Posts Categorized: Government

Army Bigwigs Have Made Shameful Attempts to Bury the Truth

by Vellupillai Thangavelu, Colombo Telegraph, March 1, 2023 The quote “Wheels of justice grind slow but grind fine” is credited to Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War, an influential work of military strategy, But in Sri Lanka this quote should be taken with a pinch of salt. Cases filed in courts gets… Read more »

Why Is South Asia’s Finest Natural Harbor Still Undeveloped?

by P.K. Balachandran, Eurasia Review, Oregon, USA, February 27, 2023 While the Trincomalee port’s intrinsic value is well-known, its exploitation has been stymied by a variety of factors   The natural endowments and the strategic value of Trincomalee port have been well-known for long time. Yet, to date, very little concrete has been done to… Read more »

Thirteen Again?

by A. Nillanthan, Uthayan, Jaffna, January 29, 2023 [translated from the original Tamil by Google Translate, with some improvement by the Editor.] “This will not divide the country. According to the decision of the five-judge panel, especially regarding the 13th amendment, we are in a unitary state. I agree with power sharing. The provincial councils… Read more »

RTI Produces Varying Accounts of the Final Stages of War

by Buddhika Samaraweera, The Morning.lk, Colombo, January 30, 2023 Military previously noted in writing that those who surrendered during the last period of war surrendered not to the Army but to the Government While the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has stated that no members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) surrendered to the… Read more »

Tamil Nationalist Parties and a Power Sharing Arrangement

Based on the Federal Idea by DBS Jeyaraj, Daily FT, Colombo, November 23, 2022 Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism has been primarily reactive in nature. The Tamils thought of themselves as being on par with the Sinhala people as co-founders of the modern nation of Ceylon. Universal franchise and territorial representation reduced them to a principal… Read more »

No Space for Memory?

Monuments, Memorials and the Residues of the War in Sri Lanka’s North by Lia Kent, Arena Quarterly, Australia, May 29, 2020 The monuments are impossible to miss. Rising from the flat and otherwise featureless Vanni—the broad, scrubby northern region so different from the dense, fertile vegetation of the island’s south—these official markers to the end… Read more »

CPA 2008: Essays on Federalism

by Rohan Edirisinha & Asanga Welikala, Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo, 2008 Essays on Federalism in Sri Lanka is a new collection of essays and articles on the Federal idea in Sri Lanka, edited by Rohan Edrisinha and Asanga Welikala. CPA has since its inception been at the forefront of the advocacy of federalism as a… Read more »

Does Sri Lanka Need a Truth and Reconciliation Mechanism?

by Mirak Raheem, Groundviews, Colombo, November 26, 2022 Groundviews on Instagram: “In 2018, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government laid the groundwork for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Its…” In the lead up to the September session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) the Government of Sri Lanka floated the proposal of establishing… Read more »

The IMF’s Staff-Level Agreement with Sri Lanka

by Meera Srinivasan, The Hindu, Chennai, September 5, 2022 What are the pre-requisites IMF laid down before the Sri Lankan government? How has India reacted to the agreement? The story so far: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on September 1 announced a staff-level agreement with Sri Lanka, months after the island nation’s economic crisis intensified… Read more »

Black July

by Sanjana Hattotuwa, Groundviews, Colombo, August 17, 2013 Black July compressed from/derived from Remembering, to never again repeat: Launch of 30 Years Ago site The culmination of months of dedicated research, travel, challenging production work and curation, I am very pleased to launch 30 Years Ago. The project is an attempt to remember and probe Sri… Read more »

Federalism: Myths and Realities

by Rohan Edrisinha – Faculty of Law, University of Colombo and Centre for Policy Alternatives, The Sunday Observer, Colombo, January 18, 2004 Excerpts of a speech delivered at the Executive Seminar on Human Rights for senior officers of armed forces on Saturday, January 10. The agreement reached between the Government of Sri Lanka and the… Read more »

Racial Discrimination a Bane to Progress

by Dishan Joseph, Daily News, Colombo, July 22, 2022  “It is not our differences that divide us, but our inability to recognize, accept and celebrate those differences” – American poet Audre Lorde Our beautiful Motherland Sri Lanka is a nation embellished with centuries of recorded history. When we delve into this history we can see… Read more »

Sri Lanka in Crisis

Why the Past Lives on in its Collective Future by Ambika Satkunananthan, 9Dashline, Europe, June 16, 2022 Sri Lanka is in the throes of an economic and political crisis not hitherto witnessed. The crisis has created instability and resulted in protests that began in March 2022. Citizens’ protests that are not organised by political parties… Read more »

To Solve Its Economic Crisis, Sri Lanka Must Demilitarize

by Ben Andak, Jacobin, New York, May 12, 2022 Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has produced an explosion of violence on the island. That violence won’t end until the country ends its war on Tamils and Muslims and drastically scales back its military budget. Soldiers check documents of a driver at a road checkpoint in Colombo,… Read more »

Sri Lanka, the Bamboo Lounge

by Roy Ratnavel, May 15, 2022 Some people like to collect coins, first edition stamps, retro comic books or sports memorabilia. I collect spoken words. I hunt and gather these words when I overhear them on the street while watching movies, in my living room via television. These words of the mouth include cultural sayings,… Read more »

Sri Lanka’s Dual Crisis

Ethnic Conflict & the Debt Economy Reimagining a pluralist Sri Lanka in the wake of the ‘Gota Go Home’ movement. by Nalika Gajaweera, Jamhoor, North America, May 4, 2022  “Except for the home crowd cheering for our national team at an international cricket match, it was the first time I was seeing Sri Lankans united… Read more »

A Perpetrator State Demands Non-violence

In Sri Lanka By Vindhya Buthpitiya, Urban Violence, UK, May 3, 2022 Weeks of citizen-led protests in Sri Lanka have demanded that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa ‘go home’. These protests began in early March, in response to the worst economic crisis the country has seen in decades. In this blog, Vindhya Buthpitiya (Associate Lecturer, University of St Andrews) reflects… Read more »