Dawn of New Year brings fresh thoughts, feelings – President

May the traditional Sinhala and Tamil New Year that has dawned be one that brings peace, joy and prosperity to all, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a New Year message. ...

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Sri Lankan diplomat may avoid questioning on war crimes claims

Diplomat facing allegations of crimes against humanity is set to return to Sri Lanka, raising fears he will avoid questioning

The Foreign Office has been warned it is running out of time to take action against a senior London-based Sri Lankan diplomat who is facing allegations of complicity in crimes against humanity.

Last week, the Guardian revealed that an organisation representing the Tamil diaspora was launching legal action against the FCO over its failure to...

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William Hague faces legal action over Sri Lankan diplomat war crimes claim

Tamil group to bring judicial review against foreign secretary over refusal to declare military attache persona non grata

An organisation representing the international Tamil diaspora is taking legal action against William Hague over the Foreign Office's failure to confront a senior Sri Lankan diplomat accused of complicity in crimes against humanity during the final stages of the island's civil war.

The Global Tamil Forum has instructed the law firm Birnberg, Peirce and Partners to bring a...

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Sri Lankan conservationists battle national park highway

Threat to wildlife posed by Chinese-funded road through Wilpattu park is cause celebre in island's postwar tourist boom

As Sri Lankans prepare to celebrate the Sinhala or Buddhist New Year in April, conservationists will be quietly praying that a proposed major road through Wilpattu national park will finally be ruled illegal. Controversially funded by the Chinese government, the road has been the centre of a case sitting with the Sri Lankan supreme court for nearly...

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Sri Lanka – Government-orchestrated threats against exile journalists

Reporters Without Borders deplores a government-orchestrated campaign of threats and smears against journalists and human rights activists that is being waged above all through media controlled by Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited (ANCL), a state-owned company better known as “Lake House.”

The targets include Rohitha Bashana Abeywardane of Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, a Reporters Without Borders partner organization, Dharmasiri Lankapeli of the Federation of Media Employees Trade Unions and Sunanda...

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Journalists are ‘traitors’, says Sri Lanka’s state TV

Sri Lanka's state-controlled media has described journalists as "traitors" following the UN human rights council's call for an investigation into the country's alleged abuses during its war against Tamil separatists.

In an attack on Sri Lankan journalists, both at home and in exile, state television accused them of "betraying the motherland."

Although the broadcaster did not name the journalists who had participated in the human rights council sessions, it screened "thinly disguised photographs of them" and said...

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Sri Lankan government calls journalists ‘traitors’

New York, March 22, 2012--The Sri Lankan government must immediately halt its intimidation of journalists who supported the adoption of a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution calling for an investigation into the country's alleged abuses of international humanitarian law during its war with Tamil separatists.

DMK to withdraw Ministers over Sri Lanka issue

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Sri Lanka – With media gagged or threatened, no progress for freedom of information

Reporters Without Borders calls on all members of the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council, which began its 19th session yesterday, to pass a resolution condemning the Sri Lankan government's violations of freedom of information and to demand an end to threats and violence against news media and human rights defenders in Sri Lanka.

“For more than a year we have been seeing new forms of censorship and a deterioration in journalists'...

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Our duty to Sri Lanka, and human rights | Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson

It is not just Sri Lanka's people that the UN Human Rights Council must serve this week, but the cause of international law

This week the UN Human Rights Council has an opportunity and a duty to help Sri Lanka advance its own efforts on...

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