Photo by AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe, via Sulekha Tourism will bring millions to Sri Lanka but will we see any of it? During the last week of October this year, the BBC Sinhala Sandeshaya service featured a story about Sri Lankan tourism, which was in turn aired by the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. The piece drew particular attention to irregularities ...
Photo courtesy Talking Economics Women make up 50% of the population but only 5% of the parliament – how can this be solved? ”If the women of a country are slaves, the men can never be free”. These were the words written by the Editorial, in the Sri Lankan magazine Voice of Women, as long back as January, 1980. Sri Lanka ...
Photo courtesy ABC The “Special Article” on illicit migration to Australia by boats from Sri Lanka by Emily Howie (2013) in the Economic and Political Weekly (August 31) appears to be based largely on lot of conjectures. An article written by an Australian refugee advocate based on 20-30 personal interviews throughout Sri Lanka and citations from Australian (and limited ...
Photo courtesy Sri Lanka Guardian “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” – Lao Tzu In his first trip abroad to India, the new Foreign Minister has stated that the new government is committed to implementing the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Similarly, in his first address to Parliament after the formation of the government, the ...
Download the report in full here, or view in inline here. ### Introduction Nearly four years since the end of the country’s civil war, Sri Lanka remains a divided, post-war society, as the ethnic conflict burns on. It has been fifteen months since the Final Report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was made public. In July 2012, ...
Google has just released an interesting visualisation of the global small arms and ammunitions trade (works best in Google Chrome). For those with older browsers, a screencast of the visualisation can be viewed as an HD video below. When disaggregated by country, Sri Lanka’s small arms and ammunitions imports since ’92 to 2010 are very interesting to study through ...
Photograph by Chandragupta Amarasinghe, courtesy Thuppahi’s Blog Looking back at the July 1983 disaster, almost 30 years later, it would be natural to query how key policy issues now critical in the discourse on disaster management, like good governance and Human Rights, affected the decisions made by policy makers and implementers as they handled the evolving situation. A Presidential ...
Photo courtesy Galaxy Mag Years ago, when only heterosexuality was legal in Australia men or women having sex with members of their own gender was a serious offence. Underpinning the law was a gamut of attitudes that cast homosexuals in the guise of abnormal, unnatural and depraved predators who deserved contempt at best and death at worst. Today there ...
Photo courtesy TVNZ 15 January 2015. Mahinda Rajapaksa is not the president of Sri Lanka. I pinch myself. I have been doing so for the last six days. He still is not. He was democratically voted out of power a week ago. One person was killed, many were attacked, state resources were abused massively. The election was not free ...
“We can see how the people are suffering but who are we to tell? Nothing can be done. Who can fight against the Government? The news on the ground is that the Defence Ministry is trying to secure 1500 acres to build a hotel in this area. This is the main reason they don’t want these people to return to ...
Anna Hazare, courtesy Injustices.in Foundation It was just last week that the BBC featured a documentary describing the post war atrocities committed against vulnerable Tamil women in the north and east who are part of the captive Tamil population subject to heavy militarization. Although the state of emergency was suddenly and mysteriously lifted by the President, last week, obviously due ...
Image courtesy Trinity College website History and tradition are great mentors. History assures us of who we are, and if we are brave enough, it can also teach us where we have failed or triumphed, behaved honourably or been disgraced. Tradition, for it to be useful, must be wisely chosen and morally crafted; because it is the conduit through ...
Photo via The Globe and Mail, by Eranga Jayawardena/Associated Press The power system in modern societies is polycentric and therefore there are innumerable movers and shakers that influence society either in conflict or conciliation. Compared with olden societies, relying on a few powerful stakeholders does not lead to quick fix of problems due to its multi-polar nature. Therefore the advocates ...
Photograph courtesy National Geographic Give me that man That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him In my heart’s core Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2 The death of the moral colossus in the politics of our time has occasioned a worldwide celebration of all things bright and beautiful that he represented in such abundant measure and to ...
Image courtesy Sri Lanka Brief In 2009 the government announced that the LTTE has been wiped out from the country with the end of the armed conflict. However, in the past few weeks there have been a number of arrests, including of women under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) supposedly to investigate and counter a renaissance of the ...
Original photo courtesy Vikalpa “It was mainly symbolic”, is how FUTA President Dr. Ranjith Dewaisiri characterized the group’s demand of “6 percent of GDP for education”, which has now gained national attention. This was in response to a question posed by an audience member during ‘THE FORUM with Eran’ held this week (26th) featuring Dr. Ranjith Dewasiri, Prof. Rajiva ...
Lord Buddha gave different meditation objects to different people. For some, just focusing on rubbing two pieces of material against each other worked, and for some others focusing on the breath worked. On Vesak poya day, we celebrate the birth, enlightenment, and the passing away of this great teacher. In Sri Lanka, almost every Buddhist family makes a lantern, ...
The Lasantha Wickrematunge Memorial Lecture held recently featured, as noted on the website of Sri Lankans Without Borders (SLWB) website, “…leading journalists from Canada and Sri Lanka [in] a panel discussion to examine press freedom in Sri Lanka in commemoration of the life and times of leading Sri Lankan journalist and human right activist Lasantha Wickrematunge.” Co-hosted by Sri ...
Image courtesy The Telegraph The merged North-Eastern Provincial Council was an administrative unit that came into being and existed as a structure in Sri Lankan administration. Consequent to the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord and the enactment of the 13th Amendment to the 1978 Sri Lankan Constitution a degree of devolution was granted to the provinces. In terms of the Provincial ...
Photo by Nazly Ahmed (@nazly) I walk at Independence Square a couple of evenings a week. A friend who walks with me, asked why the Buddhist Flag was hoisted on the flag pole. To tell you the truth, I had not noticed the large rectangle of blue, yellow, red, white and orange fluttering in the wind. On my walks ...
