UN official condemns attacks on Sri Lankan Muslims
United Nations: Under-Secretary-General Jeffrey Feltman has condemned the violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka and urged the government to bring those behind the attacks and hate speech to justice.
During the three-day visit, "he met Muslim political and civil society leaders to express concern and show solidarity", according to a UN statement issued on Sunday.
While in the island nation, Feltman, who is in charge of political affairs for the UN, also met President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe, Parliament Speaker Karu Jayasuriya and Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana.
He "appreciated the reassurances from government leaders of their intention to move forward" with initiatives for reconciliation and sustainable peace although Feltman expressed concern that many elements of the government's "visionary" plan anounced in 2015 for national unity seemed to have stalled, the statement said.
He lauded the recent appointment of commissioners to the Office of Missing Persons to probe the disappearances of people during civil conflicts and "expressed hope" that the panel "will soon be fully operational to help answer questions that haunt too many families from all across Sri Lanka about their missing loved ones".
Senior lawyer Saliya Peiris is to head the seven-member panel that includes two Tamils and a retired major general. In 2016, the government said that about 65,000 people were reported missing since 1994.
Feltman praised the adoption of the Bill for the Protection Against Enforced Disappearances by Parliament and called it "an important element of the Sri Lankan government's commitment to its citizens".
Three people were killed, 11 mosques damaged and scores of Muslim-owned businesses destroyed in the riots in Kandy district earlier this month.
A curfew was imposed and the military and police were deployed to quell the riots.
On Saturday, Sirisena announced that a panel of three retired judges will investigate the riots.
Meanwhile, the Association of Sri Lankan Muslims in North America has announced a protest outside the UN on Wednesday to protest last week's anti-Muslim riots.
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India, China decide to resume Kailash Mansarovar Yatra
New Delhi, Jan 27 (PTI): India and China on Monday decided to resume the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra as the two sides agreed to take certain people-centric steps to "stabilise and rebuild" ties.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said this following Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri's talks with his Chinese counterpart Sun Weidong in Beijing.
It said the two sides also agreed in principle to resume direct air services between the two countries.
"As agreed between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping at their meeting in Kazan in October, the two sides reviewed the state of India-China bilateral relations comprehensively and agreed to take certain people-centric steps to stabilize and rebuild ties," the MEA said.
"In this context, the two sides decided to resume the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra in the summer of 2025," it said.
The MEA said the two sides also agreed to hold an early meeting of the India-China expert level mechanism to discuss resumption of provision of hydrological data and other cooperation pertaining to trans-border rivers.
It said the two sides agreed to take appropriate measures to further promote and facilitate people-to-people exchanges, including media and think-tank interactions.
"They agreed in principle to resume direct air services between the two countries; the relevant technical authorities on the two sides will meet and negotiate an updated framework for this purpose at an early date," the MEA said.
