“Chiran Jayathu” – “Aayubowewa”
Let all as citizens comprising the civil society of Sri Lanka, join together in unison and with one voice, in response to the earnest appeal made by Renton de Alwis in “Back…
Foreign Relations
The campaign to save Rizana Nafeek: Ways to help
A demonstration was held in Colombo today to demand the immediate release of Rizana Nafeek. A month after Rizana was sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia, ran an article urging the public…
Ariyasinha urges NGOs to change strategy: A response
Image courtesy South Asia Foreign Relations Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the EU, Ravinatha Aryasinha says that NGOs need to complement the work done by Sri Lanka in a post-conflict…
Submission before Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Committee (LLRC) by Chandra Jayaratne
[Editors note: Chandra Jayaratne is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka and of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK, a former President of the Ceylon Chamber…
NATION-BUILDING: WHICH PROJECT FOR THE NORTH & EAST?
When faced with challenging human rights and humanitarian law issues who should we seek out for advice but a celebrated former Vice President of the International Court of Justice? Faced with the…
Managing diplomacy with melodrama: Sri Lanka’s Madness
Photo courtesy Flickr photostream on the NFF protest The point of departure for this note is the fast unto death by a government (cabinet) Minister, hereinafter referred to as VW, in front…
Compilation of special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka
Download the 162 page compilation of content as a PDF in high quality (25.4Mb), or low quality (3.7Mb). The low quality version is good enough to read, but the photos will look and…
Should we prosecute crimes against humanity?
It must be acknowledged that international law, both customary and humanitarian, is undergoing significant changes with regard to crimes committed during armed conflicts. Thus it is difficult to assert that international legal…
People in glass houses…
“Where you from” asked the precocious teenager from Jane, a World Bank official I was escorting to a remote hillside community in the middle of Sri Lanka to show a community based…
Interview with Prof. Kumar David
Prof. Kumar David, an electrical engineer by training, regular columnist in traditional print media and a frequent commentator on , talks about what’s left of leftist politics in Sri Lanka, the end…
National referendums and the aspirations of a diaspora: a Saturday morning reflection
A week ago (Saturday 12 December 2009), I came across a news report about a referendum organised by Tamil nationalist activists in France, in order to [quote] say yes or no for…
THE RAJAPAKSE REGIME: BRICKBATS, PLAUDITS
[Editors note: This article complements , also by the same author.] This is a disjointed exercise that does not claim comprehensiveness. That is impossible in a short essay, the more so because…
Taking note of the Lisbon Treaty
Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Klaus signed the 2007 EU Lisbon Treaty on the 3rd of November thereby making the Treaty effective as of the 1st of December 2009. The Czech Republic was the…
Sri Lanka’s new found friends: Looking for love in all the wrong places
Reading about GOSL’s latest foreign foray is like venturing into an oncologist’s office; you suspect that there is something wrong with your system but you hope that it’s nothing serious. But, deep…
Chellaney on Indo-Sri Lanka relations: How not to win friends and influence your neighbours
Intellectuals in India have unfortunately not played positive roles in building good relations with its small neighbors. For the most part they ignore all neighbors other than Pakistan. In the few cases…
