The US Department of State has expressed concern about the recent letter sent to non-governmental organisations in Sri Lanka, restricting the activities they could engage in.

“The United States is concerned by reports that the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defense has ordered registered Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and civil society groups to cease their media engagements and activities.” State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said in a press statement.

The South African deputy president and special envoy to Sri Lanka, Cyril Ramaphosa, discussed with the Chief Minister of the Northern Province, CV Wigneswaran, issues faced by Tamils in the Northeast, during a meeting in Jaffna on Tuesday, reported the Colombo Gazette.

Ramaphosa also met with Tamil National Alliance MPs in Colombo, where the party outlined the post war situation in the Northeast, highlighting continuing land grabs by the Sri Lankan military.

The TNA told the envoy that the landgrabs have to be stopped immediately, as the first step towards reconciliation.

The leader of the Bodu Bala Sena Galagoda Gnanasara told reporters today that the Pope should apologise for atrocities committed against Sri Lankan Buddhists by Christians during colonial times.

“Previous Popes have publicly apologised to certain countries because they destroyed, they killed. We had a similar situation, where most of the Buddhist temples were destroyed by them and Buddhist monks were killed. We would like to see a public apology from him,” Gnanasara Thera told a meeting with foreign correspondents in Colombo.

The leader of the Patriotic National Movement Venerable Elle Gunawansa said on Monday that the Dalai Lama has been mislead on how Sri Lanka’s Muslims were treated by Buddhists.

“It appears the Dalai Lama has been misled to issue this statement by stating that the Muslims in Sri Lanka are been cruelly treated by the Buddhists. Every Buddhist in Sri Lanka has continued to live according to the precepts of the ‘Dhamma’ extending loving kindness and compassion,” Gunawansa said in a statement, according to the Daily Mirror.

“There is a conspiracy against Sri Lanka. International efforts have also tried their best to tarnish the image of Sri Lanka in the past many decades and are becoming more aggressive. These sinister motives are to discredit and tarnish the image of Sri Lanka and if possible to destroy it,” he said.

The defence ministry’s spokesperson has denied that the letter calling on NGOs to refrain from certain activities was an attempt to restrict their work.

Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasooriya said at media briefing in Colombo on Tuesday that the letter was only a reminder to act according to a mandate previously issued by NGO Secretariat and false information was being disseminated to misguide the public.

“Amnesty International continues to have deep concerns about the shroud of secrecy imposed by the Government all under the guise of border security.”

Up to a dozen asylum-seeking women held on Christmas Island have attempted suicide, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

The women, all mothers, after being told they would be sent to Nauru and Manus Island believed that their children would have a better chance of making it to Australia without them.

President of the Christmas Island Shire Council, Gordon Thompson, said:

"Their thinking is that if the babies have been born in Australia, they cannot be sent anywhere else, including Manus Island or Nauru,"