Reconciliation

FSL8812 Christine Robichon, Ambassador of France to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, in an interview with the Daily Mirror, while commending the “huge progress” accomplished on the economic front, opines that economic development alone is not sufficient to achieve a just and lasting peace.Foreign friends, she further asserts, cannot help much in the political reconciliation […]

by Charles Haviland ML8712 North-eastern Sri Lanka has been off-limits to journalists and most other outsiders since the civil war ended in 2009, but the authorities have now granted BBC correspondent Charles Haviland access to much of the area.I was with the army as they detonated left-over munitions near a major battle scene.“Here, crouch behind […]

by Sunil BastianLand and land policy has received much attention in recent times. There are numerous discussions and activism around land policy. For example, the LLRC has recommendations about land disputes in the North; land disputes were mentioned in the resolution passed against Sri Lanka during the 18th session of the United Nations Human Rights […]

by M.A.Sumanthiran MAS8612 M.A.Sumanthiran MP Last week I wrote on the topic of self-determination. This drew many comments. One of which was to the effect that Tamil political leaders seem to believe that these issues can be settled by presenting a good legal brief, but they are eventually settled by practical power politics and the […]

By Commission for Justice and Peace of the Diocese of Jaffna On the 3rd of August, after a three day visit to the island, a senior United Nations relief official praised the Government of Sri Lanka for the ‘progress’ made within the past three years. “The scale of what Sri Lanka has accomplished over the […]

”Accountability is not only about rehabilitation and reconstruction. The Government also needs to look at the political reconciliation process as a part of the Roadmap efforts. With the war three years behind the nation, the Government needs to ensure that it is on the same page as the victim population on matters of reconciliation issues, […]

7709709584_edccc86ef9_b Following the assassination of Neelan Tiruchelvam by the LTTE on 29 July 1999, in a spontaneous outpouring of grief and loss, friends and people with whom he worked, including from the institutions he founded, remembered and honoured him by painting peace and floral motifs and the quote ‘Secure the Sanctity of Life’ in Tamil, […]

In a bid to make all Sri Lankans bilingual within the next five years, the National Languages and Social Integration Ministry has taken measures to decentralise its services and set up Provincial Language Centers in all nine provinces.“Our objective is to create a bilingual Sri Lanka within the next five to ten years to eliminate […]

As post war Sri Lanka experiences a high level of militarization, the northern provinces of the country continue to face serious humanitarian and human rights problems. Three years after the end of a protracted conflict and war that ravaged the country for quarter of a century, the people and communities are struggling to attain a […]

  Sri Lanka has achieved excellent results in its Northern and Eastern   rehabilitation and resettlement programme and post-conflict economic  development drive. Other countries with similar problems can learn a lot from Sri Lanka on these issues. Therefore, Sri Lanka should share its experience with other countries. These views were expressed by John Ging. Director, Coordination […]

Ruki DSC01363 In 2011, a young Advanced Level student from Mullikulam in the district of Mannar, living as an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) in a camp in Thalvupadu, Mannar, shared with me an assignment she had done about her village and effects of displacement. She proudly described the richness of her hometown in terms of […]

A street sign in Colombo with Sinhala at the top followed by Tamil and English (IRIN) – Enhancing practical efforts to uphold the language rights of millions of ethnic Tamil-speaking Sri Lankans could play a key role in the country’s long-term peace and reconciliation, say analysts and activists. “Language parity is one of the biggest […]

By Camelia NathanielDespite the fact that it has been three-and-a-half years since the war that ravaged this country ended, the sufferings of thousands of war widows have been ignored.  These widows continue to live in poverty and suffer from social stigmatisation and economic deprivation, purely because they have lost their husbands.According to the Assistant Divisional […]

by V. Anandasangaree Leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front V. Anandasangaree yesterday pleaded on behalf of resettled internally displaced people, when he said were starving as they had been provided with dry rations enough only for six months. Anandasangaree in a statement titled ‘Open appeal to leaders of all political parties, important personalities and […]

Military in Jaffna A psy-ops squad, operated by SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has started to ‘interrogate’ and harass former fighters and members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who have been released after the detention and so-called rehabilitation programme. Claiming that they belong to a ‘special CID unit’ from Colombo, the psy-ops […]

Red Alert: Weak external liquidity; moderately high and increasing external debt; fundamental fiscal weaknesses; high public debt and interest burden; political institutions lacking transparency and independence.With Sri Lanka planning to raise US$ 1 billion through an international sovereign bond issue sometime soon, three leading international sovereign ratings agencies Fitch, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s yesterday […]

Senior Minister for Human Resources D.E.W. Gunasekara said emphatically that as far as the grievances of the Tamils are concerned, it could be solved only if the two main political parties, the SLFP and the UNP reach consensus and thereafter hold talks with all Muslim and Tamil parties. The Minister in an interview with the […]

By Simon DenyerThe defeat of one of the world’s largest and most lethal terrorist organizations — and the end of a three-decade civil war — should have heralded a bright new dawn for the tropical Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka. The economy is one of Asia’s fastest growing, and tourism is booming. But three […]

In remarks to this newspaper, President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka has said the elections to the country’s Northern provincial council will be held only in September 2013 because the government needs time to update 30-year-old electoral rolls.The explanation for the delay is intriguing. Three other elections have been held since the defeat of the […]

 Donor assistance is waning in northern Sri Lanka, where the critical priorities of food, shelter, protection and nutrition are not being covered, and many displaced people still need outside assistance more than three years after a decades-long civil war ended. “We’re now at a critical juncture in time,” Vincent Lelei, head of the UN Office […]

MR & Menon Indo-Lanka ties under heavy strain; National Security Advisor holds crucial talks with Rajapaksa trio  ”As exclusively revealed in The Sunday Times last week, Menon’s mission was to convey to the government in “the strongest terms” New Delhi’s concerns over a string of important issues. His meetings in Colombo originally listed for one-on-one […]

in Westminster ”Both countries have a mostly Theravada Buddhist ethnic majority, and large ethno-religious minorities. Both are in the shadow of a traumatic period in their respective histories. Both have a powerful military with a serious human rights case to answer. Both have a question mark over just how democratic their government may be in […]

  Without a national identity card, many Tamils in Sri Lanka cannot avail of basic services and it makes them suspect in the eyes of the police, writes Ponniah Manikavasagam of the BBC’s Tamil service. In a remote and dusty part of Kilinochchi district in the Tamil-dominated northern Sri Lanka, people gather around a group […]

by The Social Architects IntroductionAs mentioned by TSA,[1]the government has prepared a lengthy, heading-less, and inappropriate questionnaire[2] (in poorly written and, at times, incoherent Tamil) which has been used to obtain information about ex-combatants before they leave Protective Accommodation and Rehabilitation Centres (PARCs). The document appears to place no genuine emphasis on emotional wellness at […]

Social exclusion has been long identified as a key trigger of internal conflict. It represents an impediment to the achievement of national objectives such as peace, stability and economic prosperity.  The higher the levels of exclusion in society, the more fertile the grounds for conflict – and a return to violence cannot be ruled out […]

Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), the main Muslim party in Sri Lanka, will demand the meaningful implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution when extending its support to whichever party at the election to the Eastern Provincial Council. The SLMC conducted a two-day workshop last week to seek the views of the rank and […]

Image courtesy The Hindu The Social ArchitectsFeatures, The defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May of 2009 brought a new dimension to the ethnic conflict that has engulfed Sri Lanka since its independence in 1948. During the final phase of the war, thousands of LTTE combatants surrendered to the military and […]

South African President Zuma   While the LTTE was retreating rapidly on the Vanni east front, following a debilitating setback at Kilinochchi in the first week of January, 2009, the Tamil Diaspora groups emerged as its successor. The UK-based Global Tamil Forum (GTF) is now at the forefront of an internationally backed campaign to haul […]

The UPFA government must ensure that they will not deprive the Northern Province voters of their rights by conducting elections to the Provincial Council.Secretary General of the Democratic Peoples Front (DPF) Dr. Kumar Guruparan said that it seems the USA and its Ambassador designate to Sri Lanka, have put pressure on the government, to hold […]

ITAK symbol Kalana SenaratneFrom its inception in late 1949 as the Tamil Federal Party, the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) – a party which, as the late Lakshman Kadirgamar once claimed in Parliament, was founded by a “dedicated group of principled men” – has been in the forefront of Sri Lankan (and Tamil) politics. It […]