Since late 2010, the Sri Lankan government has made much of the country’s soaring stock market as indicative of a post-war boom.

The claim has also been repeated by some international analysts.

However even by October 2010, it was becoming clear that the stock index was being boosted by the government itself.

State-owned pension funds were doing much of the buying - even as foreign investors have been largely taking their funds out.

See our earlier post ‘Sri Lanka’s stocks: a closer look’

But now the chickens are coming home to roost.

Indians top tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka, the country’s tourism authority says. (See Xinhua’s report here)

68,830 Indians visited Sri Lanka between January and May this year – up 54% from the same period last year.

British tourists came second, with 41,474 arrivals – up 7% from the same period last year. A large number of these are Tamil and Sinhala expatriates with UK citizenship.

Rathika Sitsabaiesan, MP, representing the Scarborough-Rouge River constituency, addressed the Canadian Parliament for the first time on Friday:

 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'.

The statement went on to reiterate the United States' concern over the findings of the UN Panel report and commitment to ensuring credible accountability. 

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

Sri Lanka fourth comes after Iraq, Somalia and the Phillipines. (Philippines ranks higher due to a single incident – the massacre of 32 journalists and media workers in 2009.) 

Sri Lanka ranks higher than Afghanistan, Mexico and Colombia.

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".

Making particular reference to Sri Lanka and Syria, Judge Goldstone warned perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide that they will be brought justice.