Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena yesterday met with the Australian prime minister with fighting people-smuggling high on the agenda.
Sirisena is making the first visit by a Sri Lankan head of state to Australia.
His visit to Canberra and Sydney marks the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the countries.
After meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, he was scheduled to speak with Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton.
“President Sirisena’s visit will be an opportunity to advance key areas of bilateral cooperation, including education, defense, science and technology, economic development, medical research and the fight against people-smuggling,” Turnbull said in a statement before the meeting.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe during an Australian visit in February said that Sri Lankan asylum seekers held on Pacific island camps who could potentially settle in the US were free to return home without fear of persecution.
Sri Lankans, Iranians and Afghans are the largest national groups among more than 2,000 asylum seekers who are kept at Australia’s expense on the Pacific islands nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
However, no Sri Lankan asylum seeker has reached Australia by boat since 2013.
Australia refuses to resettle any of them and US President Donald Trump has agreed to honor a deal by the administration of former US president Barack Obama to resettle up to 1,250 of them.
US officials have begun the process of assessing applicants for resettlement.
Sri Lanka has been reconciling its population since a bloody 26-year civil war ended in 2009.
Before becoming prime minister in January 2015, Wickremesinghe had accused Australia of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in Sri Lanka in return for Sri Lankan government support in preventing asylum seekers from reaching Australia.
Sirisena this week used a Cabinet reshuffle to remove his country’s minister of foreign affairs Mangala Samaraweera, who spearheaded a successful campaign to extricate Sri Lanka from possible international sanctions over war crime allegations from the country’s long civil war.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was