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GENEVA — Tamil activists urged the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday to open an independent international investigation into whether Sri Lanka's treatment of Tamils during and after its civil war amounted to genocide, and to appoint a country-specific expert to monitor the island. The appeals were made during the general debate under Item 2 at the council's 63rd session, which opened in Geneva on Sept. 7, and came in the same sitting at which the Office of the U.N. High Commissione

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — India will stand by Sri Lanka whenever it faces a crisis, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said Tuesday as he began a three-day visit focused on expanding defence and security ties. “India will always stand firmly with Sri Lanka whenever the island nation faces a crisis,” Mr. Singh told members of the Indian community in Colombo, according to India’s Ministry of Defence. Mr. Singh is scheduled to meet President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who also holds the defence portfolio,

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — India’s defence minister, Rajnath Singh, arrived in Sri Lanka on Tuesday for a three-day visit, the first by an Indian defence minister since 1988, as the two countries prepare to sign three military agreements and New Delhi presses a security relationship it now describes as central to its position in the Indian Ocean. Mr. Singh is scheduled to meet President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who also holds the defence portfolio, on Wednesday morning at the Presidential Secretaria

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s largest Tamil political party said Tuesday that the government had failed to take meaningful action on wartime accountability, enforced disappearances, or the return of military-held land, nearly two years after coming to power promising reform. The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, or ITAK, issued the statement as Sri Lanka’s human rights record came under renewed scrutiny at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. The party said it welcomed a written updat

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on Sunday that his government would not withdraw a proposed constitutional amendment extending the retirement ages of Sri Lanka's senior judges, and that he intended to move it through Parliament as soon as the Supreme Court delivers its determination on a record number of legal challenges. Speaking at a public rally in Bulathsinhala, in the Kalutara district south of Colombo, Mr. Dissanayake presented the proposed 22nd Amendment as p