With the sun glistening on waves that gently lap its clean sandy beaches and coral reefs, Hikkaduwa is the perfect tourist paradise. But there is one thing missing -tourists.

International rating agency, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Sri Lanka’s credit rating to B, five levels below investment grade, citing mounting public debt and political and security concerns.

Whilst Sri Lanka’s exports to India dropped 13%, the island’s exports to Pakistan has grown by 31%according to a Sri Lankan trade expert.

Sri Lanka has been named as a country where genocide and other mass atrocities are underway or risk breaking out.

A UN official in northern Sri Lanka has said that conditions for displaced people in LTTE-held areas are "as basic as in Somalia".

Bruce Fein, a former U.S. Deputy Associate Attorney General and currently Counsel for a US Tamil group said in an interview mid December that a 400+ page model indictment charging Sri Lanka officials for genocide against Tamils will be ready to be submitted to the U.S. Justice Department first week of January.

LTTE mounted their first counter-offensive against SLA in Vanni battlefront killing at least 60 soldiers and wounding another 150, according LTTE officials.

Warning that the LTTE's separate state ideology is a "threat" to India, the Sri Lankan Army chief says he is confident that New Delhi would not listen to "political jokers" in Tamil Nadu to force Colombo to broker a ceasefire with the LTTE.

India can end decisively end the now naked Sinhala oppression

The government says that the 'liberated' east is an example of democracy in action and a model for areas recaptured from the LTTE. The reality is anything but. Killings and abductions are rife, and there is total impunity for horrific abuses.

A leading human rights group accused government backed paramilitary outfit in eastern Sri Lanka of being behind a worsening wave of killings and child abductions.

In 2006, an internationally brokered ceasefire between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE broke down. Since then the government has been determined to win the civil war that began 25 years ago and has cost well over 70,000 lives

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government has sidelined Pillayan, a key paramilitary leader operated by the Sri Lankan government and the Chief Minister of the Eastern Province, on the utilisation of funds allocated for 'development'.

Even as Sri Lanka and some members of the international community tout the 13th amendment and the provincial council system as a viable method to devolve power to Tamils, Chief Minister of the newly formed Eastern Provincial Council and Rajapakse ally Pillayan has announced that the Eastern provincial Council is powerless.