COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

SRI LANKA 7 MARCH 2012
―From 1 January 2012 all arriving foreign nationals, apart from nationals of Singapore
and The Maldives, will require an electronic travel authority (ETA) for a short stay in Sri
Lanka. Details pertaining to this can be found at; www.eta.gov.lk.‖
25.23 The same BHC letter 513 also noted that:
―Passengers seeking entry to Sri Lanka must present themselves to an immigration
officer and are required to hand over their passport and arrival card. The immigration
officer will scan the details page of the passport. Three scanned images of the details
page will then appear on the computer screen shown in normal, ultra-violet and infrared
light, along with basic details regarding the document and the holder. This enables the
immigration officer to identify if the document has been forged or tampered with in any
way. Each immigration officer‘s desk has a terminal connected to the DIE Border
Control System. This system contains border control, visa/ETA details, citizenship and
passport records and is networked to the DIE office in Colombo. It is not linked to any
police or military database; however, there is an alert list containing information relating
to court orders, warrants of arrest, jumping bail, escaping from detention, as well as
information from Interpol and the State Intelligence Service (SIS) computer system. The
immigration officer will check for any data matches, check that the document is genuine
and unaltered, and look through the passport for visas and/or endorsements.
Dependent on the circumstances of the individual passenger, the immigration officer
may ask questions to ascertain the purpose of the visit. Once satisfied that the
passenger qualifies for entry, the immigration officer will endorse the passport with an
arrival stamp and hand back to the passenger. They will also endorse the arrival card
which they retain.
―The State Intelligence Service has an office in the immigration arrivals hall and officers
from SIS usually patrol the arrivals area during each flight arrival. Invariably, if they
notice a person being held up by DIE they approach them and take details in order to
ascertain if the person may be of interest to them. Their office contains three computer
terminals, two linked to SIS records and one belonging to the airport containing flight
information.‖
25.24 The BHC letter of 5 January 2012 514 added:
―The main mode of onward travel from the airport is by road. There are numerous taxi
services and there are pick-up areas for relatives/friends to collect arriving passengers.
No public buses are allowed into the airport…There is a rail link direct into Colombo,
and an airport station has recently been constructed around 200 metres from the
terminal, although services appear infrequent. There is no permanent checkpoint for
persons leaving the airport along the airport link road to the main A3. For persons
travelling into Colombo, the first permanent checkpoint they encounter is on the bridge
at Peliyagoda/Grandpass on entering the city. The number of vehicles being stopped
has significantly reduced in recent months. Checkpoints are extremely rare now
although this can vary during the early hours of the morning or according to the security
situation at any given time.‖
See also check-points
513 British High Commission Colombo, letter dated 5 January 2012
514 British High Commission Colombo, letter dated 5 January 2012
198 The main text of this COI Report contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 3 February 2012.
Further brief information on recent events and reports has been provided in the Latest News section
to 2 March 2012.