IDEALS

COLOMBO, (Aug. 12, 2009) IPS/GIN – These days, the front pages of
mainstream Sri Lankan newspapers are dominated by reports of
clashes between two Muslim groups, the drama of two baby elephants
separated from their mothers and government efforts to ban porn
sites and curb adult-only movies. This shift in news focus is a
radical departure from the days when newspapers were choked with
war coverage.

“I think the clashes between two Muslim factions have been
overplayed, maybe because there is no other news,” said Mohamed
Ameen, a veteran Sri Lanka journalist.

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MADHU, Sri Lanka, (Aug. 19, 2009) IPS/GIN – The jungle church was
once again filled with devotees camping out for days to take part
in the feast of the Virgin Mary of Madhu. It had been over 27 years
since the last occasion when tens of thousands of believers
streamed into the church located at Madhu, in the north-western
Mannar District, about 300 km from the capital Colombo.

In 1982 the jungle shrine was caught in the crossfire between
government forces and the Tamil separatist Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE), preventing devotees, especially from the south,
from travelling there. The war ended in May, when government forces
wiped out the Tigers, who had been fighting for a separate state
for ethnic Tamils since the 1970s. Read the rest of this entry →

TRINCOMALEE, Sri Lanka, (May 25, 2010) IPS/GIN – Rajini Padamaraj,
32 and single, is the sole support of her mother and two younger
siblings.

Rajini, of Tamil ethnic origin, is originally from the Jaffna
peninsula in northern Sri Lanka. She found a job last October as
a sewing instructor in a training centre for women funded by a
Japanese women’s group.

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COLOMBO, (May 26, 2010) IPS/GIN – Relations between Sri Lanka and
European Union (EU), which turned frosty around six months back,
appear to be thawing as the government makes a last ditch stand to
regain a crucial trade concession that has been suspended over
human rights issues hounding the south Asian island state.

A high-powered government delegation led by Sri Lanka’s Attorney
General Mohan Peiris and including Finance Secretary Dr P.B.
Jayasundera and Foreign Secretary Romesh Jayasinghe returned home
over the weekend following talks last week with EU officials in
Brussels, considered the regional bloc’s de facto capital.

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COLOMBO, (Apr. 30, 2010) IPS/GIN – Though the global economic
crisis has eased in most of Asia, latest reports about falling
demand for garments in markets like Europe and the United States
have become a new source of concern to Sri Lanka’s troubled garment
labor force.

Garments, the island state’s biggest industrial export, are
suffering a double whammy: the economic recession and uncertainty
over tax-free trade to Europe. The sector employs close to 300,000
people with another 200,000 dependent on it. Read the rest of this entry →

COLOMBO, (May 16, 2009) IPS/GIN – The United States, joined by the
UK, France and other EU states, are stepping up economic pressure
on Sri Lanka to stop the killing of civilians in its encounters
with Tamil guerrillas in the North. The countries are planning on
using a proposed IMF bailout package and trade concessions as
bargaining tools.

“I think the international community is putting economic pressure
on the government as nothing else has worked [in relation to
international appeals to stop fighting and avoid civilian
casualties],” said Jehan Perera, political commentator and
executive director at the National Peace Council (NPC) here. Read the rest of this entry →

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, (May 3, 2009) IPS/GIN – Lasantha Wickrematunge
is gone but far from forgotten at The Sunday Leader, the newspaper
where he was editor until his assassination on Jan. 7.

At the end of the long editorial room of The Sunday Leader hangs
a large sketch of Wickrematunge. He was shot in his car, just five
minutes from his office.

It is a familiar pose of Wickrematunge’s, leaning back in his
chair, smiling; yet his raised fingers make it clear that he is
making a point, like he always did. Since his assassination,
Wickrematunge, who was posthumously named recipient of the 2009
UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize, has become a rallying point for
journalists, especially those he nurtured. Read the rest of this entry →

UNITED NATIONS, (May 15, 2009) IPS/GIN – The Sri Lankan government,
which has come under heavy fire for the massive humanitarian crisis
in the country’s war zone, is winning the 25-year-old military
conflict but is on the verge of losing the propaganda war overseas.

“It is a very stressful time here,” says Sri Lanka’s Foreign
Secretary Palitha Kohona, a former chief of the U.N. Treaty
Section. Read the rest of this entry →

COLOMBO, (May 8, 2009) IPS/GIN – Trade unions from Bahrain, Jordan
and Kuwait came together with their Sri Lankan counterparts here
to strike an unprecedented agreement on the welfare of migrant
workers.

The Colombo agreement is seen as breaking the tight grip on migrant
workers of recruitment agencies here and in recruiting countries.
It grants all internationally recognised labour rights to Sri
Lankan workers, with unions in receiving countries ensuring
implementation.

Union officials said this landmark deal will be followed by similar
agreements with unions in Bangladesh, Indonesia and the
Philippines, which have large populations of workers in the Middle
East. Read the rest of this entry →

COLOMBO, (Apr. 29, 2009) IPS/GIN – As the latest round of Asia’s
longest-running guerrilla war winds down, scores of journalists
here are facing intimidation and harassment for criticizing the
military campaign against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE).

N. Vithiyatharan, editor of the Uthayan and Sudar-Oli newspapers,
spent two months in detention until his release on Friday after a
local magistrate in Colombo ruled that there was no evidence to
link him to a Tamil rebel air strike in Colombo in February 2009.

Vithiyatharan, a member of the Tamil minority community, said in
a newspaper interview on Saturday that he was detained by the
government to prevent him from highlighting the grievances of
displaced Tamil civilians in the north. Read the rest of this entry →