Tag: politics

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 […]

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 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 […]

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, […]

July 25, 2010 (LBO) – Vietnam will open an embassy in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo in early 2011, a joint statement following a meeting of deputy foreign ministers of the two countries on the sidelines of a regional group meeting said. Minister Gunawardena had requested co-operation from Vietnam in security intelligence to combat activities of […]

July 21, 2010 (AFP) – The United States pressed Sri Lanka on Wednesday to improve human rights and media freedoms amid charges that security forces committed war crimes during the last days of the island’s civil war. During a one-day visit, US Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake said reconciliation must play a key role […]

JAKARTA, July 15, 2010 (AFP) – Indonesia gave a lukewarm response Thursday to Australia’s plans for a processing centre for asylum-seekers in East Timor, saying it was only a part of a regional solution to people-smuggling. The comments by Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa came after he agreed to meet his Australian counterpart Stephen Smith, […]

KILINOCHCHI, July 14, 2010 (AFP) – The president of Sri Lanka held a cabinet meeting on Wednesday in the northern town of Kilinochchi, the capital of the Tamil Tigers rebels until they were finally defeated last year. Rajapakse’s military offensive triggered international calls for a war crimes probe. The separatist guerrillas controlled one-third of Sri […]