What’s so surprising?

The leaked cable to the US State Department from US Ambassador to Sri Lanka Patricia Butenis has this week added to growing calls for international investigations into the Rajapakse administration’s culpability for war crimes. However, it is worth remembering that the cable's contents can only be a ‘revelation’ about Washington’s awareness, if relatively recent history is ignored. For example, this is what President Obama said on May 13, 2009 : “First, the government should stop the indiscriminate shelling that has taken hundreds of innocent lives, including several hospitals, and the...

Tamils, Sri Lanka’s terror and Trafalgar Square

This is the text of former London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s speech to the Tamil National Remembrance Day in Britain

Parameters for international investigations into Sri Lanka’s war

There has been some convergence between Tamil and international demands for an independent international investigation into the events of 2009 in Sri Lanka. The international community now largely supports the view that the manner in which the last stages of the war in Sri Lanka were fought may constitute crimes against humanity.

Joy by Presidential decree

There appears to be no end to President Mahinda Rajapakse’s pompous self-regard. Having won the election and steam-rolled through the possibility of lifelong presidency, the president, through his ever obliging government, proclaimed the entire week, to be one of festivities, in order to commemorate his swearing in for a second term.

LLRC extension is no surprise

News that Sri Lanka's Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) has had it mandate extended by another six months was always expected, but there is an assumed logic behind Colombo's actions. The commission is the Sri Lankan state's attempt to fend off critics, buy time and forestall an independent, international inquiry.

Eighteenth amendment negates the 'wait for change' argument

The Sri Lankan parliament has passed the eighteenth amendment, which removes the two term limit on a President and transfers to the President the power to appoint individuals to commissions that, prior to the amendment, had been intended as quasi-independent bodies. Though the amendment itself has nothing to do with the ethnic question (and it is deliberately intended not to address that issue) it has consequences for those seeking a just solution to the island’s protracted problem that have to be acknowledged. A full list of the changes contained in the eighteenth amendment can be accessed from other places (see for instance http://www.groundviews.org/2010/09/02/the-18th-amendment-to-the-constitu... ) and numerous analysts and observers have commented on why this is a regressive step for the Sri Lankan polity in general ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAT8WpN72NY ), so this article will not look at those, but rather focus on the effects on this constitutional change on the ethnic question. The most significant alteration introduced by the amendment is the change to Article 31 of the Sri Lankan Constitution, which sets the two-term limit on all Presidents. While others have focused on the possibility of authoritarianism as a result of the incumbent being reelected continuously – which is no insignificant matter – this also has practical consequences for the ethnic question and how other players (such as the Sinhalese public, the Tamil population, the Diaspora, the international community, etc) deal with Sri Lanka in the future. For by removing the 12 year maximum limit for any single President, this amendment makes the current President and his government a ‘fact of the ground’ that has to be dealt with.

Rajapaksa's alternative reality

The Sri Lankan government is apparently abandoning the garment sector if press reports over the weekend are to be believed. Given that the EU has withdrawn its GSP+ concession and the US is investigating its version of GSP, this is perhaps just the government accepting that garments are going to be hard to sell if the country's human rights record is not improved.

TNA's well-meaning folly

The TNA is undermining the Tamil nation's calls for an independent inquiry

The meaningless Sri Lanka inquiry panel

Sri Lanka's panel is a chance to redraw the country's image, not an attempt at reconcilliation

Sri Lanka amongst challenges to 'never again' myth - Annan

The cry of “never again,” raised by so many in the years after the end of the Holocaust 1945, has rung increasingly hollow with the passing decades, Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations, protested in an op-ed Friday in the International Herald Tribune. “The Holocaust remains unique … but instances of genocide and large-scale brutality have continued to multiply — from Cambodia to the Congo , from Bosnia to Rwanda , from Sri Lanka to Sudan ,” he said. “It is surprisingly hard to find education programs that have clearly succeeded in linking the history of the Holocaust...

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