Category: Politics

August 13, 2010 (AFP) – A court martial convicted Sri Lanka’s former army chief Sarath Fonseka Friday of dabbling in politics and stripped him of his rank and medals, a senior military source said. “The guilty verdict was read out to General Fonseka at the court martial a short while ago,” the military source told […]

MONTREAL, August 11, 2010 (AFP) – A ship full of Sri Lankan refugees was less than 320 kilometers (200 miles) from Canada’s western shores and could be arriving late Thursday or Friday, local media said Wednesday. In May last year, capping a four-decade civil war, Sri Lankan government troops finally defeated the separatist Liberation Tigers […]

August 10, 2010 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s president Tuesday sacked a maverick minister who had tied a state official to a tree as punishment for failing to control the spread of dengue fever in the country, an official said. Highways minister Mervyn Silva was dismissed and his ruling party membership suspended pending a disciplinary inquiry, […]

WASHINGTON, August 10, 2010 (AFP) – A group of US lawmakers is urging the Obama administration to push for an independent international investigation into alleged war crimes that occurred during Sri Lanka’s civil war. In a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the members of Congress called for such a probe saying […]

August 10, 2010 (AFP) – Sri Lanka announced the government-appointed panel looking into the island’s civil war that ended last year would hold its first public hearings on Wednesday. The eight-member panel will hear testimony for five days in the capital Colombo and two days in Vavuniya, near the former war zone, an official statement […]

SYDNEY, August 8, 2010 (AFP) – Despite its Aboriginal roots and a large Asian population, Australia’s politics are almost exclusively white with just a handful of ethnic minority candidates in this month’s elections. Australia’s diversity — from Outback townships to Sydney’s Chinatown and growing numbers of South and Southeast Asians — is poorly reflected in […]

August 5, 2010 (AFP) – Two opposition lawmakers in Sri Lanka defected to the ruling party on Thursday, bringing President Mahinda Rajapakse closer to altering the constitution to allow him to retain power. The two MPs, both from the minority Tamil community, joined the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) led by Rajapakse, who oversaw the […]

WASHINGTON, August 4, 2010 (AFP) – The United States and Canada said Wednesday they are monitoring a ship said to be packed with Tamil refugees bound for Canada as they flee post-war persecution in Sri Lanka. D. M. Jayaratne, Sri Lanka’s prime minister, has urged Western nations to crack down on Tamils living abroad who […]

August 3, 2010 (AFP) – A group of global statesmen, founded by Nelson Mandela, Tuesday criticised the Sri Lankan government for failing to build on peace brought to the island by the end of the civil war last year. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has dismissed calls for an international probe into alleged war crimes […]

August 2, 2010 (AFP) – Thousands of men, women and children displaced by Sri Lanka’s civil war are living in the open air 15 months after fighting ended, the island’s main Tamil political party said Monday. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) said the government’s promise that the civilians would be allowed to return to their […]

July 30, 2010 (AFP) – Unidentified attackers set fire to a private television station in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo Friday after smashing editing equipment, police said. Friday’s attack was the first targeting a private television station since an identical torching of another private TV network near the capital in January last year. No one […]

July 29, 2010 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s former army chief and defeated presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka was brought before the Colombo High Court on Thursday to answer charges of provoking violence. Fonseka, who already faces two courts martial and two more criminal cases, was taken before a three-member “trial-at-bar” for the first time and charged, […]