A Sri Lankan parliamentarian and leader of the extremist Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) has lashed out at the United States, calling the country “the number one war criminal in the world” in response to travel sanctions placed on the commander of Sri Lanka’s army for his involvement in mass atrocities last week.

The former chief minister of the Northern Province C V Wigneswaran has praised the US travel ban imposed on Sri Lanka’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva, last week and said he ‘speaks on behalf of Tamils of Sri Lanka’ when he says the decision is commendable.

Current Sri Lankan prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa will lead a newly formed coalition between the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), ahead of Sri Lanka’s parliamentary elections next month.

Sri Lankan police arrested a former LTTE cadre and two others in Vavuniya, for allegedly carrying out illegal excavations last week.

Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa met with two US Congressmen and the US Ambassador to the island on Saturday, where they reportedly discussed “counterterrorism” and the relationship between the two governments.

Sri Lanka army commander, Major General Darshana Hettiarachchi, was brought out of retirement and reappointed as the Rehabilitation Commissioner General on Friday.

Senior Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka’s leading Sinhala Buddhist chapters have joined the chorus of outrage at US travel sanctions imposed on the head of the army, over his involvement in mass atrocities.

The Malwatte and Asgiriya chapters of Siyam Nikaya Chapters reportedly “expressed their displeasure” after the United States announced Shavendra Silva and his family would not be allowed to travel to the country on Friday, due to his involvement in reported war crimes, including extrajudicial killings, a decade ago

The Sri Lankan government has reportedly decided to withdraw from a United National Human Rights Council resolution that mandated an accountability mechanism for the prosecution of mass atrocities, just weeks before it was due to be discussed in Geneva.

The Australian Immigration Department has been accused of being over-enthusiastic in providing heavily redacted documents to the lawyers of the Eelam Tamil family fighting deportation to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka’s embassy in Washington DC has reportedly called on its Sri Lankan diaspora in the United States to mobilise and lobby against a travel ban imposed on the head of its army Shavendra Silva, over his involvement in war crimes.

A parliamentarian in Sri Lanka’s opposition has called for legislators on both sides of the aisle to join together and boycott the United States until a travel ban imposed on the head of Sri Lanka’s army is lifted.

UNF Parliamentarian S M Marikkar said that he would refrain from travelling to the United States until the ban on Shavendra Silva, who led Sri Lanka’s 58 Division which committed extrajudicial killings and shelled Tamil civilians, was lifted.

The Sri Lankan government criticised a United States imposed travel sanction on the head of its army over reports of his involvement in war crimes and extrajudicial killings of Tamils more than a decade ago.

The leader of Sri Lanka’s opposition has vowed to “stand by” the head of the army, after he was banned from travelling to the United States over his involvement in mass atrocities over a decade ago, when tens of thousands of Tamils were killed in a Sri Lankan military offensive.