Sri Lanka

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  • Sri Lanka finds common ground on human rights with ‘tested friend’ China

    Sep 15

    Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse told a visiting Chinese communist party delegation that the two countries are tested friends and China will always have Sri Lanka’s unwavering support on the One-China policy.

    Rajapakse made the remarks on Friday, September 4, at a meeting with the visiting delegation of the Communist Party of China (CPC), led by a member of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau and Party chief of China's Tianjin municipality Zhang Gaoli.

  • Top Sri Lankan officials refused visa by UK
    To ire of Sri Lankan government, the British High Commission in Colombo has refused to issue visas to two top officials, according to media sources.
  • Aiding Repression
    Sanctions compel people to change their government's conduct.
  • Released' civilians still in camps
    Displaced Tamil people released from the camps in Vavuniya are still in camps, local political leaders say.
     
    R Thurairatnam, a member of the eastern provincial council, told BBC Sandeshaya that 123 families released from Vavuniya camps are still kept in camps in Batticaloa.
     
    360 people are currently kept in two schools, Sinhala Maha Vidyalaya and Kurukkalmadam Vidyalaya, in Batticaloa in early morning on Saturday.
  • Le Monde calls for Sri Lanka to ‘stop’

    "After winning the war, the Sri Lankan regime is in the process of losing the peace. Following the historic, but bloody and distasteful victory, against the armed struggle of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa could be magnanimous and reach out to the Tamil minority and open the way for national reconciliation.

  • SLA massacred civilians in bunkers – medical worker
    The advancing Sri Lanka Army massacred civilians by paving their bunkers with tanks, by throwing explosives inside the bunkers and by shooting the injured, says a medical worker,who came out of Mullivaykkal during the last days of the war.
  • Pakistan destroyer on goodwill visit to Sri Lanka
    A Pakistani navy ship arrived in Sri Lanka on a goodwill visit aimed at strengthening existing ties and the level of cooperation between the two countries, according to navy sources in Sri Lanka.

    PNS ‘Zulfiquar’, Pakistan’s destroyer class ship arrived in Colombo harbour on Saturday, September 5 and was ceremonially welcomed by the Sri Lanka Navy in the presence of Pakistan Defence Adviser Colonel Syed Khurram Hassnain Alam.
  • Continuing misery of Sri Lanka’s camps
    Almost 4 months since the end of the war, little progress has been made at the camps that hold nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians which have been described as “shocking and disturbing”, recent press reports said.

    New mobile phone footage of conditions in the Manik Farm camp in Vavuniya shows ill people lying on mud floors with intravenous drips in their arms and no hospital beds in sight.
  • Boycott Sri Lanka campaign expands to multiple US cities
    North American Tamils expanded their boycott campaign over Sri Lanka goods to over a dozen cities across the US and Canada, targeting GAP and Victoria's Secret stores on Saturday, September 12, youth organizers of the event said.

    Leveraging the "No to Sri Lanka" website run by Canadian youth activists to spread the campaign message, the organizers held protests in San Francisco, Chicago, North Carolina, Boston, Atlanta, New York city and in several Canadian cities.
  • Sri Lanka’s video denial judged false
    Weeks after the airing of footage showing the purported execution of naked, blindfolded civilians by troops in Sri Lankan Army uniform, the Colombo government is still trying to challenge the authenticity of the video. However, experts have challenged all attempts by the government, arguing that the footage could not have been falsified.
  • Sinhala development model, western money but no political solution
    Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has dismissed western models for development that give precedence to industrial growth and outlined a strong agriculture based development model influenced by traditional Sinhala Buddhist doctrine.

    “We must have a Sri Lankan model,” he told Forbes magazine in an interview on Friday, August 28.

    “I prefer it to be agriculturally based. If you can be self-sufficient in food, then the industries will come,” Rajapakse said.
  • BOX STORY: Venerable Thera refused Canadian visa

    The Canadian embassy in Colombo has refused visa to a Buddhist monk due to the applicant’s passport displaying the titles Venerable and Thera, according to media reports.

  • Sri Lanka ‘likely’ to lose GSP+
    The European Union is unlikely to renew GSP+ concessions to Sri Lanka, a leaked report suggested.

    A confidential 130-page report obtained by The Economist concludes that Sri Lanka has “failed to honour important human-rights commitments, and is ineligible for GSP Plus.”
  • Sri Lanka recalls envoy to Japan after Prime Minster is finger printed at airport
    Sri Lanka has recalled its envoy to Japan after Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake was finger printed, made to wait for approximately half an hour and processed through normal passenger channel instead of the VIP lounge at Narita airport in Japan.

    Wickramanayake, had visited Japan at the invitation of the head monk of
    a well-known Buddhist temple in Kobe to the chief guest at a religious ceremony.
  • India uses arrests and visa refusal to suppress support for Eelam

    Seventeen lawyers and approximately 50 students were arrested for protesting against Congress party’s support for the Sri Lankan state and its failure to protect Tamil civilians in the neighbouring island.

    The arrests came as All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Rahul Gandhi, toured major cities in Tamil Nadu to rejuvenate the party at the grass-roots level in the state.

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