Category: Politics

COLOMBO, January 17, 2014 (AFP) – Forensic experts have discovered more bodies in an unmarked mass grave in Sri Lanka’s former war zone, raising the total to 36, an official said Friday. A team led by judicial medical officer Dhananjaya Waidyaratne found four more skeletons Thursday in the first mass grave uncovered since troops defeated […]

COLOMBO, January 12, 2014 (AFP) – Sri Lanka on Sunday called snap local elections seen as a gauge of President Mahinda Rajapakse’s popularity ahead of national polls expected to be held later this year, officials said.The southern and western provincial councils, the highest level of local government, have been dissolved, clearing the way for local […]

COLOMBO, January 10, 2014 (AFP) – Sri Lanka said Friday it would protest to the United States over its allegations that army shelling killed hundreds of families during the final days of the island’s ethnic civil war. Sri Lanka maintains that not a single civilian was killed by troops and in November ordered a census […]

COLOMBO, January 9, 2014 (AFP) – A top US official investigating war crimes has visited a former Sri Lankan battleground where hundreds of families were killed in army shelling, the US embassy said Thursday, triggering an angry response from Colombo. The US Ambassador for Global Criminal Justice Stephen Rapp spent Wednesday and Thursday travelling in […]

COLOMBO, January 5, 2014 (AFP) – A top US envoy will travel to Sri Lanka on Monday to discuss allegations of war crimes ahead of a UN review of Colombo’s human rights record, officials said.US Ambassador for Global Criminal Justice Stephen Rapp will spend five days in Sri Lanka discussing rights and reconciliation following the […]

COLOMBO, December 28, 2013 (AFP) – Sri Lanka on Saturday deported an Indian journalist arrested on a charge of working in the island’s former war zone without media credentials, police said. The 24-year-old, who was working for a magazine based in the Indian city of Chennai, was arrested on Christmas Day for photographing military installations […]

VATICAN CITY, December 25, 2013 (AFP) – Thousands of Christians are killed every year because of their faith and the persecution is becoming more widespread, Catholic observers said as Christmas celebrations are increasingly marred by attacks in at-risk countries.Experts have pointed to three main types of anti-Christian violence — the main one being religious radicalism […]

COLOMBO, December 11, 2013 (AFP) – The Catholic church Wednesday warned Sri Lanka’s government of foreign intervention unless it worked towards reconciliation and addressed allegations of war crimes during the war against Tamil separatists.Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo, said he was urging President Mahinda Rajapakse and the main ethnic Tamil party to hammer out […]

WASHINGTON, November 26, 2013 (AFP) – The US administration stepped up its battle Tuesday to thwart moves by lawmakers to tighten sanctions on Iran, warning that would jeopardize tough negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program.It’s not “an all-at-one-time or .. a spigot that’s turned all the way on. It would be a slow process that obviously […]

COLOMBO, November 25, 2013 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s military Monday announced a ban on commemorations of the island’s defeated Tamil Tiger rebels following reports that sections of the ethnic Tamil minority were planning to hold events. The military said any event was banned because the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was still a proscribed […]

COLOMBO, November 17, 2013 (AFP) – Commonwealth leaders agreed Sunday on steps to tackle high debt and poverty as they staged a show of unity after a summit in Sri Lanka dominated by a bitter dispute over war crimes.Following a three-day meeting in Colombo, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse announced that a communique had been […]

Nov 17, 2013 (LBO) – Leaders of Commonwealth nations have issued a declaration after meeting in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo calling for ‘equitable’ growth, better education and inclusivity for women, youth and the disabled.The full statement is reproduced below:- Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 15-17 November, 2013 Colombo Declaration on Sustainable, Inclusive and Equitable […]