JAFFNA, Sri Lanka: The office of Northern Province Governor Nagalingam Vethanayahan has acknowledged that the building it occupies does not have a Certificate of Conformity. The governor has repeatedly directed local authorities to act against businesses that operate without one. The admission came in a reply to a request under the Right to Information Act filed on Aug. 20 by Kumaravadivel Guruparan, a Jaffna attorney and former head of the law department at the University of Jaffna. He asked w

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka —Four opposition lawmakers, three of them representing minority communities, plan to withdraw from a parliamentary committee set up to break the long deadlock over Sri Lanka’s provincial elections, accusing the government of using the panel to further delay elections that have not been held in any of the country’s nine provinces since 2014. The lawmakers, Mano Ganesan, Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, Nizam Kariapper and Ranjith Madduma Bandara, are expected to notify the committee’s

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa is facing criticism after a telephone call he made on Monday to Sivarasa Anojan, a Sri Lankan worker reportedly sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia, was held on speakerphone in front of the prisoner's family and supporters. On the call, Anojan argued that Saudi Arabia had no grounds to prosecute him over a Facebook comment because the exchange involved Sri Lankans and began in Sri Lanka. Some critics said Premadasa had exposed the words of

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on Monday that his government would send a formal written appeal to the king of Saudi Arabia asking him to pardon a Sri Lankan Tamil worker who was sentenced to death in the kingdom over a Facebook post that Saudi authorities deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. The worker, Sivarasa Anojan, a Tamil from eastern Sri Lanka, was initially sentenced to five years in prison and fined 3 million Saudi riyals, about $800,000. His family,