Category: News

The deadline to former President Maithripala Sirisena and other accused individuals to pay compensation for failing to avert the Easter Sunday bomb attacks will come to an end on Wednesday (July 12).

In a verdict on January 12, the Supreme Court ordered former President Sirisena to pay a sum of Rs. 100 million while former IGP Pujith Jayasundara and former SIS director Nilantha Jayawardhane were ordered to pay Rs. 75 million each as compensation, former Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando was ordered to pay Rs. 50 million and former National Intelligence chief Sisira Mendis was ordered to pay Rs.10 million within four months from January 12.

The Court held that these respondents had violated the fundamental rights of petitions filed over the Easter Sunday attacks.

The Easter bombings, the worst attacks in Sri Lanka since the civil war ended in 2009, took place on Easter Sunday in 2019, targeting three churches and three luxury hotels across Sri Lanka, killing 270 people and injuring over 500.

Over 150,000 Sri Lankans have left for overseas job this year so far.

Deputy Deputy General Manager of the Foreign Employment Bureau Gamini Senarath Yapa says that most of those who left for overseas employment, booked their flights to the Middle-East.

He also believes that by the end of this year over 300,000 will leave for job overseas.

He says that these statistics are only of those registered in the Foreign Employment Bureau.

A Tamil mother has called on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to intervene to stop her son being deported to Sri Lanka where she fears he could be slain.

Reeta Arulruban arrived in Australia from Sri Lanka by boat in 2012 and was granted permanent residency after more than a decade on temporary protection visas.

She tried to sponsor her son Dixtan but the Immigration Department refused his application in 2016.

Three years later, he managed to seek asylum in Australia arriving by plane but has been detained in Melbourne ever since.

The department last month issued a removal notice for Mr Arulruban, ordering he be deported.

As a member of the Tamil minority group, his mother fears he could be tortured or killed in Sri Lanka.

“Please prime minister, please reunite my son with me, who is the only remaining family member I have,” Ms Arulruban told AAP through an interpreter.

“The prime minister was brought up by a single mother – I hope he understands the bond between a mother and a son.”

Ms Arulruban said no one in the government was listening.

“Please help me and other refugees,” she said.

“I want all the people (refugees) to be given permanent residency.”

Her husband was killed in a massacre in 2009, when tens of thousands of civilians were caught between government troops and Tamil Tiger armed rebels during civil war.

Ms Arulruban, 55, experienced sexual assault at a military camp in 2012.

Her 26-year-old son’s Australian protection application was refused and he has exhausted all avenues for appeal.

Ms Arulruban’s appeal to the prime minister is her last real hope.

“I went through a lot of trauma, I went through sexual assault, I escaped and came to Australia,” she said.

“I was hoping to reunite with my son and they are trying to take him away from me.”

The department said it would not comment on individual cases.

“Individuals who no longer hold a valid visa are expected to depart Australia,” a spokesperson told AAP.

Nina Merlino, a lawyer acting for Mr Arulruban, confirmed she was filing an injunction against the department’s removal notice.

The Tamil Refugee Council said the community was devastated by the looming separation.

“Reeta and Dixtan have yearned for more than a decade to reunite and rebuild their lives in peace after such a traumatic past,” the council’s Renuga Inkapumar said.

(Courtesy AAP)

The man charged with clawing Sri Lanka out of bankruptcy says he had warned about economic calamity years before it hit — and was pressed into retirement for his troubles.

Central bank chief Nandalal Weerasinghe was asked to return to the island nation last year to help steer it through a financial collapse that triggered months of food shortages, petrol queues and nightly blackouts.

The 63-year-old says his mandate coincides with Sri Lanka’s one final opportunity to rescue itself from a cycle of economic shocks that stretches back decades.

“There’s no excuse this time, no second chance, we have to get it right this time,” he told AFP at his Colombo office this week.

“This is where I think crisis is an opportunity.”

Weerasinghe was the Central Bank of Sri Lanka’s number two when Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected president in 2019 on populist promises of generous tax cuts.

Government debt soared as Rajapaksa pursued an unorthodox policy of printing exorbitant amounts of money while holding down exchange and interest rates to spur growth.

“As the senior deputy governor, I always raised concerns,” Weerasinghe said.

But with Rajapaksa’s administration steamrolling objections from him and other senior central bankers, Weerasinghe said he felt he had no option but to take early retirement.

“Obviously I saw if those policies continued in that way… we’ll end up in a situation that I said at that time was exactly what happened,” he added.

Weerasinghe had decamped for a quiet life in Australia, spending time with his children and hitting the golf course five days a week, when Rajapaksa asked him to come back and helm the central bank.

He returned to a country in chaos, its currency in freefall and the government days from defaulting on its $46 billion foreign debt.

The Covid-19 pandemic had dealt a hammer blow to already precarious public finances, as the island’s lucrative tourism industry shuttered and remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad dried up.

Foreign exchange reserves had almost been exhausted, leaving importers unable to buy goods necessary to keep the economy functioning.

Supermarket shelves were empty, long lines snaked from fuel stations, and thermal power stations were forced to ration electricity for 13 hours each day.

By July, Rajapaksa had fled the country after months of protests demanding his resignation for mismanaging the crisis.

– ‘China on board’ –

Rajapaksa’s successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has sought to repair the nation’s finances through a $2.9 billion International Monetary Fund bailout.

The rescue package commits Sri Lanka to an austerity regime of steep tax hikes and an end to generous consumer utility subsidies, both of which have proven deeply unpopular.

Its passage was reportedly held up for months when China — Sri Lanka’s largest bilateral creditor — resisted agreeing to a haircut on its loans.

Chinese debt has been controversial politically, with Rajapaksa and his elder brother Mahinda — himself a former president — accused of taking Beijing’s money to finance costly vanity projects.

Weerasinghe said the delays to the IMF package were understandable because Beijing was a relatively “new player” to bilateral lending.

“China is fully on board, and agreed to support Sri Lanka and help Sri Lanka to come out of this crisis,” he said.

– ‘End of the story’ –

Last year brought Sri Lanka’s worst economic downturn in its 75-year history as an independent nation, with GDP contracting 7.8 percent and inflation hitting 70 percent at its peak.

But the island’s tea- and tourism-dependent economy is no stranger to shocks, with foreign exchange shortages triggering recessions and government rationing of consumer goods numerous times in prior decades.

Sri Lanka had already gone to the IMF cap in hand 16 times before last year, but failed to stick with agreed-upon reforms, giving it a serious credibility gap.

Weerasinghe said the country had two choices this time around: if it sticks to its current IMF programme, its economy would return to normal within “two to four years”.

If it did not, Sri Lanka would no longer be indulged if it fell off the wagon and returned to its spendthrift ways at the first sign of stability, he warned.

“This time, the 17th time with the IMF, is different,” he said.

“If you are trying to go back to another programme, that will be most difficult, and I think that will be the end of the story.”

The Mullaitivu Magistrate and the Police conducted a visit to the suspected mass grave site in the Kokkuthoduvai village, Mullaitivu yesterday (6). This visit marked the resumption of an investigation into the human skeletons discovered on 29 June 2023, during the digging of the ground to install a pipeline for a drinking water project.

The area was tightly secured, preventing access to the public, as the Magistrate conducted an inquiry into the mass grave.

When news of the detection of human skeletons broke on 29 June, villagers quickly gathered at the site. The excavation work was immediately halted and the matter was reported to the Magistrate’s Court by the Police.

The Mullaitivu Magistrate yesterday (6), in the presence of a Judicial Medical Officer (JOM), Police, lawyers, officials from the forensic department, water supply board, department of archaeology, telecom, and the Ceylon Electricity Board, visited the area. The main road in the Mullaitivu-Jaffna Route was closed off for excavation, as the site was located by the Main Road.

Several NGOs have recently raised concerns that approximately 20 identified mass graves have been left unattended.