In recent weeks, India has decided to buy 126 fighter jets from France, taken delivery of a nuclear-powered submarine from Russia and prepared for its first aircraft carrier — modernizing its military to face a rising China.

India and China have a long history of tension, dating back to a 1962 border war, and New Delhi has watched with dismay in recent years as Beijing has increased its influence in the Indian Ocean.

China has financed the development of ports in [...]

Sri Lanka (AP) Sri Lanka says it will not forward to the U.N. its report clearing government forces of allegations they targeted civilians during the country’s civil war, in an apparent attempt to avoid scrutiny of the document.

Sri Lanka last year successfully prevented discussion at the U.N. Human Rights Commission of an earlier U.N. report alleging that tens of thousands of civilians may have been killed during the final months of the war against separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

The U.N. report [...]

At 10:25 a.m., a dark brown eye was removed from a man whose lids had closed for the last time. Five hours later, the orb was staring up at the ceiling from a stainless steel tray in an operating room with two blind patients — both waiting to give it a second life.

S.P.D. Siriwardana, 63, remained still under a white sheet as the surgeon delicately replaced the cornea that had gone bad in his right eye following a cataract surgery. [...]

Ethnic Tamil women in Sri Lanka’s former war zones face abuses including sexual violence, trafficking and forced prostitution, an international human rights group said Wednesday.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group said there have been credible allegations of sexual violence against women in those areas at the hands of both security forces and men from their own communities.

The group said many cases go unreported in the country’s north and east, where a 25-year civil war ended in May 2009 when government troops [...]

Sri Lanka’s president accused the United States on Tuesday of unfairly singling out a government war commission for criticism after it cleared the military of deliberately targeting civilians during the country’s civil war.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s office said he told newspaper editors that the U.S. is demanding that Sri Lanka immediately settle war accountability issues, while not criticizing other countries that have been much slower in dealing with similar post-conflict situations.

He said the commission made a wide range of recommendations for [...]

Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil leaders called Monday for an international war crimes inquiry into events during the final stages of the country’s civil war, criticizing a commission report that cleared government forces of deliberately targeting civilians.

The United States, meanwhile, expressed concerns that the report did not fully address all the allegations of serious human rights violations. The State Department called on the Sri Lanka to address those shortcomings, but stopped short itself of supporting an international inquiry.

Lawmakers in the Tamil [...]

A media rights group has filed a court challenge over the Sri Lankan government’s blocking of five news websites for content that was deemed insulting, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The local Free Media Movement filed a fundamental rights application in the Supreme Court on Monday on the basis that the blockade breaches the people’s right to information and freedom of expression, the group’s convener, Sunil Jayasekara, said.

The Information and Media Ministry ordered the sites blocked last month, saying they committed character [...]

Sri Lanka’s Parliament on Wednesday approved the creation of a multiparty committee to recommend constitutional changes for ethnic reconciliation two years after a devastating civil war.

However, a lawmaker from the largest party representing ethnic minority Tamils said it would not participate in the committee at this time because the recommendations of a previous committee had never been implemented.

"This too can be a time-buying tactic," Suresh Premachandran of the Tamil National Alliance said.

The government has faced strong international criticism over lagging [...]

Sri Lanka is counting the number of civilians killed in the final stages of the country’s bloody civil war for the first time, a top defense official said Thursday. The census aims to counter growing allegations of war crimes against the military.

The government until recently had maintained that there were "zero civilian casualties" in its final offensive against separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, despite a United Nations report that tens of thousands may have been killed in the push. In August, [...]

Lawmakers from Sri Lanka’s ruling party have attacked opposition members who were protesting inside Parliament during a budget speech by President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Opposition legislators tried to hold up placards during the speech but were surrounded by ruling party lawmakers who punched them and grabbed the placards, resulting in a brawl.

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A Sri Lankan commission that probed alleged abuses during the island’s civil war says it will present its final report in a week.

The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission said Friday it will conclude its work on Tuesday and present its report to President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Nov. 20.

The government appointed the commission last year under intense international pressure to probe possible war crimes in the final stages of the war.

Human rights groups say the commission does not meet international standards [...]

Sri Lankan officials have told a U.N. human rights panel that the country’s government is taking measures to curb acts of torture by security forces.

A delegation led by Sri Lanka government legal adviser Mohan Pieris has told the U.N. Committee Against Torture that the South Asian nation struggled with decades of terrorism at the hands of the now defeated separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

But Pieris told the Geneva-based panel Tuesday that the Sri Lanka’s government agrees "110 percent" that there must [...]

The 11-year prison sentence for a wealthy hedge fund founder convicted of insider trading charges set a record for its length, but still left the government well short of the two-decade-long prison sentence it had sought to send a stern message to Wall Street.

Raj Rajaratnam, 54, left federal court in Manhattan on Thursday after U.S. District Judge Richard J. Holwell announced a sentence that was four years below a Probation Department recommendation and well short of the government’s request that [...]

Dutch prosecutors have demanded sentences ranging from 10 to 16 years for five ethnic Tamils accused of raising millions of euros (dollars) in the Netherlands to finance the Tamil Tigers’ fight for an independent homeland in Sri Lanka.

Prosecutors accuse the men, all naturalized Dutch citizens, of extorting cash from Tamils living in the Netherlands, running illegal lotteries and laundering money.

The Tamil Tigers, defeated in May 2009 after a 26-year struggle, are considered in Europe a terrorist organization.

Prosecutors told The Hague [...]

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent a report by U.N. experts who concluded that tens of thousands of people were killed in the last five months of Sri Lanka’s civil war, primarily by government troops, to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Monday.

Ban said in April when the report was released that he would welcome a mandate from the Human Rights Council, Security Council or General Assembly to launch an international probe into allegations of possible war crimes at the end of the 26-year war between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.