As part of my journalism studies the studies, I’ve headed out to Raichur with a team of others to cover deprivation in rural India. My experience in covering poverty so far has been either with one of the many places that I worked for as field visits, or during my work with Perambara last year. [...]
A new video showing alleged summarily executions of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) cadres by the Sri Lankan military has been released online and aired on Channel4, amidst a rough welcome to the Sri Lankan President during his state visit to the United Kingdom. The Sri Lankan Government issued a statement from the High [...]
As much as people, and the Government, carry on talking about it, Hambantota will never be the next Colombo, nor will it be close to it. Yes, there is an airport that will be coming up, there is the famed harbour, there is a new Indian Consular office, but there are some simple reasons why [...]
Mahinda Rajapaksa swore in today for his second term. The 18th amendment gives him a chance to run ad nauseam. By the looks of it, he will. Whether he will win the election or not is a different story, and I plan on staying in the side of the sceptics. Six years is a long [...]
A few weeks back I was in a place called Marina Beach in Chennai. The place is a popular attraction among the locals. Hidden in plain sight though, is a small group of people who have a story to tell. When I was walking by one day taking pictures, a woman called me over. Not [...]
A topic which I wrote about a few years back on one of my old blogs, was the subject of child monks. Sri Lanka has a proud history of children being ordained as monks, in the form of Samaneras. I personally believe that this leads to children losing their childhood, as the life of the [...]
France yesterday outlawed the wearing of the full veil for women in France. Apparently whilst the law does not even say the word “Muslim”, it’s designed in such a way to target out the Muslim women who do cover their heads. The reasons cited are many, including protection of culture and tradition (French ones, obviously) [...]
The proposed constitutional amendments, now given the go-ahead by the Supreme Court, will go on for debate and vote in Parliament tomorrow (Wednesday, 8 September). By the looks of it, it would pass, which would allow President Rajapaksa to stand for re-election once his next term is over. As I outlined in this post, the [...]
For those who want to have a look at the proposed amendments to the Constitution, a copy in PDF can be found here.
Mahinda Rajapaksa has managed to secure more than 2/3 from the 225-member Parliament. This means he can practically bring in any legislation that he wants (I assume providing it doesn’t clash with the constitution) and get it passed. As Indi pointed out here, it’s partially due to Ranil Wickremasinghe being a weak opposition leader. But [...]
