The visit by an Indian external affairs minister to Sri Lanka is always an important affair. Sri Lankans of all communities and political leanings watch it carefully. They listen to the statements and read between the lines. To many, especially for the Sri Lankan Tamils and the committed democratic sections of the Sri Lankan and Indian polity, these are moments of hope. S M Krishna has had a busy week in Sri Lanka. Can peoples’ hopes in a post-conflict situation [...]

Sri Lankan defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa is President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s brother and that lends greater resonance to his words. In a recent interview, he lashed out against those who voice concern over the plight of the Tamils in the island nation. He singled out Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa among those who have been espousing the cause of the Tamils “for political reasons”. What he implies implicitly is that Indians have no right to speak on behalf of the [...]

Quoting DMK chief M Karunanidhi’s controversial remarks against Lord Rama over the Sethusamudram issue, the ruling AIADMK on Thursday sought to hit back at him on the issue of a new assembly complex built during his regime, wondering whether he possessed an engineering degree.

Referring to former deputy chief minister MK Stalin’s past remarks that his father Karunanidhi was associated with the construction of the new assembly-cum-secretariat complex brick by brick, AIADMK member S Valarmathy during a debate in the [...]

Chief Minister and AIADMK general secretary J Jayalalithaa on Friday denied Dravida MunnetraKazhagam (DMK) president M Karunanidhi’s charge that the State government was selectively targeting his partymen because of political vendetta.

  “Land grab complaints were filed by people who have no political party affiliation and the police are taking action on the complaints. As such, there is no question of political vendetta,” Jayalalithaa asserted.

Asked whether action would be taken against officials who had ignored land-grabbing charges during the [...]

A group of women activists in India has blamed the Indian government for what they said were widespread human rights violations in Sri Lanka.

The "Indian Women’s Rights Activists in Solidarity with Women in Sri Lanka" also said it had stopped believing in Colombo’s periodic pledges to bring about reconciliation in the country.

"We no longer believe the empty promises of the Sri Lankan government to bring peace and reconciliation, and strongly demand immediate action that will convince us of [...]

The US Congressional committee for foreign affairs voting to ban aid to Sri Lanka till accountability was shown on the war crimes of 2009 should warm the cockles of all right thinking people, particularly those who have been sympathetic to the Tamil people of the island nation. But the path-breaking decision coming close on the heels of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s meeting with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton in Chennai, however, drives home a point relating to [...]

In view of the difficulties in directly reaching out to the Indian market, although it is next door, Pakistani businessmen are looking at Sri Lanka as a possible conduit to India, given the island nation’s free trade agreement with India.

President of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce, Majyd Aziz Balagamwala, has been quoted in the state-owned media here as saying that if India and Pakistan did not want to import anything directly from each other, Sri Lanka could be a [...]

The Chennai-based AMET Shipping’s plan to start a Chennai-Trincomalee cruise has been postponed indefinitely because the necessary approvals from the Indian and Sri Lankan governments have not been acquired yet, says Capt Nalin Peiris, general sales agent for the cruise in Sri Lanka.

The cruise, using the luxury liner AMET Majesty, was to have been inaugurated on July 4.

Peiris told Express on Sunday that the Indo-Lanka agreement on shipping services referred to the Thoothukudi-Colombo and the Rameswaram-Thalaimannar ferry services, [...]

Jayalalithaa has submitted a memo to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that lists demands from post-conflict Sri Lanka. She has said that the Sri Lankan regime should be held accountable for war crimes during the last days of the fratricidal war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), where thousands of civilians were killed, hundreds of thousands became refuges, Tamil areas of the north were reduced to rubble, and humanitarian assistance to Tamils were denied. Jayalalithaa has asked that the [...]

The Tamil Nadu Assembly today passed a unanimous resolution seeking the state revenue department to implead itself in a case filed by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa for retrieval of Katchatheevu island, ceded to Sri Lanka by India in 1974 by way of an agreement.

Chief Minister Jayalalithaa moved the resolution even as the DMK was absent during the debate.

The resolution said the case filed by Jayalalithaa as AIADMK chief in the Supreme Court in 2008 argued that the island was [...]

Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Wednesday charged that her predecessor M Karunanidhi had failed to protect the Lankan Tamils during the war in Sri Lanka. Instead of taking concrete steps to save the Tamils, Karunanidhi had enacted ‘dramas’, she said.

Participating in the discussion on the resolution moved by her urging the Centre to impose economic sanctions against Sri Lanka until the country accorded equal rights to Tamils and resettled those internally displaced to their native places, the CM said [...]

A high-level Indian team, comprising National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar is likely to be in Sri Lanka on June 16 and 17 to discuss a wide range of bilateral issues, an India High Commission official said.

The Indian team will meet a three-member Sri Lankan team comprising Secretary to President, Lalith Weeratunga, Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa, and Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

When the two teams were set up during [...]

When the Sri Lankan government under the newly elected President Mahinda Rajapaksa decided to fight the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to the finish in 2006, the optimists were in a miserable minority.

Under the crafty and mysterious Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE was almost universally believed to be invincible. Between 1987 and March 1990, it had survived the formidable onslaught of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) officered by battle-hardened veterans of the 1965 and 1971 wars against [...]

Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) general secretary Vaiko is in Brussels to attend a hearing aimed to discuss the way forward for Tamils in Lanka. The hearing, organised by  Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left of the European Parliament, will see Vaiko address a session on what activities the group can take up to assist Lankan Tamils in the aftermath of the Eelam War IV.

Vaiko is taking part in the hearing, scheduled for June 1, on [...]

In her first interaction with the media, soon after unprecedented electoral victory, Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa assured the people that she will exercise pressure on the central government to revise its Sri Lanka policy not only to expose the heinous crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government during the last stages of the fourth Eelam War and bring the guilty to book, but also to ensure that justice is done to the Tamils in the island nation. Jayalalithaa’s timely appeal [...]