Search Results for: sri lanka

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court on Friday formed a bench comprising five judges to hear an application for a legal opinion filed by the country’s president. Jayantha Jayasuriya, chief justice of the court, will head the bench that has been asked to determine whether it is lawful for provincial council elections to be held in the [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Sunday called on the government of Sri Lanka to halt plans to resume executions and restore its 43-year moratorium on the use of the death penalty. “Sri Lanka’s plan to resume use of the death penalty is a major setback for human rights. Sri Lanka has been a bulwark against [...]

The Sri Lankan government proposed a new law with a five-year jail term as well as a fine of $1 million rupees to combat the spreading of fake news and hate speech. This proposed legislation comes in the wake of the Easter attacks where misinformation was spread leading to a nine-day ban on the use [...]

Police in Sri Lanka have arrested a bureaucrat attached to a parliamentary department for “aiding and abetting” Zahran Hashim, a suicide bomber allegedly responsible for one of multiple bomb attacks targeting churches and hotels across the country last month. Hundreds of people, including foreigners, were killed and injured in the terrorist bombings, in some of [...]

A delegation of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) arrived in Sri Lanka on Tuesday for an 11-day visit. The SPT will examine the treatment meted out to people deprived of their liberty in the Indian Ocean island nation and the safeguards in place for their protection from torture. It will hold meetings [...]

The UN expert on foreign debt and human rights Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, is stressing the necessity of treating human rights as a top priority in recent economic reforms. After Bohoslavsky investigated in both Ukraine and Sri Lanka last year, his reports focused on the importance of striking a balance between implementing measures to ensure all [...]

Sri Lanka announced on Thursday that it is lifting a 43-year moratorium on capital punishment and will start executing prisoners with drug trafficking convictions who are on death row. The Justice and Prison Reforms Ministry has issued a timeline on the process it has adopted to implement the death penalty. In July the country’s cabinet [...]

Mahinda Rajapaksa, appointed Prime Minister of Sri Lanka last month, has been barred from taking office by a Colombo court’s order on Monday. The Appeals Court asked that he reappear by December 12 with justification for his taking office since Parliament voted against him twice and announced that no cabinet could function under him if [...]

Sri Lanka Defense Chief of Ravindra Wijeguneratne has appeared in Colombo Magistrate Court after his arrest on Wednesday for aiding in the kidnapping of 11 teenagers during the final stages of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war in early 2009. When the targeted group, the Tamil Tigers, could not pay the ransom, he is alleged to [...]

The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka on Tuesday overturned the president’s decision to dissolve parliament and called for a halt in preparations for a snap election on January 5. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena dissolved parliament because he lacked the support to install the prime minister of his choice, Mahinda Rajapaksa, after firing the previous [...]