22nd April 2016

A list of people who surrendered during the last phase of the armed conflict in 2009 was not submitted to the Mullaithivu magistrate court by the army, despite a pledge by the 58D Brigade Commanding Officer to do so. Mullathivu Magistrate MSM Samsudeen ordered the officer on February 17 this year to furnish the list by April 20, however the state counsel was not present in court, causing the case to be postponed till May 17, according to Ceylon Today. A writ of mandamus regarding people who went missing after surrendering to the army was submitted at a court in Vavuniya, before it was transferred to the court in Mullaithivu. When the witness statements were recorded in December 2015, the officer testified that the names mentioned were […]

York Regional Police is seeking public assistance locating a 44-year-old woman missing from the Town of Richmond Hill. Kalamalini Sivakumar was last seen  Feb. 19,  leaving her residence in the area of Bathurst Street and King Road. Later that day, her van was located by a family member in a shopping mall parking lot in the area of Rutherford Road and Jane Street in Vaughan with a note inside from the missing person indicating she would be home in 15 days. On March 22, her family contacted police when they still had not seen or heard from her. Investigators have exhausted all leads and are now appealing to the public for information. Police and her family have become concerned for her well-being. Sivakumar is describe […]

By Winston de Valliere While Political parties and Trade Unions flex their muscles to observe May Day in just a week’s time, the enormity of the explosive emotions sizzling just beneath the surface of the two major political parties can be expected to manifest themselves in grandstanding such as that seen in the days of the Second WW by Hitler on the one side and Churchill on the other. Make no mistake about it May Day in Sri Lanka is just an euphemism for venting political venom on one’s opponents with labour issues being exploited expressly for that purpose. That’s the moral low that Lankan political forces have got mired in. Funding will have come from numerous sources abroad to boost attendance at many rallies in […]

The Criminal Investigations Department is likely to arrest four other senior Police officers, including a serving ASP and a retired Senior DIG, in connection with rugby player Wasim Thajudeen’s murder. The CID arrested Sumith Chinthaka Perera, former Crimes OIC of the Narahenpita Police Station, over the same incident on Wednesday. The serving ASP facing imminent arrest was also an OIC of a police station in the Colombo district at the time of the rugby player’s killing, authoritative Police sources told the Daily News. The Police officers are likely to be arrested on the charges of concealing information about a murder and presenting ‘misrepresented reports’ to court. It has now been established that the officers of the Crime branch of the Narahenpita Police Station had handled […]

A financial fraud involving the loss of vital foreign exchange earnings beyond calculation had been caused to country through the smuggling out of large stocks of gems since 2013, Chairman of the National Gem and Jewellery Authority Asanke Welagedara said. He said the fraud was uncovered as a result of a state audit. He said the large-scale fraud had occurred by way of a voucher system called the ‘N.N.S’, costing an annual fee of Rs.1,500 US dollars that allowed for any number of gems to be taken outside of the country without question. The current Chairman said the voucher system had been implemented by the former Chairman of the National Gem and Jewellery Authority Amithe Gamage, under the directive of the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. […]

President Maithrippla Sirisena on Wednesday accused his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa of having thwarted a bid to take disciplinary action against the then Chairman of the Tangalle Pradeshiya Sabha, Sampath Chandra Pushpa Vidanapathirana in the wake of his alleged involvement in the killing of British citizen Khuram Shaikh Zaman, (32) in late December, 2011. President Sirisena claimed that the former President had strongly opposed a decision taken by him in his capacity as the General Secretary of the SLFP together with the then UPFA General Secretary Susil Premjayantha to sack the suspected killers from the party. Addressing heads of local government bodies at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute (SLFI), President Sirisena claimed that the former President had summoned him and Premajayantha to Temple Trees and repreminaded […]

Leader of the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) and former TNA Parliamentarian Suresh Premachandran stated that, certain decisions taken by the leader of the TNA and Opposition Leader Rajavarothayam Sampanthan are questionable. He made this comment addressing a media briefing held on Tuesday (19) in Jaffna. Former Parliamentarian Premachandran further said that TNA’s election manifesto has emphasized the Federal Constitutional System and the need of combining of the North-East. But the President and the Prime Minister have said that the North-East would not be connected. So the extensive talk with government is essential on these issues. Premachandran recalled Sampanthan’s statements that the political solution for Tamil people would be granted this year supported by the President and the Prime Minister. While Sampanthan had said that the […]

 From adversary to protector- Sri Lanka Police have turned to ‘Community Policing’ as a way to build bridges between communities and the police at a time when public faith in the police is at an all-time low. Retired Senior DIG, M. Gomes spends much of his retirement as the President of the Wellawatte Civil Security Committee (CSC) but this time, he remains outside the police station and helps people connect with the police. “The police department wanted to start committees to empower civil society but at the moment it is only the Wellawatte police civil society which is getting on very well. “We have about 50 members. We meet every 3rd Sunday of the month at the Wellawatte police division”, said Gomes with pride. The […]

On a recent visit to the United States, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera made a revealing series of comments in response to a question at a forum organized by the United States Institute of Peace. When asked about the government’s timeline to introduce what the government calls “reconciliation mechanisms”, his response reflected his view that controversial Transitional Justice (TJ) mechanisms must be initiated quickly, without much delay. Citing Margaret Thatcher, he claimed that the most controversial aspects of a government’s agenda must be implemented within “a year or two” of its assumption of office. He said the government had “set itself a target of one year” to establish the mechanisms, and this was why the consultation process was supposed to take place within “three months”. He […]

By Vishwamithra1984 – “There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge, and fox, and squirrel.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson They call themselves the Joint Opposition. They are a twice-defeated, once at the Presidential and then at the parliamentary elections, lot of parliamentarians and two or three-time Ministers, who ransacked the country’s economy and its invaluable assets of youth and school children. Instead of taking these avaricious political parasites one by one and decimating them to pieces, the writer would prefer to deposit them into one bunch […]