Ahead of a resolution on Sri Lanka set to come up for procedural extension at the end of the 42nd Session of the UN Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet released a wide-ranging report on the Government’s efforts and challenges to delivering on pledges of reconciliation and justice, a decade after the War ended. The High Commissioner in her report …
The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) calls on the international community and the members of the UNHRC, to ensure that Sri Lanka firmly remains on the UNHRC agenda until all aspects of resolutions 30/1 and 34/1, are fully implemented without exceptions the GTF said in a statement. The statement said: It is almost ten years since the war ended in Sri Lanka. The Tamil community suffered the …
Is Sri Lanka on the path to establishing its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)? The answer, at least if Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is to be believed, is ‘yes.’ Speaking at a recent meeting in Kilinochchi, the wartime capital of territory ruled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during its 23 year-long conflict with government forces, Wickremesinghe suggested that setting up an TRC …
Amid the increasing Chinese influence over the strategically important Indo-Pacific region, a top Pentagon commander has advocated sustained US engagement with Sri Lanka, despite the political and ethnic turmoil in the island nation, posing a challenge to their ties. “Sri Lanka remains a significant strategic opportunity in the Indian Ocean, and our military-to-military relationship continues to strengthen,” US Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm Philips Davidson told the …
The UK government once again dismissed Lord Naseby’s call to terminate Geneva Resolution 30/1 in 2015 and Resolution 34/1 in 2017 on the basis that the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government didn’t perpetrate war crimes as alleged by the UN. The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con) on Wednesday (Feb. 05) during a House of Commons debate on UNHRC Resolution …
Sri Lanka – a Tea Island, is known for its diverse cultures and scenic beauty. While blessed with fortunes of nature to give a different array of climates, tea was first introduced to Sri Lanka as a replacement crop for coffee, during the 19th Century by a Scottish planter, James Taylor. An island with an area of 65,525 square kilometres, its heritage of tea culture is …
The former Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province, C.V.Wigneswaran, on Sunday praised Velupillai Prabhakaran, the slain leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), for bringing about Tamil unity by making several mutually antagonistic Tamil political parties come together to form the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). Speaking at a Jaffna-Kilinochchi district conference of the Eelam Peoples’ Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRF), Wigneswaran said that …
The ideological moorings of leaders in Sri Lanka, as they struggle for power, are as important as the strategic stakes of China and India in the Indian Ocean island state. The de-escalation of a recent constitutional crisis in Sri Lanka conceals a potential ideological struggle for power in the strategically located state in the Indian Ocean. Outwardly, the crisis spiralled down when President Maithripala Sirisena reappointed …
n July 2017 the Sri Lankan government renewed, for another ten years, the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) with the United States Department of Defense. ACSA allows the exchange of supply and services, training of staff and humanitarian aid in disaster situations between the two countries. In a proposal to the Sri Lankan cabinet in 2017, President Maithripala Sirisena pointed out that the ACSA would help …
Human Rights Watch released the ‘World Report 2019’, reviewing human rights practices in more than 100 countries. HRW states that Sri Lanka’s political upheaval undermined stalled processes aimed at providing truth and justice for abuses from the country’s civil war. After Maithripala Sirisena won the election in 2015, the government improved the climate for civil society, reversed some repressive measures, and supported a resolution at the …
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