Sri Lanka is sending 750 new soldiers to be part of the United Nations’ peacekeeping force in Haiti, the country’s government announced Monday.
A group of 400 soldiers from the country’s Sinha regiment departed for Haiti on Monday to join the MINUSTAH force.
They followed a group of 350 soldiers which already left for Haiti last Thursday.
The Global Tamil Forum's (GTF) demand for justice through an independent international investigation has been strengthened by the fact that the international community wants the accountability issue addressed by Sri Lanka, and until that happens there won't be a let up, GTF Spokesperson, Suren Surendiran said, asserting the Rajapaksa regime must address the disproportionate militarization of the North and reduce the military presence, materially.
Replying to a question about Sri Lankan High Commissioner Prasad Kariyawasam Kariyawasam’s reported comments that Sinhalese have their origins in most of the northern states of India, Union Minister of State in Prime Ministers Office V Narayanasamy today said Sri Lankan envoy Kariyavaasam “has exceeded his limits†who was trying to instigate north Indians against the people of Tamil Nadu in his anti-Tamil racists plot.
In a significant development in Lanka – China bilateral trade, China has upgraded Sri Lanka to no less than a Joint Sponsor in the first of its newest international trade event series- the China South Asia Exposition (CSAE), states the Ministry of Industry & Commerce.
Strongly condemning an alleged e-mail that was written by the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India, Prasad Kariyawasam, that Sinhala people in the island nation were of North Indian origin and that India must aim to protect them more than the Tamils, MDMK general secretary Vaiko on Wednesday demanded that he be arrested and prosecuted.
In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Vaiko alleged that in the e-mail circulated to media houses recently, the High Commissioner had tried to sow the seeds of hatred and rancour in the minds of people of North Indian states by spreading untruths that Sinhala people had their origins in North India and States like Odisha based on the epic Mahavamsa.
A judge announced Wednesday that more than 150 human skulls and bones recovered from a mass grave were buried there about 25 years ago, strengthening suspicion that they belonged to suspected Marxist rebels killed at the time.
Magistrate Chathurika de Silva told a court in the central town of Matale that tests show the skeletal remains found inside the premises of a government hospital dated to between 1987 and 1990. During that period, thousands of men and women suspected of having ties to the rebels disappeared after being arrested by security forces.
The Commonwealth Secretariat Tuesday said Sri Lanka's human rights situation will not be on the agenda of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) meeting next month.
Some countries, especially Canada, had tried to include Sri Lanka on the agenda citing its poor rights record and to push for a change of venue for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in November.
The report into arbitrary detention, prison conditions, the Vavuniya riot, and its aftermath published by the Sri Lankan Campaign for Peace and Justice documents the island's human rights abuses and examines the treatment of detainees in the wake of a riot in the country's Vavuniya detention centre last June, that triggered brutal police retribution.
