World NewsNovember 8, 2018 / 5:37 AM / 5 days ago

!! Sri-ලංකාවේ කලබැගෑනිය පිටුපස චීන-ඉන්දියානු ආයෝජන සඳහා බලපෑම් අරගලයක් ඇත !!

Behind Sri Lanka's turmoil, a China-India struggle for investments and influence
Derrière la tourmente du Sri Lanka, une lutte Chine-Inde pour les investissements et l'influence

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-politics-china-india-insigh/behind-sri-lankas-turmoil-a-china-india-struggle-for-investments-and-influence-idUSKCN1ND0D1

Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez
8 Min Read

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Gleaming cranes stretch out on the waterfront in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo as Chinese companies construct a $1.5 billion new commercial district, including hotels, marinas and a motor racing track. They have already built a giant container terminal nearby and a huge port in the south.
FILE PHOTO: A general view of Colombo Port City construction site, which is backed by Chinese investment is seen, in Colombo, Sri Lanka November 5, 2018. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

Now India, the traditional power in the region, is muscling into port and other projects, pushing back hard against China.
The big fear for India is that Sri Lanka, just off its southern coast and on one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, could become a Chinese military outpost.
But the battle is creating political turmoil in Sri Lanka. A bust-up between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe over how far to accommodate Indian interests is a key reason the nation’s unity government has just fallen apart, government officials and foreign diplomats said.

Wickremesinghe, who was fired on Oct. 26 and replaced by veteran pro-China politician Mahinda Rajapaksa, told Reuters about arguments at a cabinet meeting chaired by the president last month over a proposal to grant development of a Colombo port project to a Japan-India joint venture.
“There are arguments in the cabinet, sometimes heated arguments,” he said.

Wickremesinghe did not name the president but said: “There was a paper put forth to not give it to India, Japan.”
He added that he insisted that the ultimate decision should respect a memorandum of understanding signed between India, Japan and Sri Lanka.
It was the first account of what transpired in the Oct 16 meeting and the government’s pushback against India.
Wickremesinghe declined to respond when asked if he believed the China-India struggle was behind his firing. But Rajitha Senaratne, a former government minister who attended, confirmed the president and the prime minister had argued at the meeting.

Two Sri Lankan officials, as well as a Western diplomat and an Indian government source, who were all briefed on the meeting, corroborated the minister’s account.
The president’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Sirisena told a public meeting on Monday his political rivals were trying to drive a wedge between him and the Indian government by painting him as anti-India.

The Indian foreign ministry said Delhi was committed to giving developmental assistance to Sri Lanka.
In a statement last week, the Chinese embassy in Colombo rejected allegations China was involved in a conspiracy to change Sri Lanka’s leadership, saying it does not believe in such interference.
Japan did not respond to a request for comment on the sacking of the government. But Wickremesinghe and an official from the Japan International Cooperation Agency said a $1.4 billion soft loan for a light railway project in Colombo was on hold.

SECOND TERMINAL
India had been pushing Sri Lanka for the award of an estimated $1 billion contract for a second foreign-operated container terminal in Colombo. It has pointed to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) Sri Lanka signed in April 2017.

Reuters has reviewed unpublished documents from that MOU and it lays out a blueprint for projects India would be involved in, including an oil refinery, roads, power stations and the container terminal. The agreement also includes room for Indian involvement in the development of industrial zones.
The cabinet meeting was supposed to give clearance for the port project but President Sirisena said the country, already mired in $8 billion of Chinese debt, couldn’t give any more of its assets to foreigners, according to Senaratne.

“There was a misunderstanding between the president and the prime minister,” said Senaratne, who was the health minister in the deposed cabinet. The Colombo terminal should be left to the state-owned Sri Lanka Port Authority, which was already developing the facilities, he quoted the president as saying.
Tension had been building between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe even before the clash over the port project. The president did not approve of some economic reforms, such as opening up the services sector to foreign investment, being introduced by the prime minister.
Sri Lanka is only one of a number of South Asian countries where the China-India rivalry has roiled domestic politics.

China has been constructing ports, power stations and highways in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Nepal, much of it now tied to its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative to connect China with countries cross Asia and beyond.
In September, the leader of the Maldives - who had courted Chinese investments - lost an election in a result seen as a setback to Beijing’s ambitions for the islands.

“DEBT DIPLOMACY”
One of the officials briefed on the cabinet meeting said he was told Sirisena quoted U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s warning last month that China was using “debt diplomacy” and the Hambantota port in the south could become a Chinese forward military base.
Sirisena told the cabinet Sri Lanka didn’t want this kind of international attention and vowed he wasn’t going to compound the problem by granting the Colombo deal to an outside party, this official said.

But Wickremesinghe, who has forged close ties with India and Japan to balance ties with China, said at the meeting that the cabinet had already approved the broader pact with India a year ago, he told Reuters.
He said the debt-burdened Sri Lanka Port Authority wasn’t in a position to build the terminal on its own, Wickremesinghe said he told the meeting.
“It wasn’t even an Indian project, Japan was going to be the majority partner with India at 20 percent,” Wickremesinghe said in the interview.
But the president not only rejected the proposal but shocked those present by turning on New Delhi, saying he was the target of an assassination plot and suggesting India’s foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), was behind it, said officials who attended the meeting.
The Sri Lankan government later denied Sirisena named the agency, India’s equivalent of the CIA. India’s foreign ministry said Sirisena spoke to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the issue to ensure it didn’t lead to a diplomatic crisis.

But ten days after the cabinet meeting, Wickremesinghe was out and former president Rajapaksa was named in his place. Rajapaksa had ushered in Chinese investment when he was president from 2005-2015 and lost a presidential election to Sirisena after reports that RAW had helped build a coalition against him.

CHANGING LANDSCAPE
In Colombo, the increasing Chinese influence is there for all to see.

On the city’s ocean front, a part of the ocean is blocked from view because of the reclamation project that will eventually turn into the new commercial district. Giant billboards and wire mesh, including some signs in Chinese, close off the largest construction site in the capital.

There is a growing Chinese community of about 12,000 expatriates, up from barely a few hundred a few years ago. They are scattered in Colombo and Hambantota.
Modi’s government is determined to start to turn back the tide. It is aggressively pitching for projects next to Chinese investments, so China’s military does not get a free pass.

“India can ill afford to ignore the strategic advantage China has gained in Sri Lanka so close to peninsular India,” said Colonel R. Hariharan, a retired Indian army intelligence officer.
The Colombo port isn’t the only priority. In Hambantota, India is bidding to take control of an airport built next to the Chinese seaport even though it handles hardly any flights.

“We are fully in the game,” said an Indian government source. It kept its profile low, though, because of local sensitivities, the source said.
Additional reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Martin Howell and Raju Gopalakrishnan
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

All Diplomatic Units head to Supreme Court tomorrow!
Special News 2 days ago (11.11.2018)
https://lankanewsweb.net/news/special-news/34885-all-diplomatic-units-head-to-supreme-court-tomorrow

Supreamcourt-LNW-11.11.2018

U.S. and others denounce dissolution of Sri Lanka parliament as undemocratic
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-politics-idUSKCN1NF08N

Shihar Aneez, Ranga Sirilal

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena’s decision to dissolve parliament, worsening an already major political crisis, has drawn criticism from Western powers, including the United States and Britain.

A man reads a newspaper at stall carrying the news of the Sri Lanka's parliament being dissolved, on a main road in Colombo, Sri Lanka November 10, 2018.REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte
Sirisena dissolved parliament on Friday night, only five days before it was due to reconvene, but a new cabinet he installed was in danger of losing a vote of no confidence. Sirisena also called a general election for Jan. 5.

The president triggered a power struggle when he sacked prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe late last month and appointed the island’s former leader, Mahinda Rajapaksa, a pro-China strongman defeated by Sirisena in an election in 2015, in his place.
Sirisena’s rivals are set to challenge his decision, which they describe as illegal and unconstitutional, in the Supreme Court on Monday.
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The U.S. Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs said in a tweet that the United States was “deeply concerned by news the Sri Lanka Parliament will be dissolved, further deepening the political crisis”. It said democracy needed to be respected to ensure stability and prosperity.
Mark Field, the British minister of State for Asia and the Pacific, tweeted his concern about the dissolution of parliament days before it was due to be reconvened.

“As a friend of Sri Lanka, the UK calls on all parties to uphold the constitution and respect democratic institutions and processes,” Field said.
Canada’s Foreign Policy twitter feed said that it was “deeply concerned” about the decision and referred to the risks to reconciliation work after the nation’s civil war.

“This further political uncertainty is corrosive to Sri Lanka’s democratic future and its commitments on reconciliation and accountability,” it said.
Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne expressed both concern and disappointment in a statement, saying the move “undermines Sri Lanka’s long democratic tradition and poses a risk to its stability and prosperity”.

Sirisena has said he fired Wickremesinghe because the prime minister was trying to implement “a new, extreme liberal political concept by giving more priority for foreign policies and neglecting the local people’s sentiment”.

PARLIAMENT TEST

Mangala Samaraweera, an ally of Wickremesinghe, said their party expects the court to rule that the dissolution of parliament was illegal and that eventually a vote in parliament will be held to test whether there is a majority.

“We will show that we have the parliament majority and we will show that the dictator president has dissolved a government which had a majority in the parliament,” he told reporters.
They were supported by the Tamil National Alliance, the main party representing ethnic Tamil groups in parliament, who said they too will petition the Supreme Court against the dissolution of the house.

“This is a clear violation of the constitution. The president can’t do this,” M.A. Sumanthiran, a spokesman for the alliance, told Reuters.
India and the West have raised concerns over Rajapaksa’s close ties with China. Beijing loaned Sri Lanka billions of dollars for infrastructure projects when Rajapaksa was president between 2005-2015, putting the country deep into debt.

Wickremesinghe refused to vacate the official prime minister’s residence saying he was the prime minister and had a parliamentary majority.
Before he signed the papers dissolving parliament and calling the election, Sirisena appointed allies of his and of Rajapaksa to cabinet positions.
One of them said Sirisena was right to order an election to end the political crisis. Dinesh Gunawardena, a newly appointed urban development minister, said the president had handed the country back to the people.

“It is the people’s right to vote. We have gone before the people. No force can interfere. The people’s mandate is supreme,” he said.
Independent legal experts have told Reuters that parliament could be dissolved only in early 2020, which would be four-and-half-years from the first sitting of the current parliament. The only other legal way would be through a referendum, or with the consent of two thirds of lawmakers.
Given those views, it was not immediately clear how Sirisena is on legal safe ground by dissolving parliament, though his legal experts have said there are provisions for him to do so.

Additonal reporting by Tom Westbrook in Sydney; Editing by Martin Howell, Sanjeev Miglani
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

World NewsNovember 12, 2018 / 1:29 PM / Updated 18 hours ago

Western diplomats shun meeting with Sri Lanka minister on political crisis

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-politics/western-diplomats-shun-meeting-with-sri-lanka-minister-on-political-crisis-idUSKCN1NH1FG

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Eight Western countries stayed away from a meeting with Sri Lanka’s government on Monday to register their protest against President Maithripala Sirisena’s decision to dissolve parliament, diplomatic and government sources said.

FILE PHOTO: Sri Lanka's newly appointed Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and President Maithripala Sirisena talk during a rally near the parliament in Colombo, Sri Lanka November 5, 2018. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

Sri Lanka has been in political turmoil since Sirisena fired Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe last month and appointed a pro-China former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, in his place.
Western countries led by the United States and the European Union had been urging Sirisena to convene parliament and let the legislature determine who should be prime minister.
Sirisena reconvened parliament on Nov. 14, but on Friday, he dissolved it and ordered a general election for Jan. 5.
Foreign Minister Sarath Amunugama called the heads of 43 foreign missions for a meeting on the political situation on Monday but only a handful turned up, the sources said.
The ambassadors of Britain, Netherlands, Norway, France, Australia, South Africa, Italy, and Canada did not attend the meeting while European Union, the United States, and Germany sent representatives, the sources said.

India, Sir Lanka’s nearest neighbor, sent a junior representative.
Western governments are especially concerned that the return to power of wartime nationalist strongman Rajapaksa could endanger halting steps toward national reconciliation.
The government defeated separatist guerrillas from the ethnic Tamil minority in 2009, after more than 25 years of conflict. Rajapaksa has said he wants to end religious and ethnic divisions.

The EU has warned it could withdraw trade concessions if Sri Lanka backs off commitments on rights.
Diplomatic and government sources said at least 20 heads of missions turned up for the meeting including those of China, Cuba, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Pakistan.
China, which has invested billions of dollars in infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka, has called for non-interference in its affairs.
At the meeting Foreign Minister Amunugama said all of the decisions that have been taken over recent weeks were in line with the constitution.
“Most countries have stated that they are watching the situation ... Of course there are uncertainties. But there has been no violence,” he later told reporters.
Japanese officials have said they will halt a $1.4 billion soft loan for a light rail project while the United States is holding off on a $480 million infrastructure grant until the political crisis is resolved and democratic rights are restored.

Amunugama, however, said no country has said anything about grants, concessions or loans.
Piling on the pressure, Wickremesinghe and his allies petitioned the Supreme Court to cancel the presidential order dissolving parliament without allowing a vote to test his support in the assembly.

“We are at the Supreme Court awaiting consideration of our fundamental rights petition against the unconstitutional action by President Sirisena,” Harsha de Silva, a Wickremesinghe loyalist said on twitter.
The court later adjourned the hearing until Tuesday.

Sirisena has faced international criticism for plunging the country into crisis at a time when the economy is growing at its weakest pace in 16 years.
On Monday, the rupee hit a record low of 179.90 to the dollar and its dollar-denominated bonds tumbled.

Reporting by Shihar Aneez and Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Robert Birsel
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Facebook to Remove Misinformation That Leads to Violence

NewYorkTimes-SriLanka-18.107.2018-2
A Rohingya Muslim woman at a displacement camp in Myanmar. Facebook has been accused of facilitating attacks on the Rohingya in the country by allowing anti-Muslim hate speech on its platform.
Lauren Decicca/Getty Images
By Sheera Frenkel
July 18, 2018

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, facing growing criticism for posts that have incited violence in some countries, said Wednesday that it would begin removing misinformation that could lead to people being physically harmed.
The policy expands Facebook’s rules about what type of false information it will remove, and is largely a response to episodes in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and India in which rumors that spread on Facebook led to real-world attacks on ethnic minorities.
“We have identified that there is a type of misinformation that is shared in certain countries that can incite underlying tensions and lead to physical harm offline,” said Tessa Lyons, a Facebook product manager. “We have a broader responsibility to not just reduce that type of content but remove it.”
Facebook has been roundly criticized over the way its platform has been used to spread hate speech and false information that prompted violence. The company has struggled to balance its belief in free speech with those concerns, particularly in countries where access to the internet is relatively new and there are limited mainstream news sources to counter social media rumors.