Shenali D Waduge

Sri Lanka’s political history cannot be understood without confronting the forces that repeatedly reshape public anger, class conflict, and ideological rebellion. Among these forces, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) stands out as a movement that began as a radical Marxist uprising of the oppressed, yet today operates within a political alliance aligned with ultra-capitalist, liberal global frameworks under the banner of the National People’s Power (NPP). This dramatic transformation raises a fundamental question: Did the JVP evolve naturally, or was it strategically redirected by internal wanna-be elites and external geopolitical forces?

To answer this, we must examine the JVP’s origins, ideological shifts, geopolitical entanglements, the post-2015 political re-engineering of Sri Lanka, and the resulting transformation of both leadership and support base.

The JVP emerged at a time when Sri Lanka faced socio-economic changes, ideological infiltration, Cold War geopolitics and youth became a tool of manipulation.

Youth are prone to manipulation when they are vulnerable:

• Educated but unemployed youth. Universities became hotbeds of frustration.
• Rural poverty & inequality – national policies failed to deliver rural development, structural inequalities were not dealt by the traditional parties (UNP / SLFP)
• Collapse of faith in political elites
• Language marginalisation
• Educational bottlenecks
• Blocked social mobility

These factors converged, could easily sway sentiments of the educated but unemployed youth and fuel anger sufficient enough to rebel.

The Cold War years turned nations like Sri Lanka into an ideological battleground (1960s-1970s)

• USSR & China aggressively exported Marxist ideology
• India hosted multiple Marxist revolutionary movements
• Cuba exported insurgency models worldwide
• Vietnam War era radicalised global youth culture

These ideals were imported or plugged into the minds of Sri Lanka’s youth via

• Foreign scholarships
• Political training camps
• Literature networks
• University student exchanges
• Underground printing & propaganda supply

Thus, revolutionary doctrines became part and parcel of Sri Lankan student politics.

While this change was taking place in the minds of Sri Lanka’s youth, India viewed Sri Lanka through a security-dominance lens. This dominance was to prevent Sri Lanka

• Aligning with Western or Chinese military blocs
• Maintain regional dominance
• Ensure Colombo remains politically unstable enough to be manageable

When objectives are clear the next is to execute how to politically make Sri Lanka unstable.

Youth was key.

• Internal rebellion weakens central authority
• Keeps security forces inward-focused
• Prevents external military alliances

Internal destabilization indirectly served Indian strategic leverage — even without direct operational control.

India did not require formal sponsorship – simply soft facilitation and political shielding.

Tamil youth taken and trained in various camps across India created the Eelam separatist movement.

Was JVP handled in the same manner? If so by whom & for what reasons?

The transformation of the JVP came post-2015 – a period that saw

• Intelligence services weakened
• Military politically constrained
• Strategic paralysis induced
• Foreign security integration expanded

It was after security neutralization that political engineering of minds took shape and place.

Interlinked with this has been the diaspora-transnational” advocacies in the form of

1. Pro-LTTE groups living overseas
2. JVP runaways and JVP ideological sharing support-base living overseas.

There is an uncanny alliance in the manner both integrate against the State:

• Tamil diaspora lobbying
• Western NGO legal attacks
• UNHRC pressure
• Sanctions threat

This external pressure is a mechanism to maintain constant political vulnerability and keep every government on toes.

How many of Sri Lanka’s post-independence leaders have actually understood Sri Lanka’s geopolitical importance and its impact on internal and external affairs and the dynamics at play and protecting what external elements are out to grab?

Why Sri Lanka mattered then and now:

• Shipping lanes
• Naval access
• Intelligence positioning
• Cold War containment strategies

Every nation that had some form of geopolitical importance experienced proxy insurgencies to

• Pressure governments
• Influence alignments
• Force economic dependency
• Prevent nationalist consolidation

Every revolutionary movement use psychological engineering to win support:

Techniques used to convert personal frustration into ideological rage:

• Victimhood narrative building
• Elite demonization
• State oppression framing
• Heroic martyr creation
• Romanticising armed struggle

The JVP mastered this psychological conversion process.

Weaponization Youth Idealism

The JVP leadership channeled legitimate grievances into violent revolutionary ideology that permanently laid to rest thousands of youth both in the 1970s and 1980s, while the LTTE also stands guilty of.

What could these youth have become had they not fallen prey to romanticized revolutionary mind-control.

This is a classic youth weaponization strategy and a cut and paste from other movements.

Youth Emotion	Ideological Reframing
Unemployment	Systemic oppression
Poverty	Class warfare
Injustice	Armed liberation
Frustration	Revolutionary duty
Identity loss	Marxist nationalism

We have unanswered questions:

• Why the JVP rose
• Why it gained rapid growth
• Why it was intensely violent
• Why external silence surrounded its growth

The converted Youth became ideological foot soldiers of a geopolitical struggle which the youth themselves were oblivious of.

Sri Lankan youth died for geopolitical games they never understood.

JVP youth

LTTE youth all fell prey.

They believed they were fighting:

• Injustice
• Oppression
• Exploitation

They were merely:

• Instruments of destabilization
• Disposable revolutionary assets

Let us compare the JVP with other revolutionary movements

1. Nepal Maoists (CPN-M)

Feature	JVP (Sri Lanka)	Nepal Maoists
Youth Base	Rural educated unemployed	Rural educated unemployed
Ideology	Marxist–Leninist–Maoist	Marxist–Leninist–Maoist
Recruitment	Student cells + villages	Student cells + villages
Structure	Hybrid political–militant	Hybrid political–militant
Tactics	Sudden mass uprising	Prolonged people’s war
India Factor	Strategic tolerance	Strategic facilitation
Outcome	Military defeat → political reintegration	Military stalemate → political takeover

2. Naxalite Movement (India)

Component	JVP	Naxalites
Target	Rural youth	Tribal & rural youth
Method	Underground cells	Guerrilla zones
Narrative	State oppression	State exploitation
Ideology	Maoism	Maoism
Recruitment	Universities + villages	Universities + villages

3. Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) — Peru

Feature	JVP	Shining Path
Leadership	Educated ideologues	University professor
Base	Rural youth	Rural peasants
Ideology	Maoist	Maoist
Violence	High	Extreme
Indoctrination	Heavy	Total

4. FARC (Colombia)

FARC shows how hybrid insurgent-political movements sustain themselves for decades once embedded in social grievances.

The Insurgency Template

All these movements followed the same five-stage evolutionary template:

Stage 1 — Social Grievance Accumulation

Stage 2 — Ideological Injection

Stage 3 — Hybrid Party Formation

Stage 4 — Clandestine Militarization

Stage 5 — Revolutionary Escalation

Now that we have understood the pattern in youth-centred revolutionary movements let us proceed to understand the dynamics that merged JVP with neo-liberal NPP, an ideology that the JVP sustained its wrath against.

To understand this status quo we must return to 2015 regime change after which the 3 main political parties were split. SLFP split to create SLPP, UNP split to create SJB and JVP split to create NPP.

Other than Tilwin the General Secretary of the JVP, all top brass of the JVP are members of the NPP.

After 2015:

• 19A dismantled executive concentration
• Judicial activism expanded
• Independent commissions multiplied
• Governance NGO architecture embedded

This created: Permanent institutional leverage over elected authority – political capture without institutional control is temporary.

Who actually wanted to weaken the institutions & why is a clue to the minds behind these changes.

Historically, JVP ideology was rooted in:

• Anti-imperialism
• Anti-capitalism
• Anti-elite politics
• Anti-Western influence
• State-centered economic thinking
• Revolutionary populism

Yet today, the NPP platform exhibits:

• Neoliberal economic accommodation
• Western diplomatic alignment
• IMF-friendly macroeconomic positioning
• Global governance language
• NGO-compatible human rights framing
• Technocratic economic discourse

This represents a sharp ideological pivot, not gradual evolution and questions how many in the traditional JVP camp are agreeable with this pivot/shift.

More importantly, we must ask Can such a transformation emerge purely from internal strategic recalibration — or does it usually require external facilitation?”

Let us assume that the pivot came from an internal strategic evolution: yet for such to happen the leadership has to take stock of:

1. Electoral Realism

• Armed struggle failed.
• Revolutionary politics failed.
• Only electoral legitimacy could deliver power.

2. Middle-Class Capture

• Leadership increasingly drawn from:
  • Urban professionals
  • NGO circles
  • Academia
• International exposure groups
• Class orientation gradually shifted.

3. Generational Ideological Dilution

• New cadres lack revolutionary conditioning.
• Ideology replaced by technocratic pragmatism.

4. Survival Strategy

• To gain legitimacy:
  • Moderate language
  • Accept global economic frameworks
  • Rebrand as governance-capable
  • Fed-up with the failed format followed since inception!

However, this does not fully explain:

• Speed of transformation
• Diplomatic acceptance
• Media normalization
• International policy alignment
• Rapid external legitimacy

All of the above elements usually accompany external reinforcement.

The second scenario is the merger/shift as an outcome of external strategic facilitation.

This appears highly plausible.

Foreign sponsorship is not required, only externally influenced validation, narrative alignment and boosting them via social media channels. This is exactly what took place.

Such scenarios are externally operated using:

1. NGO & Civil Society Ecosystem
   • Training
   • Policy workshops
   • Governance programs
   • Leadership fellowships
   • Exposure visits

2. Diplomatic Grooming

• Selective diplomatic engagement
• Western embassy interactions
• Think-tank exposure
• Strategic dialogue forums

3. International Economic Institutions invitations
   • IMF / World Bank ideological normalization
   • Market reform framing
   • Technocratic capacity-building

4. Media Narrative Engineering

• Rebranding of revolutionary past – new hero/heart-throb
• Legitimization of new political identity
• Image normalization in international press

5. Elite Political Legitimization

• Academic endorsement
• Policy advisory incorporation
• Western-aligned intellectual support

Revolutions change rulers — not ruling classes. This understanding is important to understand how easy it is for so-called revolutionary leaders living unluxurious  lifestyles to be swayed into a life of ultra-luxuries and to compromise the support base to enjoy those luxuries in their final years of holding power, fully aware that their control is approaching full circle.

The leaders who used psychological engineering to capture youth, themselves have been psychologically programmed to embrace a life of luxuries compromising those youth & the ideals their party originally stood for.

This change became with the emergence of the NPP and the marriage of convenience with the JVP.

Post-2015 and post-NPP:

• Same elite families
• Same corporate networks
• Same NGO circuits
• Same international policy handlers

It is important to understand that class structure never changed with regime change. The same class circles rebranded.

That rebranding did not change

• Why frustration persists
• Why inequality deepens
• Why disillusionment accelerates

Let’s now ask – Did external actors support such a transformation & why”

From a geopolitical standpoint: When a radical nationalist-left movement becomes a liberal, IMF-aligned, globally compliant political force it becomes an extraordinary strategic victory.

This change has converted:

• A system challenger (JVP) into a system changer aligned with liberal policies.
• A nationalist disruptor (JVP) now silencing opposition and aligning as global order participant
• A revolutionary force (JVP) using clout to peddle western/indian economic compliance

For the minds that control – This:

• Ensures political stability as per foreign dictates
• Protects external economic interests not necessarily national
• Guarantees debt discipline as per external dictates without internal opposition
• Neutralizes nationalist resistance making government authority superior

JVP-NPP is not the only party that has been subverted into compliance.

1. Nepal Maoists → IMF-compliant government
2. ANC (South Africa) → Neoliberal economic custodian
3. Sandinistas (Nicaragua) → Electoral-liberal hybrid
4. FMLN (El Salvador) → Market accommodation
5. Former Eastern Bloc Communists → EU liberal integration

Ironically, every revolutionary movement eventually became neoliberal administrators — following external institutional integration.

So much for Lenin, Stalin and Marx.

These are mere cosmetic ornaments in party offices now.

If we are to understand the marriage of convenience between the JVP and NPP the hybrid set up appears the merging of internal brains + external strategic facilitation to bring about a rapid political transformation that is not in the interest of the Nation or rather to dismantle every pillar that keeps the nation together.

This shift came as a result of

• Internal leadership converted into power opportunity (when people saw no alternative)
• External systems offered pathway legitimacy (international PR props)
• Both converged into a mutually beneficial alignment (not for the JVP traditional support base or even the disgruntled supporters that left the traditional parties thinking NPP would provide political relief)

This alliance resulted in electoral victory with supporters falsely thinking they created a memorable change.

Memorable no doubt, when with guilt they witness every pillar being dismantled before their very eyes.

The JVP ideology of pre 2015 which could never win:

• Urban elites
• Business sector
• International acceptance
• Financial system trust
• Media legitimacy
• Diplomatic comfort

Yet, the post-2015 JVP-NPP liberal alliance supplied:

• Middle-class credibility
• Global legitimacy
• Economic governance framing
• Institutional acceptability

Without this there would have been no electoral victory.

Therefore, those that provided the props to bring that victory must realize that the artificial nature of the alliance is unlikely to be long lasting especially when the pillars that have enabled victory are now dithering towards collapse.

A controlled ideological migration — from revolutionary nationalism to managed liberal governance — enabled by both internal pivot and external strategic facilitation is never long-term.

The cracks are already appearing.

The collapse comes from the very downtrodden classes the party assured to represent but has now neglected and politically disempowered after coming to power.

Every political system contains two structurally opposed forces:

1) Those who benefit from the system

• Economic elites
• Political elites
• Bureaucratic classes
• Corporate and financial interests
• Institutional beneficiaries

They wish to preserve what they enjoy

2) Those who feel excluded or trapped by the system

• Unemployed youth
• Marginalized workers
• Rural populations
• Lower-middle classes
• Displaced or downwardly mobile groups

They demand change & redistribution.

Structural inequality is permanent which means political conflict is permanent.

What periodically changes are

• Elections
• Protests
• Trade union action
• Identity politics
• Culture wars
• Revolutions

Political systems survive by managing, not eliminating, this tension by

• Allowing limited protest
• Creating opposition parties
• Channeling anger into elections
• Offering symbolic reforms
• Periodically reshuffling elites

This keeps the dissatisfied hopeful enough not to revolt, and the elites secure enough not to repress totally.

In this set up Youth are easy to manipulate.

Every major political upheaval — French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Arab Spring, JVP, Nepal Maoists — followed this pattern.

Youth sit between classes:

• Not yet beneficiaries
• No accumulated security
• High expectations
• High frustration
• High energy

External powers exploit this structure

Because class tension already exists, external actors do not need to create it —  they only need to:

• Amplify it
• Channel it
• Reframe it
• Redirect it

Foreign influence always works through domestic grievance, never against it.

Movements like:

• JVP → NPP
• Maoists → Liberal democrats
• Islamists → Technocratic reformers

work because they:

• Speak to the anger of the excluded
• While reassuring the interests of the elite

Politics is not a moral battle.
It is a structural class management system.

The answer is found in who controls the direction of dissatisfaction?

Sri Lanka’s instability persists because:

• The excluded classes are expanding
• The elite system remains structurally unchanged
• External economic pressure intensifies class stress
• Political movements continuously repackage grievance without resolving structure

This provides permanent political turbulence.

Political systems don’t collapse when people are poor.

They collapse when people believe the system is rigged permanently against them.

That belief — whether fully true or partially constructed — is the real fuel of political change.

JVP began as a revolutionary movement seeking system overthrow

JVP-NPP became a hybrid political actor seeking a global pat on back for compliance.

Movements born to destroy systems often end up becoming the system’s most effective managers.

The journey of the JVP from armed Marxist rebellion to parliamentary neoliberal alliance is not merely a story of political evolution. It is a textbook example of how revolutionary energy is neutralized, redirected, and absorbed into global power systems.

What began as a movement to overthrow elite domination now functions within the very structures it once sought to dismantle. This transformation reflects not only leadership ambition but also a deeper geopolitical strategy that systematically reshapes political landscapes through fragmentation, ideological realignment, and regime engineering.

Political rebranding without structural reform simply recycles discontent, it does not resolve it.

Sri Lanka’s crisis is rooted in the capture of political systems, leadership pipelines, and national narratives by external interests, aided by internal elite complicity. Recognizing this, neutralizing this, is the first step toward reclaiming national agency.

The solution does not lie in outdated ideologies or imported neoliberal frameworks, but in forging a new national political synthesis grounded in:

• Ethical leadership
• Economic sovereignty
• Productive nationalism
• Social justice through opportunity
• Strategic global engagement without surrender

This demands a new political culture, built on pride in the past historically/heritage, civic education, national narrative restoration, and leadership renewal.

Sri Lanka’s future will not be secured by those who exploit class anger or preserve privilege, but by those capable of reawakening national consciousness, rebuilding institutional integrity, and restoring sovereign self-governance.

Shenali D Waduge

වෛද්‍ය තිලක පද්මා සුබසිංහ අනුස්මරණ නීති අධ්‍යාපන වැඩසටහන

අධිකරණ අමාත්‍යවරයා විසින් පාර්ලිමේන්තුවට ඉදිරිපත් කර තිබෙන ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීම සඳහා වූ පනත් කෙටුම්පත පිළිබඳව යළි සලකා බැලීමට තීරණය කර ඇතැයි එම කෙටුම්පතට එරෙහි පෙත්සම විභාගයේදී නීතිපතිවරයා ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණ2026 පෙබරවාරි 09 දින දැනුම් දුන්නේය.

ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීම සඳහා වූ පනත් කෙටුම්පත
අභියෝගයට ලක් කරමින් ගොනු කර තිබූ පෙත්සම අද (09) මහින්ද සමයවර්ධන, අර්ජුන ඔබේසේකර සහ සම්පත් අබේකෝන් විනිසුරුවරුතුමන්ලා ඉදිරියේ කැඳ වූ අවස්ථාවේදී නීතිපතිවරයා වෙනුවෙන් පෙනී සිටි අතිරේක සොලිසිටර් ජෙනරාල් සුමති ධර්මවර්ධන මහතා මෙම දැනුම්දීම සිදු කළේය.

පදිංචිකරුවන් ආරක්ෂා කිරීමේ පනත් කෙටුම්පත සහ ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීම සඳහා වූ පනත් කෙටුම්පත සම්බන්ධයෙන් අදහස් හා යෝජනා ලබා ගැනීම සඳහා අධිකරණ අමාත්‍යවරයා විසින් පෙබරවාරි මස 03 වනදා සිට මාසයක කාලයක් ලබා දී තිබෙන බවත් අතිරේක සොලිසිටර් ජෙනරාල් සුමති ධර්මවර්ධන මහතා අධිකරණයට දැනුම් දුන්නේය.

පදිංචිකරුවන් ආරක්ෂා කිරීමේ පනත් කෙටුම්පතට එරෙහිව
SC/SD/06/26 , SC/SD/07/26, SC/SD/08/26 , SC/SD/09/26 , SC/SD/10/26
අංක දරන පෙත්සම් ඉදිරිපත් කර තිබූණ අතර, එම කෙටුම්පත යළි සළකා බැලීමට අධිකරණ අමාත්‍යාංශය තීරණය කර ඇති බවට නීතිපතිවරයා දනුම් දීමෙන් පසු
පෙත්සම්කරුවන් සිය පෙත්සම් ඉල්ලා අස්කර ගන්නා බව ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණ ත්‍රී පුද්ගල විනිසුරු මණ්ඩලයට දැනුම් දුන්නේය.

ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීම සඳහා වූ පනත් කෙටුම්පත පිළිබඳවද යළි සලකා බැලීමට අධිකරණ අමාත්‍යාංශය තීරණය කර ඇතැයි නීතිපතිවරයා ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණයට දැනුම් දුන්නද එම පනත් කෙටුම්පතට එරෙහිව ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථානුකූලත්වය පිළිබඳ SC/SD/11/26 අංක දරන පෙත්සම ඉදිරිපත් කර තිබූ නීතීඥ අරුණ ලක්සිරි උණවටුන සිය පෙත්සම පවත්වාගෙන යන බවත් ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණයට දැනුම් දුන්නේය.

අධිකරණ සහ ජාතික ඒකාබද්ධතා අමාත්‍යවරයා විසින් 1972 අංක 7 දරන ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීම සදහා වූ පනත් කෙටුම්පත පාර්ලිමේන්තු න්‍යාය පත්‍රයට ඇතුලත් කර පාර්ලිමේන්තුවට ඉදිරිපත් කළ බවත් එමගින් 1972 අංක 7 දරන ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීම සදහාද, එකී ඉවත් කිරීමෙන් පසු අන්තර්කාලීන විධිවිධාන ඇති කිරීමටද විධිවිධාන සළසා ඇති බවත් ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීමට එරෙහිව පෙත්සම ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණයට ඉදිරිපත් කරමින් නීතීඥ අරුණ ලක්සිරි උණවටුන  දක්වා ඇත.
 
බලවත් තැනැත්තන්ගේ නෛතික අයිතිවාසිකම් අහිමි කිරීමට නීති පැනවීමේදී හෝ බලවත් තැනැත්තන්ගේ නෛතික අයිතිවාසිකම් වෙනුවෙන් පවතින නීති ඉවත් කිරීමේදී මෙන් නොව 1972 අංක 7 දරන ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීම සදහා වූ පනත් කෙටුම්පත මගින් නීති පැනවීමේදී ජනතාවගේ පරමාධිපත්‍යය, බුද්ධාගමට ප්‍රමුඛස්ථානය පිරිනැමීම සහ බුද්ධ ශාසනය සුරක්ෂිත කර පෝෂණය කිරීමේ රජයේ වගකීම, නීතිය පසිදලීම සහ නීතියේ රැකවරණය, බලවත් තැනැත්තන්ගෙන් අබල තැනැත්තන් අරක්ෂා කිරීම, එකලාව හෝ අන් අය සමග යම් නීත්‍යානුකූල රැකියාවක, වෘත්තියක, කර්මාන්තයක, වෙළද ව්‍යාපාරයක හෝ ව්‍යවසායක නියුක්ත වීමේ නිදහසට, ශ්‍රී ලංකාව තුළ අභිමත ස්ථානයක වාසය කිරීමේ නිදහසට, රාජ්‍ය ප්‍රතිපත්තිය මෙහෙය වීමේ මූලධර්ම සහ යුතුකම් වලට, ජනාධිපතිවරයාගේ බලතල හා කාර්යයට, පළාත් සභා ප්‍රඥප්ති සෑදීම සහ ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථාවේ නවවන උපලේඛනයේ 1වන ලැයිස්තුවේ විධිවිධාන වලට අදාල ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථාමය ප්‍රතිපාදන වලට පටහැනි බවත්, ඒ් අනුව ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථාවේ 3, 4.ඇ, 9, 12.4, 14.1උ, 14.1ඌ, 27, 28, 33ඊ, 154උ. ව්‍යවස්ථා උල්ලංඝණය කරන බවත් ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීමට එරෙහි පෙත්සම මගින් එම නීතීඥවරයා ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණයට පෙන්වා දී ඇත.

අධිකරණ අමාත්‍යවරයා විසින් පාර්ලිමේන්තුවට ඉදිරිපත් කර තිබෙන ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීම සඳහා වූ පනත් කෙටුම්පත පිළිබඳව යළි සලකා බැලීමට අධිකරණ අමාත්‍යාංශය තීරණය කර ඇතැයි නීතිපතිවරයා ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණයට 2026 පෙබරවාරි 09 දින දැනුම්  දුන්නද
තමන්ගේ පෙත්සම පවත්වාගෙන ගොස් කතානායකවරයා වෙත ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණ තීරණය යොමු කරන ලෙස නීතීඥ අරුණ ලක්සිරි උණවටුන මහතා ඉල්ලා සිටි අතර,
ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීම සඳහා වූ පනත් කෙටුම්පත සම්බන්ධයෙන් අදහස් හා යෝජනා ලබා ගැනීම සඳහා අධිකරණ අමාත්‍යවරයා විසින් පෙබරවාරි මස 03 වනදා සිට මාසයක කාලයක් ලබා දී තිබෙන තත්ත්වය තුළ ගෙවල් කුලී පනත ඉවත් කිරීම සඳහා වූ පනත් කෙටුම්පතට අදාල ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථානුකූලත්වය සම්බන්ධ පෙත්සමේ විභාගය අවසන් කිරීමට ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණය තීරණය කළේය.

https://neethiyalk.blogspot.com/2026/02/blog-post.html?m=1

වෛද්‍ය තිලක පද්මා සුබසිංහ අනුස්මරණ නීති අධ්‍යාපන වැඩසටහන දුරකථන 0712063394
(2026.02.09)

Cricket

DRS is the lotus in the mud of Sri Lanka Cricket that has now become the laughing stock of the entire Cricket World after its disgraceful 3 Nil defeat to England in the recent T 20 Tournament. Yet neither the SLC nor the Govt. of Sri Lanka is interested in supporting the just claim of a Sri Lankan for international recognition of the Player – Referral concept (DRS) as a Sri Lankan invention.

Sri Lanka suffered a

3-0 whitewash at the hands of England in their recently concluded T20I series in February 2026. The final match on February 3, 2026, saw Sri Lanka capitulate from a position of strength, collapsing from 62-2 to 116 all out while chasing a modest target of 129. 

Regarding the Decision Review System (DRS), it remains an uncredited contribution in the official records of the International Cricket Council (ICC), despite the concept of the “Player-Referral” system being first published by Sri Lankan lawyer Senaka Weeraratna in March 1997. 

England tour of Sri Lanka (T20I Series, 2026)

Match	Date	Venue	Result	Key Performers
1st T20I	Jan 30, 2026	Pallekele	England won by 11 runs (DLS)	Sam Curran (Hat-trick), Adil Rashid (3/19)
2nd T20I	Feb 1, 2026	Pallekele	England won by 6 wickets (DLS)	Tom Banton (54*), Harry Brook (36 off 12)
3rd T20I	Feb 3, 2026	Pallekele	England won by 12 runs	Jacob Bethell (4/11), Dushmantha Chameera (5/24)

The Struggle for DRS Recognition

The “Player-Referral” concept, which allows teams to challenge on-field decisions, is widely attributed to Senaka Weeraratna’s 1997 letter to The Australian. 

• Official Inaction: Despite the system being tested during an India-Sri Lanka Test in 2008, the ICC has never formally credited Weeraratna, unlike the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method which bears its inventors’ names.
• Government Support: While individual advocates and some legal teams have pressed for recognition, critics frequently point out a lack of sustained diplomatic or institutional pressure from Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) and the Sri Lankan Government to secure the intellectual property rights or international credit for the invention.
• Current Status: As of early 2026, the system continues to be used globally without an official inventor’s name attached. Advocates continue to lobby for the name to be changed to “Weeraratna Decision Review System” (WDRS) to honor its Sri Lankan roots. 

https://share.google/aimode/VJkRhCswCeFBMwLK6

Talk about BAD too EMBARRASSING… SRI LANKA CRICKET the absolute joke of a team of a once great team that were world champions twice

Completely out played and whitewashed without excelling in a single game. Sri Lanka Cricket keeps getting worse each passing year. The ‘A’ Team lost to Oman earlier in the day too.. LOL.

2nd T20I couldn’t defend 11+ runs an over for less than 10 overs. Not a single batter scored a 50. In today’s game they couldn’t chase down 129 which was helped by a responsible 50 by Sam Curran. None of our batters set out to play responsibly and sensibly when called for. For a country that dominates spin from school level we’ve managed to produce a team that is terrible against spin losing 9 wickets to spinners today. Even against a country that produces more seam friendly bowlers England spinners completely outplayed our spinners this entire series. England spinners picked up 17 wickets whereas Sri Lankan spinners only picked up 3 in all the T20Is which is very worrying considering it was a home series and we are about to start off the T20 World cup games where we face most games on home pitches. We may just lose a game against the minnow side (Zimbabwe have already beaten us a few times and won 2 of the last 5 even beating us once in Sri Lanka 2 years ago with many of the same players still in the team). We are that bad.

Even in the ODIs the spinners were out played picking up 13 when England spinners picked up 18 and they dominated in all but one game.

r/srilanka • 5d ago

QueasyCity2788

DRS ( Player Referral system ) is a Sri Lankan invention

This Sri Lankan invention is now being used not only in Cricket but also in Rugger, Soccer ( Goal Line Technology), Tennis, and Badminton. The lack of recognition for this global scale invention by a Sri Lankan, even within Sri Lanka ( by the Government of Sri Lanka, SLC, Sri Lankan cricket commentators, Media and even by professional organizations ) by a Sri Lankan boils down to one major reason ‘ Eershiyava’  ‘ (Jealousy) which the reputed political analyst Shenali Waduge has explored in depth in a devastating  “no-holds-barred” article. 

Is “Eershiyawa” (Jealousy) blocking Senaka Weeraratna and Sri Lanka from gaining credit for the invention of DRS?

‘ Eershiyava’  ‘ (Jealousy) is the bane of Sri Lanka. It is a pathological condition that has afflicted almost the entire nation and the people. No progress is possible unless and until this evil mindset is vanquished. Education at all levels of schooling should be directed towards this end. Look at India.   The Indian Inventor of the Email V.A. Shiva Aiyyadurai, an Indian Hindu was honored recently by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi despite the entire racist Western press ignoring it. 

Why is it hard to honor non-white inventors? Acknowledging Hindu Indian V A Shiva Ayyadurai – the Inventor of email

Why is it hard to honor non-white inventors? Acknowledging Hindu Indian V A Shiva Ayyadurai – the Inventor of email

Regarding the invention of the Decision Review System (DRS), evidence supports the claim that the core “Player-Referral” concept is a Sri Lankan invention by lawyer Senaka Weeraratna. 

• The Invention: Senaka Weeraratna first proposed the “Player Referral” system in a letter to The Australian newspaper on March 25, 1997, suggesting that a “dissatisfied captain of a team to appeal against a ground umpire’s decision, to the third umpire”.
• The Claim for Recognition: For over two decades, Weeraratna has campaigned for international recognition of his invention, which was later adopted by the ICC in 2008 and formalized as the Umpire Decision Review System (UDRS/DRS).
• Support for the Claim: While the ICC has not officially credited Weeraratna, his claim has been supported by various, including former SLC Vice President Asanga Seneviratne and various publications noting the lack of recognition for the Sri Lankan contribution.
• SLC’s Role: While some officials have supported the claim, there has been a longstanding feeling among cricket lovers that the SLC and the government have not adequately championed this as a national, home-grown achievement. 

see

Lorenz Pereira’s article in the Sunday Island ( March 02, 2025)

Noorjehan Safia Niaz Courtesy SuPWR

India

Opinion

March 8, 2024

Discussions in India around the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) come at a critical time for Muslim women to demand legislative reforms. While the country debates around UCC, it is essential that Muslim women get legislative protection on issues of polygamy, child marriage, halala/muta/misyar, equal inheritance rights, equity in custody/guardianship rights and the right to legally adopt.

For the Muslim community, the first set of reforms began in 1937 in the form of the Shariat Application Act, followed by another quick codified law in 1939 (Dissolution of Muslim Marriage Act). For the next 50 years, no reforms happened and for the worse, the 1986 Muslim Women’s Act (MWA), removed Muslim women from the ambit of the criminal law of maintenance and brought in a law that absolved Muslim men of their responsibility to pay post-divorce maintenance. In 2019, the fight for a law against triple divorce was drawn-out, with many religious groups opposing any disruption in the practice that had rendered scores of Muslim women homeless and destitute.

Muslim women have suffered the most from discriminatory practices imposed on them in the name of Islam.

It is high time that Muslim women get a gender just law protecting their rights within the family in the form of a comprehensively codified Muslim family law (MFL).

Codify the MFL based on the BMMA draft

Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) has been demanding a codified Muslim family law since 2007. To ensure legal protection to Muslim women on issues of polygamy, child marriage, inheritance rights, adoption and custody of children, BMMA spent eight years preparing a draft of Muslim Family Law which it regularly sends to the government to remind them of their responsibilities towards Muslim women’s demand for justice within the family. This process has enabled BMMA to bring the issue of law reform out of the closet into an open debate and exposed the blatant sexism and misogyny of Muslim clerics.

Including the Muslim community in existing laws

In the last three to four years, BMMA has also been demanding piecemeal reforms by ensuring inclusion of the Muslim community in existing polygamy and child marriage laws.

All non-religious laws relating to family issues are, without exception, applicable to all citizens. But within and outside the Muslim community, and within the judiciary, there is an understanding (or rather a misunderstanding) that these laws are not applicable to the Muslim community. As a result, Muslim women are deprived of their right to legal protection through the laws of the land. While all women, including the minority Christian and Parsi women, enjoy the provisions of IPC 494 against polygamy, Muslim women have been kept out of its ambit.

Various High Court judgments on child marriage, too, give an ambiguous picture. BMMA has been demanding that Muslim community must come under the ambit of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 and 494 IPC. If not a fully codified family law, at least allow existing laws against polygamy and child marriage to be made applicable to the Muslim community.

The Uniform Civil Code must provide legal protection for all

While BMMA understands the ruling government’s push for UCC to achieve gender justice, portraying the Muslim community as the main hurdle to it serves no one. Many other groups – such as the Sikhs, the Tribal community and political parties – have also shown apprehension. It also means that the government must have more deeper consultations with all religious and ethnic groups, going beyond the submissions to the Law Commission. UCC must not be a polarising issue, especially when its intent, as stated by the government, is national integration. Government must also not make UCC another stick to beat the Muslim community with since UCC is not a Muslim issue but concerns all citizens.

Communities, including the Muslim community, will not be open to any Code if it appears to polarize society or is seen to be targeting a specific community.

Whatever the UCC looks like in the end, if at all, it must reflect the needs of all communities. The process of arriving at a Code must be inclusive and collaborative.

Muslim women will not benefit from any uniform law if it does not provide them with legal protection against discriminating practises, such as halala, muta, or misyar. There are many empowering practices of the Muslim community (like the mehr, express consent of bride, out of court arbitration structures, etc.) which must be retained for the benefit of women.

After assimilating the suggestions from the Law Commission, if a UCC is truly what all communities want, then the draft must be shared with all and with open possibilities of further changes and amendments. If the government is truly concerned about gender justice, then the UCC must be inclusive of all voices of women across caste, community, and ethnicity. And it must not be a rushed affair for political benefit.

Muslim women have waited too long, but not anymore.

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C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B., Ph.D.

[hi-story of Transformation of Sinhala Buddhists from victims of whites, black-whites and Marxists to genocidal murderers of Tamils : how Sri Lankan governments succumbed to the Tamil Eelam trap -1923-2026]

(1) The Sinhala nation still remains trapped in the Mahavamsa mindset. They are unable to free themselves from the mythical consciousness that sees this island as the exclusive domain of the Sinhala Buddhist people.

                V. Prabhakaran- Maaveerar Day, 2005

(2) …. during the past two centuries, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism has gradually evolved through the sanctification of the Mahavamsa. Just as King Dutugemunu killed Tamils in the name of Buddhism 2,150 years ago, Tamils were again massacred in the name of the same Sinhala Buddhism two millennia later…”

….Will Tamil-speaking people continue to be deprived of the right to know their own country’s history? Or will that injustice finally end?….”

                N. Saravanan -January 2026

(3) In order to observe Sil [eight precepts in Buddhism] they come to Jaffna [Tissa Raja Maha Vihara] by passing the Sri Maha Bodhi on their way. This conduct has no [seela] moral virtue,  but revenge… Also on each Poya day [Full Moon Day] they [a handful of Tamils?]  gather around the Temple shouting communal [racist] slogans….”

…පෝයට සිල් ගන්න ජයශ්‍රී මහා බෝධීන් වහන්සේ පසුකර යාපනයට එනවා. එතන තිබෙන්නේ සීලය නොවෙයි, වෛරය. ඒ වගේම සෑම පෝයකටම ගිහින් ඒ පන්සල ළග වට වෙනවා. ඉඩම් වෙනුවෙන් නොවෙයි, ජාතිවාදය වෙනුවෙන්…”

                President AKD in Jaffna celebrating Thai Pongal- Jan 15, 2026

(4) [The purpose of the Ceylon Tamil  Society  is to create] a pan-Tamilian state – to keep alive and propagate throughout Ceylon, Southern India and the Tamil colonies, the union and solidarity of Tamilakkam, the Tamil Land.”

                Arunachalam Ponnambalam -1918/23

‚ 

Google Analytics Report on Visitors to tamilnation.org for the month of August 2009

Where Tamils live (Source map: Tamilnation.org website 1/25/2010

If the Tamils’ cry for separatism is given up, the two communities could solve their problems and continue to live in amity and dignity.”

M.C. Sansoni, CJ-(Sessional Paper No. 7 of 1980). 

Albatross around the Eelam neck

Tamil politicians beginning with Ponnambalam Arunachalam (1921/23) have had an albatross around their necks on how to justify that there was a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka, despite the fact that the Island was identified as Sinhale by foreigners (Greek, Roman, Arabic, Chinese; Serendib, Seylan, Ceylon) since time immemorial. Thambapanni (Taprobane) was another name.

Divide and rule

From 1832 onwards, under the colonial divide and rule strategy for his legislative advisory council, the colonial governor nominated , one each for the Sinhala majority and the Tamil minority. Later Sinhala majority was subdivided as low country and Kandyan, thus diluting the majority status of Sinhala people. However, with signs of communal nomination going to be replaced by territorial representation, a need arose to search for a method via history to overcome the disadvantage in population numbers.

This effort  has a history of its own, and Sarvanan’s grievance against the Mahavamsa author Mahanama Thero is an attempt to drop the albatross of a Tamil homeland theory by shifting attention to the root cause behind an imaginary Tamil genocide perpetrated by Sinhala Buddhists. In this job, he has forgotten that the Sinhala Buddhists suffered more under the Sinhala government than the Tamils. In fact it is amazing how a small group of Tamil separatists with the support of some Sinhala black-whites, were able to project and label Sinhala Buddhists who were the victims of discrimination and colonial genocide as murderers of innocent Tamils! Even though the history and geography of Sri Lanka prove otherwise, Saravanan has discovered in 2025 evidence from the 5^th century A.D. Mahavamsa one or two sentences that poisoned the Sinhala mind. He forget that the existence of an Elara tomb  closer to where he was killed by King Dutugemunu negates his theory of a Sinhala mindset to  massacre Tamils then or now.

Can we eat history?

There was a demand for a separate Dravida Nadu state in India from 1938, similar to the demand for a separate Pakistan state under the two-nation theory espoused by Ali Jinna and surreptitiously promoted  by the colonial master. In 1916 the justice Party was formed against the Brahmins (Aryans) and the Hindi language. In  1925 E. V. Ramasamy (Periyar) joined the Justice Party transforming it as Dravidar Kazhagam in 1944. In 1941 he had a meeting to align with Ali Jinna’s project with his Dravida Nadu plan consisting of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andra Pradesh and Karnatic regions. Jinna backed off  when he realized he could fight it alone. C. N. Annadurai formed the DMK party in 1949, and the demand for a Dravidasthan was dropped with the Sino-Indian war in 1962. The 16th Indian Constitutional Amendment in 1963 made secessionist designs illegal, and the DMK elements moved to Ceylon to continue their illicit operations in the Kandyan plantation areas.  They were branded as Kallathonis (illegal migrants).

Since the 1840s Christian missionaries interfered in creating a Dalith-Aryan Fault line between south and North India (a Balkanizing plan to break India). This was both similar and different from what is happening these days in the Northeastern part of India bordering China/Burma etc. Within Tamil Nadu itself two Dalith groups wanted their own separate states thus dividing it into three regions.

There were failed attempts to promote a Tamil state idea in Malaysia and more recently in the Fiji Islands. For example,  SJV Chelvanayagam born in Malaya was brought to Ceylon via the South Indian Christian Church because of the growth of the Boomiputhra movement there. In Singapore a shanty bog then, Tamils did gain a strong foothold (The purge of Indians from African states (1972) was a phenomenon took place with dictators like Idi Amin).

History and Geography

The  historical data above  indicates the double or treble jeopardy  SJV Chelvanayagam faced after he and few others rebelled against G. G. Ponnambalam for his joining the  D. S. Senanayake’s UNP cabinet (1948). They  formed the Tamil State Party (FP) in 1949. At that time GGP’s ACTC did not support the federal idea (now in 2026 DBS Jeyaraj, who began his life as an FP youth tries to use what a juvenile  SWRD said in 1926 to give oxygen to an Eelam promoting the federal ladder).   GGP was branded as a Tamil traitor, but later under Dudley Senanayaka, FP joined the UNP coalition  government in 1965 and quit in 1968. The tipping point was the refusal of Prime Minister Dudley to declare the Koneshwaram temple precincts in Trincomalee a “sacred area,” a demand made by the FP. But the ACTC continued to support Dudley.

Tamil Moses  (Tamil Che Guevara?)

With no hope for a separate state for Tamils in Tamil Nadu, SJVC thought that the ideal place to try for a Tamil state on a world map, his Kosovo dream, was Ceylon which was politically weak, a monkeys given razor blades kind of failing democracy (Dudley’s 1947 Dedigama electorate mayhem  and John Kotalawala’s role in that was the first ominous warning  in this regard). Added to  this was the existence of  a strong Marxist present supporting both the fifty-fifty demand of GGP and the federal demand by SJVC.

At the funeral of SJVC in 1977, a Christian Sinhala priest Lakshman Wickramasinghe described SJVC as the Sri Lankan Tamil Moses. The truth was that his Gandhian style struggle ended garlanding a murderer’s statute, thus handing over the failed liberation fight to a Tamil terrorist, Prabhakaran. P did not listen to Anton Balasingham, a moderate American-friendly, theoretician, and killed Rajiv Gandhi + R. Premadasa, Lakshman Kadirgamar and bombed Mrs. Chandrika. He massacred Buddhist monks, attacked Sri Maha Bodhi tree and bombed the Dalada Maligawa. If P was reasonable and wise, he could have easily achieved the mission SJVC passed on to him. If SJVC was a real copy of Gandhi, he would not keep a blind eye about the suffering of the so-called low caste  Tamils in Jaffna . As a Christian he did not oppose discrimination inside Jaffna churches against the non-Vellala castes.

An Eelam by pen (and vote block bribes)

Prabhakaran began his killing spree with the murder of Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiayappah in July 1975 for working with the Sinhala government,  Prabhakaran was killed in  May 2009  and the war ended, and C. V. Vigneswaran was elected Chief Minister of NP in October 2013.

Tamil politicians preferred continuation of the colonial rule and SJVC said he was prepared to handover the Trinco harbour to India. Indira Gandhi supported Eelam boys because of her vendetta against J. R. Jayawardena. So many misfortunes happened and the IPKF became another albatross on the Indian necks. With Tamil Nadu as a secure base separatist Tamil politicians in Sri Lanka played double games to save their skin.

Where is the evidence?

During the  30+ year terrorist war for a Tamil Eelam, the need to justify a  distinct Tamil nation with a traditional homeland in the Northern and Eastern districts of Sri Lanka was limited to items such as The Cleghorn Minute, written in June 1799 by Sir Hugh Cleghorn, the first British Colonial Secretary of Ceylon and the Sinhalese ethnologist Paul Peiris’ description of the five Saivite shrines on the four cardinal points of the compass, located on the shoreline of Ceylon predating the birth of Buddha. Cleghorn mentioned about Malabar Inhabitants and the Sinhalese, and only in 1911 Ponnambalam Arunachalam was able to change Malabar Inhabitants as Ceylon Tamils  when he was handing Census data.

The problem was that history and geography (history is past geography of a land) of Sinhale did not support evidence for a Tamil homeland in the land. There are no archeological evidence  except indications here and there of Tamil  presence. Tapassu-Bhallika could be Tamil traders or Arabic/Persians. King Elara’s  and King Dutugemunu’s armies had both Tamil and Sinhala soldiers. The custom of Chola-Pandi-Kerala royal families exchanging brides as a strategy of maintaining the balance of power with the Sinhala kings, and later with need to obtain soldiers for hire no doubt there were lots of Malabar Inhabitants just like the last Sinhale kings were Tamils from Malabar with many wives. Ancient Shiva Devala found in Polonnaruwa Sri Lanka were built on top of older Buddhist temples!

Money Order Economy

Malaria mosquito was another enemy preventing permanent settlements in the Wanni. Attempts by the British to create Tamil settlements in the Wanni had also failed. On top of that the limestone geology of Jaffna prevented any surface running water supply. American missionaries invaded Tamils in Jaffna and Batticaloa after 1815 providing Christian English schools which was available to Sinhalese only after 1880. This advantage resulted in Tamils occupying high percentage of administrative and professional jobs in the country.  Hard working Tamils went south to Sinhala areas for government clerical and other jobs and as traders with shops in towns larger and smaller. Their income earning from the South went to Jaffna households by way of regular monthly postal money orders. Before 1978, Jaffna vegetable growers benefitted by sending produce to Colombo taking the advantage of import restrictions during 1960s and 70s.

Vigneswaran, a failed  experiment

It is said that Tamils in Sri Lanka enjoy more rights than those living in Tamil Nadu! However, after the end of the terrorist war  Tamils got an opportunity select their own leaders in 2013. The new Chief Minister  Vigneswaran, promoted by government advisors like Christian Marxist Dayan Jayatilleka as a moderate Tamil, became a bull in a China shop demolishing all the bridges for reconciliation. Travelling from Colombo he passed resolutions about Tamil genocide, did not want to see Buddha statutes, instigated anti-temple protests and did not use funds allocated for the Province. He wanted land and police powers. Failed to help the so-called low caste Tamils to come out of abject poverty. Discrimination by the Vellala Hindus continued. Thus, the 1987/8 Provincial Council system did not work for the benefit of the so-called low caste Tamils,  who are the majority even within the Jaffna municipal limits! Vigneswaran tried to get the myth of Tamil homeland albatross from his neck, talking about  another story of Tamil Buddhists in the past, hanging on to Sunil Ariyaratna’s book, Tamil Buddhists, five Shiva lingams in the Island, all the time looking for oxygen from the West and Eelam Tamil diaspora. He even tried to meet the Mahanayakas’ for support! After all, his two sons married Sinhala women ignoring genocide threat! So was Sumanthiran’s son. For Vignes,  King Devanam Priyathissa was a Tamil king by the Tamil name,  Devanam Piyatheesan!

Saravanan, a smart Aleck in Vigneswaran’s shoes

Mr. N. Saravanan, a human rights activist living in Norway, who translated the 1978-2010 portion (vol. 6) of the Sinhala chronicle  Mahavamsa  in to Tamil (in 2025?) is like a Vigneswaran ghost. He thinks he could use the Buddhist Card to cut pork on pig’s flesh.  All the other older separatist Tamils had abandoned old strategies used to justify a Tamil homeland. Now in 2025/26 they have a Sinhala Marxist government taken hostage by the Eelam Tamil diaspora and the Modi of India. With or without India the long term American plan of using Sri Lanka as a military outpost is secured politely by an American ambassador Julie Chung with IMF backing.  It is only a short step now to Full implementation of the 13^th Amendment opening the door for an Eelam country with a UN flag. President AKD not only giving moral weapon to separatist Tamils to prevent Buddhists visiting historic temples in Jaffna and Trinco while removing even the military headquarters from Jaffna. He says he will not allow extremism and racism but silent about separatism!

Tamil Che Guevara

Boy M.P. Rasamanikkam from Batticaloa had the nerve to declare in Canada that during his life time Tamils will have their own country in Sri Lankan land.  This is a clear violation of his constitutional oath and JVP/NPP government is the oxygen  for his mouth. Saravanan’s use of the occasion of a Tamil translation to reveal his discovery that it was Mahanama Thero who was behind all the sufferings and massacres of Tamils for the past two thousand years is a cunning attempt to become another cardboard Tamil hero like Rasamanikkam among the dollar generating NGO-Eelam lobby in Canada, EU etc. These two  and Gajendra Ponnambalam- M. A. Sumanthiran cannot face the Tamil Che Guevara in Jaffna, Arun Siddharth. Arun is educating the non-Vellala Tamils to fight for their rights despite all kind of obstacles including from the RAW agents in Jaffna.

උතුරේ දෙමළ මන්ත්‍රීවරු බෞද්ධ විහාරස්ථාන නාමපුවරු ඉවත් කිරිම ගැන උසාවියේදී අරුන් හෙලිකරයි/ Arun Talk

Professor Chandre Dharmawardana’s reply

Professor CD living in Canada, provided  a  detailed answer to Saravanan’s accusation that  Mahanama Thero, the author of the Sinhala Mahavamsa  wrote in the 5^th Century A.D., was behind two interrelated phenomena: (1) sanctification of the Mahavamsa and (2) massacre of Tamils.

(LankaWeb – Historical context of politicisation of Mahavamsa, and Tamil translation of the last volume  (Jan. 7, 2026).

Citing examples from other Indian historical documents such as the Mahabharata/Ramayana, Prof. CD clarifies that  Mahavamsa was not a Buddhist religious book. It was not about Tamils, but who did what in protecting Buddhism and the Sinhala Dviipa (island) from South Indian invaders (Just Wars). The answer mentioned in Mahavamsa  that Saravanan thinks engrained in Sinhala Buddhists psyche for thousands of years  did not deal with killing Tamils as Tamils. It was about the Tamil king Elara’s (Ellalan) [205-161 BCE] army, which had two Buddhists, one full and the other a half Buddhist. I believe both Kautilya and Machiavelli espoused the same concept. Thus, Mahavamsa author thought the killing of non-Buddhists to save a Buddhist kingdom was not a sin.  This was similar to the duty that Lord Krishna expected Arjuna to perform (to kill his close relatives) recorded in the Hindu sacred book, Bhagavat Geetha. The invasion of Iraq to kill Sadam Hussein was projected as a just war by the American president. But, Saravanan forgets how many hundreds ( thousands?) of innocent Tamils and rival Tamils Prabhakaran killed during his terrorist war excluding the IPKF soldiers and Sinhala සොල්දාදුවන් and innocent Sinhala/Muslim people.

War of Wombs (produce more children)

Why migrants from (South India, Dravidasthan) did not or could not create a Tamil civilization in the island of  Sinhale (later Ceylon) after 1505 is a question of geography. There are no Tamil ruins of historical significance.  The Western Ghats mountains prevent the benefit of the Southwest Monsoons, most of South India was without adequate supply of water. Those who came to live in Jaffna found no surface rivers. For the British, South Indian Dalits became a source of semi-slavery supply of cheap labour that they transported to all their colonies (see Map above). Living in abject poverty their world was very different to the world  Yasar Arfath or Mohamad Gaddafi promoted to have more people to fight the Israelis, which is now taking place in Sri Lanka as human factories supported by Arab-Sharia dollars (two or three males and more than a dozen females in one duplex).

The history of Sri Lanka has been a story of how the Buddhist Temple (concept of guardian angels) saved its Sinhala Buddhist civilization from foreign invaders (Indian and Western), for thousands of years, and from local anti-Buddhist elements of all sorts, gradually rooted on the Ceylon colony as Black Whites,” since the 1840s (Colebrooke-Cameron Reforms 1833; Macaulay’s 1835 Indian Education Minute). The Great Panadura Debate (1873 ) was a landmark in this struggle for the survival of  Sinhala Buddhism”  compared to what had happened to natives in British and other Christian colonial investments. For example, after 450 years of white domination,  Christian population in Sri Lanka is about 10-15 percent. There was no such rivalry with Hindu Tamils. At least 10 percent of the sacred space in a Buddhist temple is dedicated to Hindu gods and goddesses.

Transformation of Tamil terrorists from Culprits to  Victims!

I tried to understand this systematic and organized assault on the Sinhala Buddhist civilization by arranging historical data  under five interrelated topics: (1) Anti-Mahavamsa Movement in Sri Lanka (led by Sinhala Marxists and Tamil Christians);  (2) Dravidasthan movement in South India and Tamil Separatism in Ceylon;  and (3) History of the concept of guardian angels in Ceylon/ Sri Lanka; (4) How Sinhala politicians helped Tamils and Muslims at the expense of Sinhala Buddhists; and (5) Examples of JVP anger/hate against the Buddhist Temple.  

What I found  in this history/geography exercise was an evolving process of victims projected as murderers, by a growing NGO dollar lobby with backing from some western politicians, unable to separate truth from myth, because they have become prisoners of  Eelam block vote battalions  in their respective electorates, notably in Canada, USA, UK and the EU. The harassment, discrimination and genocide Sinhala Buddhists had to face from the colonial master from 1798 onwards, and step-motherly treatment they received from local black whites since 1948, which continues now in 2026 as a deadly sin under an adulterated and bankrupt Marxist ideology. One can see this by reading between the lines of what president AKD  said in Jaffna. It reminds the mythical Kuveni’s curse. In other words, AKD and Saravanan are like two sides of the same coin!

You cannot legislate against geography.’

Wilfrid Laurier,  Canadian Prime Minister (1895)

The geography (history is past geography) of Sri Lanka has been the greatest obstacle faced by SJV Chelvanayagam and the Tamil separatist ever since. Geography professor G. H. Peiris documented how the federal idea cannot work in this Island. Simply stated, more Tamils live in the south than in the northern and eastern  provinces. A kind of federal border demarcation submitted by Mrs. Chandrika’s Package Deal of 2000 broke Sri Lanka into ethnic pieces of unimaginable headaches. What to do with the Planation Tamils, Colombo Tamils,  Ampara Tamils and Muslims and Sinhalese chased out by Prabhakaran? Tamils live amicably in  all cities and villages in the seven southern provinces. This is population geography.

The physical geography of the country would result in a federal system of fractions in war for water rights. Already Vigneswaran gave a warning about an HR complaint to Geneva relating to Mahaveli water transfer.  The 103 rivers are running to the sea radially from a central mountain massif; there is a wet compact west side and a broader  eastern side with lesser amount of rain during the N-E Monsoons.

Feeding a cancer

Knowing all this JVP>NPP President AKD is promoting ethnic unrest with words and actions. He knows Tamils promoting 13A+ which is one step below the federal idea (promoted by DBS Jeyaraj in 2026  as one hundred years of SWRD’ s juvenile plan in 1926) will be the platform for an Eelam sooner than later. Really speaking AKD has no choice now other than agreeing to Tamil Diaspora’s demands.

Mahavamsa written in the 6^th century A.D. is recognized as a rare historical document about a Sinhala Buddhist kingdom, and it was neither a Ramayana nor a Mahabharata. It was not a school textbook. It was not discussed in Buddhist Sunday schools or  monks did not preach chapters from the Mahavamsa (or Deepawamsa) in sermons. I do not think it had anything to do with the university-level history courses. I do not know how many Buddhist households have a copy of Mahavamsa  as a cherished object. If a Sinhalaya develops a conflict with a Tamil he does not get any oxygen from the Mahavamsa!

The big question then is, how  a human rights advocate living in Norway, who translated the volume 6 (1977-2010) of the Mahavamsa Project in to Tamil, who finds defects in that volume and the entire editorial process per se, blames  Mahanama Thero, author of the old Mahavamsa, alleging that he was the culprit who poisoned the minds of the Sinhala race that killing Tamils is not a sin! This great discovery” is similar to what Machael Roberts of the Thuppahi’s Blogg once said  the origin of Sinhala extremism that Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhala race [only] could be traced back to what the Anagarika Dharmapala mentioned in a letter written in 1912, i.e. We Sinhalese.”

Sinhala Buddhist leaders, even Sinhala politicians, never said what this son of a West Indies (Jamaican?) parent visualized. Like Vigneswaran he had the best one could get from the Sri Lankan state. Prime ministers  DSS, SWRD and JRJ  had their origins in South India and have had close Christian affiliations by birth and/or marriage.

Hammering Mahavamsa with falsehood was a favourite past time for both Tamil separatists and their Sinhala sympathizers, but it lost gas as a propaganda  weapon with the growing success of the Eelam diaspora to get Sinhala politicians bribed and caved in to most of their demands. Why is it then under such favourable circumstances someone like Saravanan taking about the Mahavamsa author Mahanama Thero? Is he smarter than the boy M.P. Rasamanikkam who boasts about winning an Eelam during his life time while Ponnambalam and Sumanthiran living in Colombo add fuel to LTTE remnants shouting near the Tissa Vihara?  The reason has to be that Saravanan is part of a larger conspiracy to snatch maximum from a weak government bringing unbelievable hypothesis to the table to demoralize  Sinhala Buddhists.

There were  no Tamil massacres and there is no evidence to consider that Tamils were treated as enemies by Sinhala Buddhists. Thus, in trying to use the incident of his translating a section of Mahavamsa in to Tamil Saravanan disclosed to the sane world that he is a Tamil Separatist hiding his head in the sand. He ought to come out of his sand castle and meet Arun Siddharth, Che Guevara of Jaffna Tamils.

For example, Arun points our (1) Thesawalamai law was against non-Vellala Tamils (2) Prevention of Social Disabilities Act 1958, which made imposition of social disabilities on persons by reason of their caste to be an offence was opposed by the Vellala Caste.

Just like Jeyaraj Tambiah, a Christian, went to Thailand to Study Buddhism forgetting the plight of the Jaffna non-Vellala Tamils, Saravanan (Christian?) is digging the Mahavamsa of the 6^th Century A.D.!

The Buddhists wish—and quite rightly—that in this country where they form 70 percent of the population, Buddhism should be recognized as the predominant religion of the people. In the rest of the world, Ceylon is regarded as essentially a Buddhist country, and they want this claim established here as well…They will not be content to remain in the position of inferiority to which they have been reduced by 450 years of foreign occupation… They have no desire to make Buddhism the State religion—in spite of the cry raised by self-seeking politicians— but they want the State to help them rehabilitate themselves and undo some, at least, of the injustices perpetrated against them during the days of their subjection.”

(quoted from a speech by Professor Gunapala Malalasekera, President of ACBC reproduced in Times of Ceylon, January 15, 1956, and referenced on page 196 of the book, Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New Nation,”  by W. H. Wriggins, Princeton Univ. Press,1960)

[cc: editor@Jaffnamonitor.com]

e-Con e-News 01-07 February 2025

‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

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Is Rockefeller’s Exxon Getting Singapore 

to Sell Stolen Venezuelan Oil to Sri Lanka? 

e-Con e-News 01-07 February 2025

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At a recent collective bargaining negotiation, workers

asked for a copy of the collective agreement in Sinhala.

The company agreed to translate it but declared in case

of discrepancy, the English document would prevail!

Happy Independence Day!

The English do & does prevail!

Or do they?

*

The ‘explosive’ disclosure that the US government ousted yet another President of Sri Lanka, Lt Colonel Gotabaya Rajapakse, in 2022, was headlined in the Island of 04 February, 2026, on the 78^th anniversary of the English ‘grant’ of an independence, strangled at birth in 1948.

     Rajapakse’s ouster, revealed in the book Winds of Change: Geopolitics at the Crossroads of South and Southeast Asia by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera (quoted below), comes weeks after another book by the Senior Media Advisor to the unelected President, Ranil Wickremesinghe. Wickremesinghe replaced Rajapakse II, who was forced to flee to Singapore. That book Aragalaye Balaya by Sunanda Madduma Bandara, sought to solely pin the blame for President Rajapakse’s ouster on India, even as it did not deny the role played by the USA.

‘In Singapore, a senior journalist recounted

how Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation was

scripted, under duress, at a hotel, facilitated

by a foreign motorcade.’

Who this ‘foreign motorcade’ is, we are not told. Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s own memoirs The Conspiracy to Oust Me from the Presidency ‘refrained from naming the primary conspirator, though he clearly alluded to an international conspiracy’. Why he ‘refrained’ to name such names, is also not clear, and why now? Abeyagoonasekera’s Winds of Change: Geopolitics at the Crossroads of South and Southeast Asia delveseven deeper, however, and seeks to trace the April 2019 terrorist bombings to India, alluding to a joint US-India operation to destabilize the country (see ee Random Notes). Author Abeyagoonasekera quotes Indian Defence Secretary Sanjay Mitra ordering Sri Lanka to hand over the MRCC [Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre] on 8 April, 2019, 2 weeks before the terror: ‘You cannot give it to another nation.’ India’s order was ‘meant to prevent Sri Lanka from even considering a competing proposal from China’.

*

In April 1971, the leaders & members of the

JVP were charged with overthrowing the Queen

of England. And now a government led by JVP

has to celebrate the Englishman’s charade of an

independence day minus an independent economy…

*

The dawn of the 2^nd quarter of the 21^st century has already seen the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela, & his spouse, the move to steal its abundant oil, while rendering its own government unable to administer its economy. These weeks have also seen the USA dramatically besiege Cuba further & prevent its access to energy. This week saw US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent brazenly brag claim the USA ‘deliberately triggered a dollar shortage in Iran, fueling a currency collapse that led to soaring inflation & mass anti-government protests’. He told the US Senate Economics Committee, the USA pushed ‘one of Iran’s largest banks into bankruptcy, forced the central bank to print money, & ultimately drove Iranians onto the streets’, with the ensuing unrest, accompanied threats from Donald Trump to bomb Iran again (see ee Random Notes).

     These actions recall the strangling of Sri Lanka’s own access to finance, fuel, fertilizer, pharma & food in 2022, leading to the ouster of its popularly elected leader, resulting in a so-called ‘regime change’ where very little has been fundamentally changed, at least economically, with our signature welfare credentials being dismantled, so-called free education & free healthcare undermined, its electricity system being eviscerated, and access to its own  abundant energy & mineral resources being stolen before our very eyes – all the while, while claiming Sri Lanka is bankrupt. 

     The leader of the opposition, if opposition is what their natterings amount to, is trying hard to challenge the ruling NPP from the Left lane on a busy road. He was given a headline this week: ‘Colonialism has become active in a different form today: Sajith’ – intriguing indeed, but it turns out to be a dud firework: ‘It is active in different sectors of the society such as the economy & culture. This colonialism has to be defeated,’ he said. For those who have eyes to see & a brain to smell a dead rat, over 500 undying (yet resisting) years later, colonialism is still very much alive in all its forms, political, military & economic. Like a viperous snake (with apologies to the naga), it ain’t dead til it’s cut into pieces and sold as soup to those who prize it as a delicacy!

*

‘The country has had to endure multiple trials over the years,

from the insurgencies in the south to terrorism in the north,

failed experiments with outdated socialist economic policies,

tsunamis & other natural disasters, man-made disasters of

corruption & mismanagement, an economic collapse

culminating in protest politics, & an unprecedented loss of

confidence in democratic institutions & the legitimacy of

elected leaders. & then came Cyclone Ditwah.’

– Sunday Times Editorial (see ee Economists,

Independence Day reflections)

*

No mention of an utterly mercenary media. Anyway… Among the overflowing abundance of kudos & lamentations on this 78^th anniversary of ‘independence’, we have had to listen to endless sermons about how wonderful a country the English bestowed upon us in 1948 – one recurrent theme is how the darker natives ruined this precious gift: A wonderful white-clothed civil service, an import-export dependent plantation economy run by & for merchants & moneylenders. The truth, as SBD de Silva always reminded us, is this: the English bequeathed to us the most impoverished peasantry in Asia. Amen! We therefore are compelled to remind readers to read the recent contributions in the Lankawebby Shenali Waduge on the actual history of endurance, invasion & resistance in the country (see ee Quotes).

     Waduge’s memorializing offers a healthy antidote to the utter slavishness of the English media in Sri Lanka. Their servility is most evident in its avid reproductions of commercial & bureaucratic ‘press releases’ parading as news. They really are better called ‘Nothing News’. Every single blurb issued from the nether orifices of the IMF, the World Bank, the imperialist embassies and their fronts & unthinking thinktanks: Chambers of Commerce, Advocata, Verité, etc, say nothing new. They recall the whip wielders & drummers of our traditional festivals, which at least speak to our enduring culture, which survives if not prevails despite the media. A typical news cycle proceeds thus: ‘The IMF Chief to visit… The IMF to arrive… The IMF is here… The IMF warns… The IMF was there. The IMF is leaving. The IMF has left. (& they’re back!)  This is repeated with others who have dollar or euro or yen bribes to provide: The UN is concerned. The UN is warning. The UN will provide… etc.  

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‘It is true our government is in power

but we still don’t have state power.

We will bring about a revolution soon

& seize state power as well.’

– KD Lal Kantha, Cabinet Minister

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‘If the years of [Guyana’s] suspended constitution, 1953-57,

were a period of colonial dictatorship, the years 1957-64

were the period of the People’s Progressive Party in office

but not in power. The first 4 of these years were tantamount

to a coalition of the PPP & the Colonial Office; towards the

end of this first term I was dubbed Chief Minister. Then in

1961 after we were re-elected, my title changed to Premier

under ‘internal self-government’. But real power to govern,

to carry out our program fully, was withheld from us throughout.

The government was deemed PPP, but in fact real power remained

in the hands of the [English] Governor; constitutionally, we were

merely his advisers. With him in the Executive Council were 3

other Englishmen who held the most important portfolios.’

– Cheddi Jagan, The West on Trial

– My Fight for Guyana’s Freedom, 1966

*

Those who have power have no brains

Those who have brains have no power

– Sinhala folklore

*

• This brings us to the 50-year-old city-state of Singapore – hailed as a model Sri Lanka has studiously refused to or has been too dumbass native to follow. Singapore has been playing a certain role in the region, as an outpost of multinational corporations (MNCs), helping the USA & Europe wage war on Southeast Asia, a rock with no drinking water of its own, feasting on the countries around it as a hinterland for natural resources – a veritable desert Zion of the east, miraculously turned green with borrowed humus, operating ‘the biggest port in the world’, etc. Sri Lanka obtains it fuel from Singapore, from ships that largely bypass us carrying oil there to be refined, and then sold back to us via ships that sail from there. So much for that much-promoted holy grail of a minimalist ‘carbon footprint!’

     Has Singapore been selling oil to Sri Lanka stolen from Venezuela? is the title of this week’s edition. It’s more than that: On 28 October 2025, the US embassy’s online lipstick, EconomyNext reported that Sri Lanka’s Cabinet of Ministers had awarded ‘Singapore’s Trafigura Pte Ltd’ a contract to supply 1.4million diesel barrels in 5 shipments during 7 months starting from November 15, the government said. The supply for the state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation will be on a long-term contract basis.’ This news item rather convolutedly added, ‘The Cabinet of Ministers approved the proposal tabled by Power Minister Eng Kumara Jayakody to award the relevant contract for Vitol Asia (Singapore) Ltd, as recommended by the High-level Standing Procurement Committee appointed by the Cabinet of Ministers’.

     On 06 January 2026, 3 days after the kidnapping of Venezuela’s President, EconomyNext headlined, ‘Sri Lanka awards Murban crude deal to Singapore-based Vitol Asia.’ EN then added: SL Cabinet of Ministers has decided to award a Murban crude deal for 4 shipment [sic!] to Singapore-based Vitol Asia, the government said’:

     ‘Out of the 5 bids received from the registered suppliers of Ceylon Petroleum Corporation for procurement of 2,800,000 + 5% barrels of Murban crude oil for a period of 4 months from 15.04.2026 to 14.08.2026, Vitol Asia Pte Ltd of Singapore has been chosen. The decision was taken based on the recommendation of the higher-level standing procurement committee with regard to the bids, the government said in its Cabinet decisions document’. 

     Murban is a high quality, light & sweet crude oil produced by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), often used for producing gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Merey is as a heavy crude product of Venezuela’s Orinoco Oil Belt. And only China is said to be able to really handle Merey. So even if they are not slipping Venezuelan black gold into the mix, why do Vitol & Trafigura matter?

     Rockefeller-owned ExxonMobil’s Singapore complex is now the largest manufacturing site in the world for base stocks – a key component for producing lubricants, which are used in automotives & for industrial applications. A base stock is a single lubricant component produced by a single manufacturer (see ee Random Notes). Rockefeller, like Unilever, is leaving the messier parts (labour relations, ecological concerns) of their ‘industries’ to SME fronts (see ee Random Notes).   

     Wikipedia claims, ‘Vitol, a Swiss-based Dutch multinational energy & commodity trading company founded in Rotterdam in 1966, has over 40 offices worldwide, especially in Geneva, Houston, London, and Singapore. Trafigura Group Pte Ltd is a Singaporean-based multinational commodities company, with major regional hubs in Geneva, Houston, Montevideo, & Mumbai, founded in 1993. The company trades in base metals & energy. It is the world’s largest private metal trader & 2^nd-largest oil trader having built or purchased stakes in pipelines, mines, smelters, ports & storage terminals. Trafigura was formed… in 1993 but quickly split off from a group of companies managed by Marc Rich.’ Marc Rich, the commodities trader & hedge fund manager charged in 1983 for violating the US embargo on Iranian oil while dealing on Israel’s behalf, was pardoned by US President Bill Clinton.

      After the kidnapping of Venezuela’s leaders N Maduro & C Flores, US President Don Trump decreed that only 2 companies, Vitol & Trafigura, would be allowed to load Venezuelan oil. Those companies would pay for the oil to the USA, into a special account held in Qatar under Trump’s name! Al Jazeera in Qatar has apparently not heard a word about this. Any tankers carrying oil not owned by Vitol & Trafigura from Venezuela have been illegally seized at sea by the US Navy, sometimes assisted by the English government. The USA has been claiming that Venezuela agrees to this – which is not true. The Venezuelan government simply has has no military power to stop the US Navy from seizing oil tankers. The US government is claiming that the Venezuelan government gave the USA, information on non-Vitol & non-Trafigura tankers. It is more possible that Vitol & Trafigura give information on ‘rogue’ tankers to the USA, notes former English diplomat, Craig Murray: Trafigura is: ‘the archetypal extremely corrupt Western corporation. Their record for deliberate pollution & corruption in Africa is appalling, including in Angola & Ivory Coast. They have frequently been involved in CIA schemes for regime change. How Vitol & Trafigura came to be the beneficiaries of a duopoly, and what backhanders that may have involved, is another question.’ The USA, under pressure, has since announced that more companies will be included. However, the US theft ‘is almost identical to the system imposed on Iraq after its destruction by the USA & its allies’, with ‘payments for Iraqi oil made to the USA and a percentage of them returned to the Iraqi government’. However, ‘Iraqi revenues were paid to the US Treasury, whereas the Venezuelan funds are going to a Qatar account under Trump’s personal control, removed from the reach of Congress’. Murray writes: ‘It gives him a massive slush fund to pursue policy outside the US legal framework. It is like Iran-Contra on a massive scale.’ Murray emphasizes: ‘None of this sales arrangement has been agreed by Rodríguez and none of it is contained in the new Venezuelan hydrocarbon legislation on concessions & royalties.’

     On 27 January, Anglo-US News Agency Reuters reported: ‘Trading houses Trafigura & Vitol began marketing Venezuelan oil this month after an agreement between Caracas & Washington for the USA to control 50 million barrels after its January 3 capture of President Nicolas Maduro, with proceeds going to a USA-supervised fund. Trump said the USA has also seized oil on board Venezuelan tankers for processing in US refineries. Vitol & Trafigura have sold Venezuelan crude to refiners including US-based Valero & Phillips 66 and Spain’s Repsol & have also approached Indian & Chinese refiners, including PetroChina, for possible sales… However, one of the trading executives said PetroChina traders were told not to touch the oil until further notice from headquarters.’ (see ee Random Notes)

     In a brilliant takedown of the Reuters’ news story, which should be a model for media analysts to hone their scalpels, Prince Kaponedissects how ‘Reuters sells custodial plunder as a pricing issue, turning blockade into ‘market caution’.’ He instead states clearly: ‘China’s Foreign Ministry has publicly stated that the US seizure of Venezuela’s president & use of force against Caracas ‘clearly violate international law, basic norms in international relations, and the purposes & principles of the UN Charter’ and called for Maduro’s release & dialogue; the ministry has also condemned ‘hegemonic acts’ by the US that ‘seriously violate international law & Venezuela’s sovereignty and threaten peace & security in Latin America & the Caribbean.’ Chinese officials have stressed that cooperation between China & Venezuela is cooperation between sovereign states protected by international law & the domestic laws of both countries, and that the use of force & unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela’s oil industry have undermined economic & social order. None of that appears in the Reuters frame, where the only ‘problem’ is whether a barrel clears at the right discount.

     ‘What we are witnessing around Venezuelan oil is that enforcement made material. Control here does not mean ownership in a formal sense. It means custody over circulation – authority over where oil flows, how it is sold, and through which financial channels its value is realized. That is why revenue supervision matters as much as tanker routes. When the flow of income from a country’s primary resource passes through externally administered channels, sovereignty is hollowed out without a single flag being lowered. The state continues to exist, but its lifeblood moves under someone else’s supervision. This is not collapse. It is administration. Earlier imperial playbooks sought regime change – the dramatic replacement of governments. That approach proved unstable. What replaces it is regime subordination: local authorities remain in place, but within a narrowing corridor defined by external power. Leaders are not treated as sovereign decision-makers; they are treated as managers of a pressured system, tasked with maintaining domestic order while strategic decisions about resources, trade & alignment are made elsewhere. Sovereignty becomes conditional – revocable when it obstructs hemispheric control… And the working class – here & abroad – gets trained to watch theft like it’s a weather report.’  

     Kapone’s forensics seek to ‘restore the missing record: seizures, supervision, & the re-routing of Venezuelan oil revenue through imperial hands. We reframe the contradiction as doctrine – Fortress America tightening hemispheric command as multipolar escape routes multiply. We close with a call to organize: break the information blockade, target the chokepoints, & build material solidarity with the besieged.’ (see ee Random Notes)

     Nury Vittachi’s reports provide good examples of shattering the US-led media circus of fake news & lies on China & Hong Kong, whose violent US$-funded demonstrations would echo a few years later in Sri Lanka’s 2022 beginning of IMF-backed collapse… (see ee Random Notes)

*

• Comparing the Centrals Banks of Asian of non-settler colonial countries such as India, as well as settler-colonial countries like Canada, Sunil Abhayawardhana attempts to explore the ‘Central Bank’s Role in Development’ (see ee Focus). Abhayawardhana suggests the role of such banks are ‘determined by if the economy is developed, developing, or underdeveloped’. He also describes the active role played by the central banks of (differently colonized?) Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, etc, in directing investment in industrialization, which has been prevented in Sri Lanka. Under the guidance of the IMF & World Bank & other instrument of imperialism, Sri Lanka’s Central Bank has been freed of its centrality, and made ‘independent’ of accountability to an elected parliament. The ‘independence’ of such banks has been more recently highlighted by the US government’s decision to prosecute its Federal Reserve chairman for fraud, making it out that such ‘pressures’ to conform are new. Yet it turns out that one former US President (LB Johnson) even physically assaulted one FR chair! But such publicized ‘conflicts’ could very well be theatre

     The word ‘Development’ was minted by the multinational Unilever in the 1950s to replace the word, ‘Colonial’! The pervasive use of the word (almost every government ministry & NGO uses it) shows the power of those who coin such tropes, and give it currency! For the last half a century at least, Sri Lanka has been described as ‘developing’, much like patronizingly referring to a mentally damaged child as ‘s/he is coming along, coming along…’ Finance casino players like to refer to ‘emerging’ markets. But the truth is such countries remain in that state of stasis, and a more apt and historically correct designation is ‘underdeveloping.’

*

• Kusum Wijetilleke, (an) economic advisor to the SJB leader Sajith Premadasa (where on earth are the footnote clique, Harsha & Eran?), tracks the ‘stunning’ and misleading pronouncements of the present CBSL governor, N Weerasinghe (see ee Focus). The Governor has to ‘always project stability and continuity to the markets’, writes Wijetilleke. Hence, the CBSL governor declared that the recent cyclonic devastation would have no impact of economic projections.  He also incorrectly ‘rebuked’ as mere ‘academics’ the 121 signatories of a December 2025 letter by ‘Debt Justice’ calling on the government to suspend debt payment and reconsider the debt restructuring. Wijetilleke kindly shows how these dissenting academics have been very much part of the system. 

     It turns out that this restructuring is merely postponing payment (some say the cliff – abyss? – will yawn in 2028, KW says 2043!)… Using the metaphor of the recent floods, we may say, that the inundation which could otherwise be directed into the open seas, has been merely ‘dammed’ to devastate the country in a few years (perhaps beyond the re-election cycle)… leaving the economy exposed to a second restructuring’… Wijetilleke calls for ‘realistic adjustments’ to be made possible, for countries exposed to ‘climate shocks’, but in an imperialist-dominated world, are there not other vulnerabilities, such as subjection to the dramatic caprices of US & EU policy shifts, sanctions, regular invasions, kidnapping of leaders, forever wars, etc. Should not the IMF and the World Bank take a regular walk down the wild side of Pennsylvania Avenue, and make algorithmic allowances for such blatant imperialist policy parading as mercurial whimsy?’ 

     Even as one may sense a naivete among the Debt Justice crew, with their appeal to the morality of the debt slaver, Wijesinghe ends with a staunch defense:

     ‘The economists are not advocating abandonment of markets or fiscal anarchy. They are arguing that Sri Lanka exited restructuring with a debt profile likely to fail again, their position is technically coherent, aligned with balance-sheet realism, and focused on durability rather than optics.’ Optics indeed!

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• Midst all this pussyfooting, ee Focus therefore defers once more to the super realism of SBD de Silva about Sri Lanka’s economy – continuing to reproduce his classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, and the 2^nd part of his book, ‘The Plantation System & Underdevelopment’, beginning Chapter 7: ‘Plantations & their Metropolitan Orientation’. Here he locates its origins in the mid-17^th century (when we were fighting off the Portuguese invaders, & the next set of the gangsters, Dutch invaders, were winking their eyes at us). The inability to prevent whites from obtaining and cultivating their own land, saw them resort to ‘unfree labor’ with a ‘a highly authoritarian structure of labour relations’, to shape ghe plantation system. de Silva meticulously dissected the variables comparing the evolution of peasant-based cultivation alongside large plantations, and the numerous fake justifications for their spread. Smallholders could just as easily achieve high yields per acre, and extra-economic pretexts had to be used to drive out peasants. The cost of transporting enslaved Africans was 5 times as high as white servants! However, the plantation system enabled a whole layer of middlemen & merchants to profit, even if at great cost. SBD de Silva exposed the claims to science, specialization, size, economics of scale, division of labor to justify the slave system. There was no greater productivity nor any generation of ‘external economies’, which modern industrialization is famous for: ‘where one thing leads to another…’ Ultimately what differentiates the type of colonies was whether industrialization (processing, etc) was allowed to take place or not! And even more fundamental than the limited degree of local processing & the metropolitan markets for which the crops are produced, is the dominance of merchant capital in their production & marketing. This gave rise to the fundamental divergence in the world – countries:

*

‘Whereas capitalism was the mode of production in the centre,

merchant capital being its agent, in the plantation situation

merchant capital remained dominant.’

*

• This issue of ee is dedicated to Sugath Kulatunga, who passed away last week. He was a regular thoughtful contributor to this little weekly effort, and we recall his support (even if he did not agree with everything we said, nor us with him). To the very end of his life he kept serving up issues, via social media, email, etc, issues that mattered to the country and the world, sharing & adding his wealth of practical experience and knowledge. RIP = Return if Possible…

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Garvin Karunaratne, former GA Matara

It was a Saturday morning. Seated in the verandah of the Warakapola Rest House I was waiting for the arrival of the Hon Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Dudley Senanayake. It was my task every Saturday and Sunday to meet him and be with him the entire day, for two long years. I was the Additional Disapathy in Kegalla. It happened in 1968

Earlier that week I had assumed duties as the Additional Government Agent at Kegalla and met the Government Agent Stanley Maralanda. Mr Maralanda the Government Agent was very specific.

I am happy to hand over the duty of meeting the Prime Minister every Saturday and Sunday and being with him the entire day. I am not very fluent in Sinhala and faltered in speaking at meetings and there are at least five to eight meetings every day, where speeches have to be made. You need not worry because the Prime Minister is a true gentleman.

The GA’s words reverberated in me again and again. I had never met the Prime Minister of our country. Earlier I had met many Ministers- where I had represented the department, where I had for days studied the subject in and out to be able to answer any query. I would memorize the contents of files to be able to answer. Now I was not meeting a Minister. Instead it was the Prime Minister of the country. There was no subject, no file to study and be ready.

My head was reeling fast that Saturday, when the wheels of the Humber Hawk rolled in.

I rushed out and greeted him as he stepped out of his car.

Good Morning sir, I am the new Additional Government Agent.”

Maralanda told me that you will be here.”

He strode into the verandah and sat down. The waiter brought in tea

Let me have a look at the meetings I have to attend to.

I watched his eyes rolling over the paper I submitted

After a quick cup of tea, We were on our way to the meetings. Some were organized by his own political party members- the United National Party ; others were organized by us- the officials- the Divisional Secretary or the various departments. I had been through the list and had met my officials the Rural Development Officer and the Divisional Secretary

who had organized them. I

had also met his party officials.

The Prime Minister strode down the steps and sat in the rear seat. I turned to walk to my jeep to follow him, He wanted me to sit beside him.

Come in and sit beside me.” he ordered and I obeyed

His Humber Hawk was being driven through small roads in his electorate.

He was gazing at the paddy fields on either side.

Stop there”, He was gazing at a small section of the paddy – the growing crop that looked stunted. Something had gone wrong.

Make a note of that field. Find the farmer. Get hold of the Agricultural Overseer of the area and find what went wrong.”

Yes sir.” I made a note in my field book to look into it and to report to

the Hon Prime Minister later.

He went to attend a meeting arranged by his supporters. We were led to a small room, with a table of kiribath, kevun etc. I found a plate and served a piece of kiribath and served him. I myself got a plate and did eat a piece.

Later we all fed into a meeting. I was seated beside him. My men- a few trusted officers were around at all vantage points. The speeches started.

The Prime Minister kept listening to what was said.

One speaker used the word mu”, in referring to someone about whom he spoke. The Prime Minister asked me:

What is the meaning of that word mu”, he just said.”

It is a derogatory word,”

He kept listening. The speaker used the word”aru”

What is the meaning of the word aru”

It is a derogatory word”

Stop him speaking at once.”

I sensed that the Prime Minister was very angry.

I got up from my chair, moved to the front of the stage and snatched the microphone from the speaker, pushed him aside and was about to sit down beside him, when:.

Apologize to the people for the derogatory words used at this meeting.”

I apologized to the people for the use of foul language at this meeting and sat down.

Later when his turn came he spoke, It a powerful speech, followed by mine.

There were at least five meting everyday.

During my work in Kegalla in 1968 and 1969, his Assistant Secretary sent e many messages informing me of the decisions conveyed to him by the Prime Minister for me to do . I went through each decision very carefully and did everything that was reasonable.

All the messages which I thought unreasonable, were carefully thought of and not acted on. I would pile up all such messages which I did not carry out, o to Temple Trees once a fortnight and meet him face to face when I would explain why I did not carry out that order. He kept listening to my reasoning and never disagreed.

Why was he rejected by the people at the 1970 General Election? I yet do not know.

I was away in Manchester studying for a Diploma for which I had been sent.

Garvin Karunaratne, former GA Matara

7-2-26

සංගදාස අකුරුගොඩ

2009 මැයි මාසයේදී ශ්‍රී ලංකාව නිල වශයෙන් එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ සංවිධානය හමුදාමය වශයෙන් පරාජය කළද, ගෝලීය එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊය හා සම්බන්ධිත පිරිස්, හමුදාමය නොවන ක්‍රමවලින් ස්වාධීන ‘දෙමළ ඊලමක්’ නිර්මාණය කිරීමේ බෙදුම්වාදී අරමුණු ක්‍රියාත්මක කරමින් සිටී.

ඒ සමග, ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ 2015, 2022 සහ 2024 දි සිදුවූ ආණ්ඩු පෙරලිවලින් පසු, උතුරු නැගෙනහිර පළාත්වල  හමුදා ඉවත් කිරීම්, බුද්ධි අංශ පහත හෙලීම් මගින් රාජ්‍ය ආරක්ෂක පැවැත්ම දුර්වල වීම් සිදුවෙමින් පවතින අතර එම ප්‍රදේශයන්හි පුරාවිද්‍යාත්මක වැදගත් කමක් ඇති සිංහල බෞද්ධ ආගමික සිද්ධස්ථානවල පැවැත්මටද දැඩි පීඩනයන් එල්ල වෙමින් පවතී. උක්ත බෙදුම්වාදී අරමුණු සහ  ආණ්ඩු පෙරලීම් අහම්බයෙන් හෝ හුදකලා වූ සුදුවීම් නොව එය බාහිර උපායමාර්ගික දේශපාලන පීඩනය මත සහ අභ්‍යන්තර දේශපාලන සහ පෞද්ගලික අරමුණු  සපුරා ගැනීම මත සිදුවන්නක් බැව් පිළිබිඹු කරයි.

මෙහිදී, සුප්‍රකට “වැනීසියේ වෙළෙන්දා” නාට්‍යයේ, වෙළෙන්දෙකු වන ඇන්ටෝනියෝ ගෙන් ණයක් සඳහා ඇපයක් ලෙස ෂයිලොක් “මස් රාත්තලක්ම” ඉල්ලා සිටි අයුරින්, ස්වාධීන ‘දෙමළ ඊලමක්’ ම ඉල්ලා සිටින එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ බෙදුම්වාදීන් සමග ‘අපේක්ෂාත්මක දේශපාලන ගනුදෙනු කරමින්’ ඔවුන් පිනවීමට  ගිය දේශීය හා විදේශීය නයකයිනට අවසානයේ අත්වූ ඉරනම් සලකා බැලීම වටී. 

1987 දී, එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ බෙදුම්වාදීන්ට පලාත් සභා, රාජ්‍ය භාෂා ඇතුලු බලතල ලබා දීමට   ඉන්දියාව සමග ගිවිසුම් අත්සන් කිරීමට ශ්‍රී ලංකා රජයට විවිධ බලපෑම් කල ඉන්දියා අගමැති රජීව් ගාන්ධි, 1991 දී, එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ  බෙදුම්වාදීන් අතින්ම ඝාතනය විය. එම ගිවිසුම් අත්සන් කරලීමට පුරෝගාමීව කටයුතුකල, එවකට ඇමති වරයෙකු වූ ගාමිණී දිසානායක මහතා, 1994දී ජනාධිපති අපේක්ෂකයෙකු ලෙස ප්‍රචාරක කටයුතු කරමින් සිටියදී, එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ මරාගෙන මැරෙන බෝම්බකරුවෙකු මගින් ඝාතනය වූයේය.

ඉන්දීය සාම සාධක හමුදාව ශ්‍රී ලංකාවෙන් ඉවත් කිරීම අපේක්ෂා කරමින්, එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ සංවිධානය කෙරෙහි විශ්වාසය තබා, එවකට ජනාධිපති රණසිංහ ප්‍රේමදාස මහතා අවි සහ පතොරම් ලබා දී තිබුනද, 1990 දී ඉන්දීය සාම සාධක හමුදාව ඉවත් වූ පසු, එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊය රජයට එරෙහිව හැරී, ප්‍රේමදාසගේ නියෝග මත යටත් වූ පොලිස් නිලධාරීන් 600 කට වැඩි පිරිසක් ඝාතනය කළේය. 1993 කොළඹ පැවති මැයි දින රැලියක් අතරතුර ජනාධිපති ප්‍රේමදාස එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ මරාගෙන මැරෙන බෝම්බකරුවෙකු විසින් ඝාතනය කරන ලදී.

!994 දී බලයට පත් වූ චන්ද්‍රිකා කුමරතුංග මහත්මිද, එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊය සමග විවිද සාම සාකච්ඡා මගින් බලතල බෙදා ගැනීමේ ප්‍රයත්නයන් දැරුවද, 1999දී එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ ඝාතන උත්සාහයකින් ඇගේ එක් ඇසක් අන්ධ විය.

අනුර කුමාර ජනාධිපතිවරයා ඇතුලු වත්මන් රජය බලයට පත්කිරීමට, ගෝලීය එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ ය හා සම්බන්ධිත පිරිස් වල සහාය ලැබුන බැව් රහසක් නොවේ.

පසුගිය තෛපොංගල් උත්සවය සැමරීම සඳහා ජනාධිපතිවරයා යාපනයේ කළ සංචාරය විශාල මතභේදයක් ඇති කර තිබේ. ශ්‍රී මහා බෝධිය පසුකරමින් පෝය දිනක සිල් සමාදන් වීමට යයි පවසමින් තිස්ස විහාරය වැඳීමට යාපනයට පැමිණෙන්නේ සිල්ගැනීමට නොව වෛරය පැතිරවීමට යයිද. යලිත් ජාතිවාදයට, ඉඩ දෙන්නේ නැතැයිද ” යනුවෙන් ජනාධිපතිවරයා පැවසූ බැව් වාර්තාවේ.   ජනාධිපතිවරයා, දැනුවත්ව හෝ නොදැනුවතව මෙවන් ප්‍රකාශයක් මගින් ඇත්ත වශයෙන්ම සිදුකළේ, උතුරේ දෙමළ ජනතාව තුල  වන්දනාවේ එන සිංහල බෞද්ධයන් කෙරෙහි  අනවශ්‍ය වෛරයක් රෝපණය කිරීමෙන්, දකුණෙන් උතුරට යෑම සීමා කරලීමය.

කොළඹ, නිදහස් චතුරස්‍රයේ මෙවර පැවැත්වූ 78 වන නිදහස් සැමරුම් උත්සවයේදි යුද ජයග්‍රහණයක් ගැන හෝ රණ විරුවන් ගැන කිසිදු සඳහනක් කිරීමට ඉඩ නොතබමින් ත්‍රිවිධ හමුදාවේ අභිමානය උදුරා, හුදෙක් සුලි කුණාටුව සහ මත් උවදුර මැඩලීමට උපකාරී වන සොල්දාදුවන් පිරිසක් ලෙස හෑල්ලු කරලීමට පියවර ගෙන තිබූ අයුරු දැකගත හැකිවිය.  එසේ වුවද, රාජ්‍ය දේපල සහ මිනිස් ජීවිත වනසමින් ත්‍රස්තවාදය එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ ය ටත් පෙර රටට පෙන්වූ , ඊනියා ඉල්මහ විරුවන් මහ ඉහලින් සැමරීමට වත්මන් පාලකයින් පෙළබිම, බරපතල කරුණකි.  

තම රජය කිසිදා ‘ජාතිවාදයට’ හෝ ‘අන්තවාදයට’ ඉඩ නොදෙන බව” ජනාධිපතිවරයා 78 වෙනි නිදහස් සැමරුම අමතමින් පවසා ඈත. ඒ අතරතුර, ජාතික නිදහස් දින උතුරු නැගෙන හිර බොහෝ ප්‍රදේශ නොසන්සුන් වූ බවත්  දෙමළ බෙදුම්වාදීන් නිදහස් දිනය ‘ශෝක දිනයක්’ ලෙස ප්‍රකාශයට පත් කරමින් කළු කොඩි එසවූ බවත් වාර්තා වේ. ජාතික ජන බල වේගයේ අනුග්‍රහයක් නොමතිව මේ සිද්දිය, මේ ආකාරයට, උතුර නැගෙනහිර සිදුවිය නොහැකි බැව්” ‘දිවයින’ සහ ‘ද අයිලන්ඩ්’ පුවත් පත් මාධ්‍යවේදී, දේශපාලන විශ්ලේෂක ශමීද්‍ර ෆර්ඩිනැන්ඩු මහතා පවසා තිබේ.

වත්මන් රජය, එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ ත්‍රස්තවාදයෙන් රට මුදවා දුන් නායකත්වයට ලබාදී තිබූ, රජයේ නිවසින් පලවාහැර තිබියදී, එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ සංවිධානයේ හිටපු නායක ප්‍රභාකරන්ගේ යාපනයේ වැල්වෙටිතුරෙයි ප්‍රදේශයේ පිහිටි ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණය කොට ඉදිරි පරපුරට දැක බලා ගැනීම පිණිස, එය ඔහුගේ නැගණිය වෙත බාර දිය යුතු බවට වැල්වෙට්ටිතුරේ ප්‍රාදේශීය සභාව සම්මත කරගෙන ඇති බවට වාර්තා වේ. එහෙත්, වාර්තාවන අන්දමට, ශ්‍රී ලංකාව ඇතුළු රටවල් 33 ක් විසින් දෙමළ ඊලාම් විමුක්ති කොටි (එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊ) ත්‍රස්තවාදී සංවිධානයක් ලෙස තහනම් කර ඇත. ඊට අමතරව, යුරෝපා සංගමයේ සාමාජික රටවල් 27 ද එම කණ්ඩායම ත්‍රස්තවාදී සංවිධානයක් ලෙස නිල වශයෙන් නම් කර ඇත.

රටක ජනාධිපතිවරයා, රටෙහි සෑම පුරවැසියෙකුටම තිබිය යුතු ‘ජාතික අභිමානය සහ දේශප්‍රේමය’, ‘ජාති වාදය’ ලෙස හැදින්වීම අවාසනාවකි. ඔහු   ‘ජාතිවාදයට’ හෝ ‘අන්තවාදයට’ ඉඩ නොදෙන බව මන්ත්‍රයක් මෙන් පැවසුවද, ඔහු කිසිදා, ‘ බෙදුම්වාදය හෝ ත්‍රස්තවාදයට’ ඉඩ නොදෙන බවක් පැවසූ බවක් අප මෙතෙක් අසා නැත. ඔහු සහ ඔහු නායකත්වය දරන දේශපාලන පක්ෂ , ගෝලීය එල්.ටී.ටී.ඊය හා සම්බන්ධිත පිරිස් සමග පවත්වන බැව් පැවසෙන සබඳතාවන් ගැන සිතනවිට එය පුදුමයට කරුනක් නොවේ. 

සංගදාස අකුරුගොඩ

Dilrook Kannangara

Generation Z (persons born between 1997 and 2012) are very special compared to other generations. They are highly influential around the world and have a few political, religious and business victims under their belt already. As most of them grew up with high tech, they are globally aware and better behaved compared to older generations evidenced by a drastically lower rate of childhood pregnancies, tobacco use and alcoholism. They are highly sensitive to economic strength and economic freedom, and also aware of their rights. These traits were less seen in older generations as they were more docile, accepting of what was called fate, weak and conservative.

All major political parties in Sri Lanka (except TNA and SLMC) have felt the need to woo generation Z voters and are making desperate attempts to do so. Ridiculously enough none of their leaders are from Generation Z! Some political parties are still led by Baby Boomers whose time has long passed. Showcasing naked dancers to a mix of Indian, Sri Lankan and western music does not impress Gen Z as they have regular and effortless access to all that and much more. This outdated thinking is rooted in old politicians’ thinking who used musical shows to attract voters. It doesn’t work today.

Instead, Gen Z wants tangible economic benefits and they want it now. They don’t buy arguments that they must do sacrifices for the sake of the country. This is because their parents’ generation, Generation X suffered most from Sri Lanka’s war, insurrection in the late 1980s and resultant social and economic sufferings. Gen Z kids saw how their parents suffered due to all these for the sake of the country but ended up with nothing for them in return. Gen Z is conscious of price and quality and does not tolerate the import mafia for their purchases. Instead, they’d rather buy directly from overseas sellers at a discount. Political parties funded by the import mafia will have a hard time balancing their Gen Z voters (if any) and their financiers.

Gen Z is into education and healthcare more than older generations. Governments will have to increase spend on education and healthcare and reduce its military spending and spending on other old holy cows. Gen Z doesn’t hesitate to question old and established beliefs and destroy them if need be and if doing so economically benefits them. The type of education they demand is also globalized, not localized.

Younger generations since Gen Z will be the same. Ruling parties in less developed countries will have to change their priorities to meet the aspirations of Gen Z or be left behind in history. Processes will have to be made far more efficient to produce outcomes quickly. Privileged positions awarded to various sectors of the society will have to be dismantled. These changes will benefit most and the nation though older generations kept silent about them.

Courtesy Daily Mirror

 Bloomberg report notes that wage disparities persist, with foreign workers often earning less than Russian nationals for similar roles

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By Nishel Fernando

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​Russia is turning to South Asia, including Sri Lanka, to address a widening labour shortage that has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and long-term demographic shifts. 

A report by Bloomberg highlights that Russian recruiters are aggressively scouting for workers in Sri Lanka, India, and Bangladesh as Moscow faces its most severe workforce crisis in decades. 

With an estimated need for 11 million additional workers by the end of the decade, the Russian economy is pivoting away from its traditional reliance on Central Asian migrants toward new source markets.

​This strategic shift comes as Sri Lanka sets an ambitious target of securing 350,000 foreign employment opportunities in 2026. The government is actively seeking to diversify beyond traditional Middle Eastern markets, making the opening in Russia a timely development. 

According to Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs data cited in the report, the issuance of work permits to foreigners hit a multi-year high in 2025, exceeding 240,000. While India saw a dramatic surge in permits—rising from roughly 5,000 in 2021 to over 56,000 in 2025 – Sri Lanka is becoming an increasingly attractive source for skilled and semi-skilled labour.

​Recruitment agencies such as Moscow-based ‘Intrud’ are reportedly expanding their operations to the island nation to fill vacancies in sectors ranging from construction and logistics to municipal services like snow clearing. Russian employers are expressing a growing preference for South Asian workers who are typically bound by specific contracts and visas, offering more stability than the visa-free mobility of workers from regions like Tajikistan or Uzbekistan.

​The potential influx of Sri Lankan labour into Russia aligns with Colombo’s broader strategy to bolster foreign exchange reserves. Official data indicates that 2025 was a milestone year, with total departures for foreign employment exceeding 311,000. This outbound migration has served as a critical economic buffer, with workers’ remittances reaching an estimated US$ 7.8 billion in 2025 – a figure that has played a pivotal role in stabilising the exchange rate and financing essential imports.

​However, the move into the Russian market presents complex challenges. While the demand for manpower is robust, the Bloomberg report notes that wage disparities persist, with foreign workers often earning less than Russian nationals for similar roles. Furthermore, the nature of the work often involves manual labour in harsh climatic conditions. 

As authorities aim for the 350,000 departure target this year, balancing the economic benefits of these new corridors against the safety and welfare of workers in a conflict-adjacent economy will remain a critical priority..

Courtesy Hiru News

The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) has decided to launch an inquiry into a complaint filed by the suspended Deputy Secretary General of Parliament, Chaminda Kularatne.

Kularatne was recently suspended from his post following a decision made by the Parliamentary Staff Advisory Council.

The suspension reportedly stems from complications surrounding the legality of his initial appointment to the parliamentary staff.

In response to his suspension, the Deputy Secretary General filed a formal complaint with the Bribery Commission on the 2nd of this month against Speaker of Parliament, Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne.

The complaint, filed under the provisions of the Anti-Corruption Act, requests a fair and impartial investigation into the Speaker’s conduct and calls for necessary legal action.

The Commission’s decision to move forward with the investigation marks a significant development in the ongoing dispute within the parliamentary administration.

Shenali D Waduge

Sinhala Buddhists, constituting approximately 70% of Sri Lanka’s population, and forming the islands continuous civilizations core for over 2500 years are experiencing systematic marginalization across governance, administration, legal protection, cultural preservation, and education, particularly in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. Despite being the majority, their religious, cultural, and linguistic rights, as guaranteed by Article 9 of the Constitution of Sri Lanka—which provides for freedom of religion and recognizes the foremost place of Buddhism—are under threat due to structural biases favoring minority groups.

International Human Rights – Legal angle

These developments conflict directly with internationally accepted human rights standards, including:

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) – Articles 2, 18, 27
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) – Articles 18, 26, 27
• UN Declaration on the Rights of Minorities (1992)

While Tamils constitute minorities nationally, Sinhala Buddhists function as vulnerable minorities within the Northern and Eastern Provinces, thereby qualifying for protection under international minority-rights frameworks.

Civilizational and Archaeological Continuity

The Northern and Eastern Provinces contain extensive archaeological evidence of continuous Sinhala Buddhist habitation extending over two millennia, including:

• Kurundi Viharaya
• Sampur Stupa
• Vadunnagala (Vaddamana Pabbatha) Viharaya
• Kandarodai
• Thiriyaya Girihandu Seya

The destruction, obstruction, or denial of these sites constitutes cultural erasure, prohibited under:

• UNESCO World Heritage principles
• Hague Convention for Protection of Cultural Property (1954)
• Rome Statute – Article 8 (war crimes relating to destruction of heritage)

Late MP Cyril Mathew in fact wrote to UNESCO documenting all of the vandalized sites throughout in July 1983 for which he had not received any response.

UNP MP Cyril Mathew Report to UNESCO: Proof Sinhalese were living in the North before Tamils

Central Government Level Impacts

Constitutional & Legislative Marginalization

Official Language Issues:

• Article 18(2) of the Constitutiondeclares Tamil as also” an official language, implying equality but in practice favoring Tamil in North/East provinces due to the 13th Amendment (1987).

• The 16th Amendment (1988), Article 22(1)mandates that Sinhala and Tamil shall be used in administration, legislation, and judicial proceedings throughout Sri Lanka, guaranteeing equal access to State services regardless of region. However, in practice, Tamil has become the dominant — and often exclusive — administrative language in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, creating systemic barriers for Sinhala-speaking citizens in:
  • Local government offices
  • Divisional Secretariats
  • Police stations
  • Magistrate courts
  • Provincial administrative services

This is denying Sinhala-speaking citizens their constitutional right to receive public services and access justice in their own official language.

The practical exclusion of Sinhala from administration in these provinces constitutes institutional linguistic segregation, amounting to indirect discrimination, prohibited under Article 12(1) (Equality before the law) of the Constitution.

Sinhala is de facto de-prioritized in administrative regions with Tamil majorities.

Representation & Appointments:

• Senior bureaucratic and ministerial positions in North & East provinces frequently favor minorities or expatriate Tamils, reducing Sinhala Buddhist influence.

Educational Policy:

• Schools in Tamil-majority areas receive better funding and infrastructure per capita than Sinhala-majority areas post-1987.
• Scholarships, Sinhala-medium education, and teacher recruitment are often skewed toward Tamil-speaking students/teachers.

Political Policy Bias

• Central funding is frequently earmarked for minority cultural projects, while Sinhala Buddhist temples, heritage sites, and pilgrimages receive less attention.
• Policies claiming equal treatment” are often unequal in practice, disproportionately impacting Sinhala Buddhist communities in areas historically affected by separatism.

Language & Education

• Administration increasingly favors Tamil, creating barriers for Sinhala speakers in accessing government services.
• Sinhala-medium schools in mixed districts remain underfunded, limiting educational opportunities and cultural preservation.

This practice further violates Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantees equal protection of the law without discrimination based on language, and Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), prohibiting discrimination on linguistic grounds.

Provincial & Local Government Impacts (13th Amendment & Provincial Councils)

Representation & Governance

Provincial councils in Tamil-majority areas minimize Sinhala Buddhist participation, particularly in decision-making on land, religious sites, and schools.

Provincial budgets prioritize minority cultural or linguistic projects over Sinhala Buddhist heritage preservation.

Scenario Example:

A Sinhala Buddhist temple in Trincomalee requests renovation; approval is delayed for 3–5 years, while minority religious projects are expedited.

Likely affected population: ~100,000–150,000 adults directly affected.

Land & Property

• Historical resettlement programs for Sinhala Buddhists are delayed or blocked, whereas minority claims are fast-tracked.
• None of the Sinhala Buddhists chased out of North since 1980s have been properly resettled in their original habitats or had their livelihoods restored/ land and property granted.
• Sinhala Buddhist communities in Northern & Eastern provinces face restrictions, displacement, or denied land tenure as well as daily harassments.
• https://www.dailynews.lk/2022/05/23/features/279399/sinhalese-displaced-north-still-wait-return

The forced displacement of over 50,000 Sinhala Buddhist families during LTTE-controlled years, followed by systematic obstruction of resettlement, violates:

• UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement
• Article 12 of the Sri Lankan Constitution (Equality before law)
• ICCPR Article 12 (freedom of residence)

Preventing resettlement while advancing mono-ethnic territorial consolidation constitutes demographic engineering, a known precursor to separatist state-building.

Likely affected population: ~50,000 families (~200,000 individuals).

Administrative Language Bias

• Tamil is often the primary administrative languagein Northern & Eastern provinces.
• Sinhala speakers encounter practical barriersin accessing services, filing complaints, or participating in local governance.
• Activists who claim to be taking side of Tamils based on human rights conveniently omit the human rights of Sinhala Buddhists in these areas.

District & Local Government Impacts

Representation

• Sinhala Buddhists are underrepresentedin local councils and administrative bodies in Northern and Eastern districts.
• Local government elections are often dominated by Tamil or Muslim parties, limiting political influencefor Sinhala Buddhists.

Public Services

• Infrastructure, healthcare, and local development allocation often favors Tamil-majority areas, even when Sinhala Buddhist populations are significant.
• Sinhala Buddhist temples may face funding shortages or delays in expansion approvals, while minority religious institutions receive expedited processing.

Education & Culture

• Schools in mixed areas may neglect Sinhala-medium curriculum and Buddhist cultural education.
• Sinhala Buddhist festivals like Vesak may not receive local support, whereas minority festivals are prioritized.

Judicial & Law Enforcement Impacts

Court Delays & Language Barriers

• Magistrate courts in Northern & Eastern districts frequently conduct proceedings in Tamil, creating barriers for Sinhala Buddhist litigants.
• Fewer Sinhala-speaking lawyers limit access to effective legal representation.
• Ongoing court proceedings related to Buddhist temples and land disputes demonstrate prolonged legal uncertainty and delayed justice.
• Vaddamana / Vadunnagala Pabbatha Viharaya – Archaeological Vandalism + Supreme Court Case – The vandalism of Vadunnagala (Vaddamana Pabbatha) Viharaya — a site associated with the Buddha’s legendary visits — represents not merely property damage, butan attack on living civilizational heritage, warranting the highest legal protection under both national and international cultural heritage law.
• The persistent obstruction of archaeological protection efforts revealssystematic denial of Sinhala Buddhist historical legitimacy in the North and East, aimed at erasing the truth
• https://www.dailymirror.lk/front-page/Vandalising-of-Vadunnagala-Pabbatha-Viharaya-Activists-go-before-SC/238-258535?
• Sampur Stupa – Total Demolition of Ancient Buddhist Site (Trincomalee) – Entire Buddhist stupa flattened, happened days after archaeological discovery, shows deliberate cultural erasure, occurred in Eastern Province minority-dominated area

Magistrate courts in Northern and Eastern districts frequently conduct proceedings primarily or exclusively in Tamil, creating systemic barriers for Sinhala-speaking litigants.

• Sinhala Buddhist citizens often require private translators at personal cost, delaying access to justice and weakening legal defense — a burden not imposed on Tamil-speaking litigants.

This constitutes unequal treatment before the law, violating:

• Article 12(1)– Equality before the law
• Article 22(1)– Language rights in judicial proceedings
• ICCPR Article 14– Right to fair trial

Likely affected population: ~30,000–50,000 litigants annually.

Selective Enforcement

• Crimes or property disputes against Sinhala Buddhists are often less rigorously investigated, undermining trust in law enforcement.
• This incident highlights how law enforcement and political actors may react differently to Sinhala Buddhist initiatives, potentially undermining trust in rule‑of‑law and equal treatment before the law.
• Protests and police deployment outside Buddhist religious sites in Trincomalee demonstrate persistent hostility and tension surrounding Sinhala Buddhist religious presence.
• Sinhala Buddhist monks and devotees have been prevented from holding religious observances, including Vesak commemorations, in Northern districts.
• Organized protests against Buddhist temples in Mullaitivu reflect systematic resistance to Sinhala Buddhist religious presence. When these protests are immediately hosted on pro-LTTE websites it showcases who are sponsoring the protests.

Scenario Example:

• Temple vandalism in a Tamil-majority town remains unresolved for years; perpetrators face minimal consequences.
• Repeated protests targeting ancient Buddhist archaeological sites such as Kurundi Vihara illustrate organized opposition to Sinhala Buddhist historical heritage.

Protests Against Buddhist Temple Construction – Jaffna

Scenario Example:

• Tamil kovils in the North/East are prioritized for restoration funding, while surviving Sinhala Buddhist temples remain in disrepair, affecting cultural continuity, morale, and community cohesion. Central Government allocations often bow down to provincial political pressures.

Sinhala Buddhist communities face organized protests and administrative obstruction when attempting to construct or renovate temples in the Northern Province.

Peace of Mind & Cultural Safety

• Cumulative effects contribute to psychological distress, insecurity, and erosion of cultural identity.
• Sinhala Buddhist monks face obstruction and harassment while performing religious observances in Northern provinces, contributing to fear, insecurity and erosion of religious freedom
• Sinhala Buddhist families report intimidation, harassment, and threats, contributing to fear and forced demographic retreat.

Protests Outside Buddhist Temples – Obstruction of Religious Practice

Repeated protests, obstruction campaigns, and pressure movements against Buddhist shrines in North & East — especially in:

• Mullaitivu
• Trincomalee
• Vavuniya
• Mannar

Beyond physical and administrative discrimination, Sinhala Buddhist communities endure chronic psychological insecurity, stemming from:

• Repeated temple attacks
• Obstruction of worship
• Demographic isolation
• Social hostility
• Block access for worship
• Prevent construction and restoration
• Intimidate monks and devotees
• Mobilize political pressure to halt archaeological work

This sustained fear environment constitutes psychological displacement, forcing families to abandon ancestral areas without formal expulsion — a tactic historically used in ethnic cleansing campaigns worldwide.

This violates:

• ICCPR Article 18 (Freedom of Religion)
• UN Declaration on Religious Intolerance (1981)

Such actions create an atmosphere of religious siege, producing psychological trauma, insecurity, and forced cultural retreat.

Economic & Social Impacts

Employment & Public Services

• Public sector employment in minority-majority provinces favors minorities, limiting career progressionfor Sinhala Buddhists.

Likely affected population: ~50,000–100,000 working-age adults.

Cultural & Religious Events

• Funding for Buddhist festivals, heritage restoration, and pilgrimagesis limited, while minority cultural events receive full support.
• Sinhala Buddhist communities face obstruction and protests when attempting to build or renovate temples in the North and East while illegal religious structures are put up with no intervention of authorities.

Likely affected population: Entire Sinhala Buddhist communities in Northern & Eastern districts (~300,000–400,000 people).

Unfairness

Area	Example of Discrimination / Marginalization	Effect on Sinhala Buddhists
Language	Tamil priority in North/East governance	Access to services blocked; official documents inconvenient
Administration	Provincial councils favor minority appointments	Limited political influence
Education	Sinhala-medium schools underfunded	Cultural and educational neglect
Religious / Cultural Sites	Approval delays / less funding	Buddhist temples and festivals marginalized
Land / Property	Land claims favor minorities	Displacement or denied development
Courts / Police	Case delays, selective enforcement	Legal protections weaker; perception of injustice
Budget Allocation	Uneven funding	Less development in Sinhala Buddhist areas

Legal Basis & Linkage to Article 9

Article 9 of the Constitution:

1. Freedom of religion for all citizens.
2. Protection and respect for Buddhism as the majority religion.

Violations include:

• Restricting Sinhala Buddhist access to land, temples, and religious sites.
• Delaying or denying funding for cultural and religious projects.
• Excluding Sinhala Buddhists from meaningful political participation in regions where they are present.

Other constitutional/legal references:

• Article 18(2)– Official languages.
• 13th Amendment– Provincial Council powers and devolution.
• Official Language Act (1956)– Implementation inconsistencies.
• Article 154P– Provincial council administration and minority protection clauses sometimes applied in ways that disadvantage Sinhala Buddhists.

Likely Number of Sinhala Buddhists Affected

Area	Likely Population Affected	Key Impact
Central government policy	500,000–700,000	Reduced funding for temples & schools, administrative neglect
Provincial councils	100,000–150,000	Political marginalization, delayed project approvals
Land/property disputes	200,000	Resettlement blocked, land claims delayed
Courts & law enforcement	30,000–50,000	Delayed justice, language barriers
Cultural/religious events	300,000–400,000	Cultural marginalization, festival funding inequity
Employment & public services	50,000–100,000	Disadvantage in hiring and promotions
Overall community security	200,000–300,000	Peace of mind, psychological impact

Despite being the majority population, Sinhala Buddhists face systemic marginalization across governance, law, land, education, cultural preservation, and public services. The scale of affected populations, combined with violations of constitutional guarantees (Article 9), represents a pressing human rights concern.

Sinhala Buddhists need

• Religious and cultural protection
• Equitable access to justice and administration
• Demographic balance and political representation
• Community security, peace of mind, and cultural continuity

The systematic marginalization of Sinhala Buddhists in Sri Lanka’s Northern and Eastern Provinces represents one of South Asia’s most overlooked minority-rights crises.

Failure by international human rights institutions to acknowledge these violations — while selectively amplifying one-sided narratives — risks normalizing cultural erasure, demographic engineering, and religious intimidation as legitimate political tools.

The principles of justice, equality, and non-discrimination demand equal protection for Sinhala Buddhists, particularly where they function as vulnerable minorities.

Sri Lanka must undertake a national corrective program to:

1. Restore constitutional primacy of Article 9
2. Reinstate:
   1. Archaeological protections
   2. Military protection of sacred sites
3. Reverse:
   1. Administrative linguistic exclusion
   2. Land discrimination
   3. Discrimination to Sinhala Buddhist children
4. Launch:
   1. Task a team of patriots to document the Nations historical truth
   2. An international academic audit of falsified narratives

Silence in the face of such injustice does not constitute neutrality — it constitutes complicity.

What is occurring in Sri Lanka today is not reconciliation — it is systematic demographic, cultural, and religious displacement of the island’s civilizational majority, executed under the language of minority rights, but violating the very principles of equality, truth, and justice

Shenali D Waduge

Shenali D Waduge

It is crucial to understand the real nature of India’s regional doctrine the modus operandi changes with each government but the objective remains the same. India’s geopolitical goal has been political hegemony over its neighbors, regional dominance, strategic containment of rivals (China/Pakistan), buffer-state control and to expand its sphere of influence. As a result, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka are regularly prone to all types of interferences & interventions by India via geopolitical engineering.

This doctrine is not partnership-based regionalism. It is coercive geopolitics that treats neighboring sovereign states as subordinate strategic players rather than independent nations. This hegemonic mindset has repeatedly destabilized South Asia, eroding trust in India, sovereignty of these nations, and long-term regional security.

India has historically used ethnic separatism” as a geopolitical tool. India helped weaponize terrorism & separatism in Sri Lanka. We know too well the manner India helped train Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, armed & funded them, provided ideological legitimacy and thereafter applied diplomatic pressure. As a result, scores of armed Tamil groups ran amok, LTTE emerged the most ruthless, Sri Lanka suffered 30 years of bloodshed, lost over 100,000 innocent lives and half of Sri Lanka’s independence was spent on ending terror resulting in permanent instability in multiple forms and formats.

Such conduct constitutes direct violation of the UN Charter principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-intervention, setting a dangerous precedent that undermines the very international legal norms India itself depends on for survival.

International Law Principle: Ex injuria jus non oritur

Maxim: Law does not arise from injustice.

Territorial or sovereignty claims cannot arise from illegal acts, including forced migration, colonial resettlement, or external intervention.

British colonial-era Tamil migration to the North/East does not grant sovereignty.

Indian facilitation of LTTE or external support cannot create a legal homeland.

Uti possidetis juris — colonial administrative boundaries remain legally binding at independence.

Burkina Faso v. Mali (ICJ, 1986)

The ICJ ruled that colonial administrative boundaries at independence are legally binding, regardless of ethnic or tribal distribution. Ethnic claims cannot override sovereign borders.

Sri Lanka’s colonial and post-independence borders are internationally recognized.

Tamil demographic concentration in the North/East does not legally create a separate homeland.

Reinforces uti possidetis juris, preventing fragmentation based on ethnicity.

UN Resolutions on Cyprus (N. Cyprus / Turkey, 1974)

UN Security Council Resolutions 541 & 550 declare Northern Cyprus is not a legitimate sovereign state, despite large-scale demographic settlement by Turkish citizens.

International law does not recognize sovereignty created by population transfer or military intervention.

Even if the Sri Lankan Tamil population were large and/or supported by external actors, international law does not recognize territorial claims created or encouraged externally.

Western Sahara / Morocco (ICJ Advisory Opinion, 1975)

ICJ ruled that ethnic or tribal links to neighboring states (e.g., Morocco) do not create a legal right to annex Western Sahara.

Emphasizes self-determination within existing borders, not secession imposed by foreign or demographic claims.

Tamil claims citing ethnic kinship with Indian Tamils” do not grant legal right to secede from Sri Lanka.

Legitimizes Sri Lanka’s unitary sovereignty.

Tibet / China Settlement (UN General Assembly, 1959–1965)

UNGA recognized that large-scale demographic settlement by an external state does not legitimize sovereignty.

Even if Tamil migration or political support from India had occurred, it cannot legally create a separate state.

Indonesia – West Papua

UN HRC and international legal commentators reject sovereignty claims based on transmigration or demographic engineering.

Confirms that imported population or settler presence does not justify secession.

Crimea / Russia (UN GA 68/262, 2014)

UN General Assembly confirmed that demographic changes or external support do not confer territorial legitimacy.

Annexation attempts are invalid under international law.

Even foreign backing for Tamil Eelam does not change Sri Lanka’s legal sovereignty.

Continuing this same tactic is structurally suicidal for India.

The terrain that allowed India to provide the landscape for intervention is not the same and cannot be repeated now. The eyes that ignored India’s interference then will not do the same now. Besides, India is now one of the world’s most internally fragmented states.

That which India boasts of unity in diversity” can easily be manipulated & mobilized against India.

– 22 official languages

– 2000 plus ethnic groups

– 6 major religions

– hundreds of tribes

– strong state-wise nationalism

These factors can easily be packaged into internal insurgencies that will emerge more powerful than any foreign boots.

India currently suffers Islamist separatist issue in Kashmir, Punjab Khalistan revival, Nagaland sovereignty bid, Kuki-Meitei ethnic war in Manipur, ULFA in Assam, Tribal militancy in Meghalaya, insurgency in Mizoram, ethnic militancy in Tripura, Maoist insurgency in Central India, Tamil separatist quest in Tamil Nadu.

In short, India is structurally fragile while being the big bully to its neighbors.

Weaponizing separatism abroad only trains geopolitical actors how to fracture India itself. A lesson India wishes not to learn.

Tamil Nadu separatism predates Sri Lanka’s Tamil separatist quest

Historical Sequence:

• 1930s–40s → Dravida Nadu movement in India
• 1940s–60s → DMK separatist ideology
• 1970s → Tamil militancy in Sri Lanka (with Indian facilitation)

This means:

Sri Lankan Tamil separatism is not indigenous — it is derivative and externally stimulated.

India exported its unresolved Tamil Nadu problem into Sri Lanka.

This externalization strategy temporarily relieved internal pressure but created long-term regional instability and permanent blowback risks.

Demographic Reality: The Tamil Homeland Logic Collapses

Population Group	Approximate Size
Tamil Nadu Tamils	~75 million
Sri Lankan Tamils	~2.3 million

Tamil Nadu Tamils outnumber Sri Lankan Tamils over 30 times.

This creates a fatal geopolitical contradiction:

If Tamil self-determination is valid, then:

• The only viable territorial homelandis Tamil Nadu, not Northern Sri Lanka.

Which means:

Encouraging Tamil separatism in Sri Lanka legitimizes territorial claims against India itself.

This turns Tamil separatism from a foreign policy tool into a direct existential threat to Indian territorial integrity

Colonial Demographic Engineering Realities:

Large sections of Sri Lankan Tamils:

• Were transported by British colonial authorities
• Came from Tamil Nadu as plantation labor
• Do not represent indigenous territorial continuity
• Other than newly created fake narratives, there is no proof of a separately & independently held area under non-Indian Tamil rulers. (Sri Lanka was invaded on several occasions by South Indian rulers – some invaders settled. Settlers have no claim to a separate homeland)

Under international jurisprudence, colonial-era population transfers do not generate sovereign territorial entitlement, invalidating fabricated homeland narratives

Therefore:

• Homeland claims lack historical depth
• Territorial sovereignty arguments weaken
• Indigenous nationhood claims collapse

This further strengthens that Tamil Nadu — not Sri Lanka — is the civilizational Tamil core.

International Law: Why Tamil Eelam has No Legal standing

Under international law, secession is justified only as a result of:

1. Colonial domination
2. Foreign military occupation
3. Systematic racial oppression

Sri Lankan Tamils:

• Vote
• Hold office both in public & private capacity
• Form political parties
• Govern provinces
• Possess language rights
• Exercise civil freedoms
• Own property / land and wealth

Therefore:

There is no legal basis for external self-determination (secession).

Hence, Tamil Eelam has no standing in international law.

Why Tamil Nadu / Tamil Eelam quest endangers India directly

If ethnic homeland logic is normalized, India becomes instantly balkanizable.

Ethnic Group	Secession Claim
Tamils	Tamil Nadu
Sikhs	Khalistan
Nagas	Nagalim
Kukis	Kukiland
Kashmiris	Azad Kashmir
Mizos	Greater Mizoram
Bodos	Bodoland

This transforms India into a permanent fragmentation battlefield.

No other major global power carries this many simultaneous internal fracture lines. This makes India uniquely vulnerable to externally stimulated destabilization

The Kashmir Paradox

India argues:

Kashmir separatism = terrorism + illegality.

But promotes:

Sri Lankan Tamil separatism = human rights + self-determination.

This creates a devastating legal contradiction.

Which international actors exploit:

If Kashmir has no right to separate, neither does Northern Sri Lanka.

or

If Northern Sri Lanka has that right, Kashmir does too.

India cannot logically defend both positions.

This contradiction severely weakens India’s diplomatic credibility and provides adversaries powerful legal and narrative leverage against India in international forums.

Geopolitical Disaster Scenario

If Sri Lanka fragments:

• Chinese naval presence emerges in Tamil Eelam
• Western intelligence installations follow
• NATO maritime surveillance expands
• Indian Ocean security collapses
• Southern Indian coastline becomes exposed

This produces direct military threat to India.

This would effectively complete India’s strategic encirclement arc — from Pakistan in the west, China in the north, and hostile maritime presence in the south.

China is subtly building economic relations across India’s South Indian states with Tamil Nadu economic engagement the highest.

Tamil Nadu is China-linked primary manufacturing hub for

1. Electronics – Tamil Nadu is India’s electronics manufacturing capital (Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron, Salcomp, BYD, Flex, Lite-On, Compal)

2. Apple Supply Chain Shift – Tamil Nadu is China’s external factory base

• Foxconn Sriperumbudur mega campus
• Pegatron Chennai campus
• Tata iPhone manufacturing plants

3. Footwear + EV + Electronics Cluster Domination (Tamil Nadu hosts large Chinese/Taiwan industrial groups)

• Pou Chen
• Hong Fu
• Feng Tay
• BYD suppliers
• EV battery component firms

The Strategic Reality India Ignores the reality that India has traded long-term security for short-term influence

History repeatedly demonstrates that empires collapse not from external invasion, but from internal fragmentation amplified by strategic arrogance.

Short-term leverage over Colombo has:

• Created long-term regional instability
• Invited global interference
• Opened doors to Chinese expansion
• Trained separatist ideologies

Encouraging separatism in Sri Lanka is one of the most strategically self-destructive policies India has pursued in particular persisting with the anti-Sinhala Buddhist agenda in the North & East using a variety of local pawns.

India’s regional hegemony or global power-player goal cannot come at the cost of keeping its neighbors destabilized or even remote controlling these nations.

The moment India launches such a covert-overt mission India’s enemies will be helping India’s neighbors to destabalize India. India needs to rethink its old-fashioned tactics.

It:

• Weakens India’s territorial integrity
• Strengthens internal fracture lines
• Invites foreign destabilization
• Creates long-term security threats

When will India learn – a fragmented neighborhood produces a fragmented India.

Regional bullying produces regional resistance. Regional resistance inevitably evolves into internal destabilization once geopolitical rivals intervene.

India’s pursuit of short-term hegemony abroad now threatens its long-term survival at home — a cautionary lesson in strategic arrogance.

Shenali D Waduge

Nava Thakuria

Guwahati: Amid all chaos, where the ethnic armed groups continue offensives against the ruling Myanmar military junta across the Buddhist majority  country, the Sanatani Hindus celebrated 75th Maha Ramayana Harinama Ram chanting festival in Rakhine/Arakan province in western border of the southeast Asian nation.  The four-day festival, held in Maungdaw locality with the participation of thousands of Hindu families along with local Buddhists in sacred rituals with great enthusiasm, concluded on 3 February 2026.

Organized by the Maungdaw  Hindu affairs committee with the support from the  Arakan People’s Revolutionary Government where the security was ensured by the members belonging  to the Arakan Army (AA). One of the most revered religious events for the Hindus in Myanmar/Burma, the festival was not usually promoted by the military rulers and this time it became possible after the AA fighters captured the Maungdaw locality with a sizable population of Rohingya Muslims. The Bangladesh bordering strategic town Maungdaw  and its surrounding areas  remain  under the control of AA since December 2024.

According to local Arakanese media outlets, over 3,000 Hindus from different localities like Buthidaung, Ponnagyun, Kyauktaw, besides Maungdaw, attended the religious ceremony, where a good number of AA officials were present. They all were served  with vegetarian dishes, prepared with local varieties of pulses and vegetables, where the authorities provided free healthcare to the participants  during the festival. It is believed that the  festival venue at Kyaukpantu mountain in the coastal area has a historical connection to Lord Rama, Lord Lakshman and Devi Sita.

Primary activities of the festival include the recitation of great epic Ramayana and also praying to monkey god Hanuman. According to the traditional belief,  offering Puja to the son of  Wind God, one gets endless blessings to overcome all difficulties in life. Celebration of the Ramayani festival is propagated  to preserve religious traditions and also foster harmony, unity and peace among all communities in the Arakan region of western Myanmar. The eastern neighbour of Bharat also witnesses the celebration of Diwali, Navaratri, Durga Puja, Panguni Uthiram, etc, primarily hosted by the Myanmarese Tamil and Bengali communities.

Abroad of Air

Explore the most influential Buddhist countries of 2025, where spirituality meets cultural and global impact. From the ancient temples of Myanmar to the modern Zen practices of Japan, we dive deep into the history, culture, and contributions of these nations. Learn how Sri Lanka’s sacred relics, Thailand’s vibrant festivals, and China’s monumental Buddhist heritage continue to inspire millions worldwide. Each country on this list exemplifies the teachings of Buddhism in unique and profound ways, shaping not only their societies but also the world. Witness stunning visuals of iconic landmarks like the Shwedagon Pagoda, Wat Arun, and the Leshan Giant Buddha as we uncover their stories. 

Source: Al Hakam. London.

Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.” (Frank Pittman)

Becoming a parent can be one of the most joyous experiences for both men and women. Transitioning into parenthood critically impacts various areas of functioning in both parents. And just like new mothers, new fathers too might have a hard time adjusting to the demands and challenges of the new dynamics.

Taking care of an infant can cause major disruptions in routines. Many new fathers might be unprepared or unsure of their role, which further adds to the pressures of daily challenges.

Moreover, fatherhood brings an array of various responsibilities, expectations and deadlines that require a significant amount of patience, hard work and sacrifice.

A partner’s pregnancy is an overwhelming phase in men’s lives. As they step into a world of the unknown, not having the slightest idea as to what to expect, many new fathers may experience significant amounts of stress, anxiety, helplessness, low self-confidence and loss of motivation, fears, distress around uncertainty, anger and frustration.

Paternal perinatal depression (PPND) is real

As with women, men can experience depression anytime in their lives, which also includes the perinatal period (before or after the baby is born).

Studies have found that the highest risk for depression among expecting fathers occurs in the first trimester.

A growing body of research indicates that the transition into parenthood can put men at a higher risk for developing paternal perinatal anxiety.

Fathers who experience depression and anxiety usually cite stress as a major contributing factor. Sleep deprivation, work-life balance, changes in household routines, physical exhaustion, demanding roles and the inability to take care of themselves exacerbate symptoms of anxiety and depression. Additionally, not knowing how to take care of a child or lacking confidence in one’s abilities to take care of an infant (low parental self-efficacy) can increase first-time fathers’ feelings of helplessness.

Full Text: https://www.alhakam.org/why-paternal-mental-health-matters-talked-about/

Courtesy Daily Mirror

This Bill is intended to protect tenants’ risks undermining Sri Lanka’s property rental market and also harming property owners who live on rents than on fixed deposit investments.

As the country move forward for economic challenges, it’s crucial we don’t inadvertently discourage investments in the house and apartment building industry.

Key concerns with the bill are impact on senior citizens who are vulnerable owners. Many property owners, including seniors, depend on rental income for daily expenses and medications required in old age. By making evictions harder and prioritising tenant rights, this bill could force owners to sell assets, upsetting their financial security and monthly regular income. This will be discouraging investments in houses and property. Overly restrictive regulations will deter property owners from renting, reducing housing supply increase rents. Citizens will find it difficult to locate a house or an apartment on rent as all owners will tend to look for foreign tenants.

This could worsen Sri Lanka’s housing shortage and drive up rental prices, hurting those the Bill aims to help. Unfair shift in balance as this Bill prioritises tenant rights over contractual agreements, undermine property owners’ rights. Potential for abuse will be more. Tenants might exploit the system, by depositing the rent direct to owners’ accounts by force and refusing to vacate premises, leaving owners with lengthy and costly court battles, causing monetary hardship to senior owners.

Economic consequences would be reduced investment in housing which could harm Sri Lanka’s economy, limit job opportunities for all categories in building industry (another headache for Government) and reduce government revenue. Rather than imposing blanket regulations, policymakers should encourage the current system which has been functioning smoothly all these years.

I urge policymakers to maintain status quo rather than pelting stones at a hornets’nest. Government has enough issues at hand to resolve rather than have another confrontation with the public who voted for them.

Sumith de Silva

Courtesy Adaderana

Three Swedish-made rocket launchers, believed to have been carefully buried underground by the LTTE during the war, has been discovered by security forces in the Kudumbimalai area of Batticaloa.

The weapons were recovered during a special joint search operation conducted by Special Task Force (STF) personnel and Army Intelligence officers in the Kudumbimalai area based on intelligence received. 

The three rocket launchers have been handed over to Valachchenai Police for further investigation, while the STF continues to conduct additional inquiries into the incident.

Courtesy Adaderana

For years, Russia relied on migrants from Central Asia to fill gaps in its workforce.

As demographics and the war in Ukraine drive the sharpest labour crisis in decades, recruiters are casting a wider net across some of the world’s most populous countries.

Russia estimates the economy needs 11 million more labourers by the end of the decade.

The issue was high on the agenda during President Vladimir Putin’s December visit to New Delhi, when officials signed an agreement aimed at simplifying procedures for temporary labour migration.

Even before the deal, the number of employment permits Russia issued for Indians jumped to more than 56,000 in 2025 from roughly 5,000 in 2021.

The total number of work permits given to foreigners rose to more than 240,000 in 2025, the highest since at least 2017, statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs show.

While authorisations have jumped for the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, much of the growth in foreign labour comes from further abroad – including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and China.

In 2026, workers from India and other South Asian countries have begun filling municipal jobs like clearing snow in major Russian cities, but foreign labourers are also winding up at construction sites, restaurants and other city services. 

We’re seeing a real tectonic shift in the Russian labour market,” Ms Elena Velyaeva, operations director at the Moscow-based recruitment agency Intrud, said in an interview in New Delhi in December.

The agency was set up just two years ago to bring foreign workers into the country, and Ms Velyaeva is also looking for potential recruits in Sri Lanka and Myanmar while wanting to expand the search further.

While the US under Donald Trump and some European countries are restricting immigration, Russia’s been grappling with a demographic crisis – about a quarter of the population is retirement age – since the 1990s collapse in the birth rate.

With unemployment at about 2 per cent, one of the lowest levels globally, the economy needs new workers from abroad or it risks hitting real limits on its already sluggish growth.

Faced with the shortage, Russian companies are now more interested in attracting workers tied to their jobs by visas and contracts, Ms Velyaeva said.

Migrants from visa-free regions like Central Asia are far more likely to change employers frequently. 

Intrud has partnered with the Russian Association of Welders to establish a training centre for welders in Chennai, southern India, where candidates are trained and assessed before being hired in Russia, Ms Velyaeva said. 

Other agencies have organised crash courses in Russian for future hotel workers and other positions where knowledge of the language is required.

For some jobs, such as in the construction industry, workers usually communicate with managers who speak both their native language and Russian, according to a recruiter with a Dubai office, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they’re not authorised to speak to the media.

Russia is the newest addition to the list of nations employing Indians,” said Mr Amit Saxena, director of the Mumbai-based Ambe International. It has manpower shortage right now. So it’s a natural match.” 

Ambe International only started recruiting Indian workers for Russia about three months ago, and only for the Moscow region.

Now it’s also involved in recruitment for employees in Russia’s Far East – in Vladivostok and on Sakhalin island.

Mr Putin’s war on Ukraine has worsened the already severe labour shortage.

Beyond those recruited into the actual fighting, the war economy has siphoned workers from civilian sectors into military industries, while an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 working-age Russians left the country in opposition to the war, to avoid mobilisation or for other reasons.

Russia also tightened regulations around visa-free migration in the wake of a 2024 attack on concert-goers at Crocus City Hall in a Moscow suburb.

At the beginning of the year, the number of foreign nationals in Russia had fallen to 5.7 million, down about 10 per cent from a year ago, although many of them are children, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported.

Businesses are feeling the pain.

MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC, Russia’s largest mining company, which is known to offer some of the country’s highest wages, was short about 10,000 employees in Siberia a year ago, the equivalent of about 10 per cent of its entire workforce.

The miner still lacks several thousand workers in the area, according to a person familiar with the situation. 

The shortage of skilled personnel remains one of the main challenges for Russian industry as a whole,” the company’s spokesman said by e-mail. 

JSC Shipbuilding Corporation Ak Bars, which builds both civilian and military vessels, is short of 1,500-2,000 people, one reason it’s working at about half capacity, chief executive officer Renat Mistakhov said.

Hiring from Asia is often cheaper for employers as well.

A skilled Indian electrician may earn 25 per cent less than what Russian recruiters offer for similar positions, job announcements on Russian and Gulf platforms indicate.

Russia is also looking to leverage deepening ties with North Korea to help plug the gap.

Arrivals from the country into Russia have been on the rise since 2022, after declining under a 2017 United Nations ban on employing the country’s citizens abroad. 

Many come on student visas – about 9,000 of them in 2024, the latest year for which data is available, according to the Foreign Ministry.

The number of North Korean workers on Russian construction sites alone was expected to total about 50,000 by the end of 2025, the developer group Eskadra estimated, according to RIA Novosti.

The role of Chinese labour is altogether different.

Most Chinese citizens receiving work visas are employed at their own production facilities or companies, said Professor Alexey Maslov, director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

They are mainly active in small and mid-sized businesses such as restaurants, logistics and wholesale trade, he said.

For Russia, there’s little sign the situation will change soon.

Russia’s population will continue to age, and the share of young people and children will keep declining overall,” independent demographer Igor Efremov said.

This is not a temporary crisis for the labour market but a long-term norm that will persist for decades and to which the economy will have to adapt.” 

Source: Bloomberg
–Agencies 

Hiru News

All institutions and officials involved in the importation of substandard coal should be summoned before the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE), according to Samagi Jana Balawegaya MP Sujeewa Senasinghe.

The MP stated that recent coal shipments for the Norochcholai thermal power plant were proven to be below required standards, leading to significant financial losses for the country during power generation.

He further noted that the poor-quality fuel could damage the plant’s machinery and urged a formal investigation to address these concerns.

While the government announced plans to recover funds from the relevant supplier, the MP argued that the total economic loss far exceeds that amount.

He called for a comprehensive report to be presented to Parliament to prevent such occurrences in the future.

උපුටා ගැන්ම ලංකා සී නිව්ස්

කථානායක ජගත් වික්‍රමරත්න මහතාගේ පෞද්ගලික ලේකම්වරයා ලෙස කටයුතු කරන චමීර ගාල්ලගේ යන අයට එරෙහිව විධිමත් පරීක්ෂණයක් පවත්වන ලෙස ඉල්ලමින් සජබ මන්ත්‍රී සුජීව සේනසිංහ මහතා විසින් පාර්ලිමේන්තු මහ ලේකම් කුෂානි රෝහණධීර මහත්මිය වෙත පැමිණිල්ලක් යොමු කර ඇත. 

පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේ පිළිගැනීමේ නිලධාරියෙකුට අසභ්‍ය වචනයෙන් බැන වැදී තර්ජනය කිරීම මෙම පැමිණිල්ලට මූලික හේතුව වී තිබේ.

වාර්තා වන අන්දමට, මෙම අර්බුදය හටගෙන ඇත්තේ පිළිගැනීමේ අංශය වෙත පෞද්ගලික ලේකම්වරයා ලබාදුන් දුරකථන ඇමතුමකට ප්‍රතිචාර දැක්වූ නිලධාරියා ඔහුව හඳුනා ගැනීමට අපොහොසත් වීම හේතුවෙනි. 

මෙයින් කෝපයට පත් චමීර ගාල්ලගේ මහතා, අදාළ නිලධාරියාව සිය කාර්යාලය වෙත කැඳවා ඇති අතර එහිදී ඔහුගේ පෞද්ගලික ලිපිගොනු පරීක්ෂා කරමින් බැන වැදී තර්ජනය කර ඇති බව පැවසේ. විශේෂත්වය වන්නේ මෙම සිදුවීම සිදුවන අවස්ථාවේදී කථානායකවරයා ද එම ස්ථානයේ රැඳී සිටීමයි.

මෙහිදී මන්ත්‍රී සුජීව සේනසිංහ මහතා පෙන්වා දෙන්නේ, පාර්ලිමේන්තු සේවකයින්ගේ පෞද්ගලික ලිපිගොනු පරිශීලනය කිරීමට කථානායකවරයාට හෝ ඔහුගේ ලේකම්වරයාට නීත්‍යානුකූල අවසරයක් නොමැති බවයි. එවැනි කටයුතු සිදු කිරීමේ පරම බලය ඇත්තේ ලේකම් මණ්ඩලයට පමණක් බව ඔහු අවධාරණය කරයි.

මෙම සිද්ධියට අමතරව, චමීර ගාල්ලගේ මහතාට එරෙහිව තවත් බරපතල චෝදනාවක් එල්ල වී තිබේ. දැනට සේවය අත්හිටුවා සිටින නියෝජ්‍ය මහ ලේකම් වමින්ද කුලරත්න මහතා විසින් අල්ලස් කොමිසමට ඉදිරිපත් කළ කරුණු අතර, කථානායක ලේකම්වරයා නිසි පරිදි මුදල් ගෙවීමකින් තොරව පාර්ලිමේන්තුවෙන් ආහාර ලබාගන්නා බවට වන චෝදනාව ද ඇතුළත් වේ.

Udaya Gammanpila

Shenali D Waduge

Sri Lanka formally defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) militarily in May 2009. However, where the military succeeded the ideological battle tasked to the politicians failed. Armed movements that fail militarily often transition into political warfare networks, relocating operations from the battlefield into international diplomacy, diaspora mobilization, narrative construction, legal activism, and foreign political lobbying.

Global LTTE-linked networks continue to operate with the same separatist objective — the creation of an independent Tamil Eelam — by non-military means. Through coordinated diaspora events, ideological commemorations, international lobbying, parliamentary engagement, UN advocacy, and media manipulation, these networks have reconstructed the LTTE’s separatist project into a transnational political warfare apparatus. Beneath this façade lies another ugly truth. This separatist” propaganda hides a lucrative money-making enterprise those steering it wish to continue under pretext of separatism” while residing on foreign shores.

Simultaneously, Sri Lanka is experiencing systematic demilitarization, strategic troop withdrawals, intelligence downgrading, and the weakening of security presence in historically sensitive regions, alongside increasing pressure on Sinhala Buddhist religious, archaeological, and demographic presence in the North and East. This combination is neither accidental nor isolated. It reflects a strategic convergence between external political pressure and internal policy submissive and appeasement retreat.

1. The LTTE’s separatist ideology, symbols, terminology, political objectives, and strategic methods continue uninterrupted under new organizational forms openly even in the countries that continue to ban LTTE.

2. Diaspora activism has evolved into a coordinated international political warfare systemthat influences Western governments, international institutions, and multilateral bodies, particularly the UNHRC.

3. This external pressure is directly shaping Sri Lanka’s domestic security policy, resulting in dangerous demilitarization and institutional weakening and the safety concerns of Sinhala Buddhists and Buddhist archaeological sites.

4. The emerging internal conditions precisely mirror the political, military, and administrative vulnerabilities that enabled the LTTE’s rise in the late 1970s and 1980s.

This is not merely a political issue, ethnic grievance, or human rights debate.

It is fundamentally a national security, constitutional, and sovereignty crisis.

CANADA

Maaveerar Naal – Toronto (LTTE Heroes Day) – 2025

Source: https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/canadian-tamils-commemorate-maaveerar-naal-1

Why This Is an LTTE Event:

1. The name itself is LTTE-originated
   Maaveerar Naal” = Great Heroes Day→ Created by LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran to commemorate dead LTTE combatants, not civilians.

2. Photographs show LTTE combat martyr iconography
   Events feature:

• LTTE Tiger emblem
• Flame pyramids
• Fallen cadres portraits
• Uniform-style ceremonial symbolism

These are exclusive LTTE martyr traditions, not civilian memorial practices.

3. Absence of civilian victim inclusion
   No memorialization of:

• Sinhalese civilians
• Muslim victims expelled by LTTE
• Tamil civilians killed by LTTE
• Moderate Tamil leaders assassinated by LTTE

Only LTTE cadres are honoured.

4. Ideological messaging
   Speeches consistently reference:

• Sacrifice for Tamil Eelam”
• Freedom fighters”
• Liberation struggle”

These are explicit LTTE ideological narratives.

This is not a civilian remembrance — it is structured ideological glorification of a terrorist organization.

UNITED KINGDOM

London – Tamil Eelam Flag Projection on Parliament Buildings – 2023

Source: https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/london-landmarks-lit-tamil-eelam-flag-mark-maaveerar-naal

Why This Is an LTTE Event:

1. Tamil Eelam flag is LTTE’s political flag
   This flag was:

• Created by LTTE
• Used as LTTE’s national symbol
• Never an internationally recognized civil identity symbol

2. Purpose of projection
   Explicitly stated:

To mark Maaveerar Naal”

This automatically classifies it as LTTE cadre commemoration, not civilian remembrance.

3. Symbolism used
   Includes:

• Tiger iconography
• Flame symbolism
• Martyr glorification language

These are exclusive LTTE ideological markers.

This constitutes public glorification of a banned terrorist organization’s political project.

UNITED KINGDOM

Wembley Arena – Mass Maaveerar Naal Event – 2015

Source: https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/thousands-british-tamils-commemorate-maaveerar-naal-london

Why This Is an LTTE Event:

1. Event title
   Maaveerar Naal” → Official LTTE martyr day.

2. Stage symbolism
   Photographs show:

• LTTE flags
• Tiger emblem banners
• Fallen cadres tribute walls

3. Absence of civilian names

• No civilian memorial listing
• No inclusive mourning
• Only LTTE cadres honoured.

4. Chants and slogans
   Tamil Eelam will rise”
   Martyrs never die”

These are LTTE revolutionary slogans.

This is a mass ideological rally, not a civilian grief event.

FRANCE / GERMANY / BELGIUM / SWITZERLAND

Tamil Eelam Women’s Uprising Day (Europe-wide) – 2024

Source: https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/tamil-eelam-womens-uprising-day-marked-across-europe-0

Why This Is an LTTE Event:

1. Historical origin
   Women’s Uprising Day” commemorates:

• LTTE’s female combat wing (Birds of Freedom) – Not civilian women.

2. Visual propaganda
   Includes:

• Female LTTE cadres in uniform
• Tiger emblem
• Military honour rituals

• Language used
  Female fighters”
  Martyr heroines”
  Liberation warriors”

These are armed militant glorification terms.

This is celebration of LTTE female combatants, not civilian women.

UNITED STATES

Tamil Genocide Day – Congressional Lobbying – 2025

Source: https://tamilguardian.com/content/members-us-congress

Why This Is LTTE-Linked Political Warfare:

1. Narrative framing
   Uses LTTE-originated casualty figures & terminology.

2. Terminology weaponization
   Mullivaikkal Genocide” is:

• Coined by LTTE diaspora networks
• Not recognized by any international judicial body

3. Political objective
   Goal:

• International intervention + sanctions + legal action
• This aligns directly with LTTE diaspora political strategy documents.

This is strategic diaspora political warfare, not civilian remembrance.

AUSTRALIA

Pongu Thamil – Melbourne

Source: https://www.tamildiasporanews.com/tamils-rise-in-melbourne-pongu-tamil-2025-for-freedom-and-justice/

Why This Is an LTTE Event:

1. Pongu Thamil was initiated by LTTE
   It began inside LTTE-controlled areas as political mass mobilization for separatism.

2. Slogans used

• We want Tamil Eelam”
• Self-determination”
• Our martyrs guide us”

These are LTTE political slogans.

3. Use of Tiger emblem
   Consistently present.

This is separatist political mobilization, not humanitarian protest.

INDIA

Prabhakaran Birthday & Martyr Memorials – 2015

(Shankar remembered in Madurai)

Source: https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/lt-shankar-remembered-madurai

Why This Is an LTTE Event:

1. Honours named LTTE cadres
   Specific LTTE fighters honoured — not civilians.

2. Visual propaganda
   LTTE portraits
   Uniform imagery
   Tiger emblem

3. Messaging
   Martyr sacrifice for Tamil Eelam”

This is direct glorification of an internationally banned terrorist leader & cadres.

Let us first identify and distinguish a civilian remembrance

What defines a civilian remembrance?

• Victims of violence (all ethnicities)
• Non-political grief
• Inclusive mourning
• No armed symbols
• No political slogans
• No militant glorification

What defines LTTE ideological events?

• LTTE-originated terminology
• Tiger emblems
• Martyr glorification
• Separatist slogans
• Armed struggle justification
• Exclusive focus on LTTE cadres
• Political mobilization narratives

These events do not meet the criteria of civilian memorials.

They instead constitute:

Ideological glorification, political legacy preservation of a designated terrorist organization and its separatist demands.

When an organization is banned, but its ideology, symbols, propaganda methods, funding flows, and political objectives continue under new names, it constitutes continuity of purpose — not a new civilian movement and relevant international legal doctrines include:

• Doctrine of Organizational Continuity
• Material Support & Ideological Support Doctrine
• Political Warfare Doctrine
• Proxy Conflict Doctrine

1. Evidence of Continuity of Purpose

From the global events and organizations documented we can conclude:

1. Same Goal

Tamil Eelam – independent separatist state

Not:

• Federalism
• Power-sharing
• Minority rights
• Cultural autonomy

But explicitly:

Creation of a separate sovereign Tamil state carved from Sri Lanka.

2. Same Symbols

• LTTE Tiger emblem
• Tamil Eelam flag
• LTTE martyr iconography
• Prabhakaran glorification

These are not cultural symbols. They are organizational-political symbols.

3. Same Terminology

• Maaveerar Naal (LTTE-instituted martyrs day)
• Pongu Thamil (LTTE mass mobilization campaign)
• Mullivaikkal Genocide (LTTE-originated propaganda framing)

4. Same Strategy — Shift from Armed Struggle → Political Warfare

Post-2009 operational shift:

Pre-2009	Post-2009
Armed insurgency	Political warfare
Suicide bombings	International lobbying
Territorial control	Narrative control
Military recruitment	Diaspora radicalization
Battlefield victories	Diplomatic pressure
Guerrilla operations	Legal activism

This is a classic insurgent strategic transformation, not a civilian movement.

The LTTE did not end.
It transformed from a military insurgency into a transnational political warfare network.

This constitutes:
Ongoing separatist conspiracy under international law.

EXTERNAL INFLUENCE MECHANISM AGAINST SRI LANKA

This explains how diaspora activism converts into political pressure on Sri Lanka.

1. Operational Chain of Influence

Diaspora Events → Political Lobbying → UNHRC → Western Governments → Sri Lankan Government Pressure

Step 1 — Mass Mobilization

Large-scale commemorations, rallies, protests, and political events across:

• Canada
• UK
• France
• Germany
• Australia
• USA
• EU

These:

• Manufacture perception of grievance
• Mobilize voting blocs
• Create political leverage

Step 2 — Parliamentary Capture

Diaspora groups:

• Engage MPs
• Influence election blocs
• Provide campaign support
• Organize lobbying events

This results in:

• Parliamentary motions
• Resolutions
• Diplomatic statements
• UNHRC voting pressure

Step 3 — UNHRC Narrative Institutionalization

Diaspora lobbying ensures:

• LTTE-originated casualty figures become UN documentation
• One-sided conflict framing
• Sri Lanka continuously isolated

This converts terrorist propaganda → international legal pressure.

Step 4 — Sri Lankan Political Compliance

Under:

• Trade pressure
• Aid conditionality
• IMF leverage
• Diplomatic isolation threats

Sri Lankan governments:

• Reduce military presence
• Demilitarize sensitive zones
• Alter security doctrine
• Restrict military operations

INTERNAL DESTABILIZATION OPERATIONS INSIDE SRI LANKA

Proxy Civil Unrest Operations

Inside Sri Lanka we now observe:

• Organized protests
• Religious site obstruction
• Encroachment challenges
• Mobilized grievance campaigns
• Strategic litigation

These:

• Appear spontaneous
• But followexternal narrative synchronization

Strategic Pattern

Global narrative → local agitation → international amplification → diplomatic pressure

This is a classic destabilization doctrine used in hybrid warfare.

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST SINHALA BUDDHISTS AS A DESTABILIZATION TOOL

This is not communal grievance — this is strategic demographic & cultural weakening.

Observable Pattern

• Obstruction of Buddhist religious sites
• Harassment of monks
• Encroachment disputes selectively weaponized
• Archaeological heritage suppression
• Language and administrative marginalization
• Removal of Sinhala public services

Strategic Objective

Weaken historical civilizational presence → alter territorial narrative → prepare long-term separatist legitimacy.

DEMILITARIZATION & CAMP CLOSURES: HISTORICAL PARALLEL

What Happened in the 1970s–1980s?

Military camps were:

• Reduced
• Withdrawn
• Relocated
• Politically restricted

This led to:

• Smuggling networks
• Arms movement
• Cadre recruitment
• Terror infrastructure
• Formation of LTTE operational bases

Result → 30-year war.

Current Policy (2020s)

We now observe:

• Camp closures
• Troop withdrawals
• Surveillance reduction
• Intelligence downgrading
• Soft security doctrines

This recreates the exact security vacuum that allowed LTTE to rise.

LEGAL LIABILITY OF THE STATE

Constitutional Breach

Under Sri Lanka’s Constitution:

The State is obligated to:

• Protect sovereignty
• Preserve territorial integrity
• Ensure national security
• Protect Buddhism
• Protect citizens’ fundamental rights

Deliberate weakening of national defense under known threat constitutes:

Negligence of sovereign duty.

Doctrine of Preventive National Security

International law allows:

• Preventive military deployment
• Preventive surveillance
• Preventive intelligence operations

Removing armed presence when active ideological networks exist violates security doctrine.

Sri Lanka is facing a continuing separatist campaign executed through political warfare, diplomatic pressure, and internal destabilization, coordinated by transnational networks that evolved from a banned terrorist organization.

NATIONAL SECURITY REALITY:

Weakening the armed forces, dismantling camps, and demilitarizing sensitive zones under such conditions is strategic self-sabotage.

HISTORICAL WARNING:

The LTTE rose because of exactly this kind of political appeasement and security retreat.

KEY QUESTIONS THAT MUST BE LEGALLY RAISED AND ANSWERED BY GOVT

1. Why is Sri Lanka demilitarizing while transnational separatist networks remain active?
2. Who benefits strategically from weakening Sri Lanka’s territorial security?
3. Why are armed forces being withdrawn from zones historically targeted for separatism?
4. Why are Sinhala-Buddhist heritage and demographic presence being systematically eroded?
5. Is Sri Lanka being externally pressured to create conditions for renewed separatist legitimacy?

The evidence establishes a clear and continuous strategic trajectory:

• The LTTE did not disappear in 2009.
  It transformed.

It shifted from armed insurgency to political warfare, from battlefield operations to diplomatic pressure, from territorial occupation to narrative domination, and from suicide bombings to international lobbying.

The goal, however, remains unchanged: the creation of a separate sovereign Tamil state carved from Sri Lanka not necessarily for Tamils.

Living in foreign shores, allowed to operate inspite of bans, with international players more than willing to support the cause” are all not coincidental. Connect the dots and see the bigger picture.

At the same time, Sri Lanka is witnessing:

• Strategic demilitarization of sensitive regions
• Closure and relocation of military camps
• Surveillance and intelligence downgrading
• Weakening of preventive security doctrine
• Escalating pressure on Buddhist religious and archaeological heritage
• Demographic, administrative, and cultural marginalization of Sinhala communities

This convergence recreates the exact conditions that permitted the LTTE’s original rise — a security vacuum, political appeasement, territorial vulnerability, and weakened state authority.

History provides a stark warning:

The LTTE emerged not because Sri Lanka was too strong, but because it was strategically weakened.

To repeat that mistake in the face of an active global political warfare network is not reconciliation — it is strategic negligence and governance stupidity.

Under Sri Lanka’s Constitution, the State bears a non-derogable obligation to protect sovereignty, territorial integrity, national security, and the civilizational foundations of the nation. Deliberate weakening of military readiness, security presence, and territorial defense while transnational separatist networks remain operational constitutes a breach of sovereign duty.

This is not merely a governance failure.
It is a national security risk of the highest order.

Sri Lanka now stands at a critical crossroads:

• Either learn from history and reinforce sovereign resilience, or
• Repeat past errors and once again expose the nation to destabilization, conflict, and tragedy.

The questions raised in this brief demand urgent, transparent, and accountable answers.

The security of the nation, the stability of the state, and the future of peaceful coexistence depend upon it.

Shenali D Waduge

National Development Bank PLC

National Development Bank PLC (NDB) recently formalised a strategic partnership with the Central Depository Systems (Pvt) Limited (CDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), to enhance the efficiency and reliability of dividend disbursement for companies listed on the CSE. The agreement, signed at a ceremony held recently, marks a meaningful step towards strengthening Sri Lanka’s capital market infrastructure while elevating the experience for issuers and investors alike.

Through this collaboration, NDB introduces a streamlined dividend pay-out solution designed to simplify what has traditionally been a complex administrative process. By leveraging the Bank’s robust transaction capabilities and operational expertise, listed companies are now able to manage dividend distributions seamlessly through a dedicated system that prioritises accuracy, speed, and convenience.

The service offers multiple disbursement options, including electronic funds transfers, cheque processing, and customised payment methods, ensuring greater flexibility for corporates while enabling shareholders to receive their dividends through faster and more direct channels. This approach significantly reduces processing delays and minimises the potential for manual errors, reinforcing confidence among investors and contributing to stronger investor relations for listed entities.

NDB’s partnership with CDS reflects the Bank’s continued commitment to supporting the advancement of Sri Lanka’s financial ecosystem through innovative banking solutions. By aligning with CDS’ broader efforts to modernise engagement within the capital market, the Bank plays an active role in delivering cash management capabilities that respond to the evolving needs of market participants.

Commenting on the partnership, Kelum Edirisinghe – Director/Chief Executive Officer of NDB noted that the initiative underscores the Bank’s strategic focus on providing future-ready financial solutions that create tangible value for corporate clients while supporting the long-term development of the country’s investment landscape.

As Sri Lanka’s capital markets continue to progress, collaborations of this nature remain essential in fostering efficiency, transparency, and operational excellence. NDB remains dedicated to empowering businesses and investors through meaningful financial services, reinforcing its role as a trusted partner in driving sustainable economic growth.

NDB Bank is the fourth-largest listed commercial bank in Sri Lanka. NDB was named Sri Lanka’s Best Digital Bank for SMEs at Euromoney Awards for Excellence 2025 and was awarded awards Domestic Retail Bank of the Year – Sri Lanka and Islamic Banking Initiative of the Year – Sri Lanka at the Asian Banking & Finance Retail Banking Awards 2025. NDB is the parent company of the NDB Group, comprising capital market subsidiary companies, together forming a unique banking and capital market services group. The Bank is committed to empowering the nation and its people through meaningful financial and advisory services powered by digital banking solutions.

by Janaka Perera

https://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=43,5678,0,0,1,0

Courtesy:  The Buddhist Channel

Meethirigala, Sri Lanka — Meethirigala Nissarana Vanaya, one of Sri Lanka’s most respected and largest Buddhist Forest Hermitages, celebrated its 40th year of existence, on December 23, 2007 (Unduvap Poya Day).

This rare photo taken in 1965 during the construction phase of the Mitirigala Nissarana Vanaya shows the following persons including the monks and samaneras ( trainee monks).

Left to Right

Standing – Asoka Weeraratna ( Founder of the  Mitirigala Nissarana Vanaya), three samanera monks, Dharmasena Weeraratna ( father of Senaka and Tissa ) extreme right hand

Seated on the Chair – Ven . Matara Sri Gnanarama Maha Thero 

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matara_Sri_Nanarama_Mahathera)

Seated on the ground (cross – legged ) young Tissa Weeraratna (15 years of age)

The occasion was marked with the laying of foundation stones for a new building complex at the base camp of the Hermitage to provide better accommodation facilities for lay Buddhist visitors and meditation practitioners.

The Forest Hermitage is nearly 500 acres in extent and situated in a tropical forest reserve surrounded by scenic paddy fields. It is located close to the village of Meethirigala, off Dompe on the Colombo-Kandy Road .

At a time when Buddhism had lost its most supportive and protective structure, namely meditation, Asoka Weeraratna, who founded the German Dharmaduta Society and the Berlin Buddhist Vihara in Germany in the 1950’s for the benefit of the German people , established the Forest Hermitage (not very far from Colombo) in 1967 to enable Buddhist Yogi Monks to meditate and contemplate in a suitable and peaceful environment.

He brought there the most respectful meditation teacher, the late Venerable Matara Srî Ñânârâma Mahâ Thera, widely recognized as one of Sri Lanka ‘s outstanding meditation masters of recent times, to be the guide and instructor.

The Forest Hermitage now comprises over 40 fully equipped independent dwellings (kutis) for Buddhist monks and yogis to engage in meditation under strict supervision by experienced meditation masters (Bhikkhus).

Apart from Sinhala Buddhist monks and laymen, many foreign monks and laymen alike have had the opportunity to pursue the practice of meditation with full dedication, unhindered by other tasks and duties. Some of them have come from the USA , some from Canada , England , Netherlands , Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Portugal , Italy , Yugoslavia , Czechoslovakia , Greece , India , Singapore , Taiwan , Korea , Japan , Australia , and New Zealand . They include the well known American monk Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, the Australian monk Ven. Pannavaro (founder of the Buddha Net), the Czechoslovakian monk Ven. Dhammadeepa and Ven. Ñânadassana Thera (Greece ) among others.

Having equipped the monastery with all the facilities conducive to the meditative life, and having found an accomplished meditation master to direct meditation training, and then his mission accomplished Asoka Weeraratna renounced the lay life and entered the Buddhist order under the name Venerable Mitirigala Dhammanisanthi Thera in 1972.

Das Miriyagalla, Vice-President of the Meethirigala Nissarana Vanaya Sanrakshana Mandalaya (Forest Hermitage Preservation Board), in his address on the occasion, observed that the founding of this Hermitage by Asoka Weeraratna was the flowering achievement of the post – Buddha Jayanthi Buddhist resurgence in Sri Lanka . He said:

” During the last 50 years – after the Buddha Jayanthi of 1956 – there has been a significant revival of Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka. This flowering of Buddhism is visible in every aramaya, aranya, asapuwa, and village temple. In my view the most striking symbol of the revival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka during the past 50 years is the establishment and maintenance of the Meethirigala Nissarana Vanaya. “

Miriyagalla further said that human beings live only on planet earth. Sri Lanka’s special place on the ancient world map has been highlighted by many ancient historians and travelers of yesteryear. They had come from places like Rome and Greece in Europe, the Middle-East, Persia and other Asian countries. The most significant account is set out in the World map drawn by Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd Century AD. This map has been used for over 1200 years as the most authoritative map of the world. In this map many detailed features of Sri Lanka are shown, he added.

Miriyagalla attributed the decision of India’s Buddhist Emperor Asoka to send his own son, Arahat Mahinda to Sri Lanka for spreading the word of the Buddha (and thereafter his own daughter Sangamitta with the Bo sapling) to the important position that Sri Lanka had occupied in the ancient world – whereas to all other countries the Emperor had sent missionaries drawn from outside his own close family circle.

Venerable Dhammajeewa, the Chief Monk (Kammatthana) of the Hermitage observed:

“There is a growing interest expressed by many people in different parts of the world for knowledge relating to meditation. We have seen that many Buddhist organizations both in the East and the West are making earnest requests for assistance and guidance on meditation. Meethirigala Nissarana Vanaya has responded to this interest positively. Further, Buddhists should make full use of the opportunity available for getting the maximum benefit out of time – the most valuable resource we have. The utilization of time for optimum spiritual benefit is very important. It is a challenge that we must accept.”

Ven. Dhammaransi Thera, Deputy Head monk of the Hermitage, enumerated the contributions of Asoka Weeraratna to Buddhism and compared Emperor Asoka’s role with that of Asoka Weeraratna. He said that as much as Emperor Asoka was honoured by his contemporaries and posterity by the sobriquet ‘Dharma’ (Dharmasoka), Asoka Weeraratna was likewise entitled to be honoured as ‘Weera Asoka’ for his determination and capacity to translate a prophetic vision into reality against all odds. Both the Asokas had left a sweeping legacy of spreading Buddhism touching several continents. The Venerable monk added that it was up to posterity to ensure that this legacy was protected and fostered.

Emeritus Professor Jayadeva Tikasiri, President of the German Dharmaduta Society, recalled his close association with Asoka Weeraratna from his childhood days when both of them were students at Mahinda College, Galle.

Lochana Gunaratne, Architect gave details of the building plans in relation to the new construction. The proposed project is to build a new Dhamma (Sermon) hall for lay people, a dormitory and hygienic kitchen / toilet facilities to encourage and foster meditation retreats at Meethirigala.

P.W. Amarasekera, President of the Meethirigala Nissarana Vanaya Preservation Board welcomed the guests and thanked them for their presence. Daya Samarakoon (Australia ), and the two Joint Secretaries of the Board, Chandrasiri Sumanasekera and Vishantha Peiris also spoke.

Courtesy:  The Buddhist Channel

Sam Kimball Courtesy CounterPunch

January 27, 2026

The following report was funded by the CounterPunch Investigative Fund.

They came in the night after Assad fled,” said Mohammed, a resident of Kodena, a small village perched upon rolling hills of rocky soil, about a mile and a half east of the unofficial border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The Israeli forces rode in jeeps, hummers, armored personnel carriers, Merkava tanks,” into the rural hamlet in southern Quneitra province, said Mohammed, who declined to give his last name out of fear of reprisal for speaking to the media.

The border is the Purple Line,” a ceasefire line imposed after the 1967 war in which Israel conquered a slice of southern Syria, leaving the Jawlaan, the Golan Heights, effectively Israeli territory.

They entered the village without discipline, firing machine guns, trying to scare women and families. One of their bullets went right through my water reservoir tank,” Mohammed explained.

Once they had occupied our village,”—a quick operation, given Kodena is a tiny cluster of concrete one- and two-story houses—they had the mosque’s custodian call on all males from 16 to 60 years old to come to the home of the sheikh,” to record their names and personal data.

Then [the Israelis] took away their personal defense weapons,” largely outdated hunting rifles and pistols gathered over the course of a 13-year-long civil war that had ended only two days earlier.

In August, I visited Syria to report this story, after an absence of well over 14 years. I had last seen the country’s impromptu espresso-served-out-of-a-van businesses, its long-mustached, baggy-pant-wearing Druze men, and its half-built apartment towers in the Spring of 2011 as an Arabic language student and aspiring journalist in Damascus. While I was penning my first published article about the nascent Syrian jazz movement, protesters taking to the streets to demand reforms were encountering more and more violent repression, including in the Damascus suburb of Douma, where I taught English, where demonstrators were being fired upon directly.

After the overthrow of former president Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2024, I knew I had to return to Syria to witness the historic events following his government’s fall. After all, I had left Syria just at the moment that the revolution that few Syria watchers thought could ever happen was beginning to take over cities and villages throughout the country. So I felt I must witness its sudden and unexpected conclusion.

After receiving repeated rejections of my applications for reporting funding, a colleague at a consulting startup asked me to go to Syria to collect data on housing in a city near Damascus. The colleague flew me to Syria via Turkey.

Three, I collected housing data and got to work finding a fixer and driver to take me to the area Israel had begun to occupy.

Since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, the Israeli military has quietly occupied a sprawl of land in southwestern Syria, setting up military bases and sending patrols within striking distance of Damascus. It remains to be seen whether Syria’s government will take meaningful action to regain occupied territory or relinquish more land to make good with Israeli backers like the United States, which has given largely unquestioning support for Israel’s conquests in the region, amid its ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip

Before the 1967 war, Mohammed’s home of Quneitra Governorate was the agrarian and administrative heart of southern Syria, stretching across the volcanic plateau east of today’s UN buffer and anchored by the market town of Quneitra—now an abandoned, decaying municipality within the UN demilitarized zone. The region contained more than 160 villages and farms based on grains, orchards, and livestock. It served as the civilian hinterland immediately adjacent to the Golan Heights—a high plateau forming Quneitra’s western border and later occupied by Israel.

Before 1967, it was also socially diverse, home to Sunni Arab farmers, Druze, Circassians, Turkmen, and thousands of Palestinian refugees who had not long before been expelled at gunpoint from historic Palestine. This demographic mix resembled the wider Golan plateau but contrasted sharply with the post-1967 occupied Golan, where Israel’s depopulation campaign left only a small Druze minority in place.

When Israel seized the Golan Heights during the June 1967 war, most of Quneitra’s western plateau was emptied of its population, and more than 130 villages were destroyed, their lands absorbed into what became the Israeli-occupied Golan. During the Syrian civil war, Quneitra governorate fractured into zones held by rival rebel factions. At the same time, Assad-aligned forces retained only partial footholds, leaving many towns depopulated and governance structures weakened.

In December 2024, Israeli forces crossed beyond the UN-monitored buffer zone—established under the 1974 Disengagement Agreement that separated Israeli and Syrian forces after the October 1973 war—and advanced into parts of Quneitra Governorate, establishing new military positions and claiming the need to stabilize southern Syria.

Human Rights Watch later documented forced displacements, home demolitions, and restrictions on land access for civilians living in these newly occupied areas.

Today, the governorate is divided between Syrian-held villages pressed against the UN line and Israeli-controlled territory further west—a landscape shaped first by the erasures of 1967, then by a decade of civil-war fragmentation, and now by the 2024 Israeli incursion that has pushed beyond a frontier long considered militarily frozen.

The Israelis [in Kodena] gave us assurances that they were not the army, but rather mukhaabaraat (intelligence services). The Israeli who told us this was named Captain Fet’hi, a Jewish Moroccan who spoke Arabic,” Mohammed said quietly, sitting on the terrace of a café in Damascus’ walled old city.

He told us that they would not be staying in Kodena permanently. But we knew not to believe him. After all, they had immediately set up a base on the highest point in the area, Tell Ahmar El Gharbi, which had once housed Assad regime forces.”

The Israelis built up the hilltop’s fortifications, built infrastructure, dug roads, installed surveillance cameras,” making Tell Ahmar El Gharbi a launching point for the invasion of surrounding villages throughout the entire area, Mohammed told me.

In the new base, Mohammed explained, the Israeli forces installed generators and pre-fab buildings to garrison soldiers. They roved through the village for the first three days, distributing baskets of building supplies.

But when villagers got wind of the Israeli forces trying to win hearts and minds, Mohammed and his friends protested.

We rounded up the baskets, covered them in benzine, burned the whole pile, filmed it, and put the video on the internet, saying ‘We refuse any aid given by the occupation forces.’”

Kodena is where Anwar Al-Shibli, sitting next to Mohammed at the Damascus café during that initial meeting, was arrested by the Israeli forces perched in their base in Tell Ahmar El Gharbi.

I was in the middle of the village in front of an elementary school,” he said months later over a choppy WhatsApp call from Beirut, where he had gone as an undocumented migrant to find work.

On that summer day of his arrest, he had his cell phone in his hand and was taking pictures.

Israeli soldiers on patrol in their Humvees surrounded him. Anwar said the soldiers told him they thought he looked like Mahmoud, a young man they had arrested earlier in the village for taking pictures of their base.

They took my phone but found nothing dangerous on it.”

That didn’t stop them, however. After asking why he was in his own village, the soldiers tossed him into their trucks and took him up the escarpment on the newly dug road to their base.

The man translating to Anwar on behalf of the unit was an Israeli whom Anwar said was of Algerian descent, the Captain.” The person is likely the same one Mohammed referred to as a Moroccan-Israeli, Captain Fet’hi, since their North African Arabic dialects are similar and may be hard for an untrained Syrian ear to distinguish. Anwar said they held him for interrogation at the base for around five hours.

They put me in the Captain’s office in the base. There were about 15 to 20 of these soldiers huddled around the captain. They were asking me questions, then leaving the room, then coming back and asking me more questions.”

While the Captain questioned him, Anwar said, soldiers from the unit filmed him while the others joked and laughed.

Meanwhile, trucks came and went into and out of the base, the soldiers greeting each other.

Finally, the Captain ran out of questions, put the phone back in Anwar’s pocket, and let him go.

***

About 12 miles due north of Kodena, in the town of Khan Arnabeh, the streets were filled with pedestrians and motorcycles, and shops dangling goods outside their storefronts. The town, mostly Sunni Arab, hugs a small pocket on the UN demilitarized border.

Israeli forces invaded and very briefly occupied a small part of Khan Arnabeh after Assad’s government crumbled.

Past Khan Arnabeh, in a burned and abandoned government building inside the demilitarized zone in the hamlet of Medinet Es-Salaam, plaster, glass, and chunks of brick littered the stairs up to the second floor. There, I saw Hebrew-language graffiti scrawled in black spray paint, speckling the walls. Iconic red-and-white Coca-Cola bottles were scattered across the floor, their logos written in Hebrew script. By the looks of it, Israeli soldiers had garrisoned temporarily in the building, and perhaps, in boredom, scribbled slogans on the wall to let their replacements know not to get too comfortable, because the occupation would never be far off.

Further up, on the roof, more graffiti adorns the walls. Peeking over a low wall on the edge of the roof, one can see grey Israeli tanks on the edge of the village of Al Hamadiyeh, a mile and a half to the west.

Just two months before I visited the area on assignment with CounterPunch, Israeli units demolished no fewer than 15 civilian homes in Al Hamadiyeh during their ground incursion. The destruction uprooted multiple families and stripped them of shelter. The demolitions are part of a broader pattern of forced displacement accompanying Israel’s expanding presence in the area. Israeli forces have claimed the homes were close to a newly-established—and illegal—military base built inside the demilitarized zone.

And the pressure has only intensified since then. In recent weeks, Israeli tanks and infantry have pushed into other parts of Quneitra’s countryside — storming villages, erecting checkpoints, detaining residents, and bulldozing farmland and homes, according to local reports. This is a pattern that makes the demolitions in Al Hamadiyeh look less like an isolated episode than part of a widening campaign to reorder the borderlands by force.

Back in Khan Arnabeh, in the parking lot of a deserted playground, I met a Mukhtar, a local elected leader, who sported a mustache, dark glasses, and a shemagh headdress secured with a black ring atop his head. He is a member of Quneitra’s Provincial Reconciliation Council. He asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisal.

The day after Assad fell, the Israelis came to me, and they said, ‘We came because of Hezbollah, because of Iran,’” the mukhtar said, referring to the powerful Lebanese militia group closely allied with Tehran, which supported and fought for the Assad regime against rebel groups inside Syria.

I said ‘Fine. We’re tired of wars. And we have problems with Hezbollah. They’ve killed our young men.’”

But if you’re coming to occupy our country,” the mukhtar said he told the Israelis, the wisps of his thin white shemagh flapping in the wind, Our weapons are gone. But we still have the will [to fight]. And we have stones.”

The mukhtar talked about the infrastructure the Israeli forces are building to sustain what he believes will be a long-term, perhaps permanent, occupation.

He pointed to a mountain peak clearly visible in the summer blue sky, even though it lay some 16 miles north. The highest peak in the region, overlooking Damascus, Mount Hermon sits on the Lebanon-Syrian border, on the edge of the demilitarized zone. He said the Israelis are building roads up and down the mountain.

When asked if the Israelis were building roads between the occupied Golan Heights and Quneitra, the mukhtar stopped for a moment, counting on his fingers.

Five roads,” he said.

They haven’t built power lines yet, but they do call me, demanding that I call the Syrian electricity company to fix the underground power lines in the occupied villages. Same thing for the water lines.”

What smooths out the work in the mukhtar’s role as intermediary with an occupying power is that he speaks Hebrew, which he says he learned as a history student at the University of Damascus.

I am a son of the naksa (The setback” or defeat” in Arabic), and I have ties to the Golan,” the mukhtar said, referring to the defeat of several Arab armies, including Syria’s, in the 1967 Six-Day War.And I believed I would become a politician one day,” he said, before trailing off into thoughts on the formerly ruling Ba’ath Party. He seemed to indicate that Hebrew might be practical for a political leader in southwestern Syria’s border region with Israel—a forecast that turned out to be more accurate than he may have expected.

Only blocks away, in a sandwich shop, a shop owner spoke about the initial Israeli invasion of Khan Arnabeh after the Assad government’s collapse.

They attacked all the military buildings in the town. They said they were looking for weapons, and jets bombed the buildings. They were all destroyed with airstrikes.”

Soldiers and tanks moved into the edges of town, leaving behind massive destruction. They tore up the trees, broke up the roads.”

As for the villages like al-Hamadiyeh and others under direct Israeli occupation, the shop owner says they are lost to Israeli forces. Any place Israel moves into, they don’t leave. They consider it theirs.”

And the state, he believes, will not be fighting for their return.

Will the [Syrian] state fight them? I don’t think so. Will they take the land back in these circumstances? I don’t think so. It’s not the right time.”

The Druze village of Hadar, abutting the demilitarized zone, and the occupied Golan Heights beyond. Photo taken from the rooftop of a Druze prayer house by Sam Kimball.

Despite the minuscule distances along the border line, only a few miles can change everything. Less than eight miles north, in the village of Hadar, the land is more jagged and hilly, and the air is cooler at over 1000 feet higher. The village, according to locals, is nearly 100 percent Druze. This religious-ethnic group populates a section of Quneitra and, before the Israeli conquest and annexation, the Golan Heights across the buffer zone.

The Druze of southern Syria trace their origins to an offshoot of Islam that gradually developed into a small, closed religious community known for its strict ethical code and tightly guarded beliefs. For centuries, they lived in close-knit mountain villages where strong internal bonds and a clear distinction between religious elders and ordinary members helped the community endure shifting rulers and political upheaval. Today, in places like Hadar, that tradition of communal caution and solidarity continues to shape how Druze leaders navigate the uncertainty created by Israeli military encroachment.

In the vast living room of a concrete house perched on the edge of a rock outcropping, looking out over the demilitarized zone below, Hadar’s religious leader, or sheikh, sits with his legs folded beneath him on a cushioned seat. His black pants are wide and baggy, his mustache clean and jutting to either side, and he wears a white-woven cap with a flat red top.

The sheikh, who refused to be named or even to have his voice recorded, out of fear that he may face reprisals from the Israelis or the Syrian government, made it clear that his community had a much less adversarial relationship with the Israeli occupation than villages further south.

He noted that while the newly-installed government that succeeded Assad in Damascus has overseen sectarian violence against Druze communities in Syria since it came to power, the Israelis have offered to protect villages like his, given the fear many Druze have of their new government.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Islamist movement that grew out of jihadist militias in northwest Syria and now leads Syria’s new government after spearheading the December 2024 overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, has concentrated power in Sunni Arab hands while largely excluding minorities from governance. Druze communities have borne some of the brunt of the new order, with Syrian troops and allied fighters accused of execution-style killings of Druze men and women during last summer’s bloodshed in Sweida province. Alawite areas along the coast have seen house-to-house raids and mass killings that a UN-backed inquiry and Human Rights Watch describe as identity-based attacks on Alawis. At the same time, Christians have faced harassment and attacks on their symbols, including fighters burning a Christmas tree in the majority-Christian town of Suqaylabiyah shortly after Assad’s fall, and the bombing of a Christian church.

With an Israeli health clinic set up in the demilitarized zone, the benefits of an amicable relationship for Hadar’s residents—who lack a health center of their own—are tangible.

According to the sheikh, the Israelis are concerned about their image among the Druze community, and perhaps the wider Syrian public. If negative local news about the Israelis in Quneitra is published, even if only on Facebook, the Israelis notice, the sheikh said.

They visit me in this room here, and say, ‘Why is there bad news about us online? Why are you letting that happen?’”

A short drive through narrow lanes lined with low stone walls and small gardens, down the jagged hills from the sheikh’s home, Nabih Hassoun stands in the sunshine on the road that leads through the demilitarized zone up to the border with the Golan Heights. He is the village mukhtar and also acts as an intermediary with Israeli forces.

Around him, on the mountaintops rising from the scrubby fields, the domes of former Syrian military observatories can be seen poking into the sky. They now house Israeli military installations, after the observatories were taken over following Assad’s fall.

Nabih does not think the Israelis plan to stay long-term in Hadar, or that they plan to expand further into Quneitra. They are not even building infrastructure to do so, he said, contradicting the mukhtar in Khan Arnababeh.

Despite his status as mukhtar in Hadar, Nabih says he has no contact with the Israeli forces in the area, but only the Quneitra security administration down the road in Khan Arnabeh.

Yet at the moment he said this, several beige Israeli Humvees filled with soldiers, tailed by two black jeeps, passed within feet of him on the road. They did not stop or say anything to him or to me. This, despite the fact that they have arrested several foreign journalists who got too close, including those from powerful international outfits like the BBC.

Saying that Quneitra is part of Syria, to which he owes his allegiance, he said, If the state is democratic and gives rights to its people”—something which the HTS government has not done much for its Druze population—then we are with that state,” making it unclear whether he meant Syria or Israel.

As for the future, Nabih does not think the Israelis plan to stay in Hadar long-term or to expand further into Quneitra. They are not even building infrastructure to do so, he said, contradicting the mukhtar in Khan Arnababeh.

There’s no proof they plan to stay. They’re not building infrastructure, or roads, or economic projects. Nothing that shows they are staying.”

But in the end, whether Israeli forces stay or not is not up to the people of Hadar, Nabih said. As citizens, we are just looking for something to eat, for work. We can’t live full lives because there are no freedoms, no security… We aren’t able to expel Israel.”

If Israel decides to expand further into Syria, would Syrians resist?

We have been disarmed. We can’t do anything,” Nabih said.

***

Less than four miles to the northeast, higher still in the mountains, is the town of Beit Jinn, in the foothills of Mount Hermon, only seven miles to the north. The small, mostly Sunni Arab settlement sits just outside Quneitra governorate, in the Rif Dimashq, or Damascus Countryside governorate.

Safaa, a young civil society activist in Beit Jinn who declined to give her full name, described the worsening Israeli incursions into the village and neighboring settlements. With screenshots of Google Maps she sent to me through WhatsApp, Safaa pinpointed an Israeli military fortification just outside Hadar, inside the demilitarized zone, that she said the Israelis built upon a spot called Red Hill.”

Red Hill is a former military outpost. When the Assad regime fell, Syrian soldiers left it, and Hadar’s people stole all its military weapons. Then Israel occupied this position,” she wrote to me in a lengthy thread of text messages.

The base is a staging ground for forays into the Syrian interior, Safaa said, and it has a lot of Israeli soldiers and tanks with all the tools that they need.”

The Israeli army began by entering the area of Al Koroum farms to the south of Beit Jinn, which separates Beit Jinn from Hadar.

Their goal was to enter into two military sites, which are Sahlat al-Wata and Jurat al-Luz, military posts that used to contain brigades from the former Syrian Army.”

But in an attempt to ease the potential for infighting following Assad’s downfall, the people of Beit Jinn entered the sites, took the weapons, and handed them over to the new Syrian government.

One of those military sites, Sahlat al-Wata, contained two tanks. The men of the village set up a checkpoint to protect the military sites and ensure the village’s safety.

Then one night,” Safaa said, The Israeli army arrived at the checkpoint and took the men’s weapons and telephones and told them to go back to the village.”

After the incident, the checkpoint personnel contacted the new General Security Department in the government, which instructed them that in the event of any further incursions, they should not retaliate, but instead allow the Israeli soldiers to do whatever they wanted in order to ensure their own safety.

So the checkpoint was dismantled, and the military sites were left unprotected. And on one of the following nights, Israeli Army forces entered the site of Jurat al-Luz, setting up explosives throughout the rooms, and excavated the entire place. They later entered Sahlat al-Wata and set up explosives on the tanks and the rooms in which Syrian soldiers used to live.

And then they blew up everything.”

What followed, Safaa said, was a steady escalation through December 2025. Israeli patrols became almost daily,” moving through the Al-Koroum area without entering Beit Jinn itself, stopping shepherds and farmers, checking identification, and questioning both men and women. The patrols then began pushing farther into the mountains, repeatedly ascending a ridge locally known as Bat al-Warda.

The first time, they stayed for two hours. Then they withdrew. The second time, they stayed for one night and withdrew.”

The third incursion marked a turning point. After villagers asked why Israeli forces were entering the mountain and preventing farmers from reaching their land, the response was blunt. They responded by saying that they had orders to carry out a mission,” Safaa said.

On the night of December 30, Israeli forces returned in strength, descending into homes in the Al-Koroum area with armored vehicles, dogs, and night-vision equipment. During the raid, soldiers came to arrest Mohammed Badee’ Hamadeh. His cousin, Mohammed Ahmed Hamadeh, a father of two suffering from a dissociative disorder, was sleeping outside the house under a fig tree, Safaa said. When he awoke, he panicked and began screaming, the Israeli force opened fire on him,” she said, leaving him bleeding in the road as soldiers stormed the house, beat and detained relatives, and threatened to kill an uncle if the wanted man did not surrender. Mohammed Badee’ Hamadeh later died on the way to the hospital from severe blood loss.

By morning, Safaa said, seven men from Beit Jinn had been detained, and they remained in Israeli custody. Afterward, she said, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson, Colonel Avichay Adraee, publicly declared the raid successful in a public statement.

Two days later, the violence escalated again. After another arrest attempt triggered a clash, Israeli forces withdrew their wounded and unleashed hours of overwhelming firepower.

Then the shelling began by all possible means—from warplanes, to artillery shelling from the Jabal al-Sheikh (Mount Hermon) observatory, to direct tank shelling on every location.” Drones fired missiles at anything that moved,” while helicopters strafed the town until dawn.

When the bombardment stopped, Safaa said, residents surveyed what she described simply as the massacre.” Thirteen people were dead, including entire families and a seven-year-old girl shot while hiding in her home. Homes lay destroyed, survivors fled to neighboring villages, and families searched desperately for news of detainees. Weeks later, fear still defined daily life in Beit Jinn. We do not carry out any attacks against the Israelis,” Safaa said. And we live in fear of a repetition of what happened.”

Nearly 40 miles to the south as the crow flies, past Khan Arnabeh and Kodena, just before the border with Jordan, lies the village of Kowaya. A mostly Bedouin village with a population of about 6,000, it sits on the verdant mountain slopes rising from the banks of the Yarmouk River, which divides Syria and Jordan.

Only two and a half miles east of the demilitarized border zone, Kowaya, in Dara’a province, has been the site of repeated incursions by the Israeli forces since Assad’s fall.

Hamada, a Kowaya resident, said of the Israelis, The Israelis did get close to making it into our village once, on March 25, 2025. We confronted them with small arms fire. We had a popular movement led by the sons of Kowaya, who halted the Israeli advance. Six of them were killed. And behind each of them is a family.”

The invading Israeli forces used missile-armed drones and helicopters, Hamada said.

Since [March], Israeli forces were never allowed to enter. Just yesterday,” he said in mid-November, they infiltrated the village outskirts, and they fired their heavy machine guns. They do this every two or three days.”

Israel attacks us almost daily. Last night they struck us with three shells. One fell only a few hundred meters from my house,” he said in a message in early December 2025.

Hamada said that the Israeli forces often try to enter the village with armored trucks, but when they reach the edge of the village, they run into conflict with the villagers.

Our village will not accept this invasion at all. [The Israelis] entered other villages nearby, but never entered ours.”

While Israeli forces may not yet have penetrated Kowaya, Hamada said, they have established semi-permanent footholds nearby.

They took over a military barracks called Theknet Al-Jazira, close to us. They have tanks there, artillery, and heavy machine guns,” he said.

Just three or four days after Assad fell, Israel took over the strategic region of Al-Jazira. It was chaos after the fall, before the new [HTS] government gained control of the whole country. A few days after that they tried to exploit this chaos by expanding into the nearby villages, like Ma’ariya,” a little over a mile and a half to the west, near the buffer zone. We know what they want—to expand their lands,” at the expense of Syria.

Amani, a young journalist in Dara’a province who asked that her name be changed for her safety, said that Syrians violently resisted Israeli incursions in a forest in Dara’a—a full seven miles inside Syrian territory.

We had martyrs” from the confrontation, Amani said.

She noted that Syrian farmers whose lands lie along the fertile banks of the Yarmouk River, near Kowaya, have been prevented from entering their own farmlands.

[The Israelis] have been shooting at farmers and have even arrested people from there.”

In other places they set up new military posts, like in Ma’ariya,” a mile and a half from Kowaya, where Israeli forces built a checkpoint between the village and the neighboring community of Abedin, on the edge of the demilitarized zone.

Despite the incursions, Amani seems confident that Israel won’t be able to remain long-term in Syria.

Israel and Syria signed a disengagement of forces agreement in 1974, which led to the creation of the demilitarized buffer zone. And Amani believes Israel will eventually be forced to respect the agreement.

In fact, the government is trying to force Israel to stick to the agreement, but in a political way,” she said. Syria today doesn’t have the ability or the soldiers to start a war. So [Syrian president Ahmed] al-Sharaa is communicating with friendly countries to pressure Israel to stick to the agreement.”

Aymenn Al-Tamimi, a Syrian affairs analyst and translator based in Syria, likewise does not believe that Israel will stay long, or that it is planning to make southwestern Syria part of a Greater Israel.” This, despite public statements by Israeli officials like Defense Minister Israel Katz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israeli forces would remain in southern Syria indefinitely.

Israel had no intention to launch an incursion into Syria-controlled territory. That really only happened after the collapse of the Assad regime—which, to be fair, I think took most observers by surprise… The Israelis preferred the conflict [in Syria] be kept frozen, because Assad is ‘the devil you know,’” and not the devil you don’t.

He said Israel’s invasion plan was formulated ad hoc,” with no long-standing plan to invade if and when the Assad government fell. Like most international observers, he believes that Israeli leaders thought the war in Syria had permanently stalled after 2020, with the country’s future to be decided through agreements between international powers.

It’s almost like an overreaction to security concerns,” Al-Tamimi said. Though he noted that there are elements inside Syria that are actively inviting Israeli intervention, among them sections of the Syrian Druze population.

In July and August 2025, Syria’s Druze heartland in Sweida province was hit by a wave of sectarian violence involving clashes with Sunni Bedouin fighters and subsequent abuses by Syrian government forces and allied militias, leaving hundreds of Druze civilians dead and thousands displaced, according to UN investigators. The fighting drew external action, including Israeli air strikes on Syrian forces moving into Sweida, in a conflict that underscored the deep volatility of the country.

What happened in July has changed the sentiment of many Druze, some of whom may think they can no longer be part of Syria. In southern Syria, the [Israelis] do talk about protecting and advancing the interests of the Druze community,” Al-Tamimi said, noting the existence of a lobby of Druze in Israel that has pushed for Israel to protect their co-religionists in Syria.

Then there’s the carrot side, like setting up medical points outside villages”—like the one in Hadar—or distributing aid to people. It has had an effect. It definitely has shifted sympathies towards Israel in a way that didn’t exist before [Assad fell in] December 2024.”

Israel’s actions in the newly-occupied territory in Syria, he noted, are mostly focused on finding people who have had links to groups that are hostile to Israel. Their forces have been searching for anyone with connections to Iran and Hezbollah, or ISIS.

I actually know one guy who was taken by the Israelis—I think he’s still in Israeli custody now,” Al-Tamimi said. The man had been a member of an ISIS affiliate called Jaish Khalid. He fled to northern Syria, and eventually served in the general security apparatus of the new government.

[The Israelis] raided his home in Jemla,” a village in Dara’a province abutting the buffer zone, and took him and two others. I suspect what happened there is they got a tip-off from a local that this guy had been in ISIS.”

But not all the Israeli leads or information on the Syrians is correct, of course. Some tip-offs aren’t accurate, because villagers may be trying to take revenge on each other by accusing each other of a crime” to the Israelis—essentially taking a personal dispute to an occupying power.

In Kodena, Mohammed’s village in southern Quneitra, someone told Al-Tamimi that the Israelis have become like the new [Assad] regime security apparatus in that people go and inform on each other to the Israelis,” he said, referring to a similar pattern of score settling which relied on the brutal violence of Assad’s secret police, spies, and militias.

As for Washington’s role in facilitating or putting the brakes on Israel’s expansion and operations in Syria, Al-Tamimi seems to believe that the US, which is arming Israel’s forces, is simply allowing its ally free rein in the new Syria.

I think Israel was going to establish these occupation and incursion areas, whether or not it was Biden or Trump [in the presidency]. Remember, this occupation started during Biden’s tenure. The fact that the US does not impose meaningful consequences on Israel for what it does in Syria allows Israel to continue with its actions.”

Even the criticisms that are made by the administration are very mild, and there is no meaningful pressure to stop what it’s doing in Syria. I do not see any serious pressure on Israel in the near future to withdraw completely.”

I reached out to the State Department about the American role in Israel’s occupation of Syria. A spokesperson told me in an email that Ambassador [to the Republic of Türkiye, Tom] Barrack continues to have regional discussions in his role as Special Envoy for Syria. President Trump has outlined his clear vision of a prosperous Middle East and a stable Syria at peace with itself and its neighbors.”

In my email to the Department, I noted that several Israeli leaders have publicly stated an intention to remain indefinitely in Syria. I asked if the US supports an indefinite Israeli military presence on Syrian territory, or if not, what actions it would take to bring such an occupation to an end.

We cannot speak to Israel’s or Syria’s plans– we refer you to these governments,” the spokesman wrote.

Mohammed Fahad, a journalist with the Public Affairs Office in Quneitra’s Directorate of Information, said that while the Syrian government may want to end Israel’s occupation of Syrian territory, the Israeli military presence is simply too strong.

There are nine [Israeli] military bases [in Syria]. They have armored vehicles and tanks. Each base has maybe one hundred soldiers, maybe more. They infiltrate with Hummers and civilian cars,” he told me in a string of voice messages.

He went on, This government is planning to push out these forces from Syria. It’s joining in negotiations with the United States, Qatar, Turkey, Russia to sign a security agreement to expel the Israeli forces. But through battle or warfare? No.”

The Syrian government is asking the UN Security Council, and just about anyone who will listen, to help it remove the Israeli forces, Fahad said.

The state can’t function unless Israel withdraws. There’s still weakness in the Syrian state’s security forces. They can’t work, especially in the demilitarized zone, because of the Israeli incursions.”

Little of this diplomacy at high levels is meaningful to Mohammed, living under the gaze of an Israeli military base in Kodena. Like the occupied Golan Heights within sight on the other side of the demilitarized zone, Mohammed believes his village may also be absorbed by Israel.

We will become a part of Israel. If not, Israel will impose a guardianship on us, and we will be under Israeli security control. They will run things militarily and in security, while the families and civilians will remain in the villages.”

With Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza continuing almost unopposed—albeit now at the slower pace of starvation, exposure, or a sniper’s bullet—and its main sponsor, the United States government, doing nothing to stop its actions in West Asia, it may seem that its expansion in Syria cannot be stopped. While local acts of resistance from Syrians, like the villagers in Hamada’s community of Kowaya, are inspiring, without a unified, organized resistance, Israel will continue to implement the vision of a Greater Israel” far beyond its current borders—an expansionist project even the UN condemns. And with the Syrian interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, seemingly recruited into the US anti-terrorism” alliance, after his warm embrace by Trump and his advisors at the White House in November, it is unlikely that the new Syrian government will be challenging Israel’s occupation head-on.

So far, the occupation hasn’t made a single positive move,” Mohammed said. It is only escalating.” Israeli trucks and tank patrols, which once entered Kodena only once every two weeks, now roam through the village daily. They are reinforcing fortifications on Tell Ahmar El Gharbi, he said, and put up a brightly-lit Israeli flag on another high point nearby.

Any agreements they may sign will only be ceasefires. But it’s just a matter of time—the only solution is war between us and Israel. Hopefully, we come out of that war with as few losses as possible. God willing, we get our land back.”

Videos produced and edited by Ted Griswold.

This piece was funded by the CounterPunch Investigative Fund. Please consider supporting long-form journalism.

Sam Kimball is an independent journalist who has covered culture, war and politics throughout the Middle East and North Africa. He currently focuses on Iraq, Tunisia and Libya.

Unusual workday story.  W. Pathirana. Former Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy, Colombo Medical Faculty.

Another bright day had dawned and as usual I dressed up myself for the day’s official duties. It was time for me to leave for the 10 kilometers drive that takes 45 minutes across the City of Colombo through the grid lock traffic to the work place. The fence on the side of the garage had two letter boxes painted with bright post office red. One of the boxes was dedicated to generations of squirrel families who over the years chose to bring up their new born baby squirrels in this box. One box received letters while the other received food and succor for the squirrel babies from the mother squirrel. On this day I was unaware that the letter box had a baby squirrel.

As I walking up to the car unexpectedly a baby squirrel emerged from the letter box with unusually bright shades of brown color. It was looking around in excitement at the new world around and was hesitating to move afar from the letter box. It reminded our own child’s excitement in his tender years to see all that was around him. I kept back so that the baby squirrel can move about undisturbed and find its way in to the new surroundings. It was a great pleasure to watch it as this was a new experience to me and to the baby squirrel too.

It came down the fence to the ground and all of a sudden climbed on to the wheel and vanished in to the undercarriage of the car. I could not drive away fearing that the baby squirrel may be harmed. If I started the engine generating noise, vibration, heat and motion of belts and cooling fans it could have been like a thunder bolt for the tender animal. Time is running out for me. I could not mess around and spoil my clothes either. I took a broom pushed it under the carriage and moved it around making noise to frighten the squirrel so as to chase it away from impending danger. This I repeated from different sides of the car. I did not see the squirrel leaving but in a bout of self deceit thought to myself that it must have moved away fearing the movements and the noise made by the broom.

Almost ten minutes lost and travel time squeezed, I started my journey anxiously to the work place lest I may be late. All the time I was feeling a little guilt that the baby squirrel may be still under the carriage.  Half way through the journey at a traffic light hold up I heard the baby squirrel’s cry ‘Ching, Ching, Ching’. The animal is still under the carriage and I was feeling too bad about this. The helpless baby squirrel just out in to the world may have had a brutal experience precariously hanging under the fast moving under carriage so very close to the tarmac with wind blended with smoke and dust blasting against it relentlessly. In the middle of the traffic where everyone was busy reaching their work places I had to keep driving as cautiously as I can. This in any way is of no avail for a tender animal against a huge moving hot vibrating noisy metal giant.

The vehicle was driven to a side lane where I knew there were few garages for help. The staff was still changing over to their uniforms and not yet geared up for work. I explained to them that there is a baby squirrel under the carriage and requested to hoist the car to remove it. They said they did not think that a baby squirrel could travel such a distance undercarriage and there is no purpose in hoisting the car. All persuasions failing, I left the garage and went to the closest office building with a large garden where some of my friends worked. I told them about the problem. Few of them walked up to the car, bent half way not low enough to see the undercarriage and pretended that there cannot be an animal in the undercarriage. With the hope that the baby squirrel may quietly find its way in to the garden around, the car was parked there for the rest of the day and I took a taxi to my work place.

At the end of the day in the evening, I came to collect my car this time assuring myself that the animal must have left the car in to the garden since it could hear the noise of other squirrels in the garden. It had a good eight hours to leave the car and go out in to the garden. I said good bye to my friends and left for home feeling relieved that the baby squirrel is now safe.

Returning home parking the car in the garage, I refreshed myself and sat relaxed in a chair close to the window. To my surprise I saw a big squirrel darting around in the compound near the car that was just parked. After a little while it was joined by a second squirrel. They appeared to be desperately investigating something and once in a while looked towards me as if I could help them. I thought these two must be the parents of the baby squirrel lost from their custody. There was something unusual as they dared come very close to me. I slowly pulled a stool, placed it in the compound and sat as close as possible to the two squirrels. I wondered if the adult squirrels were sensing my good intentions and appreciating me for having taken trouble to save their young baby squirrel by releasing it to the garden.

Their movements took a different twist when both of the squirrels took turns and stood on their rear feet reminding of kangaroos reaching as far as possible towards the undercarriage. Moments later the tip of the tail of a third squirrel appeared protruding under the buffer of the car. One of the two adult squirrels climbed in to the under carriage and dragged down the third squirrel. I thought to myself that they must be a pack of wrestling squirrels which is a familiar sight in our gardens. Just then I realized that it was the baby squirrel that was hiding in the undercarriage, it had not left the car and travelled all the way back home in my return journey. The parents must have desperately searched for the baby squirrel all day. One of them held the baby squirrel by the neck, climbed on to the fence, moved up the telephone post close by and then on to the other side of the road along the overhead wire and disappeared under the roof of the house across the road. A herculean task instinctively accomplished with much ease for the size of the animal.

It was with sadness that one thought about the circumstances of the tender baby squirrel that forced it to travel undercarriage of a vehicle against the fast shifting brutish tarmac soon after it emerged in to the world. Equally heartbreaking is the fact that the parent squirrels were separated from the newly emerged baby squirrel for ten long hours not knowing the fate of the young one. One is overwhelmed at the determination of the animal to have resisted hot blasts of exhaust air, dust, the jerks, growling noises of the traffic around, loneliness and motion sickness during the episode that lasted over ten hours. It was a great relief to realize that the baby squirrel had survived to happily join the comfort of the company of the family in the end.

W. Pathirana.

  -END- 

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