Category: Politics

July 23, 2009 (AFP) – Human rights campaigners on Thursday described a 2.5 billion dollar loan to Sri Lanka by the International Monetary Fund as “a reward for bad behavior”.Human Rights Watch said the IMF should have set conditions on the loan, including demands that the Sri Lankan government help re-settle nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians […]

July 20, 2009 (AFP) – The Red Cross on Monday announced the closure of four offices in Sri Lanka following a government order to foreign aid agencies to scale down operations.The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its four offices in the embattled eastern province were closed at the weekend. “The ICRC reaffirms […]

July 15, 2009 (LBO) – An Indian political activist has urged Sri Lankans to be more demanding of their right to information, saying that was how the public in India won greater access to information and more government accountability. “The right to information campaign started with a peasant movement asking for the Panchayati (village assembly) […]

July 12, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s main moderate Tamil political group Sunday accused the government of holding some 300,000 war-displaced civilians in “open prisons” and demanded their immediate release. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the squalid camps, which are ringed with barbed wire, were a “national disgrace” and violated international law. The […]

July 9, 2009 (AFP) – The International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday it had been ordered by Sri Lanka to scale down relief operations in the island where it has been helping civilian war victims. As a result, the ICRC said it was withdrawing expatriate staff from the battle-scarred northeast which was the […]

July 9, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lanka has directed all international relief agencies, including the Red Cross, to scale down operations following the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels, the human rights minister said Thursday.Mahinda Samarasinghe said the directive was not solely aimed at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which had first […]

July 8, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lankan doctors arrested for allegedly spreading rebel propaganda before the defeat of the Tamil Tigers told reporters here Wednesday that they were pressured to inflate death tolls. A five-member team of doctors who worked inside the shrinking rebel-held territory during the final stages of the war have been in […]

July 01, 2009 (LBO) – The Sri Lankan government must reform the country’s judicial system urgently if the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers is to lead to a lasting peace, an international non-governmental advocacy body has said. The Sri Lankan judiciary is not working in a fair and impartial way that secures justice and […]

June 26, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lankan police say they have arrested an astrologer after he predicted serious political and economic problems for the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse.Chandrasiri Bandara, who writes an astrology column for a pro-opposition weekly, was taken in on Thursday, police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara said. “The CID (Criminal Investigations Department) is […]

WASHINGTON, June 16, 2009 (AFP) – Sri Lanka needs to reach out to its Tamil minority and improve conditions for hundreds of thousands of displaced after defeating Tiger rebels, the nominee to be the next US ambassador said Tuesday. Patricia Butenis, testifying in a Senate confirmation hearing, said she would also press Sri Lanka to […]

June 16, 2009 (AFP) – The few surviving leaders of Sri Lanka’s defeated Tamil Tigers announced Tuesday they were reorganising the rebel movement and forming a “transnational government.” The rebel group’s international relations chief, Selvarasa Pathmanathan, said in a recorded message that the organisation would continue to pursue its aim of a separate Tamil state […]

June 11, 2009 (AFP) – Japan on Thursday urged Sri Lanka to develop closer ties with the international community as Colombo tries to rebuild the war-battered north of the island after decades of bloody ethnic conflict.Akashi said international opinion was divided on the way the conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ended, […]