12/30/2011
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New York Times
If Sri Lanka wants true reconciliation, the government must take responsibility for civilian deaths during the civil war.
09/17/2010
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WSJ
OPINION: Sri Lanka's president wants to stay in power for a long time. Only an organized opposition can stop him.
09/15/2010
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WSJ
One of Sri Lanka's unique achievements was preserving democratic rule through its 26-year bloody battle against Tamil Tiger insurgents. So it's troubling to see democracy—and the prosperity that ought to come with it—under threat now that there's peace in the land.
09/11/2010
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The Island
Nine years ago as two planes crashed into the Twin Towers, I was only one hundred meters away, and saw the debris of the twin towers eclipse downtown Manhattan. While the unpardonable attacks and the tremendous loss of life were shocking, what I did not expect was the reaction in the US. Within days fear and patriotism shook the liberal tradition in the US. While the Bush Regime and its neoconservative push to seek vast powers and place restrictions on civil liberties did not surprise me in the least, what worried me was the manner in which the Democrats caved in, and even more distressing was how liberal academics and intellectuals so easily surrendered to the fear mongering and thuggery of the Bush Regime.
09/09/2010
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LiveMint, Mint
India should not let Sri Lanka’s internal political dynamic affect bilateral ties, despite a constitutional amendment that grants quasi-dictatorial stature to that country’s president
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.
08/14/2010
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Vancouver Sun
From the Komagata Maru carrying 376 Punjabi passengers and the SS St. Louis travelling with 900 Jewish asylum seekers, to the boats with 600 people from China's Fujian province and the Ocean Lady that docked in B.C. last year with Tamil refugees - there is something about boatloads of migrants that triggers a national hysteria. Perhaps it is the realization that the expanse of ocean is not enough to enforce the divide between the West and the so-called Third World.
08/09/2010
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Amnesty International, Washington Post
The Aug. 4 news story "U.S. monitoring Sri Lankans aiming for North America, asylum" quoted a former Pentagon official who advocated summarily sending approximately 200 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers, now on a boat heading toward North America, back to Sri Lanka. This is a dangerous, ill-considered position. (LETTER TO THE EDITOR)
07/18/2010
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Sunday Leader
An opinion piece by Tisaranee Gunasekara: The prime target of Minister Wimal Weerawansa’s delusive fast was neither the UN nor its Secretary General, but the Lankan public. Minister Weerawansa and his political handlers would have known that their attempt at blackmailing the UN Secretary General was bound to fail. And, as even the Sinhala nationalist defenders of Weerawansa’s actions admit, the fast was not really meant to end in, death. So why fast, if one knew that the UN was not going to knuckle down? And why call it a fast-unto-death, if there was no real intention of, fasting unto death? Minister Weerawansa’s was a pseudo fast (unto death) and its real aim was to delude the Lankan people into forgetting, at least momentarily, their many substantive discontents and rally round the Rajapaksas in outrageous ire against the ‘evil machinations’ of the latest ‘arch-villain’, Ban Ki Moon.