By Indi Samarajiva The animal assault on tourists in Tangalle is a tragedy, but not a trend. Sri Lanka remains a safe and friendly place to visit. The lawlessness and empowerment of government thugs, however, is a trend, just not one that usually affects foreigners. Now that it has, the government has to make a [...]
By Indi Samarajiva There are still a few common fears floating around Colombo and the pages of this newspaper. They are that the country will return to war, that the economy will collapse and that we will descend into a totalitarian dictatorship soon. These are the traditional rallying cries of the disenfranchised elite, but I [...]
The government has a problem acknowledging reality, but so do its critics. The war was not all good and the Rajapaksas are not all bad. That is the middle ground. LLRC With the LLRC report, the government has admitted that civilians were killed, that hospitals were shelled and that people were detained and at times [...]
No businesses were demolished in Unawatuna. The beach, however, has been wrecked, at least temporarily. I drove down to Unawatuna on the Southern Expressway and you can see that things are both better and worse than you would imagine. Hotels And Restaurants Are Not Destroyed It is not like Kingfisher is destroyed, just their deck, [...]
When I lived in America we’d come back to visit Sri Lanka once every three or four years. In my memory, it never changed. Same buses, same cars, same streets, same stuff to do. In the last year, however, Colombo and Sri Lanka have changed dramatically, and these changes seem to be picking up steam. [...]
The LTTE’s Great Heroes Day and the JVP’s November Hereoes Day just passed. Both groups terrorized, tortured and tried to kill their way to political change, and yet both feel that there is something to commemorate. While I support mourning the dead, I think it is a folly to say that they died for something [...]
At about my age, the Buddha left his family to seek enlightenment. Blogger James Altucher said this makes him a bad father, which I guess is true in an immediate sense. The thing about Buddhism is that it is full of seeming opposites like this. People say that Buddhism is about doing nothing, but that [...]
Everyone has an agenda, except for the dead. The Rump LTTE In 2009, the Sri Lankan government ended a brutal 30 year war with a final push, eliminating the LTTE and a considerable amount of civilians the terrorist group held as effective hostages. At the time, thousands of Diaspora Tamils rallied for a cease-fire to [...]
The government has requested all ‘news casting’ websites that discuss Sri Lanka to register. This seems to involve organisations like Lanka eNews, but also blogs, foreign outlets like the BBC, and possible Facebook pages or presumably Twitter feeds. Their technical requirements make about as much sense as the policy. Thankfully this is only a request, [...]
Since Occupy Wall Street, protests have spread all over the world. The basic gripe is social and economic inequality. In Colombo, people attempted an occupy protest, which did not really pan out. Why? Well they were not part of that bigger movement. They were actually part of an almost counter movement called Occupy Yourself. Rather [...]
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