama”, after the Sinhala mythical figure. Several Sinhala settlers have been brought to the area this...