3 February 2012: The 64th commemoration of Sri Lanka’s independence takes place tomorrow (February 4, 2012)at the time when the country’s justice system is in a hopeless crisis. The abuse of the judicial process for political reasons has created doubts about the independence of the judiciary itself. The government shows no will to respect the rule […]

Hey, MAN! Yup you. Got a minute? Because I would like to talk to you. Yup, to you.
Because you whistled out a love song in my honour from your guard-post on Bauddhaloka Mawatha as I was hopping out of a tuk-tuk to get into work this morning. You were on duty. You and I are […]

“There has been, for instance, an influx of asylum applicants in Paris since the Sarath Fonseka affair. A number of individuals, some surely with next to no connections to Mr Fonseka, have successfully sold his name to gain their political asylum in France……..”
“By no means does this imply that those who really need and deserve […]

President Mahinda Rajapakse was emphatic: China’s presence in Sri Lanka is strictly business, and not political.
Challenged on speculation that China financed and built the $1.4bn Mahinda Rajapakse port on Sri Lanka’s south coast so it could sneak a naval base into India’s backyard, Rajapakse laughed and said his giant neighbour had not complained.
“No one has said […]

“The CFA and LTTE surge strengthened the JVP and JHU, ushering Mahinda Rajapaksa into office. What displacement will a ‘third surge’ of external plus Tamil nationalist pressure achieve politically, and which Bonapartist redeemer, less malleably populist and more consistently authoritarian than the present incumbent, waits in the wings to be propelled by history and social […]

The case of two Swedish journalists imprisoned in Ethiopia sheds light on a harsh campaign of repression.
IN a filthy Ethiopian prison that is overridden with lice, fleas and huge rats, two Swedes are serving an 11-year prison sentence for committing journalism.
Martin Schibbye, 31, and Johan Persson, 29, share a narrow bed, one man’s head beside […]

It will not draw last tranche of US$800mil due to high interest rate by the global lender
Sri Lanka, which is locked in a row with the International Monetary Fund over its exchange rate policy, will not draw the remaining US$800mil of a US$2.6bil loan from the global lender due to the high interest rate, the […]

“Undercover Princes”: If the title makes you think of dashing Hohenzollerns trading secrets in romantic locales, think again.
For one thing, the reality dating series of this title, beginning on Tuesday on TLC, is set not in Venice or Gstaad or even London but in the chip shops and seaside pubs of Brighton, England, which looks […]

We, the following undersigned citizens, strongly condemn the attack on the Viluthu office in Colombo between the night of the 23rd of January and early hours of
Tuesday morning, the 24th January. The office was broken into and searched by unknown persons. We are especially perturbed that this incident occurred in a high security zone in […]

DAVOS, Switzerland — Protesters in Moscow and Cairo fill public squares to demand representative government. Yet on the streets of Madrid and New York — or of Athens, which gave us the very word for democracy — discontent is almost as rampant.
The only consistent messages seem to be that leaders around the world are failing […]