UN civil war report angers Sri Lanka

Sky News
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Sri Lanka's government has criticised a United Nations report on the island's civil war, saying the allegations against the government are 'unsubstantiated and erroneous'. 

In a response to an internal review the world body released last week, the external affairs ministry said on Friday the report 'appears to be another attempt at castigating Sri Lanka for militarily defeating' the Tamil Tigers.

Sri Lanka war tourism skips reality

By Amantha Perera | IPS/Jakarta Globe

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The tour guide’s voice echoes around the dark, musty room, three stories underground. Fifty visitors — among them mothers holding infants, youths snapping pictures on mobile phones and grandparents leaning against the walls — are crammed into the narrow stairwell that leads down into the chamber, listening attentively to his every word.

The tourists have travelled hundreds of kilometers to see this underground bunker, once home to the most feared man in Sri Lanka: the leader of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Further hearings on CJ's impeachment motion on December 4

The Sunday Times 
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Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake accompanied by her laywers attended the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) sittings which took up the impeachment motion against her today morning. Further sittings were fixed for December 4. 

The Chief Justice has been given time to file a response to the allegations before November 30.

Time to push back over Sri Lankan impunity

By Alan Keenan | CNN World

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International attention on Sri Lanka has focused recently on a devastating report from the United Nations reviewing its own failure to protect civilians during the humanitarian catastrophe of the final months of the island nation’s civil war in 2009. Yet as many in the international community have been looking back, a new, quieter crisis is threatening Sri Lanka’s battered democracy – and the chances of lasting peace – with the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa moving to impeach the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. 

Should the impeachment effort succeed, it will complete a constitutional coup begun in September 2010 with the 18th amendment to the constitution, which ended presidential term limits and removed the independence of commissions on the police, human rights, judiciary, bribery and other areas of governance.