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.

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.

These falsehoods are contributing to the "deteriorating credibility of the now completely politicized institution," Harsha de Silva of the United National Party (UNP) told The Island newspaper.

See also our earlier post: