Jaffna and the Vanni today: The reality beneath the rhetoric
Photo credit: Indi Samarajiva, 2010 The drive along the A9 from Vavuniya to Killinochchi is brought to a temporary halt at the ‘exit-entry point’ at what used to be the forward defence…
Photo credit: Indi Samarajiva, 2010 The drive along the A9 from Vavuniya to Killinochchi is brought to a temporary halt at the ‘exit-entry point’ at what used to be the forward defence…
Photo of Mannar-Puttalam road, courtesy Panoramio Environmentalists have gone to courts demanding that the road connecting Mannar and Puttalam that runs through the Wilpattu National Park be permanently closed. The opening of…
Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) asked a Sri Lankan newspaper for a retraction, as the newspaper carried a “severely distorted,” news article regards a panel discussion that had taken place…
, edited by Tissa Jayatilaka, is the commemorative volume published by the Bandaranaike Museum Committee to mark fifty years since Mrs. Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike’s first accession to power on 21st July…
India’s mistake was to take our Prime Minister seriously. Ours is to allow him to continue in office. Few in Sri Lanka care to know what is said in Parliament, and it…
Though the barbed wire, I am looking down the road of memory. Selvam, my Selvam, I am waiting for you To bring back our lost life. You grabbed my hand hard and…
Photo courtesy Vikalpa The conversation I had on Lankan trajectories and ‘declinist’ discourses in a Paris cafe on a Sunday with my friend and former colleague, Prof. Nira Wickramasingha, now holding the…
The following article was published in the . Not a single Sinhala newspaper to date has published a similar account, though many reported on the opening of the new Army Headquarters in…
Transcript of speech delivered by Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu accepting the first Citizens Peace Award, 28 February 2011. Video of speech below. Members of the Head Table, Venerable Sirs, Your Excellency President Kumaratunga…
Photo credit: Eranga Jayawardena / AP, taken from Peace in our country cannot last long without reconciliation. And there can be no reconciliation until the people in the North and East and all…
In consideration of the vague exposition on the reasons behind the meeting between Ban Ki-moon and representatives of the Sri Lankan Government in New York on the 23rd of February 2011, as…
On 4 February, Sri Lanka celebrated its 63rd birthday. After nearly three decades of armed conflict, it is now one of Southasia’s calmest and fastest-growing countries. Its social indicators, apart from the…
The sweeping wave of protests over West Asia is refreshing to see twenty-two years after the fall of the Berlin wall. The demise of repressive communist regimes in Eastern Europe was not…
In an often quoted line Marx remarked, “history repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce” and years later, Henry Ford, not known exactly either for his scholarship or his political wisdom,…
We are in the USA, far away from Sri Lanka. Dr. Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN (in New York), had this to say: “We have come to a…