Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Leader [27 February 2011] covering wide range of migration related issues, Richard Danziger, Chief of Mission of International Organization for Migration highlighted the importance of migration related activities to Sri Lanka. “Migration plays an important role in the Sri Lankan economy and has enormous impact on society as a whole. There are some 2 million Sri Lankans abroad. That is almost 10 percent of the population. Many of these perhaps as much as thirty percent – have a tertiary education. The total amount of money remitted to Sri Lanka will likely be over 3.5 billion US dollars this year,” he said, Continue reading
SSRR: Samaraweera slashes the Rajapaksa Regime
Mangala Samaraweera, in Sunday Leader, 27 Feb. 2011 under title: “Rajapaksa’s Dictatorial Allies Foretell His Future”
It is with great alarm that the peace loving people of the civilised world witness the despotic regime of Muammar Gaddafi killing his own people, using heavy weapons and even fighter aircraft to bomb civilian targets in a desperate attempt to retain power. Looking at the brutal suppression of peaceful civilian protests in Libya by its megalomaniac leader and his sons we cannot but draw parallels to the dynastic path the Rajapaksa regime has taken here at home.
For the last 42 years Gaddafi has ruled Libya with an iron fist, destroying all forms of opposition, stifling dissent, silencing free speech and paving the way for his sons to take over once he is no more. During this time he and his family amassed billions of dollars and siphoned the country’s oil wealth. Oil rich Libya with its population of just six million is run by a handful of family members and cronies loyal to the first family. Gaddafi’s sons Saif, Mutassim and Hannibal hold key positions in government and the military running the country as if it were their personal fiefdom.
Only the blind or those who refuse to see, in my opinion, cannot draw the obvious parallels between the Gaddafis of Libya and the Rajapaksas of Medamulana. Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has often been pictured on the world stage with 
his arm around his best pal, Muammar Gaddafi has imposed single family rule in Sri Lanka and through the passing of legislation such as the 18th Amendment ensured that Sri Lanka is well on the path to dictatorship by the removal of term limits for the all powerful executive presidency. Continue reading
TTT: Tamil Tigers infiltrate Tory Party in Toronto
Anthony Rinehart, Courtesy of Globe and Mail, Saturday, Mar. 05, 2011
Tories trying to win support from South Asians in Ontario have opened the door to remnants of a Tamil Tiger front group the federal Conservatives themselves banned in 2008. The unlikely association, forged behind a curtain of tough government talk about Tamil refugee ships and a feared terrorist migration to Canada last year, has developed since the Tigers’ separatist struggle was crushed by the Sri Lankan military in 2009.
Last month, Tim Hudak, Leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives, announced Shan Thayaparan as his party’s candidate for Markham-Unionville. Mr. Thayaparan had helped run an election for a new Tamil separatist group, the National Council of Canadian Tamils (NCCT), whose key adviser, Nehru Gunaratnam, is a former spokesman for the outlawed World Tamil Movement. Federally, Tamil broadcaster Ragavan Paranchothy, who was in direct contact with the top Tiger leadership in 2009, is seeking the Conservative nomination in Scarborough-Southwest. Continue reading
Tony Grieg, our new Tourism Ambassador
Courtesy of the Island, 7 March 2011
What do Leonard Woolf, Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Tony Greig have in common? All three Englishmen loved Sri Lanka and her people immensely. Therefore, it was very welcome news to learn that Tony Greig has been recently appointed as Sri Lanka’s Tourism Ambassador to promote this Indian Ocean Island as a popular travel destination.
Greig was born in South Africa. During the apartheid times, by virtue of his Scottish father, he was accepted to play cricket in England and later captained the side untill he lost it, owing to his involvement with Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. Mainly due to his naturally gregarious personality, now he seems to fit better in Australia than his previous chosen home of England. Continue reading
Filed under life stories, unusual people, world events & processes
Amnesty International under the gun in Sri Lanka
Shamindra Ferdinando, in the Island, 7 March 2010 under the heading: “SL calls for probe into NGO funding”
The Sri Lankan government says the recent revelation that former Secretary General of the London headquartered Amnesty International, Irene Khan and her deputy Kate Gilmore received a staggering 533,000 and 325,244 pounds, pay-off packages, respectively, should prompt a worldwide scrutiny of NGO operations.
Khan, a Bangladeshi and the first Asian to head the AI, assumed duties in 2001. During her tenure as head, AI targeted the Sri Lankan cricket team during the last World Cup in the Caribbean in 2007 over the country’s war against LTTE terrorism. Although Khan and Gilmore quit AI on Dec. 31, 2009, they remuneration remained undisclosed until Feb. 2011. The British press reported the issue last week. Continue reading
The Mouth of the Mighty Walawe Ganga …. asleep
… looking south to the Indian Ocean
and north upriver towards Uda Walawe where the river has been tamed by a dam … indeed by two dams the other being on the tributary at Chandikawewa –
Pics by Michael Roberts
Filed under life stories
Namal Rajapaksa presents Hambantota as new sports centre
Nitin Naik of TNN, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/cricket-world-cup-2011/interviews/Hambantota-Sri-Lankas-new-sports-capital/articleshow/7560048.cms
We’ve gushed over how quickly Hambantota got ready for the World Cup, we cursed how far it is from the main city and ran out of count of the number of difficulties one had to face to reach the venue where the two World Cup matches were staged and staged successfully at that. Now, as the Hambantota party ends, it’s time to take stock of the pros and cons of having a $9 million cricket venue in an essentially poor territory. Namal Rajapasa, son of Sri Lankan president Namal Rajapaksa, whose brainchild the stadium is and who is member of parliament from this region, allays the fears of the people who think this could be a white elephant and lays down his plans to bring the Commonwealth Games here in 2018. 
Plan of harbour scheme for visitors viewing present state… The port willbe fully operational by December 2012 according to the official presentation — Picked up by Michael Roberts, February 2011
Excerpts from the interview.
You’ve realised your goal of having international cricket matches staged here, the tough task is to sustain interest in cricket among the locals after these two World Cup games.
It’s not tough. Certainly not as tough as convincing the cricket board and the other authorities to come and build this facility. When we identified the land in 2006, this was a poor village. The road was only eight feet wide and it was made of mud. Now, because of the stadium, we have a double road. So development has taken place. We are happy to bring the WC to Hambantota , but we don’t want to relax. We have bigger plans in store to develop this place.
Pakistan and Kenya cricketers line up for match, 23 Feb. 2011– Pic by Michael Roberts
Intolerance: Hues & Issues
Michael Roberts
This article was written on 3 October for Nethra No. 2 and is reproduced here now that the journal is in print –see ISSN 1391-2380 that is Vol.11, No. 02, December 2010
“We are a defeated people,” said a middle-aged lecturer friend at the University of Jaffna when we met during my brief visit to the Jaffna Peninsula in early June 2010. “People are living freely … There is no fear, but where is the political solution?” complained the journalist Aiyathurai Satchithanandam to a fellow-journalist, Ross Tuttle, when the latter visited the Jaffna Peninsula recently. The tensions and mutterings are exacerbated by the intimidating presence of a swathe of armed personnel in the northern reaches and the oversight of critical junctions by armed men and/or fortified guard posts.
The politicized Tamil voices also claim that Sinhala colonisation is about to be unleashed on their territories, while more specific allegations assert that Buddhist shrines are sprouting in the north as one step in the government’s ulterior intentions.
Shrine at seaside in Wellawatte which seems to draw both Tamil and Sinhalese supplicants — to judge from the two occasions [one quite teeming] that I walked by in 2010
Continue reading
A woman of two worlds, Thusitha Jayasundera
S
he’s probably the only Asian working with the Royal Shakespeare Company and was noted for her performance in ‘The Comedy Of Errors” . THUSITHA JAYASUNDERA tells JERRY PINTO more about herself and her career Halfway through Shakespeare’s ‘The Comedy of Errors’, an exchange occurs between two sisters which would be distasteful to any woman of the 20th century — and perhaps to some in the 16th century as well— considering the fact that England was then being ruled by Good Queen Bess who knew where she liked her men and kept them there, by most accounts. Luciana and Adriana are discussing the latter’s husband’s possible falling off in affection and Claudia offers her sister some advice
Adriana: Why should their liberty than ours be more?
Luciana: Because their business still lies out of door.
Adriana: Look, when I serve him so, he takes it ill.
Luciana: O, know he is the bridle of thy will.
Adriana: There’s none but asses will be bridled so. Continue reading
Filed under life stories, unusual people
