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by Kishali Pinto Jayawardene One cannot fail to be amazed at the considerable ingenuity if not wild imagination with which the government’s National Plan of Action to implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission has been drafted. Some responses invoke chuckles of glee whilst other promises invoke far more heated reactions given [...]

by S. Venkat Narayan NEW DELHI, August 4: In July 1989, then Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa had threatened to go to war with India if it did not withdraw the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) by the end of that month. He issued the threat when BG Deshmukh, then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Special [...]

By Tisaranee Gunasekara “This accursed, shortsighted statecraft!” – Heinrich von Kleist (Prinz Friedrich) The Eastern province, multi-ethnic and multi-religious, is Sri Lanka’s Achilles Heel. Mishandle the East and the outcome will not be a cleanly bifurcated separatist war. Mishandle the East and the outcome will be a ‘war of all against all’, involving every ethnic/religious [...]

By Nirmala Kannangara Despite Presidential Security Division (PSD) and Police Media Spokesperson’s claim that Ann Kingston (nee Mariyadas) was not knocked down by a motor bicycle out rider attached to the President’s motorcade the victim’s family claim otherwise. Forty eight years old Kingston was knocked down by a speeding motor bicycle alleged to be one [...]

by Gamini Weerakoon Watching pre-Olympic Games programmes on TV made us realise how much the Olympic Games even in this hi-tech age is dependent on torch bearers. For weeks the Olympic torch was carried from town to town in Britain and finally from borough to borough in London. It made us realise that carrying torches [...]

By Kumar Rupesinghe The announcement of the LLRC implementation plan by the Lalith Weeratunge Committee, appointed by the President, must be commended for the hard work that they did to ensure that the entirety of the recommendations have been taken note of, a time plan for the implementation agreed on. Australian Ambassador Kathy Klugman meets [...]

by Juliet Coombe (Juliet Coombe writes about Sri Lanka’s magical spots and amazing people with special beliefs and mystical practices) First there is the question of belief and then belief itself. It was first the Eleatic Parmenides, who in an attempt to understand the phenomena of change by refuting interpretations of Heraclitean and Milesian thinkers, [...]

By Jayampathy Wickramaratne Upon becoming a party to a treaty, a State undertakes binding obligations in international law. A State has to submit initial and periodic reports to the relevant treaty body on measures adopted. The country thus becomes open to international scrutiny. Sri Lanka is a dualist country and treaties do not automatically become [...]

By Namini Wijedasa An old man stood resolutely outside a house, facing a roaring, depraved mob. They had weapons. “You kill me,” the man said, in Sinhala, his language. “Then you can go in.” S.C. Chandrahasan remembers that old man. Where many have chosen to dwell on the savageness and brutality of the 1983 anti-Tamil [...]

by Celina Cramer Namini Wijedasa’s experience on her Terrorism Tour (“Throngs of people on ‘Terrorism Tour’ ”, Sunday Lakbima News, July 22, 2012/Soldiers guide pre-dominantly Sinhala visitors on “Terrorism Tour” of Mullaitheevu district’-.dbsjeyaraj.com) sparked off dormant memories of my short visit to Jaffna. David Hall, UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office Team Leader for South Asia [...]

by Rauf Hakeem The Tamil political landscape with the exclusive Tamil Congress and the emerging alternative voice of the Federal party had great legal luminaries as GG Ponnambalam and SJV Chelvanayakam. The Late Sivasithamparam was a unique blend of all these greats filling the knowledge gaps and emerging as a personality in his own right. [...]

By Mike Andree The incandescent fury emanating from the Executive Committee of the Bar Association glowed around ‘Lady Justice’. The fire they breathed would have even burnt the blindfold of the goddess of justice. Such was the wrath of the members of the Bar when the facts on the Mannar incident kept surfacing. They condemned [...]

by Ridma Dissanayake The Sri Lanka Youth Parliament will be set up in Kilinochchi, National Youth Services Council (NYSC) chairman Lalith Piyum Perera said. “The Youth Parliament was to be established in Anuradhapura. However, considering the peaceful situation in the North, it was decided to set it up in Kilinochchi,” Perera said.

By Stanley Samarasinghe The Executive Committee of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) filed a petition in the Court of Appeal , seeking permission to intervene in the contempt proceedings against Minister Rishad Bathiudeen. Attorney-at-Law, Sanath Wijewardana filed the petition on behalf of the Executive Committee members, in terms of the Article 105(3) of [...]

by Prof.Rajiva Wijesinha M.P. I have noted previously that the failure of government to make its position clear on a number of issues has been one of the main difficulties about Reconciliation. I say this because, by and large, the government position on most issues has been extremely positive, and inadequacies are more due to [...]

by K.S.Sivakumaran Knowledgeable literati would have heard of a Thamil epic poem called Silappadikaaram. It is one of the five major epics in that language. The other four are Manimekalai, Seevaka Chinthamani, Valayapathi and Kundalakesi. A Chera Prince named Ilango, who turned a sage professing Jainism, was also a great poet during the Post-Sangam Period [...]