The Hon. Sajith Premadasa - Leader of Opposition
Hon. Sajith Premadasa argued that an incident 19 nautical miles offshore occurred within Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone and invoked UNCLOS Articles 56, 58 and 88 to state that activities there must be peaceful and conducted with due regard. He said the resulting environmental harm, damage to marine resources and loss of life were contrary to international law. He also pressed the Government to answer his earlier question about a second vessel reportedly near the Port of Colombo.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, I listened to the answer by Hon. Nalinda Jayatissa. Hon. Minister, let me remind you of this matter too. As you said, the incident occurred 19 nautical miles out — within our Exclusive Economic Zone. With your leave, Hon. Speaker, I will analyze briefly. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Articles 56, 58 and 88 state that activities in the EEZ must be for peaceful purposes, and the concepts of “for peaceful purposes” and “due regard” apply. Therefore, the environmental damage, the damage to marine resources, and the loss of human life are contrary to international law.
¶ 02 Even now, the Chief Government Whip has not answered my question about the second vessel that is currently near the Port of Colombo.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 5 March 2026 ·No. 23375 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/7013
Cite as: The Hon. Sajith Premadasa - Leader of Opposition. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 5 March 2026. No. 23375. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/7013