October 2026

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Oct. 18 — China Merchants Port Holdings, the Chinese state-controlled port operator, has abandoned its plan to build a $392 million (about Rs. 130 billion) logistics complex in the Port of Colombo. The project had been billed as the largest of its kind in South Asia and had stalled for more than three years. In a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Oct. 15, the company said the parties had agreed not to proceed. It and its partners signed a settlement ending the shareh

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct. 18 — The Sri Lankan military returned 11.23 acres of private land in Jaffna this week, about 0.4 percent of the more than 2,500 acres of private land that the security forces still occupy in the Tamil-majority district, according to government figures. The release documents were handed over at the Jaffna District Secretariat by Col. W.M.A.M. Nisanka, the senior civil affairs officer at the military’s Palaly headquarters, to the district secretary, Maruthalingam Pratheepa

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: President Anura Kumara Dissanayake signaled on Sunday that he would not pardon Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera, the hard-line Buddhist nationalist monk who was returned to prison this month after the Supreme Court struck down a pardon he received in 2019. Speaking at a women’s rally of his governing National People’s Power in Badulla, in Uva Province, Mr. Dissanayake did not mention the monk by name. But his remarks followed weeks of protests by Buddhist monks and opposition

Bimal Rathnayake, who lost Sri Lanka’s ports and aviation portfolio amid allegations that he obstructed Indian-funded projects in the north, was received in Oslo by Kamzy Gunaratnam, who has questioned Colombo’s treatment of Tamils in the Norwegian Parliament. JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct. 18 — Sri Lanka’s transport minister, Bimal Rathnayake, whose opposition to developing two major transport facilities in the Tamil-majority north has drawn accusations of ethnic prejudice from critics inside and out

NUWARA ELIYA, Sri Lanka — A former Sri Lankan lawmaker has called on Britain to help secure land rights for the descendants of Indian labourers brought to the island to work on colonial plantations, arguing that generations of workers have been denied the opportunity to own the land on which their livelihoods depend. Mayilvaganam Thilakarajah, a former member of Parliament for Nuwara Eliya District, said Britain bore a historical responsibility for the future of the Malaiyaha Tamils, whose ance

By Asela Kuruluwansha Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation Minister K. D. Lal Kantha said neither President Anura Kumara Dissanayake nor the government has the power to release Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera, rejecting the central demand of Buddhist monks who marched from Kandy to Colombo last week to seek the imprisoned monk’s freedom. The government would not take such a step under any circumstances, the minister said, because going against a court ruling would betray the mandate vo

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Oct. 17 — Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera, a hard-line Buddhist nationalist monk serving a prison sentence in Colombo, resisted prison officials for more than two hours before giving up his saffron robes, and someone watched the removal remotely through a telephone connection, according to an account he gave his lawyer. The lawyer, Chula Adhikari, said the monk described the incident during a visit at Magazine Prison, where he is serving a sentence for contempt of court afte