Battleground Geneva: The Special Session of the HRC on Sri Lanka
“Sri Lanka forces West to retreat over ‘war crimes’ with victory at UN” – The TIMES (London), May 28, 2009 “Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends …Mmm,…
Author: Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
Monster
The degree of denial of Prabhakaran’s death within the expatriate Tamil consciousness is the best evidence of the pathology of Tamil ultra-nationalism. Rohana Wijeweera’s followers were fanatics, but when their leader was…
Fighting a globalised LTTE
These closing climactic weeks of the conventional war have been accompanied by tremendous external pressure on the Sri Lankan state. This has its upside because it illuminates. It reveals to us the…
Get your humanitarian paws off my country
It is heartening that the Tamil Tigers have retained a sense of humor under extreme pressure. It is a lesson to us all. The Tigers have declared a unilateral ceasefire and promised…
The Hypocrisy of the West and the Lack of a Lankan elite
We Sri Lankans have no excuse whatsoever. We have been forewarned. A piece by PC Vinoj Kumar in the latest issue of Tehelka magazine says that “while the Sri Lankan army claims…
MAN, OH (VANANGA) MAN!
Let me get this right. Two hundred and thirteen years since the first British colonial ships landed in Sri Lanka, a ship is setting sail from Britain, launched at an event with…
The Lethal, the Legal, the Legitimate: Frames of our future?
An IANS report from Puducherry, March 25 read as follows: If only the offspring of the Sri Lankan political leaders and prominent personalities, Sinhala and Tamil, who were assassinated or targeted (and…
Ending the War, Envisioning the Peace
The eyes of the world are upon us. This means two things: Sri Lanka must not blink on the fundamentals, whatever the pressures brought to bear, while at one at the same…
WINNING LOCALLY, WINNING GLOBALLY
– Jacques Ranciere (2006) The Sinhalese and Tamils are in a Mexican standoff. Locally, the Sri Lankan armed forces have surrounded the Tigers who have embedded themselves among the civilians (some of…
THE TIGERS’ TICKING TIME BOMB
Velupillai Prabhakaran is about to be defeated but he has left a time bomb hidden in plain sight which must be defused if he is not to wreak a posthumous revenge. This…
THE INDIAN REALITY IN SRI LANKA’S EXISTENCE
How do we describe our country, Sri Lanka, and how is our country described by others? As an island in the Indian Ocean, just south of or off the Southern shores of…
Tamil politics tomorrow: Options, challenges and pitfalls
The armies clash in the night but what of the morning after? The underlying ethno-national question, that of the relationships between the Sinhalese, the Tamils, the Muslims and the state, remains, but…
MULLAITIVU: CLOSING TIME
The trick is to grasp the main needs of the present while being able to see into the future, with its problems and prospects, while being aware that the choices we make…
THE MURDER OF AN EDITOR
“…The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity… …And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” WB Yeats, ‘The…
Hasta la Victoria Siempre! – Ever Onward to Victory!
 With the liberation of Paranthan and Kilinochchi, the war has pivoted decisively in favor of the Sri Lankan armed forces and against the LTTE. We are winning a ground war, not…