Sri Lanka’s Plantation Industries Minister Mahinda Buddhadasa Samarasinghe has said that he will present the findings from the census in Geneva during the UN Human Rights Council session in March.

The government announced the census last year and said it would be used to ascertain the real number of people who died during the conflict.

The Inter University Students’ Union has complained that the government spent more money on the Kotelawala Defence University (KDU), than on all other universities combined, reported ColomboPage earlier this month.

The United States has announced it is supporting the Bar Association of Sri Lanka’s program entitled “Civil Society Initiatives to Support the Rule of Law”, signing a Memorandum of Understanding at the US Embassy in Colombo on Thursday.

"This grave has grown-up people and children, and there are some holes in the skulls believed to be from gunshots,"

"We hope that you will use your influence to persuade [Sri Lanka's] President Jayewardene to give a positive lead by making constructive suggestions at the All Parties Conference.

"Military aid and anti-insurgency assistance are not enough to overcome a political crisis which has to be faced and resolved."

The Ravana Balaya, an organisation made up of Buddhist monks, has called for the arrest of Tamil clergymen who provided ‘false information’ about war crimes to the visiting US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, Stephen Rapp.

Canadian Member of Parliament Rathika Sitsabaiesan has stated that she was trailed and privately interrogated by Sri Lankan authorities, during a recent trip to her place of birth in the Tamil North-East of the island.

In her first interview since her arrival back in Canada, Sitsabaiesan told The Star how motorbikes followed her whilst she visited various places across the North-East, and on one occasion, three men took her into a room by herself, interrogating her on details of people she had been meeting during her trip.

Initially, as Sitsabaiesan began to realise her movements were being tracked, she said,

“And then the next day it happened, and we were like ‘Oh, this is a constant thing.’ And then outside my hotel, they would just hang out and give word when I left.”

She went on to tell The Star of how whilst visiting an orphanage, she was informed that the Sri Lankan authorities had arrived and with an apparent warrant for her arrest.

Northern Provincial Councillor and civil society activist Ananthy Sasitharan, has called the suggestion that she should be ‘rehabilitated’ an atrocious threat, made to silence voices like herself in the run-up to the UN Human Rights Council session in March.

Sri Lanka has called on the US to reconsider its stance on human rights issues in Sri Lanka and urged it to support the government’s reconciliation efforts.