Category: News

Sri Lanka police arrested a 31-year-old motorist this morning alleged to have instigated a honking protest at the Borella junction on April 27 when visiting Chinese defence minister General Wei Fenghe’s motorcade was passing through.

Widely circulated video footage showed seemingly frustrated motorists honking incessantly as they were forced to wait for the motorcade to pass.

Police spokesman DIG Ajith Rohana said the individual charged with organising the protest had posted a video online where he is heard to be encouraging fellow motorists to honk and express their displeasure over the temporary road closure.

Rohana said in a statement the suspect is a resident in Battaramulla who had been in Australia for 10 years.

The police spokesman further said that, according to the Vienna Convention, a host country is responsible for providing security and other facilities required for a visiting foreign dignitary.

The road was closed that night since Sri Lankan government has a responsibility to provide security to the defence minister of a powerful country like China, he said.

The suspect will be producedin the Colombo Magistrate Court today and Borella police will conduct further investigations, he added.

Parliament sessions have been limited next week to only two days because of the third wave of the coronavirus.

Seargent-at-Arms Narendra Fernando told Colombo Gazette that Parliament sittings will be held on Tuesday (04) and Wednesday (05).

He said the current coronavirus situation in the country will be discussed on Tuesday.

The discussion will be held from 10am to 05pm with no oral questions during the session.

Narendra Fernando said the Port City Economic Commission Bill will be taken up for debate on Wednesday.

The debate will be held from 10am to 08pm, with no oral questions during the debate.

He further said the decision on the Parliament sittings and the agenda for the day has been decided during the Party Leaders meeting held today.

Meanwhile, the Opposition has claimed that the Government has disregarded Opposition requests and has decided that the debate on the Port City Economic Commission Bill will be limited to one day.

All events including weddings will be disallowed for two weeks starting from next Monday (May 03), says the Commander of Sri Lanka Army General Shavendra Silva.

The move comes as Sri Lanka is battling the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic that has led to spiraling numbers of infections.

Members of the Tamil community in Australia have condemned the federal government’s gifting of drones to Sri Lankan police, amid fears they could be used negatively against the country’s ethnic minority.

Earlier this month, the Australian Border Force announced it had given Sri Lankan police five surveillance drones for use in “a wide range of activities” including natural disaster scene assessment and recovery, transnational crime investigation and countering maritime people smuggling.

The move has raised eyebrows and alarm, including from the Tamil Refugee Council, which fears the drones might be used to help prevent Tamils from fleeing Sri Lanka and to monitor political activists.

“[Sri Lankan police] have been targeting Tamils, human rights activists, Muslim communities, and when the Australian government supplies them with security equipment, all it means is putting these peoples’ lives at risk,” spokesperson Aran Mylvaganam said.

Tamil asylum seeker Maravan* has also been concerned by the move. The now-41-year-old said he was arrested and tortured by Sri Lankan government forces for his political activism.

“I totally feel I lost my life there, because at the time I felt they were shooting many Tamils,” he said.

He fled to Malaysia in 2007 and then looked to come to Australia by boat in 2013, looking for protection. His case is still going through the courts.

Since fleeing the country, he said, Sri Lanka’s military has been visiting his family wanting to know of his whereabouts.

The five drones are not the first gifts Australia has sent Sri Lanka with an aim of stopping maritime immigration.

In 2013 the Abbott government donated two patrol boats to the country in a bid to end people smuggling – a move that was criticised at the time by human rights advocates.

More than a decade after the end of the civil war between government forces and Tamil separatists, observers say the country’s rule of law and human rights situation remains a matter of grave concern – particularly since the 2019 election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party.

“The fact remains that the same government that was in power during the civil war and at the end of the civil war, when a large number of atrocities and disappearances happened, is now back in power,” human rights lawyer Alison Battison said.

Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said concerning trends seemed to be surfacing.

“We have seen increased surveillance in northern areas, which are Tamil majority areas, and seen a lot of activists and victim’s families start complaining about visits from security agents, threats and intimidation.”

Damien Kingsbury, an international politics professor from Deakin University, said Australia should be using its friendship with Sri Lanka to push it toward ending the oppression of minority groups in the country for good.

“The Australian government really ought to look at the reasons why people want to leave countries like Sri Lanka and try to address the problems at the root, rather than to bottle them up and continue to support governments which repress their own people,” he said.

In a statement, a Department of Home Affairs spokesperson said Australia works “collaboratively with international partners, including the Sri Lankan police, to tackle transnational crimes, including people smuggling”.

“Sri Lanka is a valuable partner in preventing and responding to maritime people smuggling,” the statement said.

The Department of Foreign Affairs’ 2019 country report on Sri Lanka said “the risk of torture perpetrated by either military, intelligence or police forces has decreased since the end of the civil conflict and is no longer state-sponsored”.

Sri Lanka’s prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

*not his real name.

Source:sbs.com.au

Port City Colombo is a brand-new modern city development built as an extension of the Central Business District of Sri Lanka’s vibrant commercial capital, Colombo. The city is located on 269 hectares of reclaimed land from the sea between the old city centre and the Colombo port, features South Asia’s premiere residential, retail and business destination, offering unmatched planned city living along the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.

The development will comprise of five different precincts including the Financial District, Central Park Living, Island Living, The Marina and the International Island. Upon completion, the Port City of Colombo will cover more than 5.6 million square metres of built space, which includes world-class facilities and spaces in healthcare, education, entertainment, hotels and restaurants, retail and office with an integrated resort and a marina, offering the best in living by the sea.

Port City Colombo is a key connectivity project of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and aims to align and coordinate the development strategies of Sri Lanka. CHEC Port City Colombo Ltd., a unit of China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) which is part of China Communications Construction Company Ltd. (CCCC) is investing $ 1.4 billion in reclaiming land, and is preparing to market and build support facilities. This is the single largest foreign direct investment in Sri Lanka’s history to date. Overall, the Port City Colombo is expected to attract $ 15 billion in investments and create around 80,000 new job opportunities for locals and foreigners.

The reclamation of 269 hectares of land completed in January 2019 and the development of common infrastructure is currently in progress, which includes the construction of highways, electricity, water systems and common amenities. The completion of the project, which is scheduled to finish in 2041, and when it is completed Port City Colombo is expected to contribute $ 11.8 billion to Sri Lanka’s economy per annum according to an independent study carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). This project is expected to transform Sri Lanka into a regional business and financial hub in the south-Asian region.

Colombo International Financial City (CIFC), an offshore financial district within the upcoming Port City Colombo is a game changer for Sri Lanka. As Sri Lanka is located strategically in an appropriate time zone and midway between the major financial markets: New York, London, Frankfurt and Dubai to the West and Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney to the East, it has the potential to serve as a financial centre to home a cluster of nationally or internationally significant financial services providers such as banks, bond markets, stock market, insurance companies and reinsurers.

The CIFC’s primary objective is to become a prominent financial hub in the region by connecting with South Asian and Bay of Bengal countries. As there is no established international financial centre in Indian day time, the CIFC can capitalise on that to develop as a regional financial hub, specifically to target the growth engine that is India which lies just 20 miles away.

Investors from around the world are invited to invest in Port City Colombo and the Sri Lankan Government has clearly stated that Port City Colombo is not only for Chinese investments and open for any country that intends to invest in Sri Lanka. A Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to be set up in the Port City Colombo will have regulation covering gaming according a bill tabled, titled ‘Colombo Port City Economic Commission’, in Parliament earlier this month.

This bill provides for the establishment of a Commission empowered to grant registrations, licences, authorisations, and other approvals to carry on businesses and other activities in the SEZ. The five-seven-member Commission will oversee all activities within the SEZ, including identification of a single-window investment facilitator for the promotion of ease of doing business within the Zone, and determine and grant incentives and other exemptions for the promotion of businesses of strategic importance within the SEZ.

Success of this project is depending on how the Port City Colombo is competitive with other investment hubs such as Dubai, Singapore, and Hong Kong, by attracting investors, entrepreneurs, innovators, companies, financial institutions through a well-structured and competitive legal, tax and regulatory, and dispute resolution mechanism.

However due to the increasing number of Chinese projects in Sri Lanka, as part of BRI, there was a reasonable number of critics quoting China’s BRI and investments as a ‘debt trap’ and Sri Lanka is widely showcased as an example of ‘Chinese Debt Diplomacy’. The Chatham House study reports that the cumulative value of Chinese infrastructure investment to Sri Lanka amounted to $ 12.1 billion between 2006 and July 2019 and due to that many local citizens feel that the country is being sold to the Chinese. However, several studies conducted by few reputed institutions and their data on debt dynamics do not suggest China has engulfed Sri Lanka in a debt trap.

Therefore, if the Port City Colombo project becomes successful as planned, and the Port City Colombo and CIFC can fill the vacuum between Singapore and Dubai, Port City Colombo will provide significant benefits for Sri Lanka’s economic growth by becoming a major income earner and a higher-paying service sector employment provider. Also, Sri Lanka can become an attractive location for multinational and domestic companies to set up regional HQs from which to distribute products and services to clients across the region.

(The writer is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kelaniya, researching the BRI, and holds an MBA at the Open University of Sri Lanka and BSc at the Wayamba University of Sri Lanka. Maya currently serves as a Director to BRISL.)

Source:FT.LK

Indian High Commissioner Gopal Baglay called on Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday (29) where matters of mutual interest were discussed, sources said.

According to the Indian High Commission, the High Commissioner thanked the Sri Lankan leadership for their solidarity with India, especially at this time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He sought the guidance of the PM in taking bilateral relations in all spheres with even greater momentum, said the High Commission.

Minister of Education Professor GL Peiris says the government is planning on reopening state universities on Monday, the 10th of May.

Speaking during a media briefing the Education Minister said lectures and classes will continue online, to minimise the disadvantage to students as a result of having to close universities due to unavoidable circumstances.

Minister GL Peiris noted that students will be admitted to universities in September, based on the 2020 GCE Advanced Level Examination results.

The Education Minister said the results will be released within the next seven days.

He noted the A/Level Exam concluded on the 1st of November last year.

Minister Peiris said since the examination results are being released promptly students will be admitted to local universities in September, instead of having to wait another year.