October 2026

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A Tamil party allied with Sri Lanka’s main opposition has asked the opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa, to act after Lakshman Kiriella, a senior figure in Mr. Premadasa’s party, described the government’s handling of a jailed Buddhist monk’s case as an effort to appease Tamil-speaking citizens. Mano Ganesan, the leader of the Tamil Progressive Alliance, made the request in a letter to Mr. Premadasa, whose Samagi Jana Balawegaya, or S.J.B., leads the coalition the T.P.A. be

KANDY, Sri Lanka — A 17-year-old schoolboy in Sri Lanka developed oral cancer after chewing areca nut, a senior dental researcher said, warning that packaged, flavoured versions of the nut sold near schools were exposing children to one of the main causes of the disease. Professor Ruwan Jayasinghe, director of the Centre for Research in Oral Cancer at the University of Peradeniya, said he had seen the boy himself. He said younger students were also arriving for treatment with conditions that ca

KANDY, Sri Lanka, Oct. 12 — One of Sri Lanka's most senior Buddhist monks on Monday rejected an opposition claim that the movement now governing the country had bombed the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. He also declined to blame the government for a wave of online abuse against monks. The Most Venerable Thibbatuwawe Sri Siddhartha Sumangala Thero, chief prelate of the Malwatte chapter, made the remarks to a delegation from the opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya, or S.J.B., which had come to s

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Anne Laksha Ignatius, the culinary instructor stabbed to death at her family’s home in Jaffna this month, had been planning to remarry and move abroad with her daughter, according to friends who described months of growing unease about a former student before the attack. The man the police suspect of killing her, Thevathas Pugalarasan, had trained under Ms. Ignatius, eaten meals at her parents’ house and later worked as a trainee cook at a hotel where she was employed, her f

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