09/15/2011
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The Economist
THE United States is not in the business of threatening its friends, said Robert O. Blake, US assistant secretary of state, in Colombo on September 14th. But, he added, smiling placidly, there will be pressure. If a domestic commission appointed by Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president, does not provide credible answers to allegations of war crimes committed by the military, demands for “some sort of alternative mechanism” will mount.
09/03/2011
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The Economist
MAHINDA RAJAPAKSA, Sri Lanka’s president, did not tell his ministers why he required them to attend parliament on August 25th. But an Indian newspaper put them out of their misery, breaking the news online that he was going to announce a lifting of Sri Lanka’s state of emergency. And yet, when he strode into the assembly carrying a sheaf of papers, even members of his own benches craned their necks to sneak a glance at what they contained.
07/07/2011
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The Economist
In Sri Lanka Mr Sangakkara is renowned for his integrity as well as his cricketing skills. The media welcomed his views as a reflection of public fury at the blatant politicisation of a national obsession. The Island, a pro-government newspaper, said he had spoken home truths to “inefficient, corrupt Sri Lankan cricket administrators and pompous, overbearing political nincompoops”.
05/19/2011
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The Economist
MAY 19TH is the second anniversary of the Sri Lankan government’s announcement that its forces had killed Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. It marked the government’s definitive victory in a bloody 26-year civil war—one, moreover, that analysts, including this newspaper, had for years argued could never be won. Yet in the end victory was so complete that peace already seems permanent.
04/28/2011
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The Economist
IN RECENT years the default mode for Sri Lankan diplomats has been a posture of affronted national dignity beneath a mask of outraged, sanctimonious innocence. This week, after the publication of a report by a panel of experts for the United Nations on the final stages of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, some were recalled to Colombo for “consultations”. Maybe they are brushing up their indignant-repudiation skills.
The war culminated in May 2009 with the army’s crushing of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Its climax was marked by ruthlessness and callous disregard for human life. The panel concluded that “there is a reasonable basis to believe that large-scale violations of international humanitarian and human-rights law were committed by both sides”. Since hardly any of the Tigers’ leaders outlived the war, it is the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president, that is in the dock.
04/14/2011
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The Economist
SRI LANKA’S government has got its retaliation in first. On April 12th a panel of experts delivered a report to the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, assessing whether war crimes were committed when the nation’s army bloodily won a long-running civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels early in 2009. The report has not yet been made public, but the government is furious that an independent inquiry took place at all. The report, it says, is “fundamentally flawed” and biased.
03/17/2011
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The Economist
DYNASTIES have to start somewhere. For an aspiring Gandhi in India, or a Bhutto in Pakistan, exploiting the family name to get into politics is relatively simple. Getting a dynasty going in the first place is more testing.
11/25/2010
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The Economist
THEY look more like desperate refugees than the pampered vanguard of an organised mass colonisation. But that is how most local Tamils view the 600-odd ethnic Sinhalese who pitched up at the derelict railway station in the northern Sri Lankan town of Jaffna last month. As the new arrivals saw it, they were moving back home after a stay in the south. Now resettled in the crudest of tarpaulin shelters at Navatkuli, just outside town, crowded onto scrubby land shaded by a few coconut palms, they complain of joblessness and worry about the approaching rainy season. But they insist they are here to stay.
11/19/2010
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The Economist
THE re-inauguration of Sri Lanka's powerful president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, on November 19th was accompanied by impressive displays of drumming, artillery fire and flag twirling—not to mention an enormous rice pudding. Some residents of Colombo grumbled about unusually lavish spending on the event (and closed roads that caused snarl-ups for much of the week). After hearing out the president's ceremonial speech, a local think-tank called for him to use his second term to seek reconciliation with the Tamil minority.
11/18/2010
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The Economist
WHAT to give a president who wants for nothing? Sri Lanka’s mustachioed ruler, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who turned 65 on November 18th, has a thriving personality cult, helped by propaganda that gives him sole credit for the crushing of Tamil rebels last year, after nearly three decades of civil war. He won a second presidential term in January. His party romped home in parliamentary polls. And he has since had the constitution rejigged to scrap term limits and make his office mightier.