Writing for the Financial Times’ “beyondbrics” section, Hugo Cox describes why foreigners may have to be wary of doing business in Sri Lanka, using the story of Geoffrey Dobbs, who owns four hotels in Galle and is the founder of the Galle Literary festival.

Dobbs is facing deportation for hanging the Sri Lankan flag upside down ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting last November.

Click here for full article (registration required). See below for extracts:

A leading British hotelier in Sri Lanka faces deportation after hanging the Sri Lankan flag upside down. Should foreign businessmen on the island beware?

The first day of an international conference on the Sri  Lankan state’s forcible and militarised procurement of Tamil land, saw a number of speakers calling for an international mechanism to halt land-grabs.

Various international delegates, including from the Northeast, expressed serious concern about attacks on the Tamil homeland, with many affirming that ongoing genocide against the Tamil nation is taking place in Sri Lanka.

The conference, organised by the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils alongside the British Tamils Forum, was inaugurated on Friday in the Houses of Parliament and is set to continue over the weekend.

Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh opened the conference, followed by Conservative MP Lee Scott who spoke of the importance of justice and also pointed out that Sri Lankan regimes "have tried to take land and change the demography" of the Tamil homeland.

Medha Patkar, a social activist representing National Alliance of People's Movements India (NAPM India) highlighted that the colonisation taking place in "every nook and corner of Tamil land" constituted a "continued wave of genocidal attacks" and further said:

"Sri Lanka is erecting statues not to bring in diversity and religious diversity, but to impose a new culture."

Sri Lankan government Minister Wimal Weerawansa has condemned resolutions passed earlier this week, stating that they were against Sri Lanka’s ‘national interests’.

Speaking on the recently passed resolutions, which included a call for an international investigation, a monument built to the victims massacred in Mullivaikkal and recognising that a genocide has taken place, Weerawansa stated they were part of a program to bring Sri Lanka before an international tribunal.

8 years have passed since 7 TRO workers were abducted by Sri Lankan government-backed paramilitaries in Batticaloa. The kidnappings, which took place on the 29th and 30th of January, has not led to a single arrest.

The missing aid workers are presumed dead.

“It was staggering to read that Beattie and her colleagues had ignored a log of war crimes piled high at the United Nations and described Rajapaksa as ’man of courage'.”