Monthly Archives: April 2014

Diaspora Response to GoSL List

Suren Surendiran – Global Tamil Forum This action now proves that the government is bankrupt of political will to even attempt to resolve the root causes of the Tamil National Question. As the UN Human Rights Commissioner acknowledged after her visit to Colombo in August 2013 and in her recent report, the government’s authoritarian tendency… Read more »

Critics Question Sri Lanka’s Ban on Tamil Exile Groups

by Union of Catholic Asian News, Hong Kong, April 3, 2014 Rights monitors are questioning the motives behind Sri Lanka’s decision to ban 16 Tamil diaspora organizations, which the government has accused of links to “terrorism” and the alleged revival of a separatist movement. On Tuesday, External Affairs Minister GL Peiris signed the proscription order… Read more »

Land Grabs Jeopardize Peace in Sri Lanka

Christina Williams is an attorney and founder of Reinventing the Rules, a website dedicated to covering the latest trends and lessons learned in the rule of law sector. She has worked on human rights campaigns related to Sri Lanka for several years and is currently focusing on women and land rights in the region. The end… Read more »

Transcending Terror

It is the mass banning of Tamil civil society…It is, however, also a deliberate attempt to stop the outflow of information regarding on-going atrocities in the Tamil areas, to the international community via diaspora networks, precisely at a time when it is critical. Indeed in 2009, as the mass civilian slaughter ensued, it was the diaspora, not international bodies such as the UN, that provided the most accurate portrayal of events on the ground.

The Case for Nationalism

Another factor in this resurgence is a change of intellectual fashion toward bigness. Fewer people in all classes are still confident that the future belongs to the big battalions. They have noticed that smaller states are likely to be richer, easier to manage and closer to the people than larger states. As the Economist magazine pointed out a few years ago: “Of the 10 countries with populations of over 100 [million], only the U.S. and Japan are prosperous.”

These economic facts remove an important obstacle to secession. And if there ever was a link between prosperity and bigness, it has been dissolved by free trade and globalization, which ensure that the size of a nation need no longer coincide with the size of the market open to it. At the same time, a government can shrink to the size that its citizens find most convenient to control.

The U.S. is the exception to these rules—it is both large and prosperous—because its federalism distributes power to states and localities, where it can be better controlled. Switzerland is another example. Europe might imitate America’s success if it were to model itself on Switzerland and distribute power downward. But the opposite is happening—in both Europe and America.

Years After Obama Hailed Warming Ties With India

by Gardiner Harris, ‘The New York Times,’ March 31, 2014 NEW DELHI — When President Obama visited India in 2010, he called the warming relationship between it and the United States the “defining partnership of the 21st century.” Decades of disagreements, from Cold War ideological battles to squabbles over the United States’ close relationship with India’s archrival,… Read more »

The National Question

Pictures courtesy ‘Colombo Telegraph,’ March 31, 2014 BERNARD SOYSA CENTENARY COMMEMORATION MEETING at Tamil Sangam Hall, 57th Lane, Colombo – 06 at 5 p.m. Bernard Soysa Centenary Memorial Oration Gururbrahma .. Mr. Chairman, distinguished Guests, my dear Brothers & Sisters. It is indeed ironic that we are remembering a stalwart among our Majority Community Parliamentarians of… Read more »