(PTI) Ahead of a key UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session where the US may move an anti-Sri Lanka resolution, leaders of the main Tamil party here on Tuesday met visiting US diplomat Stephen Rapp and discussed matters relating to the minority community.

Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R Sampanthan and the party’s national list MP M A Sumanthiran held talks with Rapp, the US Ambassador at Large on Global Criminal Justice who is on a 4-day visit to the [...]

Describing India’s Sri Lanka policy as "too north-centric", Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy today sought more Indian engagement in developmental projects in this country, even as he advocated the need for a political solution to the Tamil issue.

"Peace in Sri Lanka is not only in the interest of Lankans but also of India. But peace can come only with a political solution to the national (Tamil) question," Swamy told PTI.

Calling Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa a "determined and resolute leader" [...]

The modern history of Sri Lanka, centered around the politics of its Tamil minority population and its umbilically bound relationship with India, is one of broken promises, linguistic chauvinism, mutual distrust – and all-round treachery.

The annihilation in May 2009 of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which waged a bloody 30-year campaign for a separatist Tamil homeland and was in its time arguably the world’s most ruthless killing machine, gave rise to hopes that Sri Lanka might just be [...]

Contrary to the claim of the government Minister D E W Gunasekara that LTTE’s two senior men V Balakumar and Yogaratnam Yogi were dead in the battle front, a senior military official has confirmed in confidence to the Sri Lanka Guardian source that both are held in detention with the other senior men of the LTTE in a secret location in the south of Sri Lanka under strict military supervision.

Eye witness account confirmed nearly fifty LTTE men including Balakumar, [...]

Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed resigned on Tuesday following overnight protests and demonstrations, the Maldives High Commission in Colombo said.

A spokesman at the High Commission said that the Vice President of the country, Dr. Mohommad Wahid, was now the acting President.

A spokesman for the Maldives opposition Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP) told The Sunday Leader earlier that a majority of the police and army were also backing the removal of Nasheed from power.

DQP spokesman Mohhomad Malech Jamal said that there were [...]

Three American nationals were injured when the vehicle they were travelling in fell off a bridge in Puttalam today.

According to the police, the Americans were heading to Mannar after visiting the Norocholai coal power plant when the accident occurred.

The vehicle they were travelling in had veered off the road and fallen off the bridge and into a river injuring all three of them.

The police said that the Americans were admitted to hospital for treatment.

The vehicle had sunk some 10 feet [...]

Landmine clearance in Sri Lanka’s conflict-affected north could take more than a decade, experts say.

“It is expected to take (in) excess of 10 years to fully mitigate all remaining contamination in Sri Lanka,” the Mine Action Project of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Sri Lanka told IRIN, citing a lack of resources coupled with the difficult nature of the work.

Approximately 126sq km of land remained to be cleared in the island’s north at the end of 2011, according [...]

The United States said Monday it would send two senior diplomats to Sri Lanka this month, for talks expected to address alleged killings of civilians by troops during a war with Tamil Tiger rebels.

Maria Otero, Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights, and Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asian Affairs, will be in Colombo from February 12-14.

The trip is part of a regional tour for the pair — Otero will [...]

The ‘We are Sri Lankans’ organisation yesterday charged that there had been six murders and two suicides in the Jaffna district in the past two months allegedly owing to the large military presence in the north which the organisation said should be removed immediately from the area.

The organisation which aims to promote national unity said despite continuous assurances from the government that the military would promote the quality of life and development in the north and other parts of the [...]

Some 380,000 school children attending government schools in the country had still not received their school uniforms and would have to spend their own money on school uniforms if the government fails to provide them, the Ceylon Teachers Union said.

The government had allocated Rs.1,660 million for school uniforms in the 2012 budget but had still not provided the uniforms, the union’s General Secretary Joseph Stalin said. “We made a complaint to the education ministry but have still not received an [...]

(by Melani Manel Perera) 100 families living in the Udduppidi refugee camp, 52 in that of Sinnaweli. For a year the government considers these people "resettled" and does not send more flour, rice, lentils, coconut oil and sugar. Displaced people: "Without dignity, we want to be citizens of our country."

Jaffna (AsiaNews) – "War and expropriations have robbed us of our dignity as human beings. When will we be citizens in our country?”, ask for hundreds of families, originally [...]

(PTI) A close ally of Sri Lankan President on Monday claimed that US was working to "haul" Mahinda Rajapaksa before the international court in the Hague over war crimes.

"The US has got busy collecting signatures to move the resolution against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council session in March", Wimal Weerawansa, the minister of engineering services and construction told a public gathering at Matale in the central province.

"They (US) will frame charges against Sri Lanka for [...]

Photo credit Ada Derana

This is the question of the day. This is raised nationally and internationally and answers contrast for different reasons. In this article, I endeavor to briefly answer this question from a governance perspective, keeping in mind the present socio-political realities  in Sri Lanka.

The President appointed the Commission of Inquiry on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliations (LLRC) on 15^th May 2010 with a broad mandate to inquire into and report on specific matters, in terms of the Commissions [...]

(PTI) The talks with the Sri Lankan government for the release of jailed former Army chief Sarath Fonseka has been positive, family and his political party claimed on Monday.

"Talks have been positive", Anoma Fonseka the wife of the former Army chief told reporters.

Despite speculation that Fonseka might be released on a pardon from president Mahinda Rajapaksa marking the independence day yesterday, the former Army chief continues to serve his prison terms.

Fonseka, 61, was jailed for 30 [...]

The wards of the Chaavakachcheari hospital, renovated with help from Red Cross societies from Finland and Ireland at different stages and that were already declared open, were declared once again opened by SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday. The ‘hijack’ move projected as a part of ‘grand opening’ under Rajapaksa’s Vadakkin Vasantham (the spring of the North), was exposed by the local journalists, who discovered that the initial inaugural plaques with the names of foreign donors were hastily removed Sunday [...]