Namini Wijedasa, on “The Sri Lankan Hero” … in a Sandesa to GOD
Dear God,
These are terrible times. They say someone at the Central Bank mucked up the economy. There is a balance of payments crisis. Investment hasn’t taken off. We are heavily indebted. If the rupee sinks any lower, God, we will have to ask the Chinese to do something about it. After all, the Chinese are pretty much the only ones doing anything about our problems. Continue reading
Raja Dekma, or ROYAL AUDIENCE ….. Photo Item in the Daily Mirror, 25 March 2012
Pics by Pradeep Dilrukshana
President Mahinda Rajapaksa comments at photographs of world leaders captured in the years gone by. Is he reviving nostalgic memories? The picture was taken at the exhibition ‘Raja Dekma’ a complete portrayal of the President’s personal photographer Sudath Silva held at the Kotte Ananda Sasthralaya today. Continue reading
Peter Wilson, in The Weekend Australian 24-25 March 2012
SEVEN-TIME killer Mohamed Merah could have posted on the internet the horrific video footage that he took of all his murders, according to anxious French authorities.
Pic by AFP
Police and intelligence officials in Paris fear the footage might surface on the internet despite their success in tracking down the Islamic extremist who was killed during a blazing gun battle at his apartment in Toulouse, southern France. Authorities fear the videos of the first al-Qa’ida-inspired murders on French soil could become a grisly rallying point for extremists and an affront to the victims’ families. Prosecutor Francois Molins said he had already watched the footage, which was filmed by a wide-angle lens strapped to Merah’s chest and was found in a camera the killer had left with a friend. The most distressing images showed Merah, 23, chasing eight-year-old Miriam Monsonego outside her Jewish school on Monday, catching her by the hair and calmly shooting her in the head. Continue reading
… SEE http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-24/dying-for-the-truth-in-sri-lanka/3911004 for the podcast.ELIZABETH JACKSON: In a rare opportunity, correspondent Richard Lindell was recently granted a visa to Sri Lanka. There he saw first hand a government intent on intimidation and a population cowered into submission. That includes the country’s journalists. Richard Lindell spoke to Frederica Jantz [sic], the Editor of Sri Lanka’s ‘Sunday Leader.’
FREDERICA JANTZ: We have been attacked nine times, we are 18-years-old and our presses have been burnt down twice. And of course we paid the ultimate price when our founder, editor-in-chief Lasanthe Wickrematunge, was murdered in January 2009. Even after that murder, I myself continue to receive death threats. So yes it’s a huge challenge to remain independent. And more recently we even had the president himself calling my chairman and the owner of the newspaper and yelling at him, literally yelling, for a front page news item that we had carried exposing that he had siphoned off a billion rupees into a private account from a Chinese grant. Continue reading
Prachi Patankar and Jinee Lokaneeta, Sunday Island, 11 March 2012 ***
On March 4, Sunday evening, Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne spoke at a public meeting titled, ‘Post-war Sri Lanka: The Political Solution and its Historical Context’, organised by the South Asia Solidarity Initiative (SASI) at the Brecht Forum in New York City. We were fortunate to engage Wickramaratne, a long-time member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), a former senior advisor to the Ministry of Constitutional Affairs, and a member of the team that drafted the 2000 Constitution Bill and signatory to the Majority Report of Experts Committee to the All Party Representative Committee in 2006. Wickramaratne gave us a fascinating account of how the story of devolution – sharing of power with the minorities particularly Tamils and Muslims – has repeatedly come up in the context of Sri Lanka and unfortunately remains an elusive goal at the current moment under the present Government.
While the major international stories on Sri Lanka have been about the war between the LTTE and the Government, and since the end of the war, the demand for war crimes investigation; Wickramaratne’s talk challenged the audience to look at a strong tradition of constitutionalism and the piecemeal way in which the question of devolution has been brought to the centre stage of Sri Lankan politics. Focusing on some of the key phases in which devolution became an issue, Wickramaratne suggested a remarkable story of how in recent years there has been much more of an acceptance of the need for power sharing by the dominant political parties. Continue reading
Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, democratic measures, language policies, Left politics, LTTE, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, power sharing, Rajapaksa regime, reconciliation, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, truth as casualty of war, UN reports, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes
N. Sathiya Moorthy, Wednesday, 21 March 2012 — before the vote.
Background: Irrespective of this month’s vote in Geneva on the US-sponsored resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), things may not be the same again in Sri Lanka. There is more to the UNHRC vote than winning and losing. Either way, it has already stirred up a hornet’s nest. It may only be a beginning, when the sponsors of the resolution believed it would be confined to “accountability issues” pertaining to alleged “war crimes” targeting the Sri Lankan state, its institutions and individuals attaching to it.
Comment; This is not the first time Sri Lanka has been hauled over the UNHRC coals on “accountability issues”, as many in the country seem to believe. Within days of the end of the “Eelam War IV” in May 2009, the European Union initiated a similar action in Geneva. A counter-resolution initiated by friends of Sri Lanka, such as India, Pakistan and China, put paid to the EU efforts at the time. Today, by clearly attaching its name to the UNHRC resolution, the US may have forced issues already in Sri Lanka – but not necessarily in ways that all initiators of the move would appreciate. Continue reading
Shirajiv Sirimane, in The Sunday Observer, 25 March 2012
A year ago, during a tour of Malaysia with some Sunday Observer staffers, I took a luxury bus to the Genting Highlands Adventure Park from the Kuala Lumpur Central Bus station. I said to myself that Sri Lanka would not build a modern bus stand such as the KL Central within the next two decades.
The KL bus station had escalators and electronic time tables; a bus station like that in Sri Lanka was far beyond our wildest dreams. However, almost a carbon copy of the KL Bus Station was built by the Ministry of Economic Development in Negombo, which even had toilets equipped with automatic flushing systems, proving that Sri Lanka is adding infrastructure of a global standard. Continue reading
Sunday Leader, 25 March 2012
Let not the Rajapaksa government and its supporters pooh-pooh the Resolution adopted at the UNHRC on alleged war crimes committed by the government. The Resolution was adopted by the 47 member council by 28 to 15 with 8 abstentions and it is a serious indictment against the government that could have a severe bearing on the future of the country. We hope government apologists will not give juvenile interpretations to the voting such as adding on the 8 abstentions to the Sri Lankan vote and claiming that Sri Lanka was condemned by only one vote. Such a childish interpretation was attempted by a Central Bank statistician when Sri Lanka’s bid to stage the Commonwealth Games was rejected. Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE: Explanation of India’s vote at the UNHRC on Promotion,Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka
1. India believes that the primary responsibility for the promotion and protection of human rights lies with the States. Consequently resolutions of this nature should fully respect the sovereign rights of states and contribute to Sri Lanka’s own efforts in this regard.
2. India had welcomed the recommendations of Sri Lanka’s LLRC report. We believe that there is indeed a window of opportunity to forge a consensual way forward towards reconciliation through a political settlement respecting all the ethnic and religious groups inhabiting the nation. This is, in effect, what the Sri Lankan Government had committed to in this Council in 2009. We have noted the commencement of such a dialogue with several parties, including the Tamil National Alliance. Continue reading
thuppahi
