Sri Lanka Tuesday prevented media from covering the court proceedings when the President’s brother, Secretary to the Ministry of Defence, Gotabaya Rajapakasa was cross-examined by Lawyer MA Sumanthiran. Yesterday, the defamation case filed by Gotabaya Rajapaksa against Lasantha Wickrematunge and the Sunday Leader on its reporting on MiG 27 purchase by the Defence Ministry was taken up at the District Court of Mt. Lavinia before Judge Gihan Ranawaka. Earlier Gotabaya Rajapaksa gave evidence-in-chief on the 22nd of May. The Cross Examination was started on the 27th May by Lawyer MA Sumanthiren. In a strange twist the Police debarred media personnel from entering the Courts to cover the proceedings. On earlier occasions it was evident that an entire media entourage was encouraged and prosecution Counsel Ali Sabri PC was seen and quite openly giving […]

The Federal Migration Office has come under fire for wrongly rejecting asylum applications from two Sri Lankans who were arrested on their return to their home country and are still in prison. Following reevaluation, deportations are to resume. A report released on Monday referred to a series of blunders resulting from “systemic conditions”, which led to the wrong decision being made in 2011. An external investigation into the matter was ordered after the Federal Administrative Court found the asylum applications to be valid, but only after the two men had been deported. The Swiss Centre of Expertise in Human Rights and the United Nations Refugee Agency, which conducted the investigation, found that the asylum application assessments had not been thorough enough. The errors were exacerbated […]

By N Sathiya Moorthy India’s Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi, has set a healthy precedent for all of South Asia to follow by inviting all neighbourhood leaders for his inauguration, including Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sri Lanka’s President should be more than willing to accept the invitation. In doing so, President Rajapaksa could be expected to wave away reservations, if any, from within, citing Modi’s outgoing Congress predecessor, Manmohan Singh, boycotting CHOGM last year, after raising hopes and controversies through the long run-up. If it came to that, he can be expected to silence those critics by pointing to the unprecedented new regional initiative, which the Sri Lankan Government has been pressing even for addressing domestic concerns like the ‘ethnic issue’ in the country. In […]

By Dr Dayan Jayatilleka Five years after the thirty years war we are in a time of transition to a termination. It can go either way: tenuous equilibrium and a modus vivendi or a bloody tragedy as finale. The foreseeable future of Sri Lanka will depend on the Mahinda-Modi equation. There are at least two broad scenarios. Scenario I: Soft Landing The Sinhala/Southern Establishment seizes the opening provided by an incoming Modi administration with a shared or compatible ideological morphology, comprehends that a strategic rapprochement with Delhi represents the last chance of stopping an externally driven or backed separation of the North and East, and pays the minimum price for such a rapprochement in the form of the full implementation of the 13th amendment within […]