Following the US Embassy's Defense Attaché, Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith's peculiar remarks at Sri Lanka's three day seminar, the US State Department have responded swiftly in a statement describing his remarks as 'personal opinions' and stipulating that they 'do not reflect the policy of the United States Government'.

Sri Lanka ranked fourth amongst states ‘Getting Away With Murder’, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said this week. (see the 2011  Impunity Index)

Judge Richard Goldstone (former chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda), writing for the BBC on the extradition of General Ratko Mladic, said it represented yet another key milestone in the "end of the effective impunity for the worst war criminals".

Sri Lanka’s Central Bank is twisting statistics to project an unrealistic picture of economic development, an economist and parliamentarian of the main opposition said this week.

At the 17th UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) meeting presently underway in Geneva, UN rights chief Navi Pillai called an international investigation of war crimes in the final months in 2009 of Sri Lanka’s war.

Who supported: US, EU, France, Ireland

Channel 4 is to screen Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, a special one-hour investigation which features devastating new video evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Sri Lanka, at the UN this Friday 3 June.

“I conclude on the basis of the extensive technical evidence we obtained from independent experts that what is depicted in the video indeed happened. … I believe that a prima facie case of serious international crimes has been made."

As speculation drove Sri Lanka’s stock market to a 1-week high, foreign investors net sold $1.5 m (Rs. 165m) worth of shares on Monday, Reuters reported.

While Sri Lanka’s friends urge a domestic investigation into war crimes committed during the final months of the island’s war as a way of fending of an international probe, a defiant President Mahinda Rajapaksa made clear Friday there will be nothing of the sort.

The rank of President’s Counsel (PC) in Sri Lanka – originally Queen’s Counsel (QC), as it is in UK – is awarded to the most senior lawyers who are experts in a particular field. The title refers to those considered sufficiently eminent as to be appointed to represent the head of state.

In the light of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s categorical refusal to investigate war crimes by Sri Lanka’s military, this is what US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Robert Blake, had to say during his visit earlier this month (see AFP’s report