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All government schools are set to re-open in four stages from June 29, minister of education Dullas Alahapperuma announced yesterday.

Addressing a press conference at the ministry of education, minister Alahapperuma said that the government decided to close schools on March 13 following the Covid-19 outbreak and observed that schools will reopen for teachers, principals and non-teaching staff on June 29. He added that the decision to open schools in four stages was taken after discussions with the President, Health and Education ministry officials and officials of the Presidential Task Force.

STAGE 01

Commence on the 29th of June and it will only be for Principals, Teachers, Non-Academic Staff and Management.

The entire week starting from the 29th of June will be used to disinfect and clean schools as well as to add upgrades to the existing school system and for meetings between schools and parents.

STAGE 02

Commence on the 06th of July and it will be only for students of Grades 05, 11 and 13 and it will be in effect until the 17th of July.

STAGE 03

Commence on the 20th of July and it will only be for students of grade 10 and 12.

STAGE 04

Commence on the 27th of July and it will be only for students of Grades 03,04,06,07,08 and 09.

Furthermore, minister Alahapperuma said the Advanced Level examination will be held from September 7 to October 2 while the Grade 5 scholarship examination will be held on September 13.

The tourists came to see the magical waterfalls and mountain views of the lowland jungle and rainforest. But then the pandemic hit, and they were stranded in Sri Lanka.

When flights were canceled and the airports shut down, Darshana Ratnayake came to the rescue.

Ratnayake, a cafe owner in Ella, a former colonial hill station in Sri Lankan tea country, organized free food and shelter for dozens of stranded tourists.

“We were totally blown away,” said Alex Degmetich, a 31-year-old American cruise line entertainment director.

“It’s pretty remarkable,” he said. “Coming from Western society, where nothing is really given to us and we have to pay for everything which is fine. But here, locals providing us — tourists — free food and accommodation, is really humbling.”

The Sri Lankan government imposed a nationwide curfew on March 20 to curb the spread of the virus, sealing off entire regions of the Indian Ocean island nation. Degmetich was among 40 tourists from 11 countries stranded in Ella, 200 kilometers (120 miles) east of the capital, Colombo.

Ella’s famous treks tend to draw a young backpacker crowd, and Darshana knew they’d soon be out of money, and the small bed-and-breakfast lodges out of food.

He was right: Many of the tourists had just enough money to pay for the trip, and broken supply chains meant the lodges were running low on provisions.

Darshana established his Chill Cafe as a juice bar with two tables 13 years ago. The business has grown to a full restaurant and boutique hotel with 72 employees.

Just after the curfew was imposed, Darshana prepared a list of those staying in lodges and began boxed dinner deliveries. And he convinced lodge owners to let their guests stay on for free.

“Our livelihood depends on tourism. We must help tourists when they are in trouble. Money isn’t everything. We must help and share at difficult times like this,” he said.

He said he also donated 5 million Sri Lankan rupees ($27,000) to tour guides who lost their income when tourism came to a standstill.

Dr. Varatharajah, who is now treating Covid-19 patients in the United States where he fled for his safety, identified Suresh Sallay as the military intelligence officer responsible for his torture and who coerced and prepared him to give false testimony in a staged news conference in Colombo where he and other doctors were forced to deny the extent of civilian casualties in the war.

“Colonel Suresh threatened us all with many years’ imprisonment… Our families were also threatened,” stated the doctor, who says Suresh made it clear he was acting on the orders of Gotabaya Rajapaksa who was the powerful secretary of defence at the time.

In addition to threats, Dr. Varatharajah alleges Suresh Sallay used as leverage the fact that he needed essential surgery on his arm which was very badly injured in the war to compel him to participate in the news conference against his will. The delay in allowing the doctor to have the surgery caused permanent residual damage to his hand in the form of pain, sensory issues and loss of fine motor movement required by a surgeon.

The Tamil doctors who stayed in the war zone to treat casualties were recognised at the time by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders as fulfilling an essential role during the war providing vital information to the world’s news media. This role made them targets when the war ended. On 8 July 2009, the doctors including Dr. Varatharajah were forced to lie in a news conference and were then bizarrly rewarded by their handlers with a surreal trip to eat at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant before being returned to their cells.

US leaked telexes acknowledged at the time that most international observers doubted the veracity of the doctors’ “confessions”. A telex published by Wikileaks said the doctors had told an embassy contact that they had been pressured to give the press conference and had been “heavily coached for the press conference, given specific lines to say, and even practiced with several members of the local media beforehand”. In addition the telex reported that the doctors “said they were visited and questioned several times by the Secretary of Defense while in custody”.  

Absurdly the doctors were instructed to say at the news conference that there were only up to 650 deaths in the last five months of the war even though the Government itself later admitted the death toll was higher. Indeed a mere count of photographs of corpses would easily exceed that number, let alone the UN’s meticulously cross checked casualty estimates up until April 2009. As US diplomatic telexes commented at the time, the Government of Sri Lanka appeared “to be continuing its efforts to downplay the extent of civilian suffering and deaths during the last weeks and days of the war”. Diplomats at the time worried the doctors, when finally released, were at risk of abduction or extrajudicial killing.  

In addition, Suresh Sallay was summoned to appear in court in 2016 in connection with the investigation into the 2009 murder of the Sunday Leader editor, Lasantha Wickrematunge. Sallay’s top aide was reportedly picked out as a suspect in the Lasantha case in an identification parade in 2016 while a second suspect, Kandegedara Piyawansa, was kept on Sallay’s personal staff.

He has also been summoned to court in connection with the disappearance of cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda in 2010 whom police found was abducted and detained by Military Intelligence. There were allegations raised in the Sri Lankan press that Suresh Sallay had attempted to help the suspects obtain bail by getting the state counsel removed in the  case. Reports at the time said the Criminal Investigation Department of the Sri Lankan police accused Suresh Sallay of not cooperating with their investigations, with the result that civil society groups urged he be replaced as Military Intelligence Director.

Last week, the Sri Lankan President appointed Prasanna de Alwis as the new Director of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), who is another close ally of the President Gotabaya Rajapaksa also alleged to be complicit in torture. Alwis too was questioned regarding the murder of journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge after Suresh Sallay’s staffer, Kandegedara Piyawansa, made a statement in open court in 2016 alleging that Alwis had tried to influence him into implicating the former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka in the journalist’s assassination, with the promise of being made a state witness and given overseas employment.

What we are seeing is a complex web of alleged perpetrators who have spent years in the security services protecting each another now being promoted to the highest office by the President,” said Ms Sooka. “Impunity is now so deeply embedded that it’s impossible to talk of any kind of institutional reform.”

He emphasized that it is necessary to initiate a movement towards a progressive political trajectory in Sri Lanka in partnership with the people in this country who respect democracy, and the different social identities and cultural traditions in the country, and people who are not overwhelmed and consumed by hatred towards one another. He urged the people in this country who are not governed and guided solely by their racial, caste, religious, ethnic and gender identities at birth and those who are free of political, cultural and social hypocrisy to come together and join forces for this purpose.

Sri Lanka will soon begin sending its workers back overseas as it further eases its COVID-19 measures and host countries start reopening their borders.

The estimated number of overseas Sri Lankan workers is 1.5 million and 1.2 million of these are in the Middle East, according to an official from the Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE).

“The island had halted the process on March 13 due to the COVID-19 outbreak,” the bureau’s acting general manager, W.M.V Wansekera, told Arab News. “We will soon prepare to send them abroad with the opening of airports in the host countries.”

He hoped that the country would soon return to normality and once again be able to export its workforce, which is responsible for an estimated $7 billion in remittances every year.

The majority of the 1.2 million Sri Lankan workers in the Middle East - 80 percent - are stationed in Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar.

On May 26 the bureau sent a batch of 145 workers to Hong Kong – far lower than the 15,000 Lankan workers sent abroad on average every month – after they were stranded in the country during their annual vacation due to the lockdown, Jagath Batugedera, the bureau’s assistant general manager, told Arab News.

The director general of health services, Dr. Anil Jasinghe, said that his ministry had been able to keep the disease under control from April 30 and that zero cases had been recorded in the civilian population.

There were a few cases of infection in the Sri Lankan navy and 450 new cases among workers who had come back from Kuwait. As of Sunday a total of 1,620 diagnosed cases were reported, with 801 recoveries and 10 deaths.

Foreign Secretary Ravinatha Ariyasingha told Arab News that more than 38,983 workers in 143 countries had expressed an interest to return home to Sri Lanka, based on information gathered through the “Contact Sri Lanka” web portal from the Ministry of Foreign Relations.

Expatriates who spoke to Arab News said they were happy to be overseas. Mohammed Ali, an accountant working at a private firm in Riyadh, said Sri Lankan workers were “satisfied” with the new conditions laid out by the Kingdom.

“We have been staying here during good times, and we also like to stay in these trying times too,” he told Arab News. He added that, while there had been a 25 percent reduction in salary, workers were advised to only work six hours. He called this an “acceptable move” and said another “good thing” was that there had been no retrenchment of workers due to the coronavirus crisis.

Expatriate Mohammed Risqi, who holds an executive position in a Kuwaiti establishment, said that people wished to continue with their jobs during the global crisis.

“Those who are staying here illegally or have lost their regular jobs are keen to go home because staying in Kuwait is a waste of time,” he said.

(Source: Arab News)

The U.S. Department of Defense funded the donation, which includes more than 48,000 masks, safety goggles, and isolation gowns with hoods.  All items were purchased in Sri Lanka in order to champion Sri Lankan businesses as they recover from COVID-19’s economic impact.  

“The United States is proud to assist Sri Lanka’s frontline responders as they care for Sri Lankans suffering from Coronavirus,” said Ambassador Teplitz.  “Helping to protect these healthcare workers while supporting Sri Lankan businesses and jobs is just one component of our deep friendship.”  The donation is part of U.S. support to expand the flexibility, agility, and resilience of Sri Lanka's disaster response sector.

In coordination with the Ministry of Defense and disaster relief authorities, the donations will be distributed to the following health care facilities:

Indian Navy ship INS Jalashwa will sail from Colombo Port today to bring back 700 stranded Indians under the second phase of Operation ''Samudra Setu'' as a part of the "Vande Bharat" mission.

The vessel reached Colombo Port this morning and will depart with passengers to Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. It will subsequently repatriate another 700 personnel from Male in the Maldives to Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu, according to the Indian Navy.

Catering to the present requirements of maintaining social distancing and health protocols the ship is divided specifically into three zones-- red, orange and green.

Commander Gaurav Durgapal, Executive Officer on INS Jalashwa told ANI: "The guidelines for safety against COVID-19 and the protocols for the same are being promulgated by the naval headquarters and the commands respectively."

On May 29, a vanishingly rare black leopard — an actual black panther — died at a government wildlife treatment facility in Sri Lanka. It had been brought there three days earlier after being trapped in a snare in a tea estate in the hill town of Hatton, in the central district of Nuwara Eliya district. The big cat’s fate sparked  public outrage in Sri Lanka, a biodiversity hotspot with a fast-dwindling population of leopards.

The Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya) is a subspecies unique to the country, and also the island’s apex predator.

Typically  rusty yellow in color with dark spots, leopards sometimes come in an all-black hue caused by the mutation known as melanism. That was the case with this latest leopard, which was discovered on camera trap last October, generating waves of excitement among wildlife enthusiasts at the time.

Trapped by a snare on May 26, this black leopard died three days later, prompting outrage among wildlife lovers in Sri Lanka. Image courtesy of Malaka Kasun Abeywardana.

Black leopards are a rarity in Sri Lanka; this was only the third one recorded in the past decade. Far more common is the killing of wildlife by snares, typically set to trap deer or wild boar for bushmeat. The two earlier recorded black leopards were also killed in snares, in 2009 and 2013, in southern Sri Lanka on the border of the Sinharaja Forest Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

And it’s not just black leopards: snares are the primary cause of death for Sri Lanka’s leopards at large. In the first five months of this year, six leopards were caught in snares; four of them died. In the second half of May, two leopards were found in snares, one of them the black leopard. The other survived.

According to the Wilderness & Wildlife Conservation Trust (WWCT), 47 leopards were trapped in snares during the past decade. Of the total 79 leopard deaths reported during this period, 42 deaths were caused by snare-induced injuries.

“It is probable that more animals are being caught by snares and just go unreported. So the number could be much higher than this,” Andrew Kittle, a biologist with the WWCT, told Mongabay.

Once triggered, the snares tighten around the hip or limb of the trapped animal, causing extensive damage to internal organs like kidneys and making it difficult to save the animal’s life. Image courtesy of Tharaka Prasad.

A snare, at its most basic, is a noose of steel wire that is concealed along trails frequented by wild animals. When the unsuspecting animal or one its limbs touches the wire, it springs the noose. As the animal struggles to free itself, the trap only gets tighter. Snaring of wildlife is outlawed under Sri Lanka’s Flora and Fauna Protection Ordinance, but an exception is made for “pest species” such as wild boars that damage crops. As events have shown, that hasn’t stopped leopards and other wildlife from getting trapped in these snares.

“The struggle to break free makes the internal organs to get damaged, making it very difficult to save these animals,” Tharaka Prasad, a veterinary surgeon and director of wildlife health with the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), told Mongabay.

In the case of leopards, the snares usually catch around the animal’s hip area, where organs like the kidneys can become damaged as the noose crushes them. WWCT’s data for 2010-2020 show that 90% of leopards that get caught in snares die.

This black leopard was killed by a snare in 2009. Image courtesy of Ajith Gunathunga.

Of the 47 leopards the WWCT recorded as being snared, 37 were in the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka. “A century ago, large swaths of montane forests in the island’s central hills were cleared for tea cultivation. This left fragmented small forest patches for the leopards and these spots continue to shrink,” said Anjali Watson, an ecologist with the WWCT. “As leopards come out at night [and] frequently cross these habitats across various corridors, [that] makes them vulnerable to snare traps.”

She cited the latest case of the leopard snared in the tea estate in Hatton, the country’s tea-growing capital, noting that the area is “a typical corridor used by the hill country male leopard to cross to different forested areas.” Watson said the vegetable plot the leopard was crossing at the time was a new one that was set up by clearing an overgrown area. Conserving such corridors between tea estates that link fragmented forest habitats is something the WWCT advocates to minimize the problem.

But a nationwide lockdown imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic may have exacerbated the issue, Watson suggested. With many people losing work as a result of the lockdown, she said, they would have explored alternatives such as cultivating vegetable plots by clearing little corridors that are essentially paths used by wildlife such as leopards to cross, setting up snares either to protect their plots or to catch wild game.

Highly stressed and soaked in mud when discovered in the central district of Nuwara Eliya, this leopard sustained serious injuries when struggling to free itself from a snare. Image courtesy of Janaka Gallangoda.

Need for rapid rescues

The fact that snaring is technically banned in Sri Lanka yet continues unabated thanks to the “pest species” exception, needs to be addressed, conservationists say.

“Sri Lankan law has sufficient provisions to take legal action against those who set snares, on the basis that it kills indiscriminately other than the targeted wild boar,” Jagath Gunwawardana, a leading environment lawyer, told Mongabay.

“We need stringent punishments for those who set snares; perhaps jail terms and confiscation of their properties,” said Rukshan Jayewardene, a conservationist with the Leopard Trust. “This illegal practice has been ignored much too long. Wire snares kill animals indiscriminately, bringing much suffering to victims and cause lingering deaths.”

Jayewardene said it’s important to investigate whether the snares are set up in an organized manner targeting leopards.

If a leopard gets trapped in a snare at night, it may take until the afternoon of the next day for a DWC veterinary team to reach it. In those hours of struggling, the leopard would be  drained of energy and suffer serious damage to its internal organs.

A Sri Lankan leopard killed by a snare at the Argyle tea estate in the central district of Nuwara Eliya. Image courtesy of the Wildlife & Wilderness Conservation Trust.

“With each second that’s lost to carrying out a timely rescue operation, the chances of the animal’s survival declines, so time is of great essence,” Jayewardene told Mongabay.

He called for a fully equipped wildlife rescue and treatment center to be established in the Central Highlands region to cut down on the response time. Jayewardene also stressed the importance of setting up protocols to be followed in dealing with wildlife emergencies, including the rescue and treatment of snared leopards, to ensure swift coordination among different agencies and mobilize resources in a timely manner.

“It’s not about response but rapid response. There is no time to be lost,” he said.

The public outrage sparked by the black leopard’s death is now being channeled into an awareness campaign. The Wildlife and Nature Protection Society (WNPS), a leading conservation group, has declared May 29 as Leopard Day to draw attention to the urgent need to protect Sri Lanka’s iconic apex predator and to lead the fight against the deadly snares.

Sri Lanka plans to reopen its tourism sector on August 1 by allowing only small groups of visitors to begin with, a tourism official said on Sunday.

Kimali Fernando, chairperson of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB), a government body, denied a report in the local Sunday Times that said the sector would reopen in mid-June.

A limited number of small groups from around the world would be allowed to visit from August and stay in approved five-star hotels that have put strict safety measures in place, Fernando said.

He confirmed that tourists will be required to carry a COVID-19-free certificate issued either by their governments or a reputed agency, as reported by the Sunday Times which quoted Sri Lanka's Tourism Ministry Secretary S. Hettiaarachchi. Tourists would also need to wait on arrival at the airport for coronavirus testing, while individual travelers will still not be allowed to enter the country.

The country attracted around 2 million tourists last year and the sector contributes around 11 percent to the nation's gross domestic product.

President Rajapaksa discussed the proposals at a meeting with representatives of the tourism industry this month, Fernando said. The main tourist season typically begins in around November.

If the government approves the plan, Bandaranaike International Airport and Mattala International Airport, which have been closed under coronavirus restrictions, would partially reopen. Testing facilities would be set up at the airports and private hospitals are expected to provide assistance to tourists as part of the plans, Fernando said.

Popular sites such as the Yala national park, Udawalawe, Arugam Bay, Trincomalee and some beach areas would be among those open for tourists, whose temperatures would be monitored daily, he added.

As of Sunday, Sri Lanka has so far reported 1,633 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 11 deaths.

Responding to reports that a US diplomat had refused PCR testing upon his arrival at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA), Namal Rajapaksa, former parliamentarian and the son of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, took to twitter to voice his objection.

"Reports regarding a US diplomat refusing PCR tests at the BIA is so disappointing. Vienna Convention or not, the world's in the midst of a global pandemic & what we need more than ever is cooperation & respect of one another's national frameworks which are put in place to save lives," he said.

However, according to the 'Sunday Morning', the US diplomat was kept for four hours at the BIA and was released after discussing with the Secretary to the President Dr. PB Jayasundara and Foreign Secretary Ravinatha Aryasinha.

Close coordination with Ministry of Foreign Relations

Meanwhile, spokesperson for the US Embassy Nancy VanHorn when contacted by 'Ada Derana' noted that US diplomatic staff adhere carefully to Sri Lankan COVID-19 guidelines, including quarantine restrictions, in close coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Relations.

VanHorn said that the arrival of US diplomatic staff to Sri Lanka also complies with the norms and procedures outlined in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, just as it applies to arrival of Sri Lankan and other diplomatic staff to the United States.

Furthermore, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on June 04 had instructed to carry out PCR tests for COVID-19 on passengers at the airport upon arrival to Sri Lanka, and to direct them to a separate area until the results are released, before following the immigration procedure.

Sri Lanka reported its 11th COVID-19 death on Monday (June 1) morning.

Through Diplomatic Notes on 11 and 14 May 2020, prior to their eventual departure from Kuwait on two Kuwait Airways flights on 19 May, the Sri Lanka embassy in Kuwait had requested the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kuwait to conduct PCR tests on those being repatriated.

However, the embassy was informed that this would not be possible but assured that no passenger with coronavirus symptoms would be allowed to board the aircraft. It had also been stated that PCR tests had not been done on any of the returnees from other countries leaving Kuwait, Sri Lanka Foreign Ministry revealed.

Taking stock of the developments concerning those repatriated from Kuwait, it was noted that of the 466 returnees, 379 were those benefiting from the amnesty who had surrendered to the camps between 21-25 April and had been awaiting repatriation. 87 were those from Kuwaiti detention centres and prisons.