By Shihar Aneez and Ranga Sirilal | Reuters .............................................................................................................................................................................................
Sri Lanka's parliament speaker on Thursday rejected a supreme court summons to a parliamentary panel looking into a move to impeach the chief justice, deepening a crisis that has raised concern about the independence of the country's judiciary. The stand-off in the south Asian state has raised the risk of a destabilising clash between the judiciary and President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government.
By Stewart Bell | National Post.............................................................................................................................................................................................
An officer in the Sri Lanka Army, who fled to Canada and claimed he was ordered to plant explosives at the home of an outspoken opposition politician, is raising new questions about military abuses committed during the island nation’s long civil war.
Captain Ravindra Watudura Bandanage, 38, deserted after flying to Toronto in October 2009.
By Charles Haviland | BBC News [Photo courtesy: Tamil Net] .............................................................................................................................................................................................
Students at Jaffna University in northern Sri Lanka have started a two-day boycott of classes after clashes with security forces on Wednesday. They say they do not feel safe after several were beaten and injured in the worst political disturbances since the civil war ended in 2009.
Security forces entered the university, disrupting students marking a commemoration of dead rebel fighters.
By Peter Fabricius | IOL News.............................................................................................................................................................................................
The Sri Lankan government’s controversial decision to appoint, as its deputy high commissioner to South Africa, an army general accused of war crimes serves – if nothing else – to highlight that country’s inadequate efforts to consign its recent dismal civil war to history.
Sri Lankan high commissioner Winithkumar Shehan Rantavale confirmed speculation in the Sri Lankan media that General Shavendra Silva’s appointment to Pretoria was “in the pipeline”.
By Amal Jayasinghe | AFP[Photo courtesy: Tamil Net] .............................................................................................................................................................................................
Sri Lanka's main Tamil party Thursday demanded troops be withdrawn to barracks in the former rebel heartland of Jaffna after the worst ethnic violence since the end of the island's decades-long civil war.
About 20 students were wounded, seven of whom needed hospital treatment, in clashes with security forces at Jaffna University, underscoring tensions in the region despite the end of the conflict in May 2009.
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.
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.
The Sunday Times .............................................................................................................................................................................................
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.
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.
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