by Scott Stewart, ‘MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal,’ February 5, 2015 President Barack Obama has said terrorism can’t upset the world order, and he is mostly correct. In an interview aired on CNN on Feb. 1, Fareed Zakaria asked U.S. President Barack Obama to respond to charges that he is downplaying the threat of terrorism to… Read more »
Posts Categorized: International
US Asst Sec Biswal’s Statements in Sri Lanka
Statement by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Biswal Colombo – Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka February 4, 2015 http://srilanka.usembassy.gov/pr-4feb15.html It was a privilege to visit Colombo to witness for myself the sense of excitement and optimism that the Sri Lankan people have ushered in through the historic… Read more »
Sri Lanka Is Ready to Take Center Stage
by Richard Armitage, Kara Bue, & Lisa Curtis, ‘The Wall Street Journal,’ January. 28, 2015 12:29 p.m. ET 3 COMMENTS Editor’s note: The following op-ed was contributed by Richard Armitage, Kara Bue and Lisa Curtis. Mr. Armitage was deputy secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. Ms. Bue was deputy assistant secretary of State for… Read more »
Is Sri Lanka Ready Yet For Postwar Reconciliation?
Sri Lanka’s January 8 presidential election shocked the world. The removal of strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa from office and peaceful transfer of power have triggered an outpouring of optimism about Sri Lanka’s democratic future. But on one key set of issues it’s not clear that regime change heralds progress: post-war reconciliation and accountability for international crimes… Read more »
Helping Sri Lanka’s New Democracy
Sri Lanka’s voters shocked themselves and the world this month by tossing out their president, who crushed the Tamil insurgency in 2009 and then led the country, along with his brother as defense secretary, to the brink of authoritarianism. The new president has promised to restore freedom of the press, independence of judges, and the… Read more »
US Foreign Assistance
http://www.foreignassistance.gov/web/OU.aspx?FromRGA=true&OUID=229&FY=2015&AgencyID=0&budTab=tab_Bud_Overview State and USAID: It has been nearly five years since the end of Sri Lankas 26 year civil war, and circumstances are more challenging than they were a year ago. Although Northern Provincial Council elections were held in September 2013, there has been little movement on reconciliation or accountability by the Government of Sri… Read more »
Can the ‘Unknown Angel’ Deliver?
by Eric Solheim, ‘The Hindu,’ Chennai, January 15, 2015 http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/can-the-unknown-angel-deliver/article6789564.ece Anyone who two months back bet on Maithripala Sirisena winning the presidential election in Sri Lanka would be a millionaire. Most international experts expected former President Mahinda Rajapaksa to win and strengthen his family rule. He controlled the resources of the state to fund his… Read more »
Democracy Wins in Sri Lanka
Most importantly, the new dispensation must waste no time in addressing the Tamil demand for a just peace, because on this hinges the future of the country itself.
A New Sri Lanka
An urgent challenge for Sirisena is to address the concerns and anxieties of the minorities who have been at the receiving end of the rising tide of Sinhala and Buddhist nationalism… Now he needs to step in and lay out an agenda of administrative and political action. It is necessary for Sirisena to re-imagine Sri Lanka as a multi- ethnic and religious nation and bury the Rajapaksa legacy, which saw the state as a custodian of majoritarian interests. That, and a critical assessment of the Chinese involvement in Sri Lankan affairs as offered by the UNP, would also help Sirisena take Colombo’s ties with New Delhi to a higher level…
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Although Sirisena has won strong backing from the Tamil minority in the election, he may not necessarily find it easy to address India’s concerns, given his need to maintain support from the majority Sinhala community.
A Century of Silence
by Raffi Khatchadourian, ‘The New Yorker,’ January 5, 2015 …The news of the city’s changed atmosphere came quietly, five or six years ago, with the unlikely talk that Sourp Giragos was going to be rehabilitated as a functioning church—even though there was no congregation for it anymore. Then, in 2011, an item in the Armenian… Read more »
Postwar Sri Lanka’s Awkward Peace
KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka — Two men were riding the train known as the Queen of Jaffna as it rattled through the haunted battlegrounds of Sri Lanka’s civil war. One of them, Nisal Kavinda, a 20-year-old man from the Sinhalese ethnic group, was jubilant. He had wanted to ride this train since 2009, when President Mahinda Rajapaksadeclared… Read more »
Bilingual Nationhood, Canadian-Style
TORONTO — AS the United States gears up for a political brawl over immigration next year, one of the concerns shaping the debate will be the fear that English-speaking Americans will be culturally and linguistically overwhelmed by newcomers, many of them Spanish-speaking. An example of what is in store was the autumn cyberspat between the Telemundo… Read more »
ICG: Sri Lanka’s Presidential Election
by International Crisis Group, Brussels, December 9, 2014 ICG Presidential Election 2015 Sri Lanka’s upcoming presidential election promises more competition than was initially anticipated. But with that comes a great risk of violence. Long-term stability and post-war reconciliation can only be achieved through a peaceful election resulting in a government committed to serving the interests… Read more »
CM Wigneswaran Speech in India
Wigneswaran Kannabiran Memorial Lecture Nov 2014 After brief intro in Tamil, CM – Justice CW Wigneswaran’s speech is in English.
OHCHR Condemns Persistent Disinformation Designed to Discredit UN investigation on Sri Lanka
GENEVA (7 November 2014) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Friday criticized the continuing attacks by the Sri Lankan Government on the integrity of the UN Human Rights Office’s ongoing investigation into alleged grave human rights violations and abuses in Sri Lanka, and condemned the intimidation of human rights… Read more »
Amnesty Briefing on Sri Lanka for ICCPR Review
Amnesty UN INT_CCPR_CSS_LKA_18252_E Amnesty International has submitted a 40-page briefing on Sri Lanka to the U.N. Human Rights Committee in connection with the Committee’s review during this month of Sri Lanka’s fifth periodic report on its implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The briefing can be found at http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/LKA/INT_CCPR_CSS_LKA_18252_E.pdf INTRODUCTION Amnesty… Read more »
Radical Monk in Myanmar Pledges to Protect Global Buddhism
“This is not a multireligious country,” Bodu Bala Sena’s founder, Kirama Wimalajothi, said. “This is a Sinhalese country.”
Tamil Americans Urge Pres. Rajapaksa to Respect Sri Lanka’s Commitments to the United Nations
Today Sri Lanka’s President Rajapaksa spoke before the United Nations General Assembly on the status and future of Sri Lanka, yet overtly neglected to address the ongoing human rights abuses and limitation of democratic freedoms. USTPAC joins with others committed to human rights and calls on President Rajapaksa to honor Sri Lanka’s commitments to the United Nations and… Read more »
From Glasgow to Kashmir
by Jonah Blank, ‘Foreign Policy,’ New York, September 20, 2014 In Thursday’s vote, the people of Scotland did not opt for independence. But they may well have lowered the bar for separatists all around the world — not least among the countless ethnic groups of Asia. The Caledonian contest came down to the very end,… Read more »
Philippine Bill Would Give Muslims Autonomy
The Bangsamoro region would have local self-government, including locally recruited law enforcement officials — a critical demand by the rebels, given the allegations of human rights abuses in the region by the Philippine police and military, many of whom are Christians from the north. About four million people would live in the Bangsamoro region. Of the Philippines’ population of 107 million, about 5 percent are Muslim, most of them living in the south; about 80 percent are Roman Catholic.
The region would also retain most of the tax revenue generated from its natural resources. The central government would retain control over currency, foreign policy issues and national defense….Opponents of the agreement have said that it infringes on Philippine sovereignty, essentially creating a separate Muslim state in the south. A number of organizations have said they will contest the law’s constitutionality in the Supreme Court, and the rebels have said they will reject the measure if the court strikes down the main provisions dealing with autonomy or revenue-sharing.