JM Exclusive

TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka — A court in eastern Sri Lanka has ordered the Department of Archaeology to halt construction at a disputed religious site near the Kanniya hot springs, where a Hindu temple once stood and where officials say the remains of an ancient Buddhist stupa lie beneath the ground. The Trincomalee High Court issued the interim order on Monday, directing that the site be maintained in its present condition and that no further construction take place until the case returns to court

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — They came carrying photographs of sons, husbands and other relatives who disappeared years ago, some dressed in black, some holding burning torches, many still asking the question that has defined years of protests across Sri Lanka’s north and east: Where are they? Relatives of the forcibly disappeared marched through Jaffna on Sunday as part of a gathering that brought United Nations officials, international diplomats and human rights advocates together with families who sa

COLOMBO — Nearly 20 Iranian oil tankers, all of them empty, have gathered in waters near Sri Lanka, unable to sail home because an American naval blockade has closed Iran's ports. Their presence has brought the war between Washington and Tehran close to Sri Lanka and to one of the world's busiest shipping lanes for the second time this year. Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that it was tracking the vessels but bore no responsibility for them and was providing them nothing. Thushara

KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka — For more than 17 years since Sri Lanka’s civil war ended, many former Tamil Tiger fighters have lived on the margins, poor and jobless and carrying the injuries of the battlefield. Now, as a struggle for influence intensifies inside the country’s main Tamil political party, they are suddenly being courted. M.A. Sumanthiran and S. Sritharan, longtime rivals inside the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, or ITAK, are holding separate meetings in Kilinochchi with former members of

CANBERRA, Australia —An Australian senator has urged his government to raise the Chemmani mass grave with Sri Lanka in bilateral talks and at the United Nations Human Rights Council, calling for independent forensic scrutiny of the site and protection of the evidence recovered from it. David Shoebridge, a Greens senator for New South Wales, told the Australian Senate that Canberra should act on its stated commitments to accountability in Sri Lanka. "This means supporting the preservation of the

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka is examining alternative legal avenues to bring Arjuna Mahendran, the former Central Bank governor at the center of the country's long-running Treasury bond scandal, back from Singapore to face criminal proceedings, the public security minister said, acknowledging that earlier efforts to secure his return had run into legal obstacles. Ananda Wijepala, the minister of public security and parliamentary affairs, said in an interview with a private television channel