Reported by Keerthi Warankulasuriya (The main news item published in Sunday Divaina of 19th January –translated by Ranjith Soysa) If the government forces are removed from the North war crimes charges will be withdrawn The demand rejected by the Sri Lankan government .Sri Lankan government has totally rejected the American demand to consider withdrawal of […]

By A. Abdul Aziz, Press Secretary, Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at – Sri Lanka.  (Given below is an excerpt of the Friday Sermons of Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, Supreme Head of the world-wide Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Islam, delivered on 17th January 2014, at ‘Baithul Futhuh’, London, U.K. His Holiness is continuing the topic self-reformation by practicing […]

Garvin Karunaratne, Former Government Agent, Matara District On my visit to Trincomalee in December 2013 I was privy to a monk settling a family dispute. My mission was to hand over a parcel of dry rations to deserving temples and in that process I marched into a temple at Mollipotana near Mavil Aru, at the […]

Mahinda Gunasekera -By E-mail January 19, 2014 The Editor Toronto Star 1 Yonge Street Toronto, Ontario  Dear Editor, Re:  MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan’s questionable tale of harassment in Sri Lanka I refer to the news report filed by Alex Boutilier published in your edition of January 16, 2014 which describes MP Rathika Sitsabaiesan’s version of her […]

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . Canada URGENT Mr. Scott Reid, Conservative MP for Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, Ontario The Chair House of Commons 41st PARLIAMANT , 2nd  SESSION Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.   Dear, Mr. Scott Reid: Re:  Contents of […]

By Janaka Alahapperuma Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to attend the official opening ceremony of the 7th edition of the World Future Energy Summit (WFES) at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (Adnec), as part of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. The President who left the island today (20 […]

By NJ Thakuria Umesh Chandra Devchoudhury, who joined the Indian National Army (also known as Azad Hind Fauj) in 1943 and fought many battles under Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s command for the motherland of India, was paid rich tributes by his admirers recently. In a formal meeting held at Guwahati Press Club on January 11, […]

The Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Sri Lanka recognised the Pathfinder Foundation as one of its top 10 partners at a ceremony to mark Chinese New Year and Sri Lanka’s National Day held at the BMICH on Friday. HE President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne, Minister of Helth Mithreepala Sirisena, Minister of […]

URGENT APPEALS PROGRAMME Dr. Masood Ahmad (72), is a member of the minority Ahmadi sect, who is declared non-Muslim under the terms of the country’s constitution and subject to widespread discrimination, violence and abuse. Dr Ahmad was arrested from Lahore, Punjab province, on 15 December, 2013, after two persons from a Muslim fundamentalist group secretly […]

Shenali D Waduge  The country that proclaims to be the shining example of freedom of every kind cannot escape the harsh realities that questions how far Americans are living in a free state. Tragically, most Americans do not know or realize how successive Governments have been fooling them – now America is a country in […]

Shenali D Waduge  What can we say when 3 countries pretend they are the most virtuous nations of the world while as each day unfolds their crimes emerge one after the other? The latest in a never ending list of atrocities are images of US marines burning bodies of Iraqi’s, while a 250 dossier has […]

Shenali D Waduge It has become a key political and imperial strategy of the West intent on de–stabilizing and breaking up Sri Lanka to attribute all ills of this country to the majority Sinhala Buddhists and vilify the ‘Mahavamsa’ the ancient Historical Chronicle (originally written in the 5th Century by Mahanama Mahathera) as the literary source […]

Dr.Tilak Fernando Courtesy The Daily News   On January 19, 1996, cocktails overflowed, short-eats vanished, the sounds of laughter and rejoicing of guests in a social intercourse vibrated through five floors of an impressive post-war building in the City of London. The occasion was stage one of three different ‘tamashas‘ to celebrate the relocation of the […]

Prepared by: Dilrook Kannangara Already three resolutions against Sri Lanka have been passed in UNHRC in 2009 (wrong to classify it as a win as today’s problems stem from it), 2012 and 2013. A fourth is on the way in 2014. As per threats made by UK and US officials, it will focus on imposing […]

Janaka Yagirala Imagine the following experiment, you have a person with a white cube in front of him (or her). If you ask the question “Is there a black cube in front of you?”, the expected answer from a sane person with a clear conscious would be “No it is a white cube”. Now if […]

defence.lk This item is taken from Engage Sri Lanka: Corrupted Journalism, 2013, Appendix 2, pp. 203-14. The pictorial illustrations are the Editor’s additions. I, Dr. Veerakanthipillai Shanmugarajah, Medical Superintendent , Mullaitivu General Hospital, being a Hindu, honestly , sincerely and solemnly swear and MAKE OATH as follows: 1. I am Dr.Veerakanthipillai Shanmugarajah, presently Medical Superintendent […]

By Shamindra Ferdinando January 14, 2014, 12:00 pm  -Courtesy Island A prominent British law firm, Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) on Friday (January 10) lodged an unprecedented formal complaint with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. It dealt […]

C. Wijeyawickrema   Karu Jayasuriya (KJ) says it was not fair to attack the Christian evangelical church at Hikkaduwa. He talks about pluralism and freedom, just like MahindaR talks about multi-faith and multi-cultural.  Nobody approves violence, but if both UNP and SLFP live on violence indirectly, then how can they talk about non-violence? Of all […]

Dr Hector Perera       London Coconut oil is used extensively in tropical countries especially in, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Philippines etc, which have a good production of coconut oil. At one time, the oil was also popular in western countries like the United States and Canada, but there was a strong propaganda campaign in the […]

Durand Appuhamy Negombo Courtesy Island It has been alleged that two northern Catholic bishops, Drs. Rayappu Joseph and Thomas Saundranayagam, have accused our security forces as having used cluster bombs and chemical weapons during the last phase of eelam war 1V. As for cluster bombs, The Island newspaper of the 11th Jan revealed to us […]

By Charles.S.Perera  “In their annual End of Year poll, researchers for WIN and Gallup International surveyed more than 66,000 people across 65 nations and found that 24 percent of all respondents answered that the United States “is the greatest threat to peace in the world today.” Pakistan and China fell significantly behind the United States […]

Insight By Sunil Kumar January 16th. 2014 Yet another worthless attempt to discredit Sri Lanka in advance of the forthcoming Geneva Summit appears to be the case where the pun fittingly needs to be interpreted as “Rapp’s Crap” which has been coined by a local satire group interestingly enough towards the related field and as […]

Dr. Ruwan M Jayatunge  The Sri Lankan society experienced a 30 year prolonged armed conflict that changed the psychological landscape of the Islanders. A large number of combatants, civilians and the members of the LTTE underwent the detrimental repercussions of combat trauma. Following the armed conflict in Sri Lanka over 90,000 people lost their lives […]

If ever a country has been referred by many names it has to be England. What is the difference between United Kingdom, England, Great Britain and moreover why is the ‘City of London’ a Corporation and not part of England, having its own laws?  First, let us run though some of the names used for […]

By Nalin de Silva Enough is enough. Stephen Rapp the prosecutor came to Sri Lanka as an official of the USA. He visited the Northern Province with the ambassador in Sri Lanka for USA and gave a judgment. It was a case of the prosecutor becoming the judge, aptly described by the Sinhala saying “naduth […]

By M D P DISSANAYAKE The commitment of the Sri Lankan Team to beat Pakistan in a foreign tour  convincingly was largely due to unity.   Politics has played its game for many years in Sri Lankan Cricket.  Today we witness Marvan Atapattu, Hashan Tillekeratne, Chaminda Vaas  with Sanath Jayasuriya on the same bench managing the […]

by A. Abdul Aziz.  During his recent tour to Far East Tour, the World Head and Fifth Khalifa of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad delivered an historic address at New Zealand’s National Parliament in Wellington on 4 November 2013.   In front of an audience of Parliamentarians, Ambassadors of State, academics and a range […]

Mario Perera, Kadawata  In a recent commentary I referred to the declaration by Mr.Rapp the visiting US ambassador at large that hard core LTTE’ers should have been prosecuted and not rehabilitated.  Now, as is well known, there is a section of them who have neither been prosecuted nor rehabilitated. A key figure of this number […]

Shenali D Waduge  When we had been thinking that the ICC was created to put on trial only African and other Third World leaders a 250 page dossier on Britains war crimes in Iraq has been submitted on 11 January 2013 to the ICC by Birmingham-based Public Interest Lawyers and the European Centre for Constitutional […]

Shenali D Waduge What Christianity/Catholicism cannot deny whatever modern day twists their biased historians and followers spin is the fact that western colonial crusaders travelled to foreign lands in Asia, Africa and North and South America to invade, subjugate and convert the indigenous natives by hook or by crook. This reality is etched in stone […]