Jaffna onion cultivators are unable to market their produce, but it is sad that Sri Lanka imports onions from India and China.
In Colombo onions are selling for Rs110 per kg. But in Jaffna onions sell at Rs30.00 per kg. One month ago Jaffna onion cultivators sold their produce at Rs7.00 per kg by going house to house on bicycles and land master small tractors.

A news item in the Daily Mirror 17th November said Sri Lanka importers will buy 30,000 tons of onions from India to augment supplies in the domestic market.

Agents are waiting at Tutricon and Chennai ports in India to buy the bulbs on the hope of a lifting of restrictions and will import 30,000 tons of onion by …

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Poll closes on 31st December 2007.

The first Rajapakse I knew, closely related to the current President, was from over ten years ago, in a different country at a time when the Executive of the day had begun a “war for peace” campaign that was also sold as the only way in which peace could be achieved and soon.

We were both undergraduate students in the same University though in different colleges. He kept an immaculately clean apartment, tastefully furnished with a well appointed kitchen which always harboured the delicious promise of homemade Sinhalese food. We worked closely together on many projects. He was precise, sensible, quick witted and reflecting back on his nature, essentially a political animal in training. I realize now why I was then …

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About the Film
Filmed in Sri Lanka between 2002 and 2005, the art of forgetting attempts to shatter the silence and statistical anonymity that characterizes dominant discourses of war by highlighting the personal stories of the people whose lives have been altered by war and political violence. The film is structured around a journey from the northern-most tip of Sri Lanka to the southern-most and uses this journey to loosely trace Sri Lanka’s overlapping histories of conflict in both the North and South of the country through the stories of people met along the way.

The film is not intended to explain, analyze or provide a comprehensive history of Sri Lanka’s recent past. Volumes of written text have been produced …

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By Muttukrishna Sarvananthan Ph.D

The government has tabled the Appropriation Bill for the fiscal year 2008 in the Parliament on October 10th. This short note is intended to highlight the apportioning (or rather mis-apportioning) of the public expenditure for year 2008. The overall public expenditure will increase by 15% to LKR.925 billion in 2008 from LKR.805 billion earmarked for 2007. Similarly, the defence expenditure would increase by 19% to LKR.166.5 billion (USD.1.5 billion) in 2008 from LKR.140 billion (USD.1.4 billion) earmarked for 2007. The actual expenditures would be greater than the foregoing earmarked figures going by the past experience. Besides, the total public expenditure for 2007 and 2008 indicated in Table 1 does not include public debt repayments, which is …

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Today, Karuna Amman is in the police custody of British authorities, charged with entering Britain on a forged passport. As reported in last week’s Sunday Leader, this forged passport used by Karuna had been issued under a name Kokila Gunawardana by the Department of Emigration and Immigration in Colombo. This is not a normal passport that we civilians usually use but a diplomatic one especially issued to diplomats, high-ranking government officials, heads of governments and parliamentary members and ministers etc. If under special circumstances such a passport is issued to a person not holding some important position in the hierarchy of the state, a written request from the Presidential Secretary is needed. It was with this passport with all privileges …

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Yesterday, the front pages of several English papers the Daily Mirror and the Daily News amongst them carried an intriguing news flash: “British will not de-ban LTTE”, and “British government will not revoke LTTE ban”. Readers all over Sri Lanka could be pardoned for scratching their heads, furrowing their brows, and saying “Eh?”

It is often joked that only strange stories get selected for news: “dog bites man, not news; man bites dog, news”. The principle behind the “dog bites man” phenomenon in journalism is that something is news only when it changes or challenges the status quo of facts, norms or prevailing beliefs. That grass grows on ministerial lawns is not news, but if a Minster was paid …

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By Shanthi Sachithanandam

Vakarai division, largely jungle tracts crisscrossed with 14 or so villages and little hamlets, situated along the northern border of Batticaloa District. The people of Vakarai are engaged in subsistence farming and fishing, with a small element of those who are traditionally hunter-gatherers.

It was somewhere in December 1995; I was in the middle of conducting a meeting at a village called Paalchenai, in Vakarai, when suddenly a visibly distraught man from the same area burst into our meeting with a tiny transistor in his hand. “Amma, the army has entered Jaffna town,” he blurted out.

All of us, the Paalchenai villagers and I, exclaimed in horror. We quickly gathered round him to listen to the news of the conclusion …

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Channel 4’s recent programme on Sri Lanka broadcast recently in England. As noted here,

… the team making a documentary for Channel 4 was ordered to leave Sri Lanka’s embattled Jaffna peninsula on the orders of the country’s military [even though] reporter Sandra Jordan, camerawoman Siobhan Sinnerton and producer Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai had received permission from defence authorities in Colombo before flying into Jaffna.

It was not clear why the Channel 4 crew were made to leave, but the private Daily Mirror newspaper quoted a military official as saying they were sent back for their own safety.

“Around 100,000 British tourists holiday in Sri Lanka every year, but thanks to a clampdown on the international media, few realise …

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Introduction
It is more than one year since the appointment of the Commission of Inquiry (CoI). The warrant for the CoI dates to 3 November 2006. The updated TOR for the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) dates to 12th January 2007. On 13 November the CoI and IIGEP were informed of their mandate being renewed. The renewed mandate is valid till 2 November 2008.

The CoI and IIGEP were appointed by the Government of Sri Lanka in response to calls for international monitoring on human rights. The warrant mandates the CoI to investigate and inquire into 16 past cases. Therefore it is clear that the CoI only has the power to investigate and inquire into past cases and do …

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