Lanka Business Online
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
"We're developing Trincomalee and plan to issue a request for proposals to develop land," Wickrama said, delivering the annual P B Karandwala Memorial Lecture. "We plan to issue the RFP by March."
The lecture was organized by the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport Sri Lanka to honour a key figure in ports and shipping in the island.
Wickrama said 9,000 acres of land are available in Trincomalee and that previous RFPs had not drawn the desired response because of the ethnic war.
The 30-year war ended in May 2009 resulting in an economic boom which growth projected at 8.5 percent this year after eight percent growth in 2011.
"Now the situation has changed and there is a lot of potential for investments," Wickrama said.
Trincomalee will be developed more as a leisure port and no more industries will be allowed.
The port has a cement plant and flour mill.
"In the future we will not allow polluting industries as Trincomalee is a very sensitive area. It is one location where you can see elephants and whales - where the two giants on land and in the sea can be seen in one location."
© LBO
Friday, January 07, 2011
Sri Lanka to invite investments for Trinco port
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Political opposition in a nihilistic Sinhala society
By Kusal Perera | Groundviews
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
This Sinhala society as a collective entity has no such will, though individuals may show a dislike to what’s around them. Its the societal mindset that matters. Governments reflect that and so are their budgets and plans. Budget for this year (2011) is no good proof. It is obvious that this regime has no political desire and a will to find answers to those long overdue issues of poverty, rural economic growth and national development in an inclusive, plural society with much diversity. The path on which this Rajapasksa regime treads, is definitely nowhere close to the path of decent national development for a disciplined, modern, inclusive society.
With that comes an unavoidable question. How will this Sinhala society that has usurped the responsibility of deciding national politics, react to this regime’s failure in delivering post war dividends ? Or, will they ever challenge this “Al Capone” type regime ?
A case for People’s Power
There is often reason to believe that people would sooner or later react against any “Al Capone” type government. Often there is reference to the Iranian people’s upsurge that removed Shah Phalavi and to throwing out of Ferdinand Marcos, in the Philippines.
Yet, my sad and pessimistic conviction is, this present day Sinhala, Heenayana Buddhist society would not play Philippines or Iran. Not in the foreseeable future. This Sinhala society is awfully different, seasoned over centuries by Heenayana Buddhist ideology. It has turned into a grumbling, cussed entity, very much nihilistic in its culture of living.
Iran had its resentment brewing from the 1930s with senior Shah, General Rezah accused of “Westernising” Iran. His son President Shah Phalavi continued unchanged from around the 60′s with overt US support. Accumulation of resentment over decades, translating itself into an Islamic upsurge led by Mullahs, Iran finally threw him out of power and out of the country as well, in 1979.
“People’s Power” that came on the roads of Manila as an unstoppable force, was catalysed after a decade and more of Islamic Moro guerillas and the Maoist guerilla outfit, “New People’s Army” destabilised the society that Ferdinand Marcos strangled with his callous power. Thereafter with the assassination of popular Opposition leader Benigno Ninoy Aquino, sections of the army refused taking orders from the Marcos regime. It was finally the Catholic church with its “Radio Veritas” that brought people on to the streets in thousands that saw Marcos flee the country, in February 1986.
As one former President of the University of Philippines, Fransisco Nemenso put on record, “bringing hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets, in hours, in a day, would have been impossible, not just difficult, if not for Radio Veritas.”
Religious contradictions in history
This Sri Lanka is wholly different. This society lacks the religio-political inertia as in Iran and the Philippines, in translating social injustice into people’s actions. In both those countries, religion as an institution, was a socialising factor. Here in Sri Lanka, there are also no “Ayathollas of Iran” and a “Veritas Radio” as in the Philippines. There simply can not be, with Heenayana Buddhism.
Buddhist temples and monks are no organised institute like the “Church” and its clerics. It has no ideological capacity like Islam, to hold its loyal “faithfuls” from birth to adolescence to marriage and death. On a fundamentally individualistic imposition on life, Heenayana Buddhism is the opposite of the Catholic church that mobilises its constituency every Sunday and the Muslim mosque, every Friday afternoon.
There is also a feudal and a trader-business factor, hardly spoken of openly in relation to the Sinhala society and its type of Buddhism. “Nikayas”, as different “Sects” in Heenayana monkdom, were sponsored and patronised by a caste based trader community, ever since the “King” was made absent and the Shyamopali Siyam Nikaya restricted itself to the Kandyan Govigama nobility in 1764.
Amarapura Nikaya was established in 1803 by low country traders who funded a Salagama monk, Ambagahapitiye Gnanawimala thero, to make a sea voyage to Burma and return with higher ordination. Thereafter Karawa and Durawa monks were sponsored to travel to Burma for higher ordination, also by Southern traders and landed proprietors. Ramanya Maha Nikaya was later formed by another Salagama monk obtaining higher ordination, from Ramanna land in Burma in 1863.
All this keeps a feudal tag on Buddhists, with temples run by caste based monks and the trader community opting to assist their own “Buddhist taste” of the caste. To date the Vahumpura caste, making a significant presence in trade and commerce, proudly claim they are a strictly Buddhist caste. All of it in a half grown capitalist society leaves values, attitudes and social relations with rural land ownerships also intact, basically with a functioning feudal mindset, though living in a market economy.
The Old ‘Left’ and orthodoxy
The strength of the old Sama Samaja movement (LSSP) was therefore seen in how it challenged this feudal orthodoxy in an evolving urban life. The pioneering Sama Samaja leadership openly challenged the then existing Buddhist acceptance of Sinhala social relations on feudal structures from late 1920′s. It was thus able to dictate terms politically, in a well entrenched Welfare State, much different to the present day society. With that urban influence on “welfarism”, the 1953 August 12 “Hartal” was perhaps the last of its socio political engineering and the first mass action which challenged social tradition. Within a day, it forced the UNP government of Dudley Senanayake to fold up and take refuge in a British warship – HMS NewFoundland – anchored in the Colombo harbour.
The 1953 August Hartal brought out 02 fundamental issues. The first was the fact that political power lies centralised in Colombo. The rural polity has no decisive impact on State power and is only a passive “vote bloc”. Yet they become important in changing governments, with their Sinhala Buddhist feudal life, intact.
The second was that the Sama Samaja movement had no influence outside the Western Province and was to a lesser extent in the adjacent sub urban areas along the coast stretching North and South of Colombo and inland into the Kelaniya valley, towards Sabaragamuwa. It was evident therefore, the LSSP ideology could not challenge traditional rural life and therefore would not form an elected government on its own, for long years to come.
This led to a political faction within the LSSP that in its 1954 Conference proposed a change of strategy. They called for a “worker – peasant national government”, to address the majority rural voter, instead of living isolated and stubborn with its urban workers’ led anti capitalist politics. Having lost at the Conference, some like L.W Panditha, Samarawickrama and K.P Silva joined the Communist Party that was politically closer to their resolution. Thereafter Henry Peiris is said to have influenced political thinking in forming the nationalist MEP, which won the 1956 general elections, led by Bandaranayake.
Revival of Heenayana dominance
With Sama Samaja influence restricted to the urban minority and shrinking, this new nationalist alliance played alternate to the UNP with the type of Sinhala nationalism, that saw a Sinhala Buddhist revival with State patronage. Sinhala State capitalism of this newly revived Sinhala business and trader community, which depended on the Soviet bloc countries, justified the “progressive” nature of this new Sinhala nationalism.
SLFP politics thus defined the cultural potency of the Sinhala business and trader community in post independent Ceylon, that was geared to take total control of the market. This Sinhala business and trader community, perceived Tamil and Muslim business communities as strong competitors and sought State patronage for their own expansion and capture of markets. Sri Lanka thus came to be politico culturally defined as the “land of the Sinhalese” and of “Gauthama Buddha”.
The market component of Sinhala Buddhist radicalisation was amply demonstrated in the pogrom against Tamil people in July 1983. Industries Minister Cyril Mathew was in charge of the Sinhala campaign by then and represented a Sinhala Buddhist community that has specific business interests in society. In 1983 July, Tamil businesses from street corner eateries and groceries to cinema halls and big and established businesses like ‘KG Industries’, were all targeted after prior identifying. The UNP government of the day, used it politically to signal its readiness to allow violence, as answer to Tamil political grievances, that was also radicalising.
Heenayana negativism on social living
With the absence of the Sama Samaja ideology as an alternate platform that in pre independent and early post war period provided an alternate socio political ideology, this Sinhala business and trader dominance with increasing centralised State power once again provided space for Heenayana Buddhism to mould Southern social ideology. Emergence of a Sinhala Buddhist ideology based on historical rights as the superior social force in the island, structured a new and militant Sinhala political thinking (Chinthanaya) that helped decide politics, in the South. This gave legitimacy to Heenayana Buddhism as practised in the South with Buddhist monks emerging to assert themselves as a prominent social factor, embedding religion with politics.
The logical base of this Sinhala Buddhist thinking, though different to the philosophical preachings on “life and thereafter”, by Lord Buddha, stood on the broad Buddhist argument that greed and selfishness, passion and lust in a secular world of happiness and joy, leads to an extension of life in an unending cycle, which is a misery. To attain emancipation according to Heenayana interpretation which is different to Mahayana, “man” has to discipline life to dissociate from all such secular fixations, at the end of which “He” (Buddhism is a macho religion) could attain “nirvana” the sublime conclusion to life’s miserable journey.
A very individualistic and subdued approach to life, this denied the necessity to search for new knowledge in making life, a satisfying social experience. It contradicted the human necessity of seeking comfortable life and working towards such comfort. This explains why Buddhism lacks an enjoyable cultural aspect in social life, unlike Hinduism and Catholicism, or even Islamism. Introvert in its approach to life, culturally very much subdued, Heenayana Buddhism has left the Sinhala society without a rich tradition of song and dance, of art and sculpture and a culture of entertainment.
Coming of age with neo liberalism
Heenayana religious acceptance turned into individualism and a piously subdued life, the Sinhala mindset with no alternate thinking, was well seasoned to go roller skating with the neo liberal economy, introduced as the “Open Economy” from 1978, under the UNP government of JRJ. The open economy that took away all State controls on imports and exports, introduced a consumer pattern based on heavy competition for economic survival.
Opening of the economy sparked off an economic growth during the first years, that redesigned and redefined competition within a commercially expanding society. Commercialism, running on trade commissions, is very much competitive in a society that lacks both actual socio economic growth and new capital generation. Individuals and individual families, giving up on the traditional “extended family” was demanded adherence to consumer competition, for “choice” in living.
The new consumerist life, settled with home based entertainment and captive social dialogue through TV and FM channels. New and colourful communication brought both simple and soapy entertainment, mixed with controlled and edited political discussion and selected news, to the uprooted and isolated “man” held captive in the house. The fall of the film industry with all its other factors weighing in, is also due to this “locking in” of families to the new high paced lifestyle that allows no free time and social leisure. Within this neo liberal economy, socialising became restricted to seldom and carefully planned “family affairs”, not affordable to the majority in society.
In-house entertainment and FM-TV based communication thus controls the mindset of this new man, living within this highly competitive neo liberal economy. The new media phenomenon is programmed for profits, keeps an “atomised” collection of people fixed on light, a-political, contentless entertainment, all through day and night.
Accepting fate as Buddhists
The lonely, stressed out consumerist home life, especially among the middle class, is now driving people into a new religious trend, that evolves with the urban business and trader community in luxury “Ashrams” with “celebrity monks”. They preach the same Heenayana Buddhist ideology with the same individual approach to life, albeit with a more commercialised spin. This allows the Sinhala business and trader community to weigh heavily on this Sinhala regime that has Heenayana Buddhism providing the base for its official State ideology that talks proud in defeating Tamil separatism.
It has a dual social face. The urbanised middle class adopts the Heenayana tradition as their “Great Escape” from a heavily consumerised, high paced lifestyle, they would not move out from, in real life. The duality lies in being more Buddhist as escapists and more politically Sinhala to gain a bigger market share in a stagnant economy.
In more rural society, it is the strength of the Sinhala State, politicised to the grass roots, sponsored by the Sinhala business and trader community that holds power. Controlled from Colombo by a very centralised authority, akin to their Buddhist Kings, this system goes well, though with grumbling on day to day living, both in urban and rural life. This is no collective issue, for individualism that accepts life as fate, defined according to Heenayana Buddhism.
Will such an individualised, introvert society that lacks alternate thinking, have reason to challenge this regime ? Will it see political issues as common and collective issues that need to be answered on a social platform ? Not that soon for sure, more in the absence of a politically intelligent Opposition.
© Groundviews.org
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Sri Lanka Army to share anti-terror expertise with foreign militaries
Press Trust of India | India Report
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
The Sri Lankan army will conduct a training programme on anti-terrorist operations for military personnel from three South Asian countries, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh from next week, the government information department said.
The programme provides anti-terrorist operational training in jungle terrains at the elite commandos'training school in Kuda-Oya, southeast of the island.
"Four personnel from India and Pakistan and one from Bangladesh will participate in this training,"army commander Lt General Jagath Jaysuriya was quoted as saying by the information department.
Participants were invited by the Sri lanka army.
The training programme will cover 50 to 90 days and army personnel from several other countries are expected to undergo similar training in the future,"the information department said.
Sri Lankan army was able to eliminate the entire leadership of the rebel outfit LTTE in 2009, ending three decades of conflict which was one of the bloodiest civil wars in the Asian region.
© India Report
Thursday, January 06, 2011
British firm Booker Tate to build sugar factory in SL
News360.lk
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
The BOI says, an agreement with the company will be signed at the end of this month, once the "Environmental Impact Assessment" is released.
Booker Tate, a subsidiary of Tsb Sugar International, a globally known sugar producer, will be collaborating with IMS Holdings along with an individual party in Sri Lanka to establish the plant.
The facility will be named as "Bibile Sugar" and is expected to employ 400 persons.
The Cabinet has approved the allocation of 200 hectares to build the factory and a sugar cane nursery.
"They will implement an out grower system" added a BOI official, who is closely working on the upcoming deal.
Sri Lanka spends around Rs. 35 billion per annum, to import nearly 90% of the country's sugar requirement.
As of now Sevenagala and Pelawatta are the only two sugar producing factories in the country.
Meanwhile the Government has brought in the private sector to revive the Kantale Sugar factory and the Hingurana Sugar factory.
The Hingurana factory is a private public partnership in which the Government owns a 51% stake.
© News360.lk
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Lawmakers: Violence returns to northern Sri Lanka
Associated Press | Yahoo News
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
Ethnic Tamil lawmakers have submitted to Parliament a list of 15 incidents that occurred in the northern Jaffna peninsula in the past two months. The area is the cultural heartland of ethnic Tamils and was a stronghold of Tamil Tiger rebels before they were defeated by the military in 2009.
The lawmakers on Thursday asked the government to explain how such incidents could take place even with the heavy security in the area.
© Yahoo News
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Sri Lanka: 2011 dawns with killings and abductions
Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka | Press Release
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
Manoharan Ragihar, Yogarajah Hemachchandra, Logitharajah Rohan, Thangathurai Sivanantha and Shanmugarajah Gajendran were all shot dead on the second of January 2006 in a High Security Zone in Sri Lanka’s eastern town of Trincomalee. The families, local journalists and international organisations had evidence that the crime was committed by the state armed forces. The government failing to find the perpetrators and punish them is clear proof to that evidence.
Three weeks later, Sudaroli Journalist Subramaniyam Sugirdharajan whose photographs exposed that the students were killed at point-blank range was shot dead near the Governor’s Secretariat.
2011
The new year dawned in Jaffna with Sobinathan Gopinath, a 27-year-old driver of a three wheeler taxi, disappearing from Urumpirai, where, within the duration of three days, a teacher was abducted and an education officer shot dead.
The latest of abductions were reported from Kilinochchi on the 3rd of January. 28 out of 30 boys who were abducted by an armed group were later dropped at the Omanthai military checkpoint. The fate of the other two is not known.
Tamils in Jaffna and Kilinochchi are terrified by this latest wave of forced disappearances and killings. Within the last two weeks of 2010 the following violence against northern Tamils were reported from a region with a disproportionate military presence where independent media and voluntary organisations are barred.
· The chief priest of Changkaanai Murukamoorthy temple, 56 year old Nithiyananda Sharma, died from gunshot wounds received at the temple early December.
· The decapitated body of Mahendran Thiruvarudchelvam, who had been displaced from the Vanni was found in Jaffna on the 20th of December, nine days after his disappearance.
· On the 27th of December Armed men who arrived on a motorbike, shot and killed the Deputy Director of Education for the Valikaamam Zone, Markandu Sivalingam.
· Gunmen killed environmentalist Ketheeswaran Thevarajah, in Jaffna on the 31st of December.
· 30-year-old teacher, Shanmuganathan Vignesvaran of Urumpiraay West had been abducted on 30th December at Urumpiraay, Jaffna.
Government ministers from the Tamil region, Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan and Douglas Devananda have already accepted in public that the abductions and killings have not been investigated to a conclusion. The commander for the Sri Lankan military in Jaffna, Major General Mahinda Hathurusinghe speaking to journalists has ruled out the involvement of the Tamil Tigers. However, he has told the BBC that the killing of the priest earlier in December was the work of two former Tamil Tiger fighters working in cooperation with a government army corporal and that all these individuals had been arrested.
The government
The government of Sri Lanka denied the allegations made against it and claimed that there was a political motive to discredit the government by associating it with some of the killings. It explicitly denied that the education official had been killed for condemning the singing of the national anthem in Sinhala, rather than Tamil, at a state function. However, it has failed to find the culprits or establish a motive.
The climate of terror in Jaffna in particular and in the north in general continues even twenty months after the Sri Lankan government proclaimed its military victory over Tamil Tigers. However, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has declared that the state led by him will not stop operations. Addressing novice cadet officers of the Diyatalawa Sri Lanka Military Academy on the 21st of December, President Rajapaksa said that the operation ’will not cease until all bitter past memories of terrorism and secessionist intentions are completely wiped out’.
Journalist for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) strongly believes that the escalation of violence against Tamils following the president’s declaration is of serious concern in a land where Tamils are faced with loss of life, land, cultural identity and freedom.
While vehemently condemning these atrocities against the Tamil people, JDS warns that Sri Lanka will end up being at the mercy of an autocratic, fundamentalist state unless the freedom loving people within and without the country act immediately to stop this recurring violence.
Executive Committee
Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka
04 January 2011
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Tamils heavily victimised at Colombo airport
Sri Lanka Guardian
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
According to latest information, Tamil passengers of both inbound and outgoing flights are being targeted by the Terrorism Investigation Department (TID).
Those who escape the rope whilst entering are being nicked at the point of exit.
According to information, the TID officials armed with airline passenger lists single out individuals and take them into custody. Some of them are held at the airport for several hours and interrogated whilst some are taken away in unmarked white vans to unknown destinations.
The TID also makes inquiries on those who have been allowed to enter and nick them at the point of their exit from the country based on information gathered.
Persons having links to Tamil nationalist politics or connected to the LTTE are even stopped at the point of departure. This is done by putting the person in the immigration database as a wanted person and when the person reaches the immigration desk for clearance the TID will be invited to arrest the person.
In order to justify the arrest, bogus and anonymous letters are also being produced to stop the person at immigration exit point.
Those who undergo lengthy interviews at the airport have experienced untold hardships. Whilst the interview is underway, the information provided by the arrested person are passed to the intelligence flying squads who will go around and interview the parties mentioned in the interview including to confirm the stories.
According to airport sources, some of those taken in unmarked vehicles are taken to unknown places and their fate is not known unless they are released.
Following the failed visit of the President Mahinda Rajapakse to the UK, the arrests of Tamils from London has increased.
The arrests of outbound passengers result in victims undergoing untold hardships on release to reorganise the travel again incurring unnecessary costs.
© Sri Lanka Guardian
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Sri Lanka prohibits UN war crimes investigation
By Daniel C Giacopelli | Open Democracy
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
The international panel will not, however, be given permission to travel around the country to meet prisoners, conduct interviews or carry out an independent enquiry: ‘It is only on that basis of giving evidence to the LLRC that the government has consented to their visit,’ said Keheliya Rambukwella, a government spokesperson. ‘The UN panel will be given visas only to testify before the LLRC if they request (that) and not for any investigations....This is the government stance and there is no change in that,’ he added.
It is the latest development in a back-and-forth saga concerning the role a post-war commission in the country, following the violent conclusion in 2009 of the quarter-century fight between Sri Lankan military forces and the Tamil Tiger rebels. Amid widespread claims that both sides perpetrated war crimes, Ban Ki-moon appointed a three-man panel to probe such allegations. The existence and mandate of the international panel, led by the former attorney general of Indonesia, plus a South African and an American, was vehemently opposed by officials in Colombo. In response, President Rajapaksa announced the creation of the government-sponsored LLRC and rejected the admittance of any third-party commission into the country, maintaining that the investigations were a ‘national matter’ and that the UN panel constituted ‘unwarranted interference’ that infringed on Sri Lankan sovereignty. Maintaining the credibility of the LLRC has been difficult for the government, however, as human rights groups around the world continue to point out that the commission lacks the impartiality required to conduct a convincing and effective investigation. Amnesty International, among other groups, has already refused to testify at the LLRC for this reason.
On 18 December, the government changed its position regarding the UN panel, announcing that visas would, in fact, be extended to the three members so that they can share evidence and present their findings with the LLRC, a move praised by the UN Secretary General. Yet it remained uncertain at the time the extent to which the panel would be given appropriate freedom to conduct an effective investigation, or one at all. One reporter in the country suggested that it was ‘unlikely’ that the international team ‘will be given free rein,’ a prediction ultimately confirmed by last Thursday’s announcement that no investigation would be permitted. Explaining the decision, Rambukwella noted that, ‘The circumstances are different now,’ without elaborating.
The openSecurity verdict: It remains uncertain whether the panel will take up the government’s offer to meet with the LLRC, given that no independent investigation will occur. The UN has not yet requested visas for the panel members. The possibility of a meeting outside of Sri Lanka between the LLRC and the UN panel has already been rejected by the LLRC.
One political analyst observes that, ‘There is no point in the UN panel coming here, if it is only allowed to meet only the LLRC and not allowed to meet the civil society and people affected by the war and to travel around the country.’ He notes that while the UN panel was largely created to examine the intensely violent final stage of the campaign, the LLRC has mostly been collecting submissions regarding ‘reconciliation for the future’. Without an independent inquiry, it would be difficult to know for sure the specific details of the damage inflicted in those final days.
Protests such as those from Sri Lankan officials regarding a violation of sovereignty, that supreme and sacred concept within the international system, are common, yet hold precious little moral weight when allegations of war crimes are involved. And indeed, research conducted by Human Rights Watch has shown that it is extremely likely that acts of violence amounting to war crimes occurred in early 2009. Self-preservation is the government's main motive.
Yet, though it remains a highly unlikely scenario, the Sri Lankan government would be wise to allow the UN panel to fulfil its mandate within the country unhindered. It is important to note that the violence that emerged over the course of the 26-year old war was far from one-sided. As observed by Meenakshi Ganguly, despite the reportedly thousands of civilian deaths caused by government military forces, the hundreds of thousands of innocent Tamils held in detention camps and other alleged human rights abuses inflicted upon many in the Tamil community, ‘It is hard to mourn the passing of a group that pioneered suicide-bombings, murdered Tamils who opposed Tiger tactics, and ran a near-totalitarian state-within-a-state. The evil of the Tiger leadership was never more evident than in the final days of the conflict when Tiger forces shot Tamil civilians attempting to flee the fighting and heavy government shelling’.
Only by setting the record straight and shining light on the abuses originating from both sides will President Rajapaksa validate his post-war commitment, signed by himself and Ban Ki-moon, to ‘the promotion and protection of human rights, in keeping with international human rights standards and Sri Lanka’s international obligations’. And if concepts of justice and fairness are not attractive, surely financial incentives are. According to one estimate, Rajapaksa’s refusal to allow an impartial investigation has cost Sri Lanka $150 million (97 million pounds) in annual trade from the European Union and has been quite harmful for foreign investment.
© Open Democracy
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Sri Lanka mulls ban on mini-skirts
Press Trust of India | NDTV
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
The cultural ministry was considering public petitions calling for a ban on mini skirts which have raised the ire of ultra conservative sections of society, officials said.
The Cultural Ministry forwarded the petitions to a committee to study the requests and come up with a dress code for public places, a ministry official told PTI.
Ministry Secretary Nimal Rubashinghe said no firm stand was taken in respect of the skimpy women's clothing, but the Lakbima News daily said the government was contemplating banning mini skirts.
"There are individuals and groups representing religious and cultural interests, who have written to us raising concerns that this kind of (mini) dress would corrupt our culture," Minister T. B. Ekanayake was quoted as saying by the Lakbima news daily.
"They say with the arrival of tourists, this situation would worsen," the minister added.
Sri Lanka has already ordered the pulling down of bill boards featuring women showing extra cleavage or exposing thighs to advertise products or services in the capital and elsewhere in the country.
"A new era of moral purity is in the offing in the New Year," said the report in the daily, which is controlled by business family close to the ruling party, but has extensive links to gambling.
The country also took objection to bikini-clad women dancing around a Buddha statue in one of US pop singer Akon's music videos and denied him a visa to perform in the country.
Sri Lanka has also ordered Internet service providers to block access to over 200 porn websites said to feature local men and women.
© NDTV
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
‘Sri Lanka to become regional financial hub’ says Central Bank Governor
By R. K. Radhakrishnan | The Hindu
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
Presenting the ‘road map monetary and fiscal sector policies for 2011 and beyond,' he said this was a gradual process.
The central bank was strengthening its global and regional financial links. The immediate goal was to develop the financial sector's capacity to proactively respond to the changing requirements of the economy, and support the next phase of economic development of the country, he said.
He said collaboration with foreign financial institutions and banks would increase further.
Sri Lanka had to get its systems, especially at the supervisory level, on a par and in line with international standards, to make the country a regional financial hub.
Since there is an increasing presence of international banks in Sri Lanka and local bank branches outside Sri Lanka, memorandum of understanding with home regulators of foreign banks and host regulators of local banks in the Asian region would be signed by the end of 2012, he said.
The biggest challenges of 2011 included, maintaining inflation at the ‘mid-single digit' and keeping the Sri Lankan rupee from appreciating too much, he said.
All key sectors performed impressively in 2010. The inflation had remained manageable at ‘mid-single digit levels' for two consecutive years, stability in exchange rate was maintained and there had been “remarkable macro economic stability.”
The central bank has projected its economy to grow by 8-9 per cent over the next few years and has asserted that all sectors would contribute to the growth, riding on the ‘peace dividend.'
Revealing that the central bank had invited Moody's for a fresh sovereign credit rating, he said both S & P and Moody's had given ‘stable' outlook while Fitch had given ‘positive.'
© The Hindu
This site is best viewed with firefox
Visit the JDS New Website
Read the urgent alerts - act now!
Sri Lanka's Killing Fields
No Impunity for Enforced Disappearances
UN REPORT ON SRI LANKA
where is prageeth?
Amnesty: Failures of Sri Lanka's LLRC
Permanent Peopls's Tribunal on Sri Lanka - Final Report
Sivaram: A walk down memory lane
Remembering Lasantha
Subscribe to JDS newsfeeds
UN EXPERTS conclusion backs the JDS video
SL Execution Video : The truth comes out
A legacy unforgotten
Post-war justice in sri lanka : International Commission of Jurists
Evidence of Police Brutality in Sri Lanka
A Study of Police Torture in Sri Lanka
