Skip to main content

U.S. warns Sri Lanka on pace of reconciliation

‘We are concerned about the worsening situation on human rights’

Voicing frustration over the pace of reconciliation in Sri Lanka five years after the end of the war, a visiting official from the United States on Saturday warned that the patience of the international
community was wearing thin.
Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Desai Biswal said deterioration in human rights, transparency and governance was taking a toll on democracy in Sri Lanka. “We reiterated our commitment to Sri Lanka but conveyed our concerns to senior government officials about the insufficient progress in addressing justice, reconciliation, and accountability,” Ms. Biswal said at a press conference here.
Ms. Biswal, who arrived in Colombo on Friday, met top government officials, politicians in the ruling coalition and the Opposition – including Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran – and civil society representatives. On Saturday, she travelled to Jaffna, and held meetings with civil society representatives there. Amid growing speculation on a strong U.S.-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka, she said: “We are concerned about the worsening situation with respect to human rights, including continued attacks against religious minorities, as well as the weakening of the rule of law and an increase in the levels of corruption and impunity.”
Only about a week ago did the Northern Provincial Council pass a resolution calling for an international inquiry into the alleged war crimes. Asked if the U.S.-resolution was likely to push for an international probe, Ms. Biswal — who maintained that it was too early to comment on how it would be worded — said the U.S. always had a strong desire to have a Sri Lanka-led reconciliation process, but the international community was frustrated and sceptical of the pace of the government’s progress in this regard.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i...
3 comments
Click Here To Read more »

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...
18 comments
Click Here To Read more »

"ISRO has capabilities to build geostationary satellites for air quality monitoring” (downtoearth)

Pawan Gupta's findings on trans-boundary movement of pollution (Punjab to Delhi) from biomass burning in 2015 spurred debates. He participated in discussions with Indian regulators early September at the Better Air Quality Conference in Busan on the advantages of using satellite data for air quality monitoring. He explains to Down to Earth how air quality monitoring is done using satellite data. How is satellite data used to measure air pollution? Satellites that provide information on atmospheric pollutants are normally (not always) in the low earth orbits (400-1000 km above the Earth’s surface). A single satellite can carry one or more remote sensing instruments onboard that look down to earth and obtain information about the object in the field of view of satellite sensor. The Earth receives electromagnetic radiation from the sun, which travels through space and reaches the earth-atmosphere system. The radiation then interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere and the surface...
1 comment
Click Here To Read more »