Sri Lankan police have summoned the former Northern Provincial Council member, T Ravikaran for an interview on April 7, amid ongoing tensions after Buddhist monks stormed a Tamil festival.
Accusing the government of planning to sell Sri Lankan Airlines to a company 'operation with LTTE Funds', Sinhala trade unions have threatened industrial action if the deal goes ahead.
Colombo Fort Magistrates was told yesterday by the Sri Lanka's Criminal Investigations Department (CID) there was evidence the Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne hid a man wanted over the abduction and disappearance of 11 predominantly Tamil youths during 2008 - 2009.
The Sri Lankan Supreme Court has ordered the Northern Power Company to compensate residents in Chunnakam, Jaffna for environmental damage caused by the Uthuru Janani thermal power plant which the court claimsviolated residents fundamental rights.
<p>A Sri Lankan minister claimed that president Maithripala Sirisena is not against a UN Human Rights Council resolution which mandated a hybrid court with international judges, despite his government repeatedly speaking out against such a mechanism.</p>
<p>“I don’t think the President is really against the UNHRC or the setting up of OMP,” claimed Harsha De Silva in an address to Sri Lanka’s parliament.</p>
"Sri Lanka Finance Minister, Mangala Samaraweera, has released an article entitled the "Truth about the Geneva Human Rights Council Resolution" in which he called upon citizens to reaffirm commitment to the UN resolution and warned of the threats of universal jurisdiction.
The Sri Lankan government plans to buy private land in order to resettle internally displaced families in the North-East.
The proposal was presented by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe at cabinet, according to Ada Derana, citing a ‘lack of sufficient state-owned lands in the Jaffna District’ as the cause for the unresolved issue of resettlement.
<p>Sri Lanka’s decision to reinstate the death penalty may disproportionately impact on Tamil speaking people on the island, said Amnesty International in a briefing released earlier today.</p>
<p>Amnesty International found that “people who are from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, or belonging to racial, ethnic or religious minorities, are disproportionately vulnerable to being sentenced to death”.</p>
Following pressure from an ultra-nationalist Buddhist group, police have arrested award-winning Sinhala novelist Shakthika Sathkumara under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) for insulting Buddhism.
Britain’s minister for Asia and the Pacific said “much faster progress is needed” in Sri Lanka, as he responded to questions regarding accountability for mass atrocities committed almost a decade ago.
Theresa Villiers, MP for Chipping Barnet, asked whether “Ministers share my grave disappointment that, 10 years after the horrors of Mullivaikkal, no one has been brought to justice for war crimes in the Sri Lankan conflict?”.
Arguing the UN Human Rights Council process has failed to provide justice to Tamil victims of mass atrocities in Sri Lanka, the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) announced yesterday it would be seeking data and information from the UN investigations in order to push for private prosecutions of war criminals.
Human Rights Watch yesterday urged the Sri Lankan government not to end the country's unofficial moratorium on the death penalty, as pledged by the president, Maithripala Sirisena.
Responding to Sirisena's statement this week that a date had been set for the death penalty to came back into force.
Imposing the death penalty for drug offenses would violate Sri Lanka’s international human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
The Assistant Superindentent of Police in Mannar, Upul Alawatta was arrested last night by the Criminal Investigation Department over the abduction and disappearance of a man in 2008.
