Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa said today that expenses incurred by the government to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo next month will bean investment for the future of the country and its people.
The dead body of a 47-year old Tamil woman was found on the premises of Naachchimaar Kovil in Jaffna this month, badly mutilated and raped according to medical sources.
The Sri Lankan military has been accused of the rape and murder.
The victim was identified as 47-year-old Markandu Yogarany, a war displaced woman from Vavuniya who was suffering from mental health issues, following the end of the armed conflict. She was staying with the Holy Family Convent who had reported her missing since the 4th of October.
The body was discovered on the temple premises on the 17th of October.
In a recent report from the North-East of Sri Lanka, BBC correspondent heard the stories of Tamil victims of torture, rape and arbitrary detention by the Sri Lankan military.
The Tamil Nadu Assembly, convened today to unanimously pass a resolution that called on India to ‘completely’ boycott the upcoming Common Wealth Heads of Government Meeting
Unable to establish correspondence with the Commonwealth Secretary General, Kamalesh Sharma, Channel 4 news anchor, Jon Snow, questioned the director of the Secretary General’s office, Simon Gimson, on the purpose of holding Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka.
The Burmese opposition leader and human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi has said that David Cameron should engage with all parties in Sri Lanka, after increasing pressure on the prime minister not to attend the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on the island.
Recently elected Northern Provincial Councillor and civil society activist Ananthy Sasitharan has criticised many claims in an IRIN article on why more and more women are turning to sex work in the Northeast. Ananthy criticised the article for trivialising Tamil women turning to prostitution as purely finance-driven, arguing instead that in reality militarisation in the Northeast has created a culture where abuse, harassment and rape of Tamil women at the hands of the Sri Lankan Army has become commonplace.
Writing on globaltamilnews.net (in Tamil) Ananthy blamed the regime in Colombo and its associates for repeatedly “dragging through the mud” the women trying to recover from the horrors of Mullivaaykkal.
Ananthy disputed the IRIN article’s reasoning that seasonal demand has encouraged the increase in Tamil women turning to sex work. Instead, Ananthy says that the resort to prostitution is not a last resort decision based on financial desperation, but one that vulnerable Tamil women are in the end reduced to, after widespread experience of abuse at the hands of the Sri Lankan army.
Staff at Jaffna Teaching Hospital held a remembrance event for the massacre of over 60 doctors, staff and patients committed by Indian Peacekeeping Forces (IPKF) in 1987.
Responding to resolutions taken by various Pradeshiya Sabais earlier in the week to restore Maveerar Thuyilum Illangal - martyr cemeteries - in Kilinochchi, Jaffna Security Forces Commander Mahinda Hathurasinghe said that a 'banned terrorist organisation' like the LTTE could not lay claims to tombs or monuments.
The Australian Human Rights Commission found today that asylum seekers were at the risk of being returned to harmful situations in Sri Lanka, under the current government’s ‘enhanced screening process’.
An Australian gambling tycoon’s plans to build a $400 million resort in Sri Lanka have been delayed after protests by Buddhist leaders and some political parties, reports Reuters.
