Search Results for: rajapaksa

Under President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s leadership, the Sri Lankan civil war reached a brutal conclusion on May 18, 2009, ending a 25-year-long conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist rebel group. Rooted in longstanding grievances, including discriminatory policies against Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, the conflict saw the [...]

The year 2024 is an important one for Sri Lanka. It is a presidential election year, and a resolution adopted by the UN Human Rights Council to gather evidence of international crimes for use in future prosecutions is due for renewal. After the public ousters of the former-elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2023, Ranil Wickremesinghe [...]

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court invalidated on Wednesday, for the first time ever, a presidential pardon to former member of Parliament Duminda Silva. In a unanimous ruling, the court found that there was “no legal basis or even a factual basis to uphold the decision made by” former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to pardon Silva. Silva and [...]

The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka declared Tuesday that several former politicians, including former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, breached the public trust and violated Article 12 (1) of the Sri Lankan Constitution in their management of the economy. The bench ruled by a majority of [...]

The Sri Lanka government announced on Wednesday that a special parliamentary committee is to be established to probe allegations made by UK media outlet Channel 4 regarding the complicity of Sri Lanka’s top intelligence official in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, which had killed more than 200 people.  The 2019 Easter Sunday attacks involved six [...]

Sri Lanka’s parliament passed on Wednesday an anti-corruption bill designed to strengthen governance and fight corruption in the country’s government. With the passage of the bill, the government is also hopeful to receive economic assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which previously denied Sri Lanka assistance based on their lack of compliance with international [...]

Four Sri Lanka activist organizations accused former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday of obstructing police investigations into mass graves discovered in an area where he served as a military officer during a Marxist rebellion in 1989. Activist groups the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP), the Center for Human Rights and Development, Journalists [...]

For years, Sri Lanka has occupied the international spotlight for one of its contentious laws—the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The PTA was introduced in 1979 during the Sri Lankan Civil War using the emergency law provisions in Part II of the Public Security Ordinance. While similar laws exist in other nations, showing widespread acceptance [...]

The Canadian government announced Tuesday that it had placed sanctions on four Sri Lankan officials, including former Presidents Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Mahinda Rajapaksa, in response to the Sri Lankan government’s crackdown on human rights during the Sri Lankan civil war between 1983 and 2009. The sanctions impose restrictions under Section 2 of the Special Economic [...]

Sri Lankan law students are reporting for JURIST on the situation in that country since mass protests in July that forced the ouster of sitting Sri Lanka president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the imposition of emergency rule and the parliamentary election of current president Ranil Wickremesinghe. Sandun Batagoda, a final year law student at the Faculty of [...]