09/04/2011
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Sunday Times
EDITORIAL: It began in the rural villages, but now it is the 'talk of the town'. Even foreign television channels felt it worthy of reporting -- the 'Grease Yaka' or Grease Demon phenomenon gripping the attention of many throughout the country. Dismissed earlier as one of those weird rumours in a country now bored without war-related news, the incidents that followed, however, took a frightening and even deadly twist.
09/01/2011
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Himal Magazine
COMMENTARY: The last few years in Sri Lanka have been marked by numerous elections at various levels – presidential, parliamentary, provincial council and local government. The Mahinda Rajapakse regime won all these elections with landslide victories, and now controls all eight provincial councils, barring the Northern Provincial Council for which elections are yet to be held. Indeed, the regime seemed to have mastered the art of electoral politics, ensuring its legitimacy and overwhelming power at a time when the United National Party (UNP), the main opposition, is in shambles.
08/30/2011
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The Hindu
EDITORIAL Sri Lanka's decision to lift the Emergency regulations, as announced by President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Parliament last week, is a step towards creating a positive environment for national reconciliation. The regulations rode on powers granted to government under the 1947 Public Security Ordinance. They have remained almost continuously in force since the 1971 Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna insurgency in southern Sri Lanka, through the years of the armed Tamil militancy in the North and the East. But there was never any real justification for retaining them after the LTTE's military defeat in 2009. The broad sweep and vague language of the regulations struck fear among the Tamil minority, and curtailed the freedoms of all Sri Lankans. Over the years, and especially after the LTTE's assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in 2005 until the end of the war, the government introduced a welter of overlapping regulations arming security personnel with wide and arbitrary powers to search, detain, and arrest people for “terrorism,” which itself was not clearly defined. Draconian in their scope, the regulations undermined the freedom of speech, expression, and movement. The monthly approval needed from Parliament for their extension was an insufficient cover. With the immunity they provided to officials, the instances of misuse were many, especially in the Tamil-dominated areas of Sri Lanka.
07/31/2011
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The Sunday Leader
The Sunday Leader is proudly Sri Lankan. As Lasantha Wickremetunge wrote in his posthumous editorial, “the Leader is there for you, be you Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, low-caste, homosexual, dissident or disabled”.
This is the inclusive Sri Lanka in which we believe, and towards which we labor. The government may call us traitors, but it is they who betray this ideal.
03/05/2011
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The Island
Two events that occurred last week are pertinent to the lessons learnt and reconciliation process which the powers-that-be loudly proclaim is in progress. The first of these relate to the Attorney General’s undertaking to the Supreme Court that the allegedly forced registration of Jaffna and Kilinochchi residents undertaken by the security forces will be suspended. This was a result of the TNA filing a human rights petition. The second was the non-binding resolution adopted by the U.S. Senate about the situation in Sri Lanka.
09/09/2010
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Daily Mirror
On August 03, 2000 when President Chandrika Kumaratunga headed for parliament to present the ill-fated 2000 draft Constitution bill in view of perpetuating her regime, among other plans, it was the vehicle of her Fisheries Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa that was stopped by the demonstrators down parliament road.
08/15/2010
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The Star
EDITORIAL: Canada doesn’t have a Tamil “problem,” whatever critics of our refugee system may say about the arrival here of the cargo freighter MV Sun Sea with some 500 asylum-seekers. We processed 34,000 refugee claims last year; these arrivals won’t overtax the system.
08/01/2010
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Himal Southasian
EDITORIAL Over a year after the end of the war, the Sri Lankan regime is continuing the politics of confrontation, undermining the possibilities for reconciliation in the post-war period. There remains an urgent need for reconciliation between multiple actors: between the Tamil and Sinhalese communities, polarised by nationalist mobilisation; between the state and minorities who have faced majoritarian discrimination; and between the government and the United Nations, which have become increasingly estranged. The challenge before Sri Lanka now is whether it can move forward as a genuinely multi-ethnic polity and an accepted member of the international community, particularly when local participation and international support are both vital for the reconstruction and development of the war-ravaged society. Since the end of the brutal conflict 15 months ago, Sri Lanka has also completed two national elections, ensuring the political stability of Mahinda Rajapakse’s government and strengthening his hand. However, the president’s actions on the ground, and his administration’s response to international engagement, would have one believe that the conflict was not over.
07/08/2010
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Daily Mirror
If Minister Wimal Weerawansa and his team lay siege on Temple Trees tomorrow and block the inhabitants from entering or leaving the premises, would anybody call it a peaceful demonstration? It is a criminal act.
02/07/2010
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The Sunday Leader
EDITORIAL: In a democracy, a thumping majority is expected to result in cool heads among the victors and cold feet among losers. The recent presidential election in Sri Lanka has had the opposite effect with the winners going for the jugulars of the losers and the losers preparing for rearguard action. General Sarath Fonseka is alleged by some leading personalities of the Rajapakse government of planning a military coup against the government and several of his close associates being arrested while the opposition parties within six days after the election, took to the streets and staged a massive demonstration in Colombo’s Hyde Park in protest against what they allege was a rigged election.