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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The leader of Sri Lanka’s Parliament told the chamber on Thursday that a controversial independent lawmaker from Jaffna was “psychologically affected” and that lawmakers were patiently waiting for him to seek treatment and recover, an unusually personal attack that came during a chaotic exchange over parliamentary decorum. Bimal Rathnayake, the transport minister and leader of the House, also said the conduct of the lawmaker, Ramanathan Archchuna, was insulting to “the enti

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A private hospital in Jaffna has been fined 3 million Sri Lankan rupees after pleading guilty to charging patients more than the government-set maximum price for a common blood test, the largest penalty imposed in a nationwide enforcement drive against private hospitals and medical laboratories. Venus Speciality Hospital (Pvt) Ltd, on Palaly Road in Kandarmadam, had been charging Rs. 550 for a Full Blood Count, or FBC, test, despite a legally prescribed maximum charge of Rs.

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A high-level delegation of European diplomats visited the Chemmani mass grave excavation in Jaffna on Wednesday, meeting relatives of the forcibly disappeared and telling them that a petition they submitted would be treated as more than a symbolic appeal as the families renewed their demand for international intervention. “The petition you have given us is not merely a piece of paper,” the diplomats told representatives of the families, according to those present at the meet

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s justice minister told Parliament this week that the country holds no prisoners officially classified as “political prisoners,” a legalistic distinction that has reopened one of the most sensitive disputes of the postwar era and raised questions about the government’s commitment to a promise made to Tamil voters by both President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his party’s election manifesto. Harshana Nanayakkara, the minister of justice and national integration, sa

TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s main Tamil political party has accused government authorities of beginning religious construction at the disputed Kanniya site in the eastern district of Trincomalee despite a court order that it says prohibits such work. Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, the parliamentary group leader of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi, or ITAK, said the Department of Archaeology, together with the Trincomalee district secretary and other government officials, had commenced construct

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Thuraireasa Ravikaran, a member of Parliament for the Vanni district from the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, or ITAK, has urged the government to remove Indian trawlers and other vessels that have long crowded Myliddy Fisheries Harbour, saying they are preventing local fishing families from fully using a harbour that was once one of northern Sri Lanka’s most important fishing centers. Mr. Ravikaran raised the issue at a meeting of Parliament’s Ministerial Consultative Committe

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A senior Tamil political leader has urged European diplomats to press for a separate scientific investigation into the Chemmani mass grave, arguing that establishing when the victims were buried could help determine who was in authority at the time and ultimately identify those responsible. C.V.K. Sivagnanam, acting president of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, or ITAK, said he made the request during a meeting in Jaffna with a high-level European delegation that included th

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A decision to invite M.A. Sumanthiran, the acting general secretary of the ITAK and a politician widely blamed by his critics for the decline of both Tamil politics and the ITAK’s standing in Jaffna, to the 150th anniversary celebrations of Victoria College in Sulipuram drew protests from a group of former students on Saturday — before the school announced that he would not attend after all. The former students gathered outside the college to object to the invitation extende