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By Rasaiah Loganandan

Mr.Jeyasankar says that there has been a statement in the leaflets like this, distributed at the premier of the drama “Theatre needs no spoken language and it evolutes sans spoken language several decades ago” says the leaflet”

There are no such baseless lies in that leaflet. As the Tamil translator of it I can take the full responcibility of it. This is the section of the leaflet (in English) which Mr.Jayasankar pointing out:
Continue reading ‘We need freedom to create with and for everybody living in Sri Lanka’ »

Frances Harrison at the Frontline Club debate, London-May 16, 2012

By Frances Harrison

Today marks three years since the end of the fighting in Sri Lanka . I would like to mourn the dead but still I do not know how many. Estimates range from seven to 147,000. It is a shocking difference.

How is it possible in this world of satellites, rolling news and internet we have no idea how many human beings really perished, even rounded up to the nearest thousand?

It is because as journalists we have failed to get close to the truth. On one hand the Sri Lankan government says the 2009 war was a magnificent humanitarian rescue operation, while on the other many Tamils say it was a genocide.
Continue reading ‘“Dubbing Sri Lankan Conflict as ‘war without Witness’ is Simply not True”’ »

Western provincial council member Mujibur Rahman-The only Muslim politician who participated in the demonstration

By Latheef Farook

Muslim community’s overall response to vandalism at the Dambulla mosque by a mob led by Ven Inamaluwa Sumangala Thero on Friday 20 April 2012 has been “calm and dignified”.

In one voice their message to the mainstream peace loving Sinhalese was “restore communal harmony”. This was the spontaneous response of the community long before what people described as “so called politicians and so called religious scholars” came to the scene.

As a mark of protest, Muslims closed their shops throughout the east, Puttalam and other places on 26 Thursday and 27 Friday April 2012.They demonstrated after Friday Juma prayers not to resort to violence, instead to insist on communal harmony. The entire community prayed individually at homes and collectively at masjids while men and women throughout the island observed fasting.
Continue reading ‘Muslims’ peaceful response to vandalism at Dambulla Mosque’ »

By Suresh Premachandran M.P.

Text of a paper presented at a symposium in Oslo, Norway

Suresh Premachandran M.P. speaking at the symposium

The root cause of the nationality conflict in Sri Lanka is based on two mythical believes masqueraded as history that is ‘Sinhalese are the son of the soil’ others are aliens. The island is blessed by Buddha thus, ‘the island is the land of Buddhism’.
Continue reading ‘Sri Lanka’s Nationality Conflict: Contemporary Political Scenario’ »

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha MP

by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha MP

The more extreme elements in the Ministry of External Affairs have at last put their cards on the table in the form of an article by the wife of one of its rising stars. The same young lady kindly gave me an opportunity to engage in a strong critique of the viewpoints she represented, when she gratuitously attacked me some weeks back.

What is astonishing is that this article is based on the premise that countries like Cuba and Venezuela are anathema at present to Sri Lanka. I suspect it will be news to President Rajapaksa that Cuba is a failed state and that a positive view of Chavez ‘fundamentally undermines everything Sri Lanka has stood for since it inherited a liberal democracy post 1948’.
Continue reading ‘Denizens of the Ministry of External Affairs have no understanding at all of Foreign Policy’ »

Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleka at UNHRC special session on Sri Lanka, in Geneva on May 26, 2009.-pic courtesy: Getty images

by Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

Reflections on the Third Anniversary of the Diplomatic Victory

May is the month of the diplomatic success of Sri Lanka and its friends at the Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2009. That battle and victory are now the target of criticism and historical revisionism.

It is alleged that Sri Lanka was brought onto the HRC agenda by our success, that the Sri Lankan team in Geneva at the time should have kept the resolution off the agenda as had our counterparts in New York, that the success of 2009 was the progenitor of an inevitable setback of March 2012 in the same arena, and that if we are in a hole today, we dug that hole in 2009.
Continue reading ‘The significance of Sri Lanka’s success at the UNHRC in Geneva, May 2009’ »

by R.K.Radhakrishnan

The Indian intelligence agencies had a big hand in planning and executing terrorist strikes in Colombo in the mid-eighties, the President’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga said. Reading from a book, Gota’s War, at its launch here, he said the role India played in Sri Lanka needed “intensive discussion.” He described the events described in the book as “home truths.”

Lalith Weeratunga lighting the traditional lamp at the launch of 'Gota's War'

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was under intense pressure from India, United Kingdom and France to stop the Eelam War IV in April of 2009.
Continue reading ‘‘Gota’s war’ book launch function turns into an India bashing session’ »