“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” — Voltaire Where do we go from here? The paranoia increases by the day. First came the reported disappearance of Prageeth Eknaligoda (missing since January 24 this year), then the statement made recently by reinstated Deputy Minister Mervyn Silva who reportedly stated at a ...

BBC World Service In 1989 Appapillai Amirthalingam was assassinated at his home in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. He was a politician - the most prominent democratically-elected leader of the Tamil community....

By a special correspondent Exclusive to BBC Sinhala service The alert and watchful eyes of weary soldiers scanned every vehicle passing through the checkpoints. Broken, torn buildings tower over the tiny UNHCR tents on the gardens and court yards. Hanging...

by Tisaranee Gunasekara “A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill….” - George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-four) Some months ago, Defence Secretary and Presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapakse threatened to send the former Army Commander, Gen. Sarath Fonseka, to the gallows. When BBC’s Stephen Sackur asked about the possibility of Gen. Fonseka testifying about...

Report To Congress on Measures Taken by the Government of Sri Lanka and International Bodies To Investigate Incidents During the Recent Conflict in Sri Lanka, and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Such Efforts Office of War Crimes Issues Report August 11,...

by Prof. Michael Roberts The citizens of Thamileelam who struggled out of the inferno of war in the north-east corner of the northern Vanni during the months of January-May 2009 journeyed on foot or boat. During the first few months...

by Tisaranee Gunasekara One should take great care not to bow down or become enslaved to an object unworthy and base, lest we become sharers of the baseness and unworthiness of the same — Giodano Bruno (The Heroic Enthusiasts) Last week the villagers of Ragamwela in Ampara, engaged in a protest demonstration, accusing the police of occupying their lands. Ragamwela is strategically locat...

By Dr.A.R.M.Imtiyaz [Abstract: Symbols are emotional and they play significant role in all aspect of human communities, including electoral politics. Symbols are deadly in nature because they can provoke deadly violence and war crimes. In Sri Lanka, Sinhala politician and...

By Athiyan Silva Further evidence has emerged in recent weeks of the continuing political disintegration of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was militarily crushed in May 2009 by the Sri Lankan military. Several reports indicate that...

(Lanka-e-News 25.July.2010 -1.10PM) The BBC Sinhala service including ‘Sandesaya’ and other miniature services and groups world wide are to be closed down in September 2010, it has been decided,...

By Charles HavilandBBC News, Colombo On a leafy Colombo corner, surrounded by hundreds of his nationalist supporters and Buddhist monks, Sri Lankan cabinet minister Wimal Weerawansa burns an effigy of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Mr Ban is a figure of...

Current moves undermine further Democracy in Sri Lanka By Dr. S. Narapalasingam The Government of Sri Lanka has been successful in brushing off the alleged accusations of war crimes during the final stage of the war and violations of the...

BBC Sandeshaya The detained former military commander in Sri Lanka says he is prepared to meet the special panel appointed to advice the UN chief on alleged human rights violations in Sri Lanka. Gen Sarath Fonseka told BBC Sandeshaya that...

By S.V.Kirubaharan, France The recent BBC series of hard talk programmes on Sri Lanka presented by Stephen Sackur was well-received globally. This telecasting has shown the good, bad and ugly sides of Sri Lanka...

By Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka I hope everyone saw Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, with Russell Crowe in the title role. The BBC History channel backed it up with a two hour programme, piecing together the legend from historical fact and circumstance....

The recent BBC series of hard talk programmes on Sri Lanka presented by Stephen Sackur was well-received globally. This telecasting has shown the good, bad and ugly sides of Sri Lanka. The true stories about the return of the internally displaced people – IDPs, the present feelings of the Tamils

BBC HARDtalk 4: Presented by Stephen Sackur: "HARDtalk has come to Sri Lanka, a year after government forces finally defeated the Tamil Tigers, to end Asia's longest running war. But now the talk is of reconciliation and rebuilding; but how...

BBC HARDtalk III In the third of a special HARDtalk series in Sri Lanka, Stephen Sackur reports on what is happening to the thousands of child soldiers who took part in the war. HARDtalk is the hard-hitting flagship news programme...

June 16, 2010: 11.00 am Siobhain McDonagh: (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab): I am grateful for the chance to highlight again the appalling treatment of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan Government....

With its foreboding lighting effects that appear to have been plucked straight out of Dante's dark epic Inferno-and cleverly devised one suspects to reduce its willing, and oftentimes unsuspecting, "victims" to submission-the BBC's HARDtalk program has attained a universal reputation...

By C. A. Chandraprema It was the other day that the BBC aired the full version of the Hard Talk interview with Gotabhaya Rajapakse, and there are certain issues that need to be raised, not about what Gota said in...

by Dr.Daya Somasundaram University of Jaffna Abstract The phenomena of suicide bombers in Sri Lanka share some similarities with but also have some marked differences with what is seen in other parts of world today. Increasing discrimination, state humiliation and...

By Stephen Sackur Presenter, BBC HARDtalk The Sri Lankan government has threatened to execute Sarath Fonseka, the army commander who delivered victory over the Tamil Tigers, if he continues to suggest top officials may have ordered war crimes during the...

To say that the new Sport Minister’s thoughts, Monday, on the Sri Lanka Cricket Board was a breath of fresh air would be an understatement. Rather, Minister C. B. Ratnayake’s remark that cricket is “the third most corrupt institution behind education and the police” was more a tornado, which, while devastating surely the game’s administrators, ...

by M.C.M. Iqbal Louise Arbour of the International Crisis Group is reported to have said during an interview in the BBC that the government violated the laws of war by blurring the line between combatants and civilians, and that its...

In an official visit to the USA, Minister of External Affairs Prof. G. L. Peiris has called on the Tamil community all over the world to get involved in the rehabilitation process in Sri Lanka. Peiris, who is scheduled to meet Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on Friday made this comment to the BBC at [...]

The arrest a month ago of Sri Lanka's former army chief and defeated presidential candidate, Gen Sarath Fonseka, along with some of his supporters, has raised fears among rights groups in the country.The authorities accuse the general of having worked...

People in Sri Lanka discuss the latest political developments as they prepare for general elections in April.