October 2026

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told Sri Lanka’s most senior Buddhist monks on Thursday that he would not set aside prison regulations for a single prisoner. “If the law becomes my will, it will be interpreted and implemented according to what I like and dislike,” he said. “That is not appropriate.” At the same meeting, he proposed rewriting those regulations within two weeks. The changes under discussion would allow convicted monks to wear their robes outside prison on

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct. 11 — Residents of Palaly, in Sri Lanka’s north, gathered on Sunday for the 17th consecutive week to demand that the military return land they were forced to leave 36 years ago. Many of the protesters were displaced during the civil war between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. They say they have waited decades for permission to go back to their villages, reclaim their property and resume farming and other work there. The war ended in May 2009 w

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s Board of Investment said this week it would begin taking land reservations from investors at a planned export processing zone in Paranthan, Northern Province, by the end of November, and start building infrastructure there and at a second zone in Kankesanthurai in early January. The board announced the schedule in a statement on Wednesday after its chairman, Duminda Hulangamuwa, and its director general, Sulakshana Jayawardena, visited the province. In Kilinochch

By Asela Kuruluwansa KANDY, Sri Lanka — More than 100 Buddhist monks set out from Kandy on Saturday on a six-day march to Colombo, the capital, to demand the release of Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero, a hard-line Sinhala Buddhist nationalist cleric who was returned to prison this week to serve the rest of a sentence for contempt of court. The march has exposed a division within Sri Lanka’s Buddhist clergy. On Thursday, the leaders of the country’s main monastic orders met President Anura Kuma

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sivarasa Anojan, the Sri Lankan migrant worker sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia over a Facebook comment about the Prophet Muhammad, has told Saudi authorities that he is willing to convert to Islam in an effort to avoid execution, a Tamil-language newspaper in Jaffna reported on Friday. The report could not be independently verified, and Tamil politicians involved in efforts to save Mr. Anojan’s life said they could not confirm it. Neither the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry