Photo courtesy JDS A Talk given at the Colombo Club, August 2014 Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. I do so with trepidation since speaking to captains of industry is quite outside my zone of comfort. My brother Indrajit Coomaraswamy, with whom you are more familiar, once told me in the middle of a political ...
Photo courtesy Business Today Minister Wimal Weerawansa, nicknamed as the ‘eldest son of the President’, during the 2010 presidential election campaign, came up with a rather serious proposal some two months back: To have a referendum to abolish the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, the constitutional chapter that deals with devolution of power. Sinhala extremist parties and groups immediately ...
Image courtesy Omlanka For someone who never belonged to any political party in Sri Lanka, Maduluwawe Sobitha thero (1942 – 2015) led an extraordinarily political life. The fearless and politically engaged Buddhist monk stood up to every Lankan head of state beginning with President J R Jayewardene (in office: 1977-1988). He never hesitated or minced his words when he ...
Goatabaya Rajapaksa ceremonially declaring open a Buddhist Leadership Academy of the Bodhu Bala Sena in Galle, via dbsjeyaraj.com Sri Lanka’s fragile attempt of reconciliation, following the end of the thirty-year civil war, faces a potentially backbreaking obstacle. The growing Sinhala Buddhist nationalism that is the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) movement is threatening to divide an already a fractious society. ...
On again and off again ceasefires, rocket launches, bombings and killings involving Israel and Gaza dominate television news at this time. When the indirect talks between the two sides fail in Cairo, the military campaigns restart and the destruction caused by Israeli bombings in Gaza is there for all of us to see. Buildings with several stories, UN schools, civilian ...
Photograph courtesy Api Sri Lankan On 20th Nov. 2014, the President of Sri Lanka officially proclaimed his intention to hold presidential elections and seek a third term. This was when there was two more years to hold presidential elections. It was widely believed that the reasons for premature elections was the fading popularity of the President and his strong ...
A few months ago I travelled to Jaffna. I saw a very different, ‘developed’ Jaffna than the one I had visited just a few years previously in 2011; a mall, 3D cinema, new buildings and many other new developments in the process of construction. The people of Jaffna however, seem to be unchanged. They dress the same, they talk ...
The Presidential Commission of Inquiry to Investigate into Complaints Regarding Missing Persons (the Commission), was established over a year ago on 15th August 2013 by Gazette 1823/42. The sole purpose of the Commission was to investigate and inquire into cases of disappearances in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka. In March 2014, the Centre for Policy Alternatives ...
Sri Lanka Campaign came out today with this extremely revealing and useful infographic about the Rajapaksa regime’s nepotism in Sri Lanka. Worth sharing widely. For high resolution version, click here.
We drove down to Galle today on the newly opened E01 road, more commonly known as the Southern Highway / Expressway. Setting off at 6.33am, we were in Galle at 7.45am, and setting off after a leisurely breakfast at around 9.45am, we were back in Kottawa around 10.45am. Many will take this same journey in the days and weeks ...
Image courtesy the Sunday Leader The recent elections to three provincial councils, namely the Northern, North Western and Central and the consequent results together with the general political expectations that several more provincial elections would be held next year followed by national, presidential and general elections, make the opposition or non UPFA political landscape a rather important factor in ...
Image courtesy JVP Media Unit If the Rajapaksa administration wanted to mislead and confuse the mainstream opposition and lead it to an electoral dead-end, it could hardly do better than the opposition has itself done, and done unto itself. The main Opposition candidate remains Ranil Wickremesinghe who has no rural resonance. As Mervyn de Silva wrote, “the road to ...
Photo by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, via Yahoo News There is change, and for the better. The presence of the leader of the SLFP at the UNP Convention was something unimaginable even a year ago. Maithripala Sirisena was the Chief Guest at the annual gathering of the UNP and that was a sign of new times, a movement towards a more ...
Curated by Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives and Editor of Groundviews, Sanjana Hattotuwa, and in collaboration with Artraker (United Kingdom), Watch this space: Framing the past, untying the future – an exhibition featuring Sri Lankan art and work from the Artraker “Art of Peace” series, theatre and public discussions – was an attempt to interrogate how ...
AFP PHOTO/LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHILAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI/AFP/Getty Images via FT blog The ‘Declaration of Peace’ by the Government of Sri Lanka at the 67th Independence Day Celebrations held on 4th February 2015 is a notable shift in its recognition of the past and the need for healing and unity. The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) made a similar recommendation, as did ...
In relation to the 6 families who were staying at Our Lady of Velankanni church, original article available here. Due to insistence of the families, the Army had agreed to vacate the lands they (Army) had occupied and allow all six families to go back to their own lands. However, around two acres of lands remains occupied by the Army. ...
When the British administrator J.S. Furnivall coined the term “plural society” he was talking about colonial Burma to describe the extraordinary diversity of nationalities, ethnicities, races and religions that inhabited its cities. Sixty years ago he wrote, “Bengali Muslims jostled alongside Iraqi Jews and Armenian Christians”. Walking around Yangon’s streets today, you can still experience this diversity in the ...
Image courtesy JDS Sri Lanka Campaign has just released a very good compilation of rebuttals to points made by Min Mahinda Samarasinghe’s address to the UN Human Rights Council yesterday, which can be read and viewed here. Here Sri Lankan civil society responding to Mahinda Samarasinghe’s speech @groundviews @cfhaviland #HRC22 #UNlk scribd.com/fullscreen/127… — Sri Lanka Campaign (@SLcampaign) February 28, ...
Photo courtesy MSF Like many countries, Sri Lanka is a nation struggling with a lot problems. The prevailing negative trends on the island are well-documented and irrefutable. People talk about national reconciliation, but one doesn’t see much of it. People talk about human rights, but one doesn’t see those being protected either. Perhaps the most unforgettable aspect of daily ...
