The Bar Association of Sri Lanka convening a special press conference on Sunday (10) afternoon elaborated on the process that should be followed by the President, and the Prime Minister in vacating their posts.
BASL President Saliya Pieris, PC told reporters that in terms of the constitution, the President must address to speaker a letter signed by him of his decision to step down, and when the position is vacant the Prime Minister would take over as acting President.
Sri Lanka‘s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will step down next Wednesday (July 13), the country‘s parliamentary speaker said on Saturday (July 9), after a day of violent protests in which demonstrators stormed the president‘s official residence and set fire to the prime minister‘s home in Colombo.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters broke into the presidential palace in Sri Lanka. The country has been facing a food, fuel, and medicine shortage not seen in 70 years. The country declared bankruptcy only days ago.
Zehntausende Demonstranten und Demonstrantinnen marschierten am Samstag durch die Hauptstadt Colombo und in das Regierungsviertel, einige stürmten den bis dahin schwer bewachten Palast von Präsident Gotabaya Rajapaksa und ein nahe gelegenes Büro, wie Fernsehbilder zeigen. Der Präsident sei bereits vor dem Wochenende in Sicherheit gebracht worden, hieß es aus Sicherheitskreisen, und werde an einem geheimen Ort beschützt.
But many officials and lawmakers have said, publicly and privately, that they doubted the president was unaware of the intelligence on an imminent threat.
In addition to being president, Mr. Sirisena also leads the Defense Ministry, which oversees the work of much of the intelligence agencies. The officials say it is impossible that he would not have been briefed on a memo about threats that others at much lower levels had heard about.
“The government from the very beginning wanted to keep the minority vote with them, so they didn’t take any action,” Rajapaksa said.
The violent attacks, the ensuing political uncertainty and an upsurge in nationalism is almost certainly going to strengthen the Rajapaksa family, according to Alan Keenan, a London-based senior Sri Lanka analyst for the International Crisis Group who has lived on and off in the country for nearly two decades.
(26. April 2019)
A police spokesman said Friday that police forces had raided a house in Sammanthurai, a town on the east coast, and that after a gun battle they seized an Islamic State flag, explosives and clothes they said may have belonged to some of the Easter suicide attackers. It was not immediately clear who had been inside the house or whether any occupant had been killed. Police said the clothes matched those worn in a video that the attackers posted online before the bombings.
(7. März 2019)
It said the government will seek an extension of the timeline of the UHRC resolution 30/1 of October 01, 2015, through a co-sponsored roll-over resolution at the ongoing 40th session of the UN Human Rights Council.
The statement stands in contrast with President Sirisena’s comments on Wednesday that he would send his own team to the UNHRC session later this month to seek a reprieve. He said the UN must allow Sri Lanka to resolve its own issues without digging into past.
(6. März 2019)
However, at the 30th session, the UNHRC relaxed its call for an international inquiry by opting for a hybrid court that included both international and local judges and prosecutors to conduct the probe into war crimes. At the UNHRC’s 34th Session in March 2017, the Sri Lankan government was allowed by way of Resolution 34/1 a period of two years to meet the requirements outlined in the 30/1 Resolution.
(16. September 2018)
This debate has been in progress since Lanka was granted independence by the British in 1948. It involves the disfranchisement of plantation Tamils in 1948, the passing of the Official Language Bill (better known as the Sinhala Only Bill) in 1956, the 1958 riots against the Tamil community and those in 1977, the two insurrections by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (Peoples Liberation Front – JVP) which were brutally suppressed, and the 1972 and 1977 constitutions, both of which stated that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist country. These are matters which the country’s elite have consistently downplayed.
1983 was a pivotal year in the history of post-independence Sri Lanka. It was in July of that year a pogrom against Tamils in the south and east of Sri Lanka was instigated. Their possessions and business were looted, their houses burnt, many women were raped and probably 2,000 people were killed. This resulted in an exodus of around 100,000 Tamils from the south. It is not surprising that the civil war began in earnest in its bloody aftermath. It ended only with the complete victory of the Lankan state and the annihilation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) twenty-six years later. During the conduct of the long civil war there were countless human rights violations by both sides, with the civilian population being caught in the middle. The conduct of the last phase of the war, known as Eelam War IV,[3] came under particular scrutiny by the international community. It is this scrutiny that has angered that section of the Sinhala community that refuses to admit any fault on their own side.
(5. März 2017)
Mr. Sirisena himself addressing troops in the northern Jaffna peninsula on Sunday said he would not subject the Sri Lankan military personnel to any probe.
“I have clearly said that I am not prepared to serve charge sheets to our soldiers or to have foreign judges to try our security forces,” Mr. Sirisena said.
“It is my duty to protect the troops,” he said.
(17. Februar 2017)
Sri Lanka must employ international judges and prosecutors to ensure accountability during trials of those responsible for alleged war crimes against mostly Tamils, Human Rights Watch Australia‘s director Elaine Pearson told SBS News.
Ms Pearson‘s call, which echoes a recommendation in a 2015 UN Human Rights Council report of the OHCHR investigation of Sri Lanka, comes as Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesingh this week visited Canberra.
(16. September 2015)
Among the most serious crimes documented in the report are numerous unlawful killings, sexual and gender-based violence, enforced disappearances, torture, child recruitment, attacks on civilians, denial of humanitarian assistance, and violation of the rights of internally displaced persons in closed camps.
The report also documents “years of denials and cover-ups, failure to carry out prompt investigations, stalled investigations and reprisals against the family members of victims and others who have pushed for justice,” states the news release issued by the UN human rights office (OHCHR).
(16. September 2015)
In May 2009, the army recaptured the last area controlled by the LTTE, putting an end to a war that claimed the lives of up to 100,000 people, according to the UN. Nearly 40,000 of them are believed to have been killed in the last five months of the conflict.
Although the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) paper names no suspects, stating it was a „human rights investigation, not a criminal investigation,“ it does say that Tamil politicians, humanitarian workers, journalists and ordinary civilians were among the alleged victims of Sri Lankan security forces and associated paramilitaries.
Sri Lanka’s former wartime defense chief, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, said on Friday he would run for president in elections this year and would stop the spread of Islamist extremism by rebuilding the intelligence service and surveilling citizens.
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the country’s former defense secretary who helped end a brutal 26-year civil war in 2009, said in a phone interview with Bloomberg late Tuesday that voters are looking for a leader more like him in a presidential election that must be held this year.