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by Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka Even if everything the TNA says is true, it is still making a mistake, or perhaps two or three, and is on the verge of yet another wrong turning in the history of error that marks over half a century of Tamil politics. If the TNA’s fears of prevarication on the [...]

By Jehan Perera The government’s approach to problem solving after the end of the war has been two fold. One is to set up mechanisms that would give a different perspective on the problem. With the overall improvement in the country’s post-war situation evident to both citizens and foreign visitors alike, the government has its [...]

We, the following undersigned citizens, strongly condemn the attack on the Viluthu office in Colombo between the night of the 23rd of January and early hours of Tuesday morning, the 24th January. The office was broken into and searched by unknown persons. We are especially perturbed that this incident occurred in a high security zone [...]

by Robert. J. Evans (Sri Lanka’s killing fields have put it beyond the boundary There are compelling reasons why the England cricket team’s forthcoming tour should be called off argues South Asian affairs expert and former MEP Robert Evans.) For years one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the game, Muttiah Muralitharan, represented [...]

by Keshia Jacotine Sri Lanka now finds itself between two empires; Britain and China. For nearly 150 years, Sri Lanka (then known as “Ceylon”) was part of the British Empire. Before that, both Dutch and Portuguese settlers exerted control over parts of the country for years. Sri Lanka is now considered to be one of [...]

by Emanuel Stoakes The extrajudicial killing of civilians, surrendering soldiers and dissident journalists under the direction of the Sri Lankan government has been alleged by a former general in the Army who was extremely well-placed to comment on military activity during the island nation’s bloody civil war. The source, whose name is withheld for reasons [...]

By Kishali Pinto Jayawardene It is quite amusing to see the government and all its men using the report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation (LLRC) as a barely inadequate fig leaf to cover its total lack of adherence to the substance of the Commission’s recommendations. Unacceptable excuses for delay in implementation Here and overseas, [...]

Pro-government protesters, some armed with clubs, seized the promenade outside Fort Railway Station on Wednesday, to prevent media activists from observing “Black January,” a month when many of Sri Lanka’s journalists were attacked over the years. This was despite the Colombo Fort Magistrate Kanishka Wijeyratna making an order that media activists be allowed to stage [...]

By C.A. Chandraprema The Sinhala weekly Ravaya celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The present writer spoke to its editor Victor Ivan who was exulting over two things in particular – having been able to publish the newspaper for 25 years without folding up the way so many other publications did and secondly, that nobody [...]

By Namini Wijedasa Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha, advisor to the president on Reconciliation, has spoken openly and more emphatically on the need for the government to do more for people in areas affected by the war. Excerpts from the interview: QUESTION: You are one of the few members of the government still talking actively about reconciliation. [...]

by Arthur Wamanan Deputy Minister of Resettlement and Vice President of Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan says that priority should be given to address the immediate needs of the Tamil people. In an interview with The Nation, Muralitharan blamed the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) for making impracticable demands while ignoring the basic needs [...]

By Tisaranee Gunasekara “Buying the army off tends to be a good insurance policy for would-be dictators” – Christian Caryl (Foreign Policy – 24.1.2012) Some walls should never be built; some should never be breached. Many of Sri Lanka’s most devastating ills emanated from our habit of building unnecessary walls, and demolishing necessary ones. Our [...]

By Dhara Wijayatilake Much is being said about the Report of the five-member Committee appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to report on matters relating to the District ranking error that occurred in the 2011 G.C.E A/L results. Some allege that the report seeks to cover up a serious flaw in the Z score calculation that [...]

by Stewart Bell Toronto • More than two years after the smuggling ship MV Ocean Lady arrived off the West Coast carrying 76 Sri Lankan asylum seekers, the first public hearing to determine whether to accept them as refugees took place on Monday. “My life is in danger in my country,” an ethnic Tamil man [...]

by Prof.R.P.Gunawardane I have watched with great pain of mind the events and developments that took place after the release of the results of GCE A/L Examination held in 2011. Many errors and omissions in the results have been reported and a presidential committee was appointed to look into this matter. The report of this [...]

by Satish Chandra As is customary, official circles in India have hailed External Affairs S M Krishna’s four-day visit to Sri Lanka [ Images ] from January 16th to 19th 2012 as ‘successful.’ Whether or not it was indeed ‘successful’ demands an examination of what transpired during the visit and the extent to which India’s [...]

IRIN news service Tea in Sri Lanka is one of the country’s biggest cash crops, but families working on tea estates are among the nation’s poorest in terms of earnings as well as nutrition, say experts who back regional approaches to tackle nutrition disparity. One in every five children younger than five is malnourished nationwide [...]

The Canadian Human Rights Voice (CHRV) is organizing a non-partisan event on February 1st, 2012 ( 10 am till 6 pm ) in Parliament Hill, Ottawa, to discuss Canada’s responsibilities to respond to the violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in Sri Lanka. In December 2011, the Sri Lankan government-appointed Lessons Learnt and [...]

by G.Pramod Kumar The weird stone barrage by the Sri Lankan Navy on Tamil fishermen from Rameshwaram near the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) on Saturday, brings forth a vexed issue that seems to perpetually escape resolution. At stake are the lives and livelihoods of thousands of fisher-folk in Tamil Nadu.

by National Peace Council During his recent visit to Sri Lanka, Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna gave support to the Sri Lankan government’s intention to have a Parliamentary Select Committee work out the modalities of a political solution to the ethnic conflict. The Indian government has consistently expressed its interest in a political [...]

by Tisaranee Gunasekara False paths, credulously followed… – Gunter Grass (Eulogy on Christa Wolf) Good warriors often make bad leaders. Those who are good at winning wars are not necessarily good at governance — “with their serial signature fiascos The AL results imbroglio is, and seems destined to remain, unresolved.

By Ranga Jayasuriya Nearly a thousand political activists who were heading to Jaffna to take part in a protest campaign against the abduction of two of their colleagues had a taste of the bitter post-war reality in the North even before they could reach the peninsula. Twelve bus loads of activists were held up at [...]

By Namini Wijedasa A visiting Indian dignitary last week took it upon himself to reveal the Sri Lankan government’s latest position on power-sharing. Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said at a media briefing on Tuesday that President Mahinda Rajapaksa told him he would fully implement 13th Amendment”plus”.

By Tisaranee Gunasekara “O let my land be a land where liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath” (Langston Hughes) Speaking with many tongues is a time-tested Rajapaksa way of obfuscating issues and evading trouble. But occasionally this deceptive habit helps reveal what the regime would dearly want to conceal.

by Asanga Welikala Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka’s book, Fidel’s Ethics of Violence: The Moral Dimension of the Political Thought of Fidel Castro, is a significant contribution towards understanding one of the enduring intellectual dilemmas in the theory and practice of politics: the ethics of the use of violence. Dayan’s ambitious project in this book is to [...]

By M. S. Shah Jahan Greece owes 367 billion dollars. Who is going to bail out? The other European countries. Ireland owes 565 billion dollars. Who is going to bail out? Rest of Europe. How much Italy and Spain owe? One trillion dollars each. Who is going to bail out them? France, Britain and Germany. [...]

Address by Hon. Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, former President of India ‘Evolution of Noble Nations’ at the launch of National Action Plan and declaring 2012 As the year for a Trilingual Sri Lanka January 21, 2012 Evolution of Noble Nations What can I Give? Dear friends, when I was flying from New Delhi [...]

Thirteen plus not Thirteen minus by Dushy Ranetunge in New York The Thirteen amendment was “forced” on us to reverse on going fracture of the republic, caused by tribalists trying to drag it into the past and reverse history into something Sri Lanka never was. For most of its history, Sri Lanka was administered under [...]

The writ application filed by TNA National List M.P., M.A Sumanthiran challenging the Land Circular (2011/04) was taken up today (19th January 2012) in the Court of Appeal. Ms. Murdu Fernando, DSG appearing for the Respondents gave an undertaking to withdraw the Land Circular and informed Court that a new circular will be issued and [...]

By Agence France-Presse A Sri Lankan doctor who admitted aiding the South Asian nation’s Tamil Tiger separatist group began his appeal on Tuesday to be allowed to resume work in Britain. Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy spent almost five years in a US jail for providing material support to the rebels, who were defeated by Sri Lankan troops [...]

by S.Anthonithasan Croos The Ten Year National Plan – milestone towards a Trilingual Sri Lanka A Ten Year National Plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka will be launched by President Mahinda Rajapaksa on January 21, 2012. This is yet another strong initiative of the President to create long lasting peace and harmony among all Sri [...]

By S L Gunasekara In the heyday of the LTTE, the TNA had it good. While the Tamils whom they claimed to represent suffered indescribable hardships, torments and agonies by reason of being under the jackboot of the Tigers with their little children being regularly kidnapped and their hard earned money extorted from them by [...]

By Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka I look at the issue of accountability primarily as a political scientist and from a comparative politics point of view. And I am struck by the fact that what I consider to be an exemplary progressive democracy, Brazil, headed by Dilma Rousseff, who was herself an guerrilla and a political prisoner, tortured [...]

by S L Gunasekara Our late colonial masters, the British, have an institutionalized system of ‘family bandyism’. Their Head of State will always be from one family. When the mother Elizabeth dies it will be her eldest son or failing him his eldest son or failing a son, a daughter who will succeed to the [...]

The Government of Sri Lanka suffered a big blow today when the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which is the premier political party of the Sri Lankan Tamils rejected the report presented by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation(LLRC) that was appointed by the President Mahinda Rajapaksa as a domestic mechanism to probe past events related to [...]

By Emily Wax Despite differences that spurred civil war and cost tens of thousands of lives, the Tamils and the Sinhalese from Sri Lanka have at least one thing in common: a love of tea. But some Tamil Americans say they are cautious when they go to Dupont Circle’s Teaism because their archenemies — the [...]

By Namini Wijedasa Control over territory was central, to the LTTE’s futile battle for a separate homeland. Now, nearly three years after the war ended, ownership of land in the north and east remains a complicated, controversial and tangled mess. Two new reports shed light on serious disputes related to property throughout the north and [...]

by Gamini Weerakoon A politician’s desire to be remembered is only natural. To be remembered forever would be the acme of political desires. What better way would a Sri Lankan desire be remembered than for his name be inscribed in the Mahavamsa. (The Mahavamsa we have to explain to those uninitiated in our history is [...]

by Namini Wijedasa Nobody can accuse Jaliya Wickramasuriya, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Washington, of not trying his best. But his best–even when nurtured by an expensive PR company–is evidently not enough. The genial and approachable Wickramasuriya was the subject of a widely circulated email last week. The title of it was, ‘When an Idiot was [...]

By Kishali Pinto Jayawardene The continuing failure of Sri Lanka’s institutions of justice is well demonstrated in the most recent Views of the Geneva based United Nations Human Rights Committee (UN Committee) calling upon the Sri Lankan State to effectively investigate and prosecute the murderers of a small time businessman in Negombo after he, his [...]

by Rajah Kuruppu A recent event that underlines the innate good nature of man was the great Walk from Dondra in the South to Jaffna in the North covering a distance of 670 kms. to generate funds to build the Paediatric (Children’s) Cancer Ward in the Jaffna General Hospital. The Walk named Trail, a journey [...]

BY Tisaranee Gunasekara “A historic victory can wreak as much havoc as a historic defeat” Tony Judt (Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten 20th Century) Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has spoken: the dead Tiger might arise. If the Tiger does rise from the ashes of an annihilating defeat, a lion-share of the credit for that near-miraculous resurrection would [...]

by Dr.Vickramabahu Karunaratne In recent months, people in Lanka have seen a dramatic increase in the number of protests involving thousands of university students. Many of these turned violent after clashing with the police, who tried to stop their campaigns. Last week Jayewardenepura student demonstration was stopped at Colpetty junction, but there was no clash.

By Tisaranee Gunasekara Tiger fascism and Sinhala supremacism: two inimical but mutually sustaining extremisms which have been the bane of post-independence Ceylon/Sri Lanka. Sinhala supremacism created a language issue, prevented its resolution and enabled its metamorphosis into an ethnic problem. Tiger fascism rendered a negotiated settlement of the war impossible and murdered many Sinhala and [...]

by Gamini Jayasinghe Thai Pongal is a “Thanks giving ceremony” celebrated by farmers in particular to thank the nature spirit- the sun- and farm animals for bringing prosperity to agriculture with plentiful harvests. They venerate and thank the sun god – the nature spirit and offer the first part of the produce in the form [...]

UK Foreign Office Minister responds to report on the conflict in Sri Lanka: Alistair Burt, Minister with responsibility for Sri Lanka, informs the House of the Government’s views on the Sri Lankan Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’s Report. “I would like to inform the House of the Government’s views on the Sri Lankan Lessons Learnt [...]

By Ayesha Zuhair The report of the International Crisis Group (ICG) on ‘Sri Lanka: Women’s Insecurity in the North and East’ alleges that that violence against women in Sri Lanka’s mainly Tamil-speaking North and East is on the rise and that women in the region face “a desperate lack of security” in the aftermath of [...]

By Rosy Senanayake MP Sri Lanka was one of the forerunners in the fight for universal suffrage since 1927; in this region we were one of the first countries to give women the right to vote and contest. In 1931 when the battle was finally won we had 4.5 percent in the council.

Arundhati Roy reacts to the objection to her attending the fair organised by The Book Sellers and Publishers Association of South India “The protest began when The Cage by Gordon Weiss (former UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka) was released. The book indicts the Sri Lankan government for war crimes, but is also sharply critical of [...]

Set up industrial training and engineering institutions: G. Parthasarathy In the present-day world where politics is invariably trumped by economics, India has to have a drastic rethinking of its policy in favour of economically empowering the Tamils in Sri Lanka as a sustainable solution for their rehabilitation, former diplomat G. Parthasarathy said on Sunday.

by Mano Ganesan Speech made by Mano Ganesan leader of the Democratic People Front, at the NSSP annual convention “It is Answering Time for the southern Sinhala establishment. Tamils in particular and the Sri Lanka onlooker world community in large are the petitioners.

by Prof.Rajiva Wijesinha Speech by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, MP at the inaugural session of the ‘Global Languages Meet’ on January 7, at the Sir Sayoji Rao Auditorium, Varodara,India It was an honour to be present at the launch of the People’s Linguistic Survey of India, and I must congratulate Dr Ganesh Devy, your founder, on [...]

by Gotabaya Rajapaksa Sri Lanka today is a country that is enjoying the benefits of peace. For three decades, the people of this country suffered immensely as a result of terrorist activities. The LTTE’s defeat in May 2009 has set the stage for a national revival that should enable Sri Lanka to become one of [...]

by Tisaranee Gunasekara “Look over the edge of the abyss, and consider how close we are to losing what we have created here. Ask yourselves if the time has not arrived for us to come to our senses, to break out of our paralysis, to demand for ourselves, finally, the lives that we deserve to [...]

by Javid Yusuf To gain an accurate understanding of the Muslim community’s approach to the rebuilding of Society it is necessary to first comprehend a Muslim’s outlook to life itself. For Muslims, religion is the most important aspect in life and hence the approach to public affairs would be premised upon a system of values [...]

by Dr. Vikramabahu Karunaratne The full report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) is in public domain, after it was presented in parliament on 16 December, by the Leader of the House, Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva. He in fact made it very certain that the recommendations would be carried out to the [...]

by Kishali Pinto Jayewardene Several months ago, President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared to the world that the ‘truth’ in regard to the last stages of the war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and government forces will be revealed by the Report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) commissioned by himself (see [...]

by Dr.Tissa Vitarana General Secretary, Lanka Samasamaja Party The LSSP welcomes the LLRC Report because it provides a positive and constructive basis for achieving reconciliation and national unity. It is a balanced, serious and comprehensive report that also makes available, as a separate Annexures publication, all the data drawn on by the LLRC Commission in [...]

Namini Wijedasa Interviews V.Aanandasangaree Nothing has improved for the Tamils of the North even two-and-half years after the war, said Veerasingham Anandasangaree, secretary-general of the Tamil United Liberation Front, last week. Excerpts from the interview: QUESTION: How would you analyse the progress of talks between the Tamil National Alliance and government? ANSWER: Both sides are [...]

By Tisaranee Gunasekara “Nothing is closer to the law of the jungle than a system of distorted laws and procedures” – Haaretz Editorial (2.1.2012) President Rajapaksa won the Eelam War, with the help of countless others (including the imprisoned Gen. Fonseka). In fairytales, the hero who saves a country from some deadly peril is rewarded [...]

by Chelvatamby Maniccavasagar Skandavarodaya College, Chunnakam, Jaffna which was established in 1894 by philanthropist and educationist, late Kandaiya Upaathiyayar is completing 117 years in the sphere of education. To mark this occasion a special commemorative first day cover and stamp will be issued by the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry.

by Evan Duggan, Vancouver Sun A young scholar from B.C. has found herself in the centre of the international climate change spotlight after a video of her rousing speech at the Durban climate talks in South Africa last recently went viral. Anjali Appadurai, a former student of Gleneagle Secondary in Coquitlam, who is now a [...]

By D.B.S. Jeyaraj True tale of a Tamil Tigress-4 After joining the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) formally the two friends Shenuka and Nirmala were lodged at the house of a widowed mother of three daughters by senior tiger leader Murali. This lady was an aunt of Bharathan Rajanayagam who was then in charge [...]

Since the end of the war in May 2009, it has become important for all ethnic communities of Sri Lanka to re-examine and reevaluate their past. It is through this process of self-reflection that some of the major issues that confront state and civil society today can be meaningfully reconceived and reconfigured for the future.

By S. Ratnjeevan H. Hoole These are the days of talk – and I do mean talk – of national integration. As I write a paper to be read at the annual meeting of the American Society of Engineering Education on the siting of the new engineering faculty in Jaffna and do the requisite reading [...]

By R. Bhagwan Singh Driving on the potholed A9 highway to Jaffna that could break the strongest of spines, it was great relief spotting a volleyball match in progress at a wayside playground. It was in Kilinochchi, which used to be the LTTE capital until President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced its capture by his troops on [...]

By Tisaranee Gunasekara “by clever and persevering use of propaganda, even heaven can be represented as hell to the people, and conversely the most wretched life as paradise”-Hitler (Mein Kampf) If the law was allowed to take its normal course after the Kolonnawa mini-war, the Christmas Eve murder of a British tourist in Tangalle may [...]

by Terence Fernando About 200,000 displaced people are still living in refugee camps in northern Sri Lanka, even though southerners believe everything is back to normal. The government organises trips to the war zone only to show monuments that celebrate the army’s victory.