Sri Lanka’s government Wednesday denounced the US-led air operation against the Libyan regime with a familiar refrain.

“These strikes are harming civilians and are also a violation of the territorial integrity of an independent country,” External Affairs Minister G.L.Peiris told Parliament.

The irony is incredible. Sri Lanka, whose governments over three decades murdered over a hundred thousand Tamil civilians throughout bombardment, blockade, extra-judicial killings and disappearances (and that was before the mass killings of forty thousand more in 2009), has something to say about Libya.

(From Reuters' report Wednesday)

Sri Lanka’s bourse is Asia's best performer so far in 2011 with an 8.6 percent gain, after a 96 percent rise last year.

The sixth annual Tamil Studies Conference, "Parimaanam: Images, Embodiments and Contestations" organized by the University of Toronto and the University of Windsor, will be held at the University of Toronto from May 13-14, 2011.

Registration to the public is open. Click here. 

Extracts from US Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake’s speech to the Asia Society on Monday:

This is one of the pictures at a recent exhibition in London billed as the “first international showcase of Sri Lanka's leading contemporary artists since the end of the civil war in 2009”:

President Mahinda Rajapaksa this week grumbled that Western countries were refusing visas to Sri Lankan minister, but were issuing them to ‘terrorists’ – his word for Tamils who seek refuge abroad from his militarized rule.

On International Women’s Day (March 8), the Global Tamil Women Forum (GTWF) appealed to international governments, parliamentarians, institutions and human rights defenders over the plight of Tamil women in Sri Lanka.

The appeal urged the international community to ensure:

“Our failure to acknowledge male rape leaves it in the shadows, compounding the humiliation that survivors experience. For instance, the majority of Tamil males in Sri Lanka who were sexually assaulted during that country’s long civil war did not report it to the authorities at the time, later explaining that they were simply too ashamed.

Amongst the changes to atttract foreign investment, Sri Lanka is to abolish its standard tool for this – long tax holidays for those prepared to invest.

Sarath Amunugama, senior minister for international monetary co-operation, says it’s his idea:

“The brutal attacks on fishermen who stray into Sri Lankan waters has given ordinary Indians a brief glimpse of the lack of accountability of Sri Lanka's security forces, and the unresponsiveness of the Rajapakse government to serious abuses.