Sri Lanka’s president since 2005, Mahinda Rajapaksa, is evidently giving the matter some thought. His government is already dominated by several Rajapaksa brothers, including a fierce one, Gotabaya, who oversees defence, and a more nimble-minded one, Basil, who runs economic policy. Now the 65 year-old president, who last month denied a rumour that he was being treated for cancer, is increasingly eager to promote his son, Namal Rajapaksa.
UN TREATY BODIES ON SRI LANKA RECENTLY ISSUED CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Parallel Event on the Occasion of the 16th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council “Human Rights Situation in Sri Lanka: Contextualizing the Post-Conflict Realities” 9 March 2011 Theodor Rathgeber Sri Lanka Advocacy Network, Germany www.lanka-advocacy.org The human rights situation in Sri [...]
BANGALORE – The Sri Lankan government’s triumphalism following its victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has reached a new high. The new military headquarters of the army’s 51st Division that was inaugurated at Kopay near Jaffna this month “has been built on the site of a Tamil Tiger graveyard earlier flattened by the army”, the BBC has reported.
Media Release STATEMENT OF THE GOVERNING COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL PEACE COUNCIL IN REGARD TO THE INVESTIGATION BEING CARRIED OUT ON IT Last week, the Executive Director of the National Peace Council was called to the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Sri Lanka Police. He was informed that the CID wished to [...]
It was 28 April 2005: Well known Darmarathnam Sivaram had been abducted around 10.00 pm and the news reached me by 10.45 pm. At that time I was playing a leading role in Sri Lanka’s press freedom watchdog, the Free Media Movement.
After a quick discussion among leading activists over the phone we decided to do the following: Protest locally and inform internationally about the abduction as much as possible, and gather further information from the authorities. I worked whole night making phone calls, firing emails, and issuing statements.
Fighting is taking place in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi in eastern Libya, with eye-witness accounts of tanks on the streets of the city and a warplane falling to the ground in flames. But the Libyan government is insisting that it is honouring a ceasefire announced on Friday and that its fighter jets are grounded.Leaders from the US, the UK, France, and Arab countries are meeting in Paris to discuss military action in Libya. The summit comes after the UN Security Council approved a resolution that allows “all necessary measures”, short of an invasion, to protect civilians in the north African country.
In the final stages of the war with the LTTE, New Delhi played all sides but discouraged international attempts to halt the operations.India played a key role in warding off international pressure on Sri Lanka to halt military operations and hold talks with the LTTE in the dramatic final days and weeks of the war in 2009, confidential U.S. Embassy cables accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks showed.The cables reveal that while India conveyed its concern to Sri Lanka several times about the ‘perilous’ situation that civilians caught in the fighting faced, it was not opposed to the anti-LTTE operation.
Nine days after the earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, rescue operations are still underway. The danger has not passed as officials have warned of the possibility of further earthquakes; however, they have assured the public that they will not be as damaging as the one that occurred on Friday, March 11. The greatest danger that is facing all those in Japan is the very real possibility of a meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) asked a Sri Lankan newspaper for a retraction, as the newspaper carried a “severely distorted,” news article regards a panel discussion that had taken place at the School.A Sri Lankan newspaper, The Nation last Sunday in a front page story titled ‘LTTE threat to disrupt Harvard discussion on Lanka turns into damp squib’ carried an article detailing a panel discussion attended by Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN Palitha Kohona, and said a journalist who had been convicted for 20 years in Sri Lanka and is now a Nieman Fellow had attempted to block the event. The Kennedy School in a letter to the editor that it also carried on its website said that The Nation’s article “presented a severely distorted account” of the seminar and carried “a number of inaccurate claims about individuals associated with the event.”
