A Sinhala Buddhist monk has lodged a complaint at the Swiss Embassy in Colombo, claiming that rival extremist monks abducted and assaulted him as the clergy tussle over a seat in Sri Lanka’s parliament.

Monks from the Our Power of Peoples Party (OPPP) are currently engaged in a dispute over the sole National List seat that the party is entitled to in Sri Lanka’s parliament. 

Arambepola Ratanasara, a member of the OPPP claimed he was “kidnapped and held illegally” by Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, another monk who is the general secretary of the Sinhala supremacist Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) organisation.

A two-thirds majority in the Sri Lankan parliament does not mean the ruling Rajapaksa regime can ignore the concerns of the Tamil people, declared Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R Sampanthan. 

Sri Lanka has ordered the rationing of electricity throughout the week after power cuts plunged the island into darkness following yet another failure of the Norochcholai power plant.

Sri Lankan officials said a “technical fault” at the plant left the island without power for up to 10 hours. Traffic lights in the southern capital of Colombo failed, alongside water pumps in many areas, causing widespread disruption.

Planned power cuts have been scheduled for the week ahead as Sri Lanka attempted to restart the plant.

Excavations of a site in Jaffna where human skeletal remains and clothes were found last week are to commence to determine whether it is yet another mass grave site, reports The Island. 

The site is on private property,  where a woman's skeleton and clothes were found.

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, Professor Neil DeVotta warns of “Rajapaksa rule well into the future” and possible anti-Muslim pogroms “in the days ahead unless the international community bands together to protect them”. 

The Sri Lankan army blocked local farmers in Mullaitivu from assessing and clearing their land to cultivate it for maize and rice, earlier this month.

Members of the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) led an investigation into the issue and met with the farmers from the Othiyamalai, Erukalampilavu and Thanikallu areas in Mullaitivu. The TNPF leader and parliamentarian, Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam and TNPF parliamentarian, Selvarajah Kajendren, held discussions with the farmers about the actions of the military and probed into the situation.

Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary, and accused war criminal, Kamal Gunaratne, has delivered a speech in which he vowed that he would not permit room for separatism or extremism in the North-East as well as tackling “separatist” voices abroad.

Photo of Justice Minister Ali Sabry with President Gotabya Rajapaksa

Justice Minister Ali Sabry has reported that moves are underway to abolish the 19^th Amendment of Sri Lanka’s constitution, which limits the power of the Presidency, and to bring in the 20^th Amendment which will be debated in parliament by mid-September.

“We are taking steps to abolish any clauses in the 19th Amendment that are detrimental to the country and amend them accordingly,” Sabry reported.

Sri Lanka’s newly appointed Foreign Secretary, retired Navy admiral Jayanath Colombage, has announced that he would re-evaluate Sri Lanka’s foreign policy which had been orientated towards the western hemisphere.