SRI LANKA: Extreme Weather Changes Could Follow Floods

Weather experts warned Sri Lankan to be prepared for extreme weather changes with hardly any notice following devastating floods here that have affected over one million people.

SRI LANKA: Fund Shortfall Slows Post-War Development

Some 19 months since the end of Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war, over 325,000 civilians displaced by the final bout of fighting between late 2007 and May 2009 have returned to live in their villages or with their relatives.

SRI LANKA: Doctors Put Life During Conflict Under Microscope

During the last phase of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2008, information on the intensified fighting had slowed to a trickle. But in their November 2010 submissions to a government commission looking into the final days of the conflict, a group of doctors who served in the war zone have shed light on living conditions that were "not fit for even animals".

SRI LANKA: A Powerful President Promises Prosperity

Percy Mahinda Rajapaksa is the quintessential Sri Lankan politician - someone who senses the subtle shifts in the political landscape quickly and can turn a narrowest of victories into the strongest of legacies.

SRI LANKA: Rising Bread Prices Expose Trade Vulnerabilities

There was a time when being a breadseller here in Colombo enabled Charmindha to have modest dreams. But the teenager from Sri Lanka’s rural south has been seeing his daily earnings slide in the last two months, and indications are that’s not going to change anytime soon.

SRI LANKA: Widows Struggle to Put Life Back Together Again

Having to take care of eight teenage children is not an easy task for 70-year-old Yamunadevi (not her real name).

Sri Lanka Challenges Post-War Human Rights Probe

When Sri Lanka's External Affairs Minister Gamini Lakshman Peiris was at the United Nations last month, he challenged human rights groups to appear before a government-appointed 'Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission' (LLRC) probing human rights violations during the country's civil war.

SRI LANKA: Peace Dividend Perks Up Economy

The Taj Samudra, the flagship property here of Taj Hotels India, sits on what is arguably the best location in Sri Lanka’s capital. Overlooking the Indian Ocean, it is the only five-star hotel in this city from which guests can walk out straight into the largest sea-fronted green esplanade in the country.

SRI LANKA: ‘Tigers’ Become Tourists

The younger ones in the group tried to imitate the older boys, in their teens and early 20s, who wear the latest fashion promoted by Hindi and South Indian movie stars – faded denim jeans, tight T-shirts, and oversized belts hanging nonchalantly around their slim waists. Alongside them, the handful of women wore brightly coloured ‘shalwar kamiz’ (traditional South Asian dress) that fluttered in the wind.

SRI LANKA: Constitutional Change Undermines Political Checks

If Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa appears unassailable after the September ratification of a constitutional amendment lifting a limit on presidential terms, blame the main opposition party.

Sri Lanka Shuns West, Finds Solace in Emerging Powers’ Arms

The European Union’s decision to suspend trade preferences for Sri Lankan exports may have finally come into force, but the island nation is not budging an inch on any of the powerful bloc’s recommendations on its controversial human rights record.

SRI LANKA: War-weary Civilians Dream of New Homes

Ramaih Sathdiyapillai has had enough of life on the run. A native of Kilinochchi district – which was until not too long ago the stronghold of the separatist Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka's north – she bore the brunt of the war along with tens of thousands of others.

SRI LANKA: Former Battle Zone In Search of A Business Boom

It is an odd location to open a new restaurant, right in front of a row of buildings whose roofs have been blown off by artillery fire and whose walls are pockmarked by gunfire.

SRI LANKA: War Over, But Women Wage Battle For Survival

It was a typically hot, humid day in this eastern coastal village. The sun burned down from a cloudless sky, roasting the skin as an angry sea breeze swatted the faces of the few foolish enough to venture out onto the deserted main road that runs through town.

SRI LANKA: Protest Highlights Hostility to International Criticism

Traffic now flows around the U.N. compound here in the Sri Lankan capital, and the dozens of policemen visible last week are no longer there. It is business as usual, a far cry from a week back when an angry minister's death fast just outside the main U.N. office made the area the focus of international attention.

SRI LANKA: After Decades of Bloodshed, Home Calls

For almost two decades, Athanayakemudiyanselage Punchibanda lived without hope of ever returning here to his native village.

SRI LANKA: U.S. Labour Review Comes on Top of EU Pressure

When garment factory workers outside Colombo once organised a noisy protest over a bonus issue, police threatened to file charges – of hostage taking -- against them.

U.N. Chief Heading for New Brawl over Sri Lanka Panel

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is heading for a second round of political brawling with the powerful 118-member Non- Aligned Movement (NAM) over his decision to appoint a panel of experts to advise him on possible violations of humanitarian law by the Sri Lankan military during the concluding stages of its war against Tamil separatists last May.

SRI LANKA: A Former Woman Combatant Struggles to Pick Up the Pieces

As a young woman, Ranjani (not her real name), a 32-year-old Tamil from Sri Lanka's eastern Batticaloa district, only had bright hopes for tomorrow.

MALAYSIA: Thousands of Refugees Living in Constant Fear of Arrest

As Rajoo, 27, makes tea at a rundown shed in Brickfields, a depressed suburb of the capital inhabited by hundreds of Tamil immigrants from Sri Lanka, he evinces no sign of anxiety and a deep yearning for something.

U.N. Chief Names Advisory Panel on War Abuses in Sri Lanka

Defying a challenge by the government of Sri Lanka, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Tuesday named a three-member panel of experts to advise him on how he should proceed with investigating violations of human rights and humanitarian law during the concluding stages of that country's long-drawn-out separatist war last May.