Photo Courtesy of BBC News Sri Lanka is led by a man who has, by his admission, two faces. In a more democratic avatar is Gotabaya Rajapaksa the President. Here, the individual...

Foreign media have reported that the Sri Lankans have responded in a fitting manner to the world through the election results. This has explicitly displayed the rapport between the Government and the people. The foreign media attributed the Government’s development programme and the resettlement process to the election victory. All India Radio mentioned that President ...

How focused and efficacious are the current infrastructure investments in Sri Lanka, executed through a public investments programme (PIP)? Take for instance the Chinese funded Norochcholai coal fired power plant, built after obtaining a commercial loan from China, and its subsequent breakdowns resulting in power cuts that will stifle growth and earnings, on top of ...

Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Tuesday was prevented from delivering the keynote address at the opening sessions of the Commonwealth Business Council following a raucous demonstration by Sri Lanka Tamil expatriates and human rights activists opposite the venue of the symposium at Mansion House in London. The morning sessions were cancelled by the organisers ...

This country’s history is repeating itself with deadly accuracy. Last week Gotabaya Rajapaksa reiterated what Sinhalese leaders have been saying since the parting of ways with the Tamils in 1958. In an interview with the BBC on Monday (May12) Rajapaksa was asked about ‘a recent local government

Receipt of aid, both in the form of grant aid and concessional aid, like in the good old days, would give an impetus to development. When there are roads, power plants and power connections, water supply and sewerage facilities and such like built, that would also give a fillip to investments and therewith job creation ...

Relatives and friends of Sri Lankan Tamils who risked their lives in search of a better future abroad after the end of the war in May 2009 are desperately seeking information as to their fates. Thousands of Tamils migrated from the country to escape the violence of the 30-year civil war, which ended with Sri ...

In May, 2003, I travelled around Iraq reporting on its oil industry. Before reaching Baghdad, I got in touch with Marie Colvin, who was there covering the war and its aftermath for the Sunday Times, where I worked from 1986 to 1993. She wrote back to say that she was staying at a hunt club in ...

The British Embassy in Colombo today monitored the return of a group of failed asylum seekers who had been deported from Britain. According to the Embassy, the British Deputy High Commission in Sri Lanka Robbie Bulloch monitored the return of 52 failed asylum seekers at the Katnayake airport. “I visited Colombo airport today to observe ...

Britain has questioned concerns raised by two charities which say that Sri Lankan Tamils deported from the UK are at danger of being tortured or raped. Another charter flight returning people to the island nation, including Tamil and Sinhala failed asylum-seekers, is due to leave on Tuesday. But Human Rights Watch and Freedom from Torture ...

Reporters Without Borders calls on all members of the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council, which began its 19th session yesterday, to pass a resolution condemning the Sri Lankan government’s violations of freedom of information and to demand an end to threats and violence against news media and human rights defenders in Sri Lanka. “For ...

THERE are signs that the international community is gearing up for action to hold Sri Lanka accountable for alleged war crimes committed by its forces at the end of the brutal civil war against the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009. A resolution is being prepared for next month’s session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva ...

“I believe a journalist can change the world,” says exiled Sri Lankan journalist Sonali Samarasinghe, “if not why are we here then”. Sonali is one of three exiled journalists, from the minority Tamil and majority Sinhalese communities, whose stories are told in a new Norwegian film, Silenced Voices, by Beate Arnestadpreviewed last night at the Fritt ...

Francis Harrison, former BBC foreign correspondent whose book of accounts of survivors from Sri Lankas civil war is to be published this summer, says in an article in the Dawn, that there are "signs that the international community is gearing up for action to hold Sri Lanka accountable

A UN special envoy arrived Friday for talks with the new administration in the Maldives, as former president Mohamed Nasheed called for fresh elections after being ousted in what he called a coup d'etat, AFP reported. Assistant Secretary General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco reached the capital Male early Friday and was due to hold talks with new president Mohamed Waheed. “There will be a meetin...

The extrajudicial killing of civilians, surrendering soldiers and dissident journalists under the direction of the Sri Lankan government has been alleged by a former general in the Army who was extremely well-placed to comment on military activity during the island nation’s bloody civil war. The source, whose name is withheld for reasons of safety, had high-level ...