President Maithripala Sirisena today, at a meeting with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and several other high-ranking Ministers gave order to have the Meethotamulla garbage dump cleared in the next few months under the supervision of the Sri Lanka Army.

He also ordered illegal settlements in the area banned.  

The President further stated that required activities for providing compensations to the victims should be done with extreme vigilance.

He requested the continuance of the assistance given by all institutions to provide relief to the victims.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena visited Sanchi on Saturday. Sirisena arrived in India to attend the `Vichar Mahakumbh' in village Ninora, near Ujjain.

At Sanchi, Sirisena unveiled the statue of Dhammapathik Anagarika Dharmapala, a Sri Lankan Buddhist revivalist and writer who was one of the founding contributors of non-violent Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism.

Expressing gratification over his visit, Sirisena said that he felt blessed and thanked MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and BJP spokesperson Ram Madhav for inviting him to Sanchi. He also praised the government for establishing the Sanchi University of Buddhist-Indic Studies.

Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who accompanied President Sirisena announced building a `friendship park' near Sanchi University. ``The park will strengthen the friendship and cultural bond between the two countries'', he said.

Chouhan also said that a grand temple dedicated to Sita would be built at the site where she had undergone `Angi Pariksha' in Sri Lanka. ``Expenditure on this would be borne by Madhya Pradesh government while, Sri Lanka government has agreed to provide land for the temple'', he added.

Earlier, the Sri Lankan President along with Speaker of Sri Lankan Parliament Karunaratna Jayasurya, visited Chaityagiri temple and worshipped the holy relics of Lord Buddha's disciples Mahamoggalayan and Sariputta.

(Times of India)

Seeking a permanent solution to the issue of frequent arrests of Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy, India on Friday reiterated the need to build a dedicated mechanism.

“Prime Minister Modi stressed the need to develop a mechanism and find a permanent solution to the issue of fishermen straying into each other’s waters,” informed sources said, following a meeting here between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the visiting President of Sri Lanka Maithripala Sirisena.

The Ministry of External Affairs informed on Thursday that Sri Lanka currently holds 34 Indian fishermen and 96 Indian fishing boats in custody. In comparison, the MEA spokesperson said India has 13 Sri Lankan boats in custody and no Sri Lankan fishermen.

Free trade agreement

Creation of a dedicated mechanism has been in the making for several years but has not moved ahead. Modi and Sirisena reviewed a number of bilateral issues during their talks but the free trade agreement between the two countries which has been discussed earlier was not taken up.

Sirisena is in India to attend the Vaicharik Mahakumbh in Ujjain, an inter-faith event which will take place on the sidelines of the Simhastha Kumbh. He will also visit Sanchi, where he will unveil a bust of Buddhist revivalist Anagarika Dharmapala.

A diplomat working on the inter-faith project which is indirectly supported by the government, said Mr. Sirisena’s visit is likely to provide an opportunity for India to deepen ties with Sri Lanka, especially in view of the growing Chinese influence over Colombo.

(The Hindu)

President Maithripala Sirisena left for an official visit of Germany and Austria this morning.

During his trip, Sirisena is to meet the leaders of the two countries and participate in a German-Sri Lanka Business Forum in Germany.

The forum will be held on February 18.

Five bilateral agreements are also in the agenda to be signed between Sri Lanka and Germany.

Ministers Malik Samarawickrema, Mangala Samaraweera, Mahinda Samarasinghe and Daya Gamage are also part of the delegation.

The results of the government's anti-corruption drive are now beginning to show, President Maithripala Sirisena said yesterday.

His observation coincided with the arrest of five people including former President Mahinda Rajapaksa's second son, for alleged financial fraud at Carlton Sports Network.

People did not appoint the government to take the law into its hand, Sirisena said, adding that they need the rule of the law established so that wrongdoers could be punished legally.

Yoshitha Rajapaksa and four others were arrested yesterday and were charged under the Money Laundering Act. They were remanded by the Kaduwela Magistrate last evening. 

President Maithripala Sirisena insisted that there were no ‘war crimes allegations’ on the war in Sri Lanka, arguing that investigations have found only allegations of ‘human rights violations’.

He made this observation in an interview with the Qatar based Al Jazeera television network. According to Al Jazeera, the president’s statement appears to contradict key findings from a UN investigation into the country's civil war released in September last year.

The report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) investigated atrocities committed by both the Tamil separatists and the Sri Lankan Army during the 26-year-long conflict.

In detailing its principal findings, the OHCHR report stated: "If established before a court of law, many of these allegations would amount, depending on the circumstances, to war crimes and/or crimes against humanity."

Speaking to Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid, Sirisena, rejected the allegations.

"I must say very clearly there is no allegation regarding 'war crimes', there were war crimes allegations during the early stages. But at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, mainly in the proposals presented in September, there were no 'war crimes' allegations against us.

"They contained allegations of human rights violations only. When you consider the facts surrounding the allegations of human rights violations, we are committed as a member of the United Nations, to implementing the main points and proposals," Sirisena said.

The OHCHR report recommended the creation of a "hybrid special court" comprised of international and domestic judges, persecutors, lawyers and investigators.

"Sri Lanka must now move forward to dismantle the repressive structures and institutional cultures that remain deeply entrenched after decades of erosion of human rights," said Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, UN high commissioner for human rights, when the report was published last year.

At the time, the high commissioner, who is expected to arrive in Sri Lanka on February 5, also warned against a purely domestic court.

"The levels of mistrust in state authorities and institutions by broad segments of Sri Lankan society should not be underestimated," he said, adding it is for this reason that the establishment of a hybrid special court is so essential. 

"A purely domestic court procedure will have no chance of overcoming widespread and justifiable suspicions fueled by decades of violations, malpractice and broken promises."

However, President Sirisena told Al Jazeera that he is committed to bringing war time perpetrators to trial, but that he is opposed to foreign involvement.

"Within that commitment, we will always act in accordance with the sovereignty of our country and in accordance with our constitution. For this work, we can obtain foreign technology in certain areas. In terms of people we definitely do not need outsiders."

Sirisena also denied providing conflicting messages or backtracking on ensuring justice is served, saying: "There is no way of doing this in an express or super-fast manner. So what we are hoping to do through this is to free the country from the allegations that have been made against it. To free the country, we must clearly face the truth, and similarly we must take decisive actions towards accountability."

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe contradicted President Maithripala Sirisena on the international involvement in a war crimes investigation mechanism, adding that “we have not ruled that out”.

In a recent interview with Channel 4 News, Wickremesinghe said that “We have not ruled that out. We are standing by our commitment in the Geneva resolution. We are putting together a mechanism for accountability and reconciliation by May.”

Meanwhile, he also stated that those that surrendered at the end of the war and are still missing in Sri Lanka are ‘most probably dead’.

“This is why the missing persons office and the TRC are there. We have to find out what happened”, he said.

“There are no detention centres in the north or the south. There are 292 in detention are known to the government no others”, the Prime Minister added, commenting on the reports of detention centres.

However, Wickremesinghe went on to dispute UN estimates that 40,000 civilian deaths, saying that a further investigation would be required.

Commenting on the number of civilian casualties, “We have a question mark as whether it is 40,000 but we are interested in finding out the actual number. We know there were casualties there had to be casualties in that type of fight. But we are interested in standing with the international community to determine the final numbers.”

(With inputs from The Tamil Guardian)

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena told Tamils in the war-ravaged North Lankan town of Puthukudiyiruppu on Sunday, that infrastructural development alone will not bring about ethnic reconciliation and that efforts must be made to win the hearts of the people to achieve that goal.

The President was speaking to families of disappeared Tamils on the sidelines of a function to formally inaugurate a major garment factory set up by the Hiradarmanis, a Sindhi family living in Sri Lanka since the 19th Century. The Hirdarmanis are among the three top manufacturers of garments in Lanka. Incidentally, all three are Lankans of Indian origin. 

The President made the remark about the inadequacy of the “brick and mortar approach” to peace building, to draw attention to the fact that the Rajapaksa government’s stress on infrastructural development in the war-torn Northern Province had not won the hearts of the Tamils.

The President also met the family of the pardoned LTTE cadre Sivarajah Jeneepan, who profusely thanked him for releasing Jeneepan.

“ There is not a kovil which we did not  visit to secure his release and when you released him you became our God,” the relations said.

Jeneepan took the opportunity to request the President to release the remaining hundred-odd LTTE cadres or “political prisoners” as the Tamils describe them.

The President assured that the matter will be looked into, and drew attention to the plan to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act by a more humane one which will enable the release of many detainees.

The Hirdaramani garment factory has over 850 employees, all local Tamils. It has the capacity to produce 40,000 garments a month. Previously, the youth of the area had to travel long distances to find employment and also live away from their families.

(The New Indian Express)

The Secretary to the President P.B. Abeykoon today claimed that there was no official song released for the first year anniversary of President Maithripala Sirisena's presidency.

According to a statement released by the President's Media Division, Abeykoon said that the song titled “Nuba Ape Minisek” had falsely claimed that it was the President’s Official Song for 2016.

He added that the song has been played by some social networking websites without the permission of the President as well as the Presidential Secretariat.

However, an article was published on today's Daily Mirror on the launch of the song. This article claimed that the song was officially launched by the President on January 7.

Therefore, the statement from the President's Secretary stands contradictory to the article published today.

The anniversary song came under severe criticism in social media platforms for featuring several kings from the Polonnaruwa era including Parakramabahu the Great, thereby drawing parallels with them and the President.

The song also offers blessings to President Sirisena to "rule the land forever", in stark violation of basic tenets of democracy and good governance.

The song has been produced by two individuals, namely Imran Cader and Dr. Arosha Fernando. The latter uploaded it on his his Youtube channel, only to remove it several hours later.

The official theme song to mark Maithripala Sirisena's first year in office has been removed from Youtube, following severe criticism leveled at it.

The anniversary song came under severe criticism in social media platforms for featuring several kings from the Polonnaruwa era including Parakramabahu the Great, thereby drawing parallels with them and the President.

The song also offers blessings to President Sirisena to "rule the land forever", in stark violation of basic tenets of democracy and good governance.

A screen grab captured before the video was removed shows that by the time it reached 872 views, there were 111 'dislikes' and only two 'likes', indicating the disapproval rate among the viewers.

President Sirisena, in his election campaign, had repeatedly assured that he would not be a 'king' but will function as a democratically elected President. 

The song has been produced by two individuals, namely Imran Cader and Dr. Arosha Fernando. The latter uploaded it on his his Youtube channel, only to remove it several hours later.

The President is yet to make an official comment on the matter.