Thursday, June 17, 2010

Japan urges world not to dictate to post-war Sri Lanka



Japan on Wednesday urged the world not to dictate to Sri Lanka amid post-war reconciliation efforts and renewed calls from the West for a probe into possible war crimes.

Sri Lanka last month celebrated the first anniversary of its victory against Tamil Tiger separatists, ending 25 years of civil war, and rights groups used the occasion to push for an international war crimes investigation.



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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Sri Lanka: Patriotism as creed



by Tisaranee Gunasekara - Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it”. - General Douglas MacArthur (Nation, 17.8.1957)

It defies reason. The year the war was at its most intense and critical, Sri Lanka’s defence allocation was Rs. 177 billion; but in the first year of peace Sri Lanka’s defence allocation increased by a massive Rs.24 billion to Rs. 201 billion. Normally, defence expenditure increases in times of war and decreases (or stabilises) once peace dawns. Sri Lanka has become the antithesis of this norm; in this surreal land, defence expenditure actually increases during peacetime.


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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Sri Lanka plans to liberalize higher education



Sri Lanka's president Mahinda Rajapaksa has backed a plan to liberalize university education and set up a mechanism to monitor and evaluate the quality of foreign and local higher education, an official said.

A proposal for a 'National policy framework on higher education and technical and vocational education' to revamp higher education, has been drawn up by Sri Lanka's policy-making National Education Commission (NEC).


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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Sri Lanka: UN political chief holds talks with President



The top United Nations political official held talks today with the President of Sri Lanka at the start of a two-day visit aimed at helping the island country deal with key challenges in the wake of its long-running civil war.

B. Lynn Pascoe, the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, also visited an area close to the final battles of the civil war last year and is now the scene of the resettlement of thousands of people who fled their homes during the conflict.


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Thursday, June 17, 2010

President for ever?



Feizal Samath - Sri Lanka’s ruling majority is planning to push forward constitutional amendments that would allow for unlimited presidential terms, sparking an outcry from opposition groups and left-leaning members of its own coalition.

Debate is growing over plans by the president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party-led coalition to bring in amendments that would allow Mr Rajapaksa to run for an unprecedented third term in 2016.


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