Long supportive of Sri Lanka’s war against the Liberation Tigers, The Hindu newspaper has rarely been critical of Colombo governments.
Not even when Colombo repeatedly, and pointedly, ignored Delhi’s explicit, if softly phrased, requests such as for a political settlement with the Tamils, or to implement the Indian-brokered 13th amendment (in 2006 President Mahinda Rajapaksa rescinded the 1987 merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces. See the justification here and India's plea here).
Indeed, President Rajapaksa, an ultra Sinhala nationalist whose regime has been accused of widespread human rights abuses ever since he came to power, has long had a platform in the paper through its fawning interviews (see, for example, this).
However, the recent comments by his brother, Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who has a penchant for speaking his mind – and thus making clear the regime’s unvarnished sentiments, seems too much even for The Hindu.
See the paper’s editorial of Tuesday August 16 here.
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