Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
The current talk in town is that the UNP and its aligned ‘lame duck’ political parties strategy is to sponsor General Sarath Fonseka as the Presidential candidate. But ironically wants to sell all the arms and armaments which the General treasures!
During last weeks Emergency debate, the UNP had demanded that the government sell off [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
During the last few weeks the hot topic in Australia was about bogus Tamil asylum seekers. The boat carrying 255 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers which was turned around en route to Australia has now gone ashore in Indonesia. It has now come to light that the leader of the group, Kulaendrarajah Sanjeev alias [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
‘People-smuggling’ had been highlighted in the discussions at the formal session of the East Asia Summit held in Thailand last week. The issue came to lime light because of the influx of bogus Tamil asylum seekers from Sri Lanka to Australia and Canada recently.
 
Back in Australia, the controversy over them between the government and the opposition reached [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
The US in a document captioned “Reports to  Congress on incidents during the recent conflicts in Sri Lanka”, has urged Sri Lanka to probe allegations of war crimes committed by government troops and Tamil rebels during the final months of their conflict. According to the Report there are credible claims of atrocities by both [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
During the last few weeks there were news about illegal immigrants from Sri Lanka to Australia. One boat was stopped half-way in Indonesia on the request of Australia and in it were 255 Tamil ‘asylum seekers’.
 Broadly, these are ‘economic migrants’ who want to migrate to the west on the pretext of persecution in Sri [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
President Obama created history by becoming the first black-American President  of the USA. He was also the first black-American to edit the Harvard Law Journal. Now according to critics, he has made history by winning the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize for having not done anything. This stunning choice has shocked Nobel observers.
 
President Obama himself had been [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, China
On the 6th of October, Sri Lanka along with many other countries celebrated the International Teachers Day. It’s unusual that some countries such as New Zealand and Australia still do not observe this. The Teachers Day is not so popular like the Fathers Day, Mothers Day or the Valentines Day because there is no [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
The Island of 2nd October had a news item about Hillary Clinton making allegations that rape had been used as a weapon in Sri Lanka’s successful war against the LTTE. Hillary, while chairing a meeting of the UN Security Council had referred to Balkans, Burma and Sri Lanka and said that perpetrators of rape [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, China
In a letter to an English Daily on 26th Sept., titled ‘Ragging in universities’, a subscriber observes, “…Ragging in universities must stop. The perverts must be punished severely…Get the military to give protection to the new comers. Our forces defeated the ruthless LTTE… Tackle these poisonous snakes…”
 A few weeks ago it was reported that [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
Mohammed Noordin, Indonesia’s militant leader and ally of Al-Qaida who masterminded  a string of terrorist attacks across the Indonesian region for 7 years was killed with 3 of his aides on 18th September. He had been responsible for the Mariott Hotel bombing in 2003 which killed a number of foreign tourists and for the [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera
The international community had criticized the verdict given in Tissainayagam’s case by the Colombo High Court on 31 August.  He had been indicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. It was alleged that he caused racial disharmony by his writings, website and Magazine for which he was lavishly funded by the LTTE. Other accusations against him were, [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, China
While travelling in China I saw a news report about a student in a leading school committing suicide as a teacher had reprimanded her for using a mobile phone. In fact, there had been two incidents.
 
I showed the news item to my Chinese friend who is a teacher and he was indeed shocked that a [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
This week the government had ordered the ICRC, INGO’s and NGO’s to scale down their operations because now that the war had ended the government writ ran all over Sri Lanka. The government had reassessed their operations following cessation of hostilities.
 The ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) entered Sri Lanka at the height [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
The UN in a statement this week has asked the government to ensure that children released by armed groups have access to care, protection and re-integration programmes. It had also stressed that the government should, “… ensure the identification, release and rehabilitation…. in accordance with international standards…’
 In fact, these child combatants were never released [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
During the last couple of months when the Sri Lankan war was on, the Tamil Diaspora and the sympathisers of the LTTE went on a rampage in the Western countries conducting demonstrations, processions, blocking roads, fasting and so on causing problems to the locals and inconveniencing the tourists. Because of this, tourists changed their [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera
The defeat of the LTTE which is  a cause for universal celebration, as it uprooted the number one terrorist organisation and opened up a new era in Sri Lankan history, has been marred by certain countries, Tamil diaspora, Human Rights Activists & Organisations, various interested Institutions and so on. The latest to join the line [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera
Last week at the 62nd General Assemly of the World Health Organisation Israel had brought forward a proposal calling for the UN and WHO to send a high profile team to investigate into Human Rights violations by the Sri Lankan government under the pretext of launching war on terrorism. This had been defeated by the [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera
During the Sri Lankan war, the LTTE malicious propaganda machinery worked round the clock to convince the world that the civilians held as hostage were staying willingly and certain sections of the international media sympathetic to them colluded and gave wide publicity to the LTTE stand. They were supported by countries and international organisations backing [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
Apart from some Western countries like the US, UK, France and the EU, a powerful ally of Prabhakaran is the Christian Church. Prabhakaran is Christian and has named his son Charles Anthony without giving a Tamil name aligned to the Tamil culture, custom  and language to show his allegiance to the Church and get their unequivocal support. For his [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
Che Guevara, was an Argentinian Marxist Revolutionary. As a medical student, during his travels in Latin America he was transformed by poverty and economic inequality he had witnessed. In 1956, he joined Fidel Castro and invaded Cuba over-throwing the US backed Cuban dictator Batista. He served as Minister of Industry under Fidel Castro.
 
He was [...]

Dr.P.A.Samaraweera, Australia
The US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and the UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband in a joint statement issued , “… Expressed concern about the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka… Expressed alarm at the large number of reported civilian casualties… Asked the LTTE to lay down arms and allow civilians free passage… Called for [...]