The British Embassy in Sri Lanka

UK in Sri Lanka

London 19:42, 02 Sep 2011

00:12, 03 Sep 2011

Fri Sep 02 19:42:54 BST 2011

British High Commissioner to answer questions via video

01 September 2011

The British High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, John Rankin, will answer questions from the public through a fortnightly video clip, which will be published on the British High Commission (BHC) Colombo Facebook page every other Tuesday.

John Rankin

People are invited to submit their questions related to the UK, through the following methods:

> Post a query on the wall of the BHC Facebook page with the subject “Ask the High Commissioner”;

> Tweet a question to the @UKinsrilanka and @UKinmaldives twitter channels with the hash tag “#asktheHC”; or

> Send an email to Colombo.General@fco.gov.uk with the subject “Ask the High Commissioner”.

The High Commissioner will select 5 questions on a fortnightly basis and answer them in a video clip, which will be posted in BHC Facebook page.

British High Commissioner, John Rankin, said, “We warmly welcome people sending in questions related to the UK – from UK foreign policy to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. However, we do not intend to answer individual visa questions and request that they be sent to our “Dear Visa Officer” column. There are nearly 3000 British citizens living in Sri Lanka, and at any given time there could be over 1,000 British tourists in Sri Lanka – this is an ideal opportunity for them as well to post a question to us, which I would be pleased to answer.”

The first video of “Ask the High Commissioner” is to be released on Tuesday, 13 September, 2011.

The British High Commission in Colombo uses social media proactively to engage with the Sri Lankan and Maldivian populations. In addition to four websites – in Sinhala, Tamil and English (one for each country) – the BHC is also on Facebook, Twitter and