Further repression of media, civil society, minorities (New York) – The Sri Lankan government in the past year failed to advance justice and accountability for the victims of the country’s 26-year-long civil conflict, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2012. While Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged north and east became more open, the government deepened repression of basic f...

New York 23 January 2012:The Sri Lankan government in the past year failed to advance justice and accountability for the victims of the country’s 26-year-long civil conflict, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2012. While Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged north and east became more open, the government deepened repression of basic freedoms throughout ...

By Kusal Perera “Sometimes, all you have is nonsense to deal with and your anger, with which to do so”. - Anonymous “Happy New Year” said everyone to everyone else, after the year had faded off with bursting fire crackers last night. If all wishes made in good faith for a better New Year in ...

  The Sri Lankan army ordered extra-judicial killings and assassinations during the final days of the country’s civil war, according to allegations made by a former member of the army. The source made the statements in an affidavit, obtained by The International as a part of an investigative report on the civil war, published today. The allegations ...

By Imaad Majeed The government has taken extra measures to impose restrictions on the local media by blocking news websites alleged to have engaged in “character assassination” and “invasion of privacy”. Secretary for Ministry of Media and Information, W. B. Ganegala said, “the ministry will introduce a code of ethics and media guidelines.” Mudslinging and ...

The Rajapaksa brothers, Basil and Gotabhaya, have both shown a keen sense of likened thinking with regard to the conduct of the war in Sri Lanka. In a leaked US embassy cable Basil Rajapaksa is quoted as having told members of the US Senate Foreign Relations that, ‘I’m not saying we’re clean; we could not ...

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has written an open letter to President Mahinda Rajapaksa urging him to take whatever measures are necessary to protect Frederica Jansz, the editor of The Sunday Leader, and to ensure that those responsible for last week’s death threats against her are arrested. The threatening letter Jansz received on 27 October was ...

Foreign minister GL Peiris  on Sunday condemned the "preposterous" UN-commissioned report alleging war crimes and revealing he stopped Canada raising it at a Commonwealth meeting, AFP reported Foreign Minister Gamini Peiris also confirmed Sri Lanka will host the next Commonwealth leaders' meeting in 2013, saying that none of the 54-nation bloc raised the prospect of moving it during t...

Last week’s My View talked about six popular fallacies of currency or exchange rate appreciation which both the authorities and the public have tended to harbour in themselves. Of them, the following three were discussed in detail: Fallacy One: The government can fix the external value of a currency at any level it wishes. Fallacy ...

Gives comprehensive address highlighting issues of developing countries Shoots down discriminatory practices by developed countries Outlines post-war development, reiterates stance against terrorism Backs Palestine, Cuba and Africa By Nisthar Cassim in New York In his much-anticipated address to the UN, President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday took a comprehensive local, regional and world view, with...

Sept 01, Colombo: Sri Lanka Computer Emergency and Readiness Team (SLERT) chief engineer Rohana Palliyaguru says there is no information to indicate that an anonymous Sri Lankan group has hacked into the DNS servers of several large international and local organizations.

No complaints have been made regarding the hacking of the DNS servers of many international company websites by the Sri Lankan branch of Anonymous while no serious effects have yet to be felt following the breach, the Computer Emergency and Readiness Team (CERT) stated.

Aug 01, Colombo: The A Singapore-based international arbitrator has dismissed a Citi Bank claim against Sri Lanka's state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) on the payment of soured hedging deal, Reuters report said citing anonymous sources .

The report of the UN Advisory Panel was finally released and the government moved into top gear to get the country behind the regime. The government informed the state media of a press conference on Thursday last week. The Ambassador for Russia in Sri Lanka was agreeable to grant an interview against the Ban panel ...

The BBC Sinhala Service, in asking for comments on the 2010 US Report on Human Rights in Sri  Lanka, gave me little notice, and suggested I could just glance through the synopsis with which the report began. As it happened, I was able to look through some of the rest, which was good, because I ...

by Anthony Reinhart Tories trying to win support from South Asians in Ontario have opened the door to remnants of a Tamil Tiger front group the federal Conservatives themselves banned in 2008. The unlikely association, forged behind a curtain of...

By Indi Samarajiva Mark Zuckerberg was recently named TIME magazine’s person of the year. This comes as no surprise to the over 500 million people who know him impersonally as the founding head of their online social network, Facebook. It does, however, disappoint supporters of WikiLeak’s Julian Assange, another strong contender. They both have something ...

by Tisaranee Gunasekara Basil Rajapaksa is unabashed in claiming that in Sri Lanka an era of ‘ruler kings’ has begun. Western ideas of transparency, he claims, along with limits of presidential power and accountability, are not relevant to ‘Asian Culture’.”...

THAT the second testing of his urine sample might clear Manju Wanniarachchi of any wrongdoing and so restore his Commonwealth Games gold medal is pretty much a hope that rides on the wings of a prayer. The truth though is, hardly ever does the result of a second examination (for banned substance in the system ...

NOT that our little world of sport was at peace with itself last week and so free of issues that might warrant critical scrutiny. If there was such bliss for seven straight days, then, it must’ve been in some other land; over here (where, as the popular joke says, God deems it unnecessary to station ...

YOU’D expect players to be climbing over each others’ shoulders to get a slice of the action at a National Championship, especially one with a rich history, like that of tennis. There was no desperate scramble, though, to get on court for the ongoing 95th Tennis Nationals, an annual tournament so immersed in tradition that ...

By Hilal Suhaib (islandcricket.lk/blogs/hilal) Last week I was forwarded several emails from an anonymous source. These emails included an email from a Roy Bishop of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka which was sent to various news agencies, journalist, ICC officials, officials of other Test playing countries

HARDtalk - Sri Lanka Part 1 - The Tamils and the North: Hardtalk on the road in Sri Lanka: In May 2009, after almost 30 years of civil war, Sri Lanka's government announced its defeat of the separatist Liberation Tigers...

The Disaster Management and Human Rights Ministry states that the US State Department’s 2009 Country Report on Human Rights Practices pertaining to Sri Lanka was a conflation of historical background, repetition of statements in earlier reports, unverified assertions and falls short of the high standards that the State Department professes to uphold. Issuing a release in response to the Marc...