KAMALIKA PIERIS

ATTACK ON KENT AND DOLLAR FARMS 1984

Revised 10.3.25

The Kent and Dollar farms were located near Manal Aru.  Kent and dollar farms are 11 minutes drive from  Kurundi vihara and  8  minutes drive from  Tannimuruppu kulam. The farms were bought on a 99-year lease from the state by a wealthy Tamil in 1965.  In 1978 the owner donated the two farms for the resettlement of estate Tamils, who had fled the central hill country during the anti-Tamil riots of 1977.

Gandhyian Movement of Rajasunderam, and the Tamil Relief and Rehabilitation Organization led by Nityananda and Kandasamy were the two organizations   that carried out the operation. SEDEC and Redd Barna helped. Redd Barna is a Norwegian NGO.

Gandhyam was founded by Dr. S. Rajasundaram and S. A. David. They had been doing refugee resettlement work from the beginning of the 1970s. They founded Gandhyam after the 1977 riots. It provided the refugee-settlers with agricultural advice, facilities and materials. Volunteer workers ran schools and day care centers for children. The U.S. agency CARE supplied packets of Triposha. NOVIB   and Oxfam helped. [1]

Within two years the two farms became prosperous. The settlers cultivated minor crops and became self-supporting. By December 1978 the first sowing of black gram had yielded a bumper crop.

 In December 1982 we visited the prosperous and popular Kent and the Dollar Farms where Indian Tamil refugee families were being rehabilitated, said Sabaratnam.  They were cultivating minor crops they told us that they were happy, as their incomes were high.  The entire area looked green and fresh. [2]

But there was a dark side to this. When Panditeratne got orders to dismantle the Maduru Oya settlement in September 1983, he planned to send the settlers to Vavuniya and Mullaitivu. He sent T.H. Karunatilleke and B.H. Hemapriya to visit Vavuniya, Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi and identify as many tanks as possible around which Sinhala settlements could be created. [3]  

Karunatilleke and Hemapriya toured the area   from 8^th to -10th October 1983. They found some tanks which could be repaired at minimal cost which were close to the existing Sinhala settlements and close to existing services.

But they also found something else.  They discovered that Dollar and Kent farms were to be used by the LTTE to launch a massive attack on Padaviya.

Karunatilleke and Hemapriya   sent in a report to Panditeratne dated 12.10.1983. In their   report they stated that   while engaged in their own search, villagers from Padaviya who do chena cultivation in the area   informed them of a new settlement created by Gandhiyam. The team passed through this settlement at 10 am. The people living there were from estates.

The settlement had 60-80 houses of semi-permanent nature, a permanent stores building and a small meeting hall. There were new tents of foreign make fixed close to the hall. There was a young Christian priest with a group of people in the hall.  They were told that the priest had his base in Madhu and Kilinochchi.   They saw the Eelam flag hoisted on the meeting hall. A number of houses carried the Eelam emblem on their front walls.  On our way back by 6 pm we found that 20-30 new families had come, they were from estates.  Within a few hours they had built 12 cadjan sheds. 

Karunatilleke and Hemapriya were told that a group of young Tamils regularly came down to this village through Nedunkerni and directed the cultivation and the training of the youth.  The settlers were kept under rigid supervision. They were paid a substantial living allowance by an unknown, well-organized movement.

Padaviya settlers said that in the evening and at night, they heard sounds of gun fire and other noises, for a set period of time.  Youth brought in trucks and motor bikes also participated in these sessions. This was a regular feature on certain days of the week and seemed to be training session.  Karunatilleke and Hemapriya stated that they strongly suspected that   this was part of a subversive   plan.

The settlement they were speaking about, was known as Dollar farm, reported Karunatilleke and Hemapriya. It had been given on special lease to a firm twenty years ago. It is on the southern border of Mullaitivu almost adjoining the Padaviya scheme.

Karunatilleke and Hemapriya saidthey were also informed that there was another   place called Kent farm, located to the east or north east of Dollar farm. This was also on lease. Kent farm was one of the central training centers of the LTTE. They had not visited Kent farm. They advised that both leases be cancelled.  

From 1982 Gandhiyam and other social service NGOs helping Tamils were under surveillance by the police, Arthur Herath, Assistant Superintendent of Police in Vavuniya had sent a series of reports to the Defense ministry through the Inspector General of Police urging action to evict the estate settlers.  Arthur Herath was later killed by bomb under his table.

The reports were taken seriously by the Security Council. Lalith Athulathmudali was sent to report on this in early December 1982.  He wanted the inspection to appear like a normal ministerial tour and organized the opening of a Sunday pola in Mankulam.

Island newspaper on 7th October 1983 said that over fifty stateless families, comprising nearly 250 men, women and children had been brought from the plantations and settled on 500 acres set aside by the Government for the settlement of landless villagers within the electorate under a World Bank project. This encroachment had started two years ago when the Gandhiyam Movement launched a large-scale encroachment in the jungle areas of Vavuniya and Mullaitivu and other areas off Vavuniya.

Gandhiyam was sealed in April 1983 and its leaders detained.  The estate Tamils were evicted. They were herded into buses, taken to the hill country towns and dropped on the roads, said Sabaratnam, Thondaman was angry.  He raised the matter in the cabinet. 

The government said that the Kent and Dollar farms were on state land, given on lease, and the state was taking them back to set up open prisons, a new experiment where prisoners would be allowed to live with their families and do cultivation.

The two farms were taken over by the state by a special gazette notification and converted into open prisons.  Four hundred and fifty prisoners and their families were settled in those farms.   KEEPThey were mostly those convicted for minor offences like theft, brewing and selling of illicit liquor, intimidation and thuggery. 

Settlers were under prison officers but were allowed to live with their wives and children. They thought they were free. Training in agriculture was given. Hemasiri Fernando, a farmer was in Anuradhapura prison serving a sentence for trespass, destruction of property and assault.  He and his family were taken to Dollar Farm, where he was given a plot with chillie and banana cultivations.  “We considered it a gift from heaven,” he said.

The scheme aroused much anger amongst the Tamils. They said Sinhalese farmers were settled in lands that were formerly populated by ethnic Tamils. They were given land, money to build homes and security provided by the Special Task Force

The military has settled Sinhalese ex-convicts in the very area that had been the home of Indian Tamils refugees for almost seven years, said Manogaran. They were given the farm plots, developed by the evicted Indian Tamils, with standing crops and well-kept dwellings, said Sabaratnam.[4]

Thondaman said Sinhala leaders are very short-sighted. They do not pay attention to the reactions of the Tamils to their actions.  He told Sabaratnam, “They are going to pay heavily for this.”

The Sinhala settlers on Dollar and Kent farms were aware that the LTTE were planning to attack them. They could hear the gunfire. They pleaded with the authorities, please give us military training, give us arms and ammunition, to protect themselves otherwise we will all be dead very soon. The administration said that according to the Establishment Code, civilians cannot be armed or given training in defense positions. Settlers received no guns or training.

The settlers, releasing this, were getting desperate, they wrote to Dimbulagala Hamuduruwo. we did not ask to come here, they said, we came from Maduru Oya. The army burnt our houses at Maduru Oya. after that they gave us permits for Padaviya. We cannot live here under the present conditions. We are shivering in fear. The two villages adjoin ours were destroyed by bombs and arson.  What appeared in the newspapers is all lies. The murdered children have been thrown into latrine pits other are buried in the jungle. 300 families ran away. Pease try to get us land in Polonnaruwa or Badulla district.

The attack on Dollar and Kent farms took place on 30 November 1984.  It was planned by Prabhakaran, then in Chennai, and executed by Mahattaya.  Prabhakaran admitted responsibility for the attack when an expatriate group raised the matter with him, said Sabaratnam.

About 50 LTTE cadres travelled in the night in two buses armed with rifles, machine guns and grenades.  One of the buses sped to Dollar Farm and the other to Kent Farm.  The attacks were timed to start at about the same time in the early hours of the morning.

At Dollar farm LTTE fighters shot and hacked the guards, the prisoners and the male members of the families.  Some of the prisoners were thrust into a room in a building and blasted with explosives.  Sixty-two Sinhalese including three jail-guards were killed.  The second bus proceeded to the Kent Farm eight kilometers away and killed 20.  The attackers withdrew before the police and the army arrived the next morning.

an eye witness account of the massacre at Dollar farm is given in the book by Malinga Guneratne. D.H. Somapala 28 yrs is one of the survivors of the attack on Dollar farm. He said ‘at about 5.30 am on the morning off 30 November 1984 about 100 terrorists, some dressed in army uniforms circled out entire farm from various sides and began firing at us and throwing bombs at some of the huts in which we were  living. A few of us were able to escape by running into the jungle and I was one of those who survived, when inside the jungle I hid and tried to see what was happening.”

Within a few minutes the terrorists rounded up all the civilians who were unable to escape and herded them into one circle. They wielded their sub machine guns and ordered them all to lie down.  While some of the terrorists held guns at the heads of the civilians and ordered them to lie down. others quickly began to tie their hands and legs of the civilians. Then they started jumping on the bodies and kicking them. Some urinated on these live bodies. They were thereafter turned face down, and placed next to each other. At a given signal they kept guns at the head of each and shot them through their heads and necks. When I saw them commence firing, I fled. 

Malinga described what they saw when they went on relief after attack.  the  pitiful state of the Dollar and Jent refugees. They had nothing other than what they were wearing. Children were orphaned, wives had lost their husband and children.  We got a firsthand account of the attack. they said after attacking us, they urinated on the dead bodies. The settlers    were astounded by the venom and ferocity of the attack.     The hatred the LTTE harbored against the Sinhalese could not have been more apparent, commented Gunaratne.

I went to see Thondaman in his ministry the next morning, recalled Sabaratnam.  He smiled as I entered.  “Have you heard the news?” he asked.  He expressed his happiness about the attack.[5] A few days later Devanayagam, the other Tamil minister, expressed a similar reaction.  In fact, every single Tamil in Sri Lanka and abroad was happy about the attack.  In Tamil Nadu, there was a sense of elation.  Some Tamil papers led with that story, continued Sabaratnam.  

In my view, concluded Sabaratnam, the Kent and Dollar farm attack was a milestone in the Tamil freedom struggle.  It denoted that in the Tamil psyche that a separate Tamil nation had been born.  The Weli Oya Scheme made them to realize that the Sinhalese were out to deny them their homeland.  the need to defend their homeland became a priority  . The Tamil people were happy about the attack.  The Sinhala people were angry, said Sabaratnam.  ( continued)

[1] https://sangam.org/pirapaharan-vol-1-chap-33-knocking-out-the-base/ SABARATNAM

[2] T Sabaratnam Manal Aru becomes Weli Oya  https://sangam.org/articles/view2/633.html

[3]  Malinga Gunaratne. For a sovereign state

[4] https://sangam.org/pirapaharan-vol-2-chap-23-manal-aru-becomes-weli-oya/ sabaratnam

[5] https://sangam.org/pirapaharan-vol-2-chap-43-the-massacres/ sabaratnam

KAMALIKA PIERIS

 LTTE MASSACRES AT KOKILAI AND NAYARU   1984, 1985

Revised 10.3.25

On 1 December, 1984 LTTE cadres, including women fighters, attacked two Sinhala Catholic fishing villages, Nayaru and Kokkilai, killing 59 fishermen. [1]  Kokkilai lagoon is an estuarine lagoon on    north-east Sri Lanka .The town of Kokkilai is located on a sand bar between the lagoon and the Indian Ocean. Nayaru is 15 kilometers north of Kokkilai.

[1] T Sabaratnam  Manal Aru becomes Weli Oya  https://sangam.org/articles/view2/633.html

A string of Sinhala fishermen’s settlements had been established along the coast from Trincomalee to Mullaitivu. Nayaru and Kokkilai are the northernmost of these settlements. They were occupied by fishing families from Negombo and Chilaw.   

There had been two attacks on Kokkilai in 1978 and 1982 and some inhabitants had abandoned the village.[1]   This  attack was the third.  LTTE arrived in a van at 8 pm. The Tamil driver had tooted the horn and flashed the lights as he approached the Sinhalese, to warn them of the impending massacre. He was later found shot.  The militants jumped out and began throwing explosives and opening fire. Those not immediately killed ran to their boats to flee into the ocean.

Magilin Costa, who survived, had been returning home from her factory, at night, when she noticed a van tooting its horn and blinking its lights. She hid and watched. She recalled that there were men and women, in blue shorts and square necked shirts, they were young. They shouted filth in Tamil.  They first threw a bomb than started firing.  They fired at all the cadjan huts. They used at least two machine guns. After shooting the LTTE departed.  When she       returned home, she found that her two daughters had been bound by their long hair and shot dead at point-blank range.

The LTTE had gone on an orgy of destruction, said Malinga.  The survivors of the massacre became refugees and relocated to refugee camps in Negombo, Duwa and Pitipana

This attack was followed by another LTTE attack, in 1985, this time on the army camp at Kokkilai. On the night of 13 February 1985 LTTE attacked the Sri Lanka army encampment at Kokkilai. That year, the army had established a small outpost at Kokkilai inside an abandoned school, with a young second lieutenant, Sarath Wijesinha officer commanding two platoons of soldiers. It was completely cut off from the base camp.

Over 100 LTTE fighters surrounded the Kokkilai Army Camp and attacked it with RPGs, mortars and grenades for over four hours. .[2]   This was the first direct assault on a Sri Lanka military base by a Tamil militant group. It was also the first time they had used RPGs. After the clash ,14 bodies of militants were found outside the camp perimeter dressed in military type uniforms and with night vision glasses. 

Ravi Jayewardene, Malinga Gunaratne, and others had visited Kokkilai after it has been attacked by LTTE They were shown the arms recovered from the LTTE. There were three rocket propelled guns.  the rocket launcher had been taken away by the retreating LTTE.  LTTE came with the very best assault rifles including the German Heckler and Koch gun. Night vision glasses, AK 47, M16 assault rifles were in the possession of every rebel killed.

 The   dead LTTE soldiers were all in battle fatigues (combat uniforms). Even the underwear was of camouflage material. They each had night vision glasses, AK 47 and M16 assault rifles. They carried supplies of food and water and each had a cyanide capsule and stock of medicines which included expensive Destroz type pep pill used by long distance runners. David Walker of the UK Special Air Force (SAS) who was with them told the unfazed Wijesinghe, this is an excellent battle by any standard. Congratulations.

The army camp at Kokkilai was commanded by Lieutenant Shantha Wijesinghe. The camp was just two platoons of soldiers inside a school. Camp was cut off from the rest of the army.  Wijesinghe knew he had little strength, so he innovated. Wijesinghe cut trenches around the school, and placed his best snipers as sentries at strategic points outside the camp.

At about 2 am, on 15 February 1985, around 120 LTTE attacked with rocked propelled grenades. They shot down the search lights first. The army held its fire and thinking all were dead the LTTE came in. The army then fired, killing 25 LTTE and the LTTE leader ordered a retreat. Army had lost just two men.  They repulsed the attack by 120 LTTE though less armed.  The garrison held out and received reinforcements by morning.

This shows how bravely the war was fought in the initial stage with very poor weapons and little training, said Malinga Guneratne. Lieutenant Shantha Wijesinghe received a field promotion to captain, the first time in the army’s history. (continued)

[1]  Malinga Gunaratne. For a sovereign state

[2] https://sangam.org/pirapaharan-vol-2-chap-43-the-massacres/ sabaratnam

Walden Bello

I think that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been misinformed. I don’t disagree with their shutting down USAID, but I think it’s rather small fry.  There are much, much bigger fish to fry if you want to really save U.S. government money that is being wasted in programs that are mischievously justified as aid to the poor people of the world.

Elon, hear me out:  if you walk northwest from your headquarters at the Eisenhower Executive Building along Pennsylvania Avenue, you’ll come after one long block upon two ugly buildings squatting beside each other. One is the World Bank. The other is the International Monetary Fund (IMF). You can actually just walk in and demand to look at their books since they are extensions of the U.S. government. And you would have a very good reason to do so, since these are two of the most questionable and controversial institutions directly or indirectly funded with U.S. taxpayers’ money.

Let me start with the World Bank, which is located at 1818 H St NW.  This institution has so-called development projects throughout the Global South, otherwise known as developing countries. This agency says that its mission is to end poverty in the developing world. To fulfill this goal, its lending has risen from nearly $55 billion in 2015 to $117.5 billion in 2024. Yet, despite this massive increase, the Bank admits that global poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill, with 2020-2030 set to be a lost decade.” Some 3.5 billion people, or 44 percent of the globe, remain poor, after decades of massive World Bank lending. And a major part of the reason is that World Bank programs have created poverty instead of alleviating it.

Living in Luxury While Fighting Poverty”

To manage its operations, the Bank’s full-time staff rose from nearly 12,000 in 2015 to over 13,000 in 2023.  These figures are just the tip of the iceberg. If one includes all employees—permanent, non-permanent, contractual, part-time—throughout the world, the Bank employs close to 41,000 people. The vast majority, 26,000, or 63 percent, work out of the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC, and only 3,200 are located in Africa, where most people in extreme poverty live.

The Bank’s economists and top administrators are among the highest paid financial functionaries in the world, which explains the reason why the Bank is a major cause of the brain drain from developing countries: a great number of highly trained economists from developing countries prefer to work at the Bank instead of their home countries, with some going straight from Ivy League or British graduate schools to Washington, DC.  Many within the Bank and the International Monetary Fund complain about the South Asian Mafia” that they claim controls employment opportunities for economists and higher-level staff in the two organizations.

The World Bank has come under fire for the billions it has spent supporting fossil-fuel projects throughout the Third World that have contributed to global warming and to mega-dam projects that have displaced millions. The Bank, along with the Fund, has also gained notoriety for imposing structural adjustment” programs guided by the radical principles  of the Washington Consensus” that are designed to promote globalization but have, instead, increased poverty and deepened inequality.  The reason World Bank projects and programs don’t work or create exactly the opposite of their intended goals is because they are based on questionable propositions built on little or no empirical evidence. An assessment made a few years ago by an all-star team of renowned economists led by Princeton’s Angus Deaton, a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics, was damning:

[The] panel had substantial criticisms of the way that the research was used to proselytize on behalf of Bank policy, often without taking a balanced view, and without expressing appropriate skepticism. Internal research that is favorable to Bank positions was given great prominence, and unfavorable research ignored. In these cases, we believe that there was a serious failure of checks and balances that should have separated advocacy and research. The panel endorses the right of the Bank to strongly defend and advocate its own policies. But when the Bank leadership selectively appeals to relatively new and untested research as hard evidence that thes preferred policies work, it lends unwarranted confidence to the Bank’s prescriptions. Placing fragile selected new research results on a pedestal invites later recrimination that undermines the credibility and usefulness of all Bank research.

The Bank’s refusal to acknowledge real-world refutations of its pro-globalization advocacy and its unbalanced, one-sided research led to justifiable rejection of its advice by the people who were suffering from the policies it was implementing, confessed Paul Collier, head of the Bank’s Research Development Department of the Bank from 1998 to 2003:

The profession has been unprofessional, fearful that any criticism would strengthen populism, so that little work has been done on the downsides of these different processes [of globalization]. Yet the downsides were apparent to ordinary citizens, and the effect of economists appearing to dismiss them has resulted in widespread refusal of people to listen to experts.” For my profession to re-establish credibility we must provide a more balanced analysis, in which the downsides are acknowledged and properly evaluated with a view to designing policy responses that address them. The profession may be better served by mea culpa than by further indignant defenses of globalization.

Despite the high rate of failure of its lending programs acknowledged in internal World Bank assessments, the World Bank administrative budget that supports the high salaries of its economists and other high-level staff just keeps growing. The World Bank (IBRD/IDA) administrative budget was approved at $3.5 billion for FY25, a sizable rise from the $3.1 billion authorized for FY 2024, with no convincing reason at all.

The IMF and the Art of Worsening Financial Crises

The International Monetary Fund, whose address is 700 19^th St NW, is the World Bank’s sister agency.  It has a full-time staff of 3,100, supported by a budget of $1.5 billion. The IMF’s economists are paid even higher than those at the World Bank, and they evoke more fear, hatred, and contempt than the Bank.

The IMF has an equally controversial history. It has a record of coming in to supposedly assist developing economies in crisis, only to make things worse. Its greatest debacle and scandal was its performance during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, when the so-called tiger economies of the East and Southeast Asia were destabilized by the massive inflows and outflows of foreign portfolio investment.

The Fund was heavily criticized on three counts. First, it had encouraged the governments of the region to eliminate capital controls, thus provoking uncontrolled capital flows. Second, it assembled multi-billion dollar rescue packages” that went to rescue not the people suffering from the crisis but to compensate the foreign financial speculators that had lost millions in dubious speculative ventures, thus encouraging moral hazard,” or irresponsible investing. Third, its measures to stabilize the damaged economies intensified the crisis, since instead of encouraging government spending to counteract the collapse of private sector, it told the governments to radically cut spending, leading to a procyclical” negative synergy that ended in deep recession.

In just a few weeks, one million people in Thailand and 22 million in Indonesia fell below the poverty line. The only country that contained the crisis was Malaysia, which refused to follow the Fund’s dictates and imposed capital and currency controls

So disastrous were the IMF’s interventions that George Schultz, President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of the Treasury, called for its abolition for encouraging moral hazard, and prominent economists like Jagdish Bhagwati and Jeffrey Sachs accused it of provoking global macroeconomic instability. Indeed, a rare conservative-liberal alliance in the U.S. Congress came within a hair’s breath of denying the IMF a $14.5 billion replenishment.

Eventually, the Fund was forced to admit that the thrust of fiscal policy…turned out to be substantially different…because the original assumptions for economic growth, capital flows, and exchange rates…were proved drastically wrong.” But things were never the same again. The IMF was so reviled for its performance that Asian governments developed IMF-phobia, swearing never again to ask the IMF for rescue even in the most dire circumstances. For instance, after paying off what Thailand owed the IMF, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra declared the country liberated” from the Fund in 2004.

Instead of learning from its debacle during the Asian Financial Crisis, the IMF stumbled into another fiasco more than a decade later, during the Global Financial Crisis. It allowed itself to be hijacked by Germany, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank to provide billions of public money to rescue German financial institutions and investors that had engaged in an orgy of irresponsible lending to Greece to the tune of 25 billion euros. To get the so-called rescue funds, the Greek government, like the Asian governments previously, was forced to adopt severe austerity measures that drove unemployment up to 28 percent and condemned the Greek economy to permanent stagnation, only to turn the money it was ostensibly receiving over to the German banks.

Not surprisingly, so long as the IMF is there, the big international banks will assume that they will be bailed out for making irresponsible loans.

The U.S. and the Bretton Woods Twins: Fiction and Fact

There is a fiction that the IMF and World Bank are multilateral institutions that are owned by their many member governments. The reality is that the United States controls both institutions, with a 17.4 percent share of total quotas at the Fund and 15.8 per cent share of voting power at the Bank.  These shares give the U.S. government a veto power over any policy change. But the truth is that U.S. power is not limited to its being able to veto policy decisions it does not like. No country would dare oppose a move by the United States to radically cut the administrative budgets (by, say, 75 percent initially) and the number of personnel in the two organizations (to 600 personnel each, as in the case of USAID) if it wanted to do so. All it needs to do to get its way is to threaten to withhold its contributions to the two organizations. I can guarantee that immediately the interest rate at which the Bank borrows in international capital markets would leap upward, paralyzing its lending operations.

The IMF and the World Bank are monuments to misguided economic thinking and policies that have brought much misery to the peoples of the Global South. They are institutions that no longer serve any purpose except to perpetuate and enlarge themselves. If Elon Musk and Donald Trump are really serious about radically downsizing bloated bureaucracies, they could not have better targets than the Bretton Woods twins.

Walden Bello, a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus,  is the author or co-author of 19 books, the latest of which are Capitalism’s Last Stand? (London: Zed, 2013) and State of Fragmentation: the Philippines in Transition (Quezon City: Focus on the Global South and FES, 2014).

by, Professor Nishan C. Wijesinha

Firstly I should start off by saying that “people are with many grievances”; but they are walking through the passages of political and media, popular propaganda. To my knowledge, these are all-time-related fake visuals. 

For example on the 21st of February 2025, at Samanthurai during this paddy harvest season; hundreds of elephants are seen crossing through the carpeted roads to find food from these fields; as these elephants are starved without food and congested in an environment of dry landscapes.

As I have mentioned many times in many popular addresses, “elephants are a national Buddhist heritage and should be secured to a habitat of their own”.

These habitats could be cultivated by spreading Kithul seeds and other palms that attract their habitual diet.

On the other hand, Acteria plants could be grown as fences to separate elephants’ habitats from the paddy and other crop farming areas.

As I have mentioned many many times at many many popular community awareness programs.

Acteria fences on the other hand could completely, eradicate, the need for electrical fences; which are an absolutely harmful thing for the animals as well as humans in this Theravada Buddhist State.

As of the 2004 Tsunami,  all the needed infrastructure to set up these fences and the fruitful habitats for the elephants could be materialised through camps organised through media companies such as Sirasa, Swaranawahini and Derana.

On the other hand, its total administration has to be under the complete guidance of a nation’s lady  of prudence and international charisma, bearing the harmony of mother nature.

Finally our motherland needs the watchmanship of a Nations Lady, who is of the highest standards of International  entrepreneurship, and interpersonal relations; who could glide through the waves of all season’s. 

And that esteemed Lady of highest charisma to my knowledge is ,”Otara Gunawardene”.

I close by saying with confidence: ” that our nation  “The only Thearavada Buddhist State”  would be of its right track with her esteemed influence”.

උපුටා ගැන්ම ලංකා සී නිව්ස්

විස්තීරණ ණය පහසුකම් වැඩසටහන යටතේ පස්වැනි වාරිකය ලබාදීමට පෙර රුපියල් බිලියන 900 ක ආදායම් ඉලක්කයක් සම්පූර්ණ කිරීමට මෙරට රජය කටයුතු කළයුතු බවත්, රජය ආයෝජන වැඩිකර ගැනීමට කටයුතු කළයුතු බවත් ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදල විසින් මෙරට රජයට දැනුම්දී ඇතැයි අනාවරණය වේ.

ආර්ථිකය කෙරෙහි අවදානම තවමත් පවතින බැවින් ආර්ථිකය යථා තත්ත්වයට පත්වීම දීර්ඝ කාලයක් පුරා පවත්වා ගැනීමට සහ ණය තිරසරභාවයක් කරා යන මාවතකට ගෙන ඒම සඳහා ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණ න්‍යාය පත්‍රය තිරසරව පවත්වා ගැනීම ඉතා වැදගත් බවද ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදලේ නියෝජ්‍ය කළමනාකරන අධ්‍යක්ෂ කෙන්ජි ඔකමුරා සඳහන් කර තිබේ. ප්‍රතිපත්තිමය වැරදීම් ඇතිවීම සඳහා ඉඩක් නැති බවද ඔහු සඳහන් කර ඇත.

ආර්ථික ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණ සඳහා සහායවීම සඳහා බදු අනුකූලතාවය ඉහළ නැංවීම සහ බදු නිදහස් කිරීම්වලින් වැළකී සිටීම ප්‍රධාන බවත්, රජය සතු ව්‍යවසායන්ගේ රාජ්‍ය මූල්‍ය අවදානම් පාලනය කිරීම සඳහා ප්‍රමාදයකින් තොරව පිරිවැය ආවරණය වන විදුලිය මිලකරණය නැවත ස්ථාපනය කිරීම අවශ්‍ය බවත් ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදල සඳහන් කරන්නේය.

මෙරට පුරවැසියකු විදේශ රටකට සේවාවක් සැපයීමේදී අය කරන සියයට 15 ක බද්ද ඉවත් කිරීමට නොහැකි බවද ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදල විසින් රජයට දැනුම්දී ඇත.

මේ වසර තුළදී ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදල විසින් වාරික දෙකක් මෙරටට නිකුත් කිරීමට නියමිත අතර, එහි වටිනාකම ඩොලර් බිලියන 1.1 කි.එම වාරික නිකුත් කිරීමට නම් රජය සිය ඉලක්ක කරා ගමන් කළයුතු බවද ජාත්‍යන්තර මූල්‍ය අරමුදල විසින් පෙන්වාදී තිබේ.

– සාලිය කුමාර ගුණසේකර

By Saman Indrajith Courtesy The Island

Shanakiyan

The credibility of a government that claimed to be fighting corruption was at stake when individuals involved in financial misappropriation held Cabinet positions, Batticaloa District ITAK MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam told the House yesterday.

Speaking during the committee-stage debate on expenditure heads of the Ministry of Energy in Budget 2025 proposals, Rasamanickam stated that an individual who had been interdicted over a financial fraud in the Fertilizer Corporation was now a member of the NPP Cabinet and sat in the front row of the government side.

The person in question had been appointed to the Fertilizer Corporation when Anura Kumara Dissanayake was Minister of Agriculture in the UPFA government under President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

Since I do not intend to vilify anyone, I refrain from naming the person concerned,” Rasamanickam said.

Meanwhile, earlier in the day, during the debate, NDF Badulla District MP Chamara Sampath Dassanayake lashed out at Energy Minister Eng. Kumara Jayakody, claiming that he had information about Jayakody’s dealings while working at the Fertilizer Corporation.

I have information about your transactions but I will not go into details,” Dassanayake told Minister Jayakody when the latter attempted to interrupt.

Deputy Speaker Rizvie Salih cautioned MP Sampath against making personal attacks.

In response, Sampath stated that he had not engaged in any personal attacks.

Courtesy The Island

Dr. Sugathadasa

The Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) yesterday (03) warned the government of a countrywide strike unless it restored holiday allowances to the previous level for doctors.

GMOA Secretary Dr. Prabath Sugathadasa emphasised that as the cuts imposed through Budget 2025 weren’t acceptable to the GMOA, the government should take immediate remedial measures and its failure to do so would drive the GMOA to resort to trade union action to win its demands.

Dr. Sugathadasa said that in case the government didn’t respond positively to their demand immediately a strike would be launched tomorrow (05).

The GMOA official said that if the government failed to resolve the issue at hand by 06 March, the government faced a serious challenge in maintaining the public health sector.

By Shane Seneviratne Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Colombo, March 03 (Daily Mirror) – A man was arrested this morning by Kadugannawa police for riding a motorcycle from Colombo to Kandy while naked.

Police said the 23-year-old man was arrested after a great effort by law enforcement.

Several police officers observed the man riding the motorcycle along the Kandy-Colombo road and attempted to apprehend him, but none were able to catch him.

The Kegalle and Mawanella police also pursued the man but were unsuccessful. After alerting the Kadugannawa and Peradeniya police, officers in Kadugannawa managed to stop the motorcycle using roadblocks.

The arrested man has been identified as a 23-year-old resident of Ahangama. He is set to be produced  before court today, where authorities will seek permission to obtain a mental health evaluation.

Kadugannawa police are conducting further investigations under the direction of Senior Superintendent of Police for the Kandy Division, Anuruddha Bandaranaike.

Courtesy Adaderana

The nominations for the 2025 Local Government Elections will be accepted from March 17, 2025, the Elections Commission announced.

The commission said that the relevant nominations will be accepted until 12 noon on March 20, 2025.

Accordingly, the notices regarding the acceptance of nominations for the election of Mayors, Deputy Mayors, Chairpersons, Deputy Chairpersons, and members for 336 local government institutions across the country have now been published in the respective local authorities. 

The Election Commission said that these include 28 Municipal Councils, 36 Urban Councils and 272 Pradeshiya Sabhas. However, the Kalmunai Municipal Council, Dehiattakandiya Pradeshiya Sabha (Ampara District), Mannar Pradeshiya Sabha (Mannar District), Punakari Pradeshiya Sabha (Kilinochchi District), and Elpitiya Pradeshiya Sabha (Galle District) are excluded from this election.

Meanwhile, the commission said that security deposits from candidate will be accepted from March 3 to March 19, 2025, until 12.00 noon, excluding March 13, the Poya Day and weekends on March 8, 9, 15, and 16.

Courtesy Adaderana

Discussions have been held at the Ministerial Consultative Committee on Transport, Highways, Ports and Civil Aviation, regarding Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) bus drivers who operate services while bypassing schoolchildren and citizens with season tickets.

During the meeting, the Minister of Transport, Highways, Ports and Civil Aviation, Bimal Rathnayake, stated that any citizen could report such incidents by calling 1958. He further emphasized his awareness of the said issue and assured that stringent measures would be taken against such misconduct. 

He also mentioned that SLTB drivers and conductors had been duly informed of the matter, the Parliamentary Communications Department said in a statement.

The Ministerial Consultative Committee on Transport, Highways, Ports met under the Chairmanship of the Minister Bimal Rathnayake at Parliament, where these issues were discussed. 

The meeting was attended by the Hon. Deputy Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation, Janitha Ruwan Kodithuwakku, the Hon. Deputy Minister of Transport and Highways, Dr. Prasanna Gunasena along with both government and opposition Members of Parliament, as well as officials from state institutions affiliated with the ministry, the statement added.

Furthermore, the Committee Chair expressed his concern regarding the lack of initiative from railway department officials in addressing the harm caused to elephants, despite the availability of technology. He pointed out with regret the incident where six elephants perished due to a train collision, calling it a deeply unfortunate occurrence. 

He expressed disappointment over the railway department officials in failing to utilize the GPS technology to mitigate such incidents and expressed his dissatisfaction over their inaction, it noted.

Minister Bimal Ratnayake issued directives to the railway department officials to take all necessary measures to prevent such occurrences. In response, the officials stated that discussions were already underway and that immediate steps were being taken to address the issue. Additionally, an ad hoc Parliamentary Committee was established, comprising Members of Parliament, to formulate an efficient management system within the railway department.

Discussions also covered the issue of the container congestion at the port, with the Hon. Deputy Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation briefing Members of Parliament on the steps taken to address the matter, the statement mentioned.

Accordingly, to mitigate the delays caused by containers being held at the port, additional staff had been swiftly recruited. To alleviate congestion within the port, approximately two acres of land in Bloemendhal area had been allocated to customs for vehicle parking, the Deputy Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation, Janitha Ruwan Kodithuwakku stated. 

He further highlighted that the Port Community System, which is a digital technology initiative, had been launched as a long-term and sustainable solution.

Additionally, the Annual Report of the Sri Lanka Ports Authority for the year 2023, along with the Annual Report of Jaya Container Terminals Limited for the year 2023, was reviewed and approved during the Ministerial Consultative Committee meeting held.

Moreover, a progress review was presented by the chairpersons of the three subcommittees appointed under the Ministerial Consultative Committee on Transport, Highways, Ports and Civil Aviation to seek legal and administrative solutions for issues related to transport, highways, ports, and civil aviation, according to the Parliamentary Communications Department.

Courtesy Adaderana

Property in Sri Lanka’s Colombo had risen 7.7 per cent in the second half of 2024 from a year earlier, according to a Land Valuation Indicator. According to the report, industrial land had risen 3.9 per cent in the first six months compared to a year earlier. Residential land had risen 9.9 per cent, and commercial land had risen 9.4 per cent.

The highest increase was observed in the Residential LVI, followed by Commercial and Industrial LVIs. Per perch, bare land prices are semi-annually obtained from the Government Valuation Department.

The Land Price Index (LPI) was compiled from 1998 to 2008 on an annual basis and from 2009 to 2017 on a semi-annual basis, covering 5 DS divisions in the Colombo District.

From 2017 onwards, its geographical coverage was enhanced to represent all 13 DS divisions in the Colombo District, and hence, it was rebased considering 1st half of 2017 as the base period. From 2020 onwards, LPI was renamed Land Valuation Indicator (LVI) and has continued to be released semi-annually.
 
Source: Realty+
–Agencies

e-Con e-News

blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com

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

e-Con e-News 23 February – 01 March 2025

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‘Our economy is running on conditions.

There is no economic independence or sovereignty –

it is under probation and being monitored.’

– President AK Dissanayake, 2025

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‘The nature of the political life of our island must be understood.

We were a colony, a benevolently administered dependency. So long

as our dependence remained unquestioned our politics were a joke.

– The Mimic Men, VS Naipaul, 1967

And so it turns out be, as other leaders – in Sri Lanka and around the world – have long known: that a party may ‘be in office, but not in power’ (see ee Quotes, Cheddi Jagan). This ee reproduces some choice & apt excerpts from Sir Vidia Naipaul’s 1967 novel (see ee Focus), which is said to be partly based on the repeated Anglo-US coups in Guyana in the 1950s and 1960s.

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‘Soon we saw that there had been no need, that our power was air.

We had no trade unions behind us, no organized capital.’

– Mimic Men, VS Naipaul

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And so the ‘stark admission’ from Sri Lanka’s President, has opposition critics declaring that the NPP government – which ‘has so far backed down from its campaign promise of renegotiating the unfavorable debt restructuring agreement brokered by the IMF’ – has, in fact, done so knowingly and willingly.

    The IMF’s ‘ambitious and often brutal austerity programs’ are indeed politically, socially & economically unfeasible. The government’s new budget missing the IMF’s deficit target, appears to be due to its promise to resume ‘public capital investment’ – nationally owned assets used for industrial productivity. However, these ‘public investment will be the first line of expenditure to be slashed’, predicts Shiran Illanperuma (see ee Focus)… unless… unless… 

    The ‘Global South now spends more in debt payments than it receives in grants & loans’, and we are ‘cursed with low growth rates due to a lack of investment’, especially ‘investment in the manufacturing sector’, which ‘is key to technological upgrading, upskilling labor, and unlocking rapid growth in the Global South’. Instead, ‘services have accounted for 81% of new foreign investment projects between 2020-23’.

     So, even as there is a ‘renewed push’ for industrialization across many countries – from President Lula da Silva’s New Industry Brazil (Nova Indústria Brasil/NIB) program to the Made-in-China 2025 program, ‘it is unlikely that any government in Sri Lanka can formulate & implement such cohesive plans without confronting the IMF & private creditors which have severely restricted the country’s economic sovereignty’.

     Meanwhile,  there was news this week too that the US-dominated IMF and World Bank are tying aid to Lebanon to ‘normalization’ of relations with Israel, and the disarming of Hezbollah (see ee Sovereignty).

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Has anyone noticed the eerie homophony between Sri Lanka’s SERU (State-Owned Enterprise Restructing Unit) and Ukraine’s SOERA (State-Owned Enterprises Reform Activity in Ukraine)?

    Another fake WWF (World Wrestling Federation) drama – better called, dissimulation – was staged this week in the USA’s Oval Office, showing Ukraine’s leader bantering with the US President. Then there is the kalabala (yet more kayfabe?) about USAID’s supposed demise, which is meant to divert from the real story:

    So keep dreaming! The US is reorganizing & outsourcing Empire. It is attempting to freeze their war on Russia (as it has done with its wars on Korea & China – Taiwan). The US is not ending their war in Ukraine, which they have all but lost. This is also evident in the US Vice-President JD Vance’s Munich speech, telling Europe to buy more US weapons rather than make their own, to attack Russia and China. Their Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE device is meant to sharpen ‘the tools of the US Empire – not dismantle them’ (see ee Sovereignty, US is Reorganizing/Outsourcing Empire)

    So Trump will surely come for Sri Lanka’s rare earth minerals next (if they haven’t already). US President Donald Trump is reported as yearning for rare earth minerals from Canada, Greenland & Ukraine so as to downgrade Europe’s & their settler states’ reliance upon Chinese exports of these hard-to-find materials. Like from Ukraine, the US can now demand, ‘Pay your debt or we’ll swipe – errrrr, swap – Sinharaja & all our graphite & yet unrevealed minerals & fuels in Sri Lanka.

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Recall: Ecuador’s government completed a Galapagos Debt for Nature Swap in May 2023, repurchasing $1.6billion of Ecuador’s outstanding bonds at ~40 cents on the dollar, saving Ecuador $1.1bn in debt service repayments. The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), funded by the Latin American Development Bank (CAF), acted as advisor to Ecuador’s Ministry of Economy & Finance on this ‘green’ transaction. 5 months later, Quito ratified the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Washington. In December 2024 Ecuador’s President and Banana Co. Oligarch Daniel Noboa permitted the US military to use the environmentally fragile Galapagos Islands as a base for regional surveillance, to combat ‘drug trafficking, illegal fishing’ to prevent ‘violent conflicts… between narco-terrorist groups fighting over drug export routes’. Sound familiar? The archipelago had been declared a World Natural Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978.

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Last week ee began our glimpse into the over-100-year monopoly of Ceylon Tobacco Co, owned by British American Tobacco (BAT). CTC has deprived the country of billions through such ‘normal’ multinational corporate (MNC) practices as transfer pricing, concealing this data aided by such giant accounting firms as Deloitte, etc. This ee continues Charles Abeysekera’s study: showing how CTC has along the way hijacked not just the Ministry of Agriculture, but also the state banks – Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank (see ee Focus).

     Our story begins with the traditional village economy still based on paddy & highland crops including vegetables; cultivating tobacco only for itinerant Muslim traders – then gradually supplanted by this Anglo-American multinational. This ee examines ‘CTC in the Mahaweli Scheme’ – its active involvement in non-tobacco activities, which their merchant media present to the public as acts of benevolence. Such MNCs or TNCs (transnational corporations) have penetrated into peasant agriculture, also replacing the government and its agencies: irrigation and land development departments, state banks, the cooperative system, and state marketing agencies, totally controlling smallholding peasants, leaving them no choice over crops and cultivation practices. They have also been destroying the forest cover, with the Forest Department reserving the right to the Company to cut such trees for fuel, setting up such companies as Charlanka Ltd – a joint venture between the USAID-funded Enterprise Development Inc. and the Sri Lanka State Timber Corporation!

    The story describes how CTC established a restricted market by creating a new layer of middlemen mediating between CTC and tobacco growing peasants, who had no direct dealings with either the CTC or the banks. TNCs have, in effect, replaced the state… Here then is the untold story of the sabotaging of the Paddy Marketing Board, by CTC, etc, just as Sathosa (Ceylon Wholesale Establishment, CWE) has been hijacked by Unilever, and the Fertilizer Corp. by England’s ICI-CIC etc. Most interesting is their control over technology:

‘Contrary to the large colonial enterprises of the past,

TNCs are more interested in the control of activities

than in the actual ownership of natural resources.

The real basis for their powerful position, therefore,

is not the property of land or mineral deposits but the

ownership of the technical process which it is difficult to

attack by the normal procedures of expropriation & nationalisation.’

– EH Jacoby

Meanwhile, England’s CTC has been shutting down their reliance on local tobacco farmers. This week CTC was reported as claiming its revenue fell down in the December 2024 quarter, due to smuggling. However, other countries point out that it is the cigarette companies themselves who are smuggling tobacco and cigarettes into their countries, to avoid taxes. And even better: it is the sophisticated corporate tobacco networks, with their enormous ‘supply chains’ of marketers and salesmen, who are also involved in smuggling prohibited drugs!!! Gangsters, anyone?

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Last week, media in Sri Lanka reported that ‘Lord Swire’ visited Port City… England once forbade the Sinhala calling the Buddha – ‘King’ – Budhurajananwahanse. They wanted the Buddha referred to as Lord Buddha, because England’s King ruled over all of us, including the Buddha. So now here comes Lord Swire, real name: Hugo George William Swire – and how did this Swire become a Lord like the Buddha, in English? The Swires were big profiteers off English slave cotton from the USA, then turned to carrying opium on their shipping lines (P&O, anyone?) from India to China, linking to the pirates Jardine-Matheson (who became the biggest landowners & employers in Hong Kong, and are still!) and set up the opium-financing HongKong & Shanghai Bank! Lordy! Lordy! Lordy!… Buddhu Ammo!

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Germany’s just elected chancellor Friedrich Merz once represented BlackRock in Germany, 2016-20. BlackRock has become one of the largest non-German shareholders in many of the country’s most important companies – from Deutsche Bank to Volkswagen, BMW to Siemens (which helped hijack Ceylon Steel Corporation). It turns out Europeincluding their settler governments & their economic systems have been fully privatized entities effectively run by corporations & banks. Then again, let’s recall England’s Royal African Co with its monopoly over the slavery of Africans, and the East India Co later morphing into the opium-dealing ‘private English’ Jardine-Matheson (which still controls Hong Kong) and palm oil-loving Unilever (which still controls SL), Anglo-American (which still controls South Africa), CTC, ICI-CIC, etc…?

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Contents:

By Yohan Perera and Ajith Siriwardana Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Colombo, Feb 28 (Daily Mirror) – Number of persons in all three armed forces will be reduced while they will be made sophisticated with equipment, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told Parliament today. 

“The Sri Lanka Army will be confined to 100,000 personnel, Sri Lanka Navy to 40,000 and Sri Lanka Air Force to 18,000, the President revealed. 

“Our aim is to acquire modern equipment to the forces. Almost all aircraft in the Sri Lanka Air Force are becoming outdated. Therefore, we will acquire new aircraft. The Sri Lankan Navy will also get new craft and new equipment. We will do it without any hesitation,” the President said.

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Colombo, March 02 (Daily Mirror) – The special exposition of the Sacred Tooth Relic for the public will be held from April 18 to 27, the President’s Media Division (PMD) said.

It said the exposition to the public will be on April 18 from 3:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. and thereafter, from April 19 to 27, daily from 12:00 noon to 5:30 p.m.

A preliminary discussion on the event took place today at the President’s House in Kandy, under the patronage of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

President Dissanayake expressed his gratitude to the Mahanayake Theras for granting the Buddhist community of Sri Lanka the opportunity to take part in this sacred event after 16 years. He emphasized that the Buddhist people of Sri Lanka aspire to see the Sacred Tooth Relic revered and worshipped throughout their lifetime.

The President also expressed his belief that this occasion would help restore the declining civility in the country and serve as a catalyst for religious and cultural enlightenment.

Highlighting the significance of organizing such events for the promotion of Buddhist enlightenment, President Dissanayake conveyed his hope that this exposition, which coincides
with the New Year celebrations, would help guide the country toward a new direction.

He anticipated the participation of hundreds of thousands of people, with large crowds expected to attend the exposition over the course of the ten-day event. The President stressed
that it is the responsibility of all to ensure the public can worship the Sacred Tooth Relic without hindrance and assured that the government will provide full support to facilitate
this opportunity for all.

During the discussion, it was decided to establish three separate lines for the public to venerate the Sacred Tooth Relic during the special exposition. President Dissanayake instructed
officials to follow the guidance of the Mahanayake Theras regarding the safety of both the Sacred Tooth Relic and the public.

It was also proposed that schools in Kandy be closed during the period of the exposition, with alternative dates for student education to be scheduled.

Considerable attention was given to ensuring adequate sanitary facilities for devotees and managing waste effectively. Plans were also made for a vehicle management system to handle
the increased traffic during the event.

Extensive discussions were held regarding the provision of healthcare, drinking water, and other essential services for the public. There was also a proposal to allow people who wish to provide food for devotees to register for the “Dansal”.

DARSHANA SANJEEWA BALASURIYA Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Colombo, March 02 (Daily Mirror) – Denying the allegation by Leader of the House Bimal Ratnayake that the former Speaker had used fuel worth Rs. 33 million within nine months from January 1, 2024 to September 24, 2024, which amounts to Rs. 4 million per month, former Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said spreading falsehood to gain power will not be successful every time.

The following is a statement issued by former Speaker Abeywardena in this regard:

“I would like to state at the outset that I have not resided in any official government residences since I first entered Parliament in 1983 and until September 2020, when I was appointed Speaker. In September 2020, after almost a month of being appointed, I had to shift to the official residence of the Speaker for official and security reasons.

“I solemnly declare that throughout the entire period of my tenure, I spent my personal money on my meals at the Speaker’s residence. There is no legal provision for government funds to be spent on the meals of a Speaker. However, when special guests, foreign ambassadors or foreign diplomats visit, it is a duty to entertain them, and such expenses are considered as expenses of the Speaker and are incurred at government expense. It is regrettable that all such expenses have been added and presented as expenses incurred for my personal meals.

“Also, from 1983 until I assumed the office of the Speaker in August 2020, even during my various Ministerial positions, I have always travelled in a single vehicle. Just as Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya found out after assuming office that she will have to travel with escort vehicles for security reasons, I too had to travel with three other vehicles after assuming the office of the Speaker. Every Speaker is allocated three vehicles (an official vehicle and two escort vehicles) and in addition, a jeep belonging to the Police Special Task Force was also allocated to me. I would like to inform the public that these vehicles were the only ones allocated for my needs and those of my security officers. In addition, five vehicles and fuel were allocated for five key officials of my staff.

“The vehicles and fuel provided to those officials were similar to and in accordance with the circulars mentioned in the instruction paper issued by the Secretary to the President of the present government on 21st January 2025 on the staff allowances of Ministers. Therefore, since spending Rs. 33.4 million on fuel for the three vehicles allocated for me over a period of nine months appears even statistically impossible and because running charts of all vehicles are available with Parliament. I request a special audit done in this regard.

“Although it is futile to present more detailed data in a social context that expects short answers, I would like to request journalists who are interested in investigating into the truth, to obtain the details on the above and other allegations made against me from Parliament under the Right to Information Act, and not only to investigate into the years 2023/2024 but also from 2020.

“I also request that legal action be taken immediately if there is any irregularity in this regard. Although spreading falsehoods was a successful strategy to gain power, I believe that using it repeatedly and on a daily basis to reinforce in the minds of the voters that the decision they had made was the right one, will not be successful, even in the short term. I couldn’t agree more with the statement by Minister Bimal Ratnayake when he said that a person cannot be judged a gentleman merely by his attire, but a gentleman is made by his conduct and actions. To this, I would like to further add that holding a high or low office also doesn’t guarantee that one is a gentleman.

“I would like to conclude my explanation by recalling the following two verses from the Dhamma Pada. There is no sin that cannot be committed by people who speak falsehood, ignore the Dhamma, and have no belief in the afterlife.

“If someone harms a pure-hearted and innocent person who has done no harm to others, that harm will return to that fool like a lot of dust thrown up into the wind.

“Since it does not take long for the realities felt by the people to transcend temporary psychological gratifications, I hope that the government led by Minister Bimal Ratnayake will be interested and intelligent in managing the state machinery well and leading the country towards development, and in fulfilling the good promises made to the people soon.”

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Colombo, March 03 (Daily Mirror) – In a bid to avert any energy crisis in the future, the government is hurriedly taking measures to purchase both petroleum products, including LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) from Qatar under a government-to-government agreement, an official said.

Chairman of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) D.A. Rajakaruna told Daily Mirror that two rounds of talks had been conducted with Qatar Energy, formerly Qatar Petroleum, to explore the possibility of importing such products at cheaper rates under a government-to-government deal.

He said Qatar Energy is a state-owned company and, therefore, energy purchases under such a deal are possible.

Asked about similar plans with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), he said, “In that country, only private companies handle the process.”

Currently, Sri Lanka purchases fuel from the open market after calling for tenders from suppliers.

Besides, the government is planning for the rationalisation of setting up new filling stations in the future.

Mr. Rajakaruna said around 1,300 filling stations are in operation at the moment, but most of them have been set up in an ad hoc manner.

“At every junction, there is a filling station. Hereafter, new ones will be put up according to a scientific map being worked out by the Moratuwa University, ” he said.

Courtesy Adaderana

The two former Sri Lanka Army Intelligence personnel, who were arrested on suspicion of being involved in the abduction and assault of journalist Keith Noyahr in May 2008, have been granted bail by the Mount Lavinia Magistrate’s Court, Ada Derana reporter said.

Accordingly, the two suspects were ordered to be released on two surety bails of Rs. 1 million each.

The two suspects had been arrested yesterday (01) in the Nawagaththegama and Elayapaththuwa police divisions by officers of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) based on investigations into the assault on journalist Keith Noyahr in May 2008.

On May 22, 2008, journalist Keith Noyahr, was assaulted after being abducted in a van in the Waidya Road area of the Dehiwala Police Division.

The arrested suspects are two retired Army Intelligence personnel from the Military Intelligence Corps (MIC), aged 42 and 46, and residents of the Nawagaththegama and Ulukkulama areas.

The CID is conducting further investigations into the incident.

Courtesy Adaderana

A discussion has been recently held between the Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) and salt manufacturing companies at the CAA’s head office.

The discussion had taken place on February 25, and its purpose was to make the necessary interventions to release high-quality salt for industry and food use into the market at a reasonable price.

Accordingly, based on the pricing surveys conducted by the CAA regarding salt prices in the market, the varying prices of salt over the past period, the seasonal shortage of salt, and the challenges faced by the salt industry had also been discussed.

Representatives from eighteen institutions, including government officials and leading salt producers, attended the meeting, with significant focus placed on stabilizing prices, so that consumers are not inconvenienced due to the current market conditions.

The producers also expressed confidence that locally produced salt is scheduled to enter the market in the future and will be sold at competitive prices by the end of March.

They also agreed to the CAA’s request that prices should remain stable without further increases until then.

3 Minutes – SEPAL AMARASINGHE

Shenali D Waduge

US funding for GoSL entities & Civil Society 2015 to present 

Click to open list

With artificial intelligence” now becoming the buzzword, citizens should utilize it to gather information while knowing that it is not completely correct. It is an entity giving us information that is in public domain cutting time spent on searching. However, if incorrect data had been fed it is likely that the output we receive will undoubtedly be questionable. Therefore, while we cannot presume ChatGPT to be entire factualy what it is giving cannot be completely disregarded as well. It provides the sources and also encourages us to verify from the original websites, annual reports etc. Also, depending on how the question is asked the answers are likely to vary as well. But it provides a good foundation for investigation.

Therefore, the GoSL is dutybound to investigate as the Speaker himself as agreed to do, primarily because not only political parties, but Parliament, Central Bank, Judicial system, Ministries, Corporations – entire state entities ChatGPT claims to have received funding & collaborated in a variety of programs that constitute a violation of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty & territorial integrity as well as a threat to Article 9 of Sri Lanka’s Constitution as the very entities that fund the State are clamouring to change the Constitution with primary goal to remove Article 9 of Sri Lanka’s Constitution thus fulfilling the colonial goal that they have failed to do since 1505.

So the Trojan Horse has now after over 500 years of trying come inside the gates.

While our attention has always been on civil society, NGOs, think tanks ets being aligned & funded to destabilize Sri Lanka, the enemy has nicely crept into the State apparatus especially following the 2015 regime change.

Nevertheless, governments may come & go, officials can be changed or removed but the Nation must remain protecting & securing the civilizational history & heritage for it is that which has held the Nation together & protected all. Neither of the worlds 2 powerful faiths have moral standing to dictate given that all of the world’s wars involve them while the faith that heralds our nearest neighbor is also involved in unforgiveable destruction & vandalism of Buddhist heritage sites in the North & East.

Going through the list / the amounts disbursed / the programs that are being rolled out doesn’t take an idiot to connect the dots & picture what the ultimate goal is.

This should be a concern not only to the Govt, but the Opposition and every Nation loving citizen.

Pressure must be exerted to launch an immediate investigation on the State entites, MPs, Ministries etc receiving USAID funding while the Constitutional Committee must remove all MPs including PM who have either worked for US agencies or received funds from them. This is a violation of the Constitution & a major conflict of interest knowing that these international agencies are pushing to change the constitution and have been attempting to do so for many years.

Shenali D Waduge

උපුටා ගැන්ම ලංකා සී නිව්ස්

රජය විසින් යෝජනා කර තිබෙන නව අපරාධ නඩු අධ්‍යක්ෂ ධුරය (රජයේ අභිචෝදක තනතුර) නීතිය දේශපාලනයට යටකිරීමක් බව හිටපු අගවිනිසුරු සරත් එන් සිල්වා මහතා පැවසීය.

මෙවැනි තනතුරක් 1970 – 1977 ආණ්ඩු කාලයේ ක්‍රියාත්මක විය. එකල නියෝජ්‍ය අපරාධ නඩු අධ්‍යක්ෂ පදවිය දැරූයේ තමා බැවින් මෙම කරුණ පිළිබඳව තමන් හොඳින්ම දන්නා බව පැවසූ සරත් එන් සිල්වා මහතා නීතිපතිවරයා සතු අපරාධ නඩු පිළිබඳ බලය විෂය භාර අමාත්‍යවරයා විසින් අපරාධ නඩු අධ්‍යක්ෂ ලෙස පත් කරනු ලබන වෙනත් බාහිර නීතිඥවරයකු යටතට පැවරීම බරපතළ වරදක් බව සඳහන් කළේය. මේ සඳහා ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථාවද සංශෝධනය කළ යුතුය. එදා මෙම පත්වීම උපයෝගී කරගෙන පැවති බණ්ඩාරනායක රජය දේශපාලනඥයන් අත්අඩංගුවට ගැනීමට නියෝග නිකුත් කළේය.

එකල විපක්ෂයේ සිටි කීර්තිමත් නීතිඥයකු වූ ලලිත් ඇතුළත්මුදලි මහතාද මෙම දඩයමේ ගොදුරක් බවට පත්විය. ඇතුළත්මුදලි මහතා අත්අඩංගුවට ගැනීමේ නියෝගය රැගෙන අපරාධ නඩු අධ්‍යක්ෂ මහේස්ත්‍රාත්ගේ පෞද්ගලික නිවසට ගොස් නියෝග ලබා ගැනීමට තැත් කිරීම එකල මහත් ආන්දෝලනයට ලක්වූ බව සඳහන් කළ යුතුය. එහෙත් ඉහළ අධිකරණ මගින් රජයේ අපරාධ නඩු අධ්‍යක්ෂවරයාගේ තීරණ ප්‍රතික්ෂේප කිරීමත් සමඟ අර්බුදයක් හටගත්තේය.

එනිසා වත්මන් ආණ්ඩුවද අතීතයෙන් පාඩම් උගත යුතුය. තමා දන්නා ආකාරයට නීතිපතිවරයා සතු බලතල වෙනත් පාර්ශ්වයකට පැවරීම බරපතළ අගතිදායක තීන්දුවකි. හිටපු නීතිපතිවරයකු සහ අගවිනිසුරුවරයකු ලෙස තමන් මෙම තීරණය සම්බන්ධයෙන් නැවත සලකා බලන ලෙස රජයෙන් ඉල්ලා සිටින බවද හෙතෙම සඳහන් කළේය.

මෙම නීතිය නිසා එදා බණ්ඩාරනායක රජය බලවත් අප්‍රසාදයට ලක්වූ අතර මහනුවර නීතිඥ සංගමය අපරාධ නඩු අධ්‍යක්ෂ පදවිය ස්ථාපිත කළ පනත ප්‍රසිද්ධියේ ගිනි තබා ඊට විරෝධය දැක්වූයේ යැයි ද හිටපු අගවිනිසුරුවරයා කීය.

– දේශය

By Maheesha Mudugamuwa and Michelle Perera Courtesy The Morning

• Fuel distributors stop new orders, warning of shortages tomorrow 
• Panic buying escalates as public fears fuel shortage
• CPC reassures public of sufficient fuel reserves despite protests
• Petroleum dealers suspend credit to Govt. institutions
• Govt. defends pricing formula, rejects calls for higher profits
• Fuel distribution as usual at LIOC, Sinopec, RM Parks stations: Min.

Long queues at fuel stations have been reported across the country since last Friday (28 February) night, as a growing dispute between fuel distributors and the Government intensifies. 

The situation is expected to worsen over the next few days, with fuel distributors warning of a complete fuel shortage by tomorrow (3) due to their ongoing protests.

The Petroleum Dealers’ Association has vowed to halt new fuel orders following the Government’s decision to abolish the 3% profit margin previously added to fuel prices. 

The protest has triggered panic buying, with many consumers rushing to fill up their tanks, fearing a shortage. Despite these actions, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) has attempted to reassure the public that there were sufficient fuel reserves in the country.

However, the association has made it clear that no new fuel orders will be placed and that post-payment fuel supplies to Government institutions, such as the Police and hospitals, will be suspended. 

The distributors argue that the new payment formula, which cuts into their profit margin, is unsustainable, especially given the high investment costs involved in running fuel stations.

Fuel distributors have confirmed that they will continue their stance of halting new orders, despite the Government’s agreement to meet with them on Tuesday (4). A spokesperson for the Petroleum Dealers’ Association expressed strong opposition to the Government’s decision to remove the 3% profit margin added to fuel prices.

In a media briefing, Petroleum Dealers’ Association Vice President Kusum Sandanayake explained that the existing fuel stocks at stations would only last until tomorrow (3) morning due to the suspension of new orders from Friday night.

The association stated that no new orders had been placed with the CPC for fuel distribution starting yesterday (1). It also announced that fuel ordering would cease from midnight on Friday (28 February), leading to a complete shortage of fuel at filling stations by tomorrow. 

The association’s Central Committee has scheduled a protest at the Presidential Secretariat later today (2).

The CPC’s decision to abolish the 3% discount given to distributors and implement a new payment formula is set to take effect tomorrow (3).

We will sell off all the fuel we have already purchased, but we will not be placing any new orders due to the unfair treatment we have faced,” the association said. 

It is becoming increasingly difficult for fuel station owners to continue operating under these conditions,” a representative added.

He further explained that private distributors faced significant costs, including maintenance expenses, which they needed to cover to keep their businesses afloat. Under the current system, a fuel station that handles 15 deliveries of petrol would only make around Rs. 62,300 in profit, which is simply unsustainable,” he stated.

Meanwhile, Fuel Station Owners’ Association (FSOA) President Kumar Rajapakshe expressed concerns to The Sunday Morning about the fairness of the recent price formula proposed by the CPC. 

He argued that the formula did not take into account the significant investments made in prime locations across the country, which were critical for their expected Return on Investment (ROI).

We have invested millions of rupees in these properties,” Rajapakshe said, noting that there were two types of fuel stations: those owned by the CPC and those that were privately owned. He emphasised that privately owned stations were the most affected by the new formula.

However, Rajapakshe pointed out that fuel stations operated by Lanka IOC (LIOC), RM Parks Ltd., and Sinopec had decided to maintain the 3% commission for distributors, ensuring no issues with fuel supply at those stations. 

We anticipate shortages and we have been asked to meet with them on Tuesday (4),” he added.

However, CPC Chairman D.J.A.S. De S. Rajakaruna clarified that the Government’s decision to revise profit margins was based on actual costs, not on sales prices. He further explained that the ongoing issue had been sparked by one group of distributors who had publicly announced their refusal to purchase fuel, which he said misrepresented the situation.

The situation is different from what was portrayed,” Rajakaruna said, noting that the CPC had 1,696 orders, LIOC 471, Sinopec 391, and RM Parks 366, totalling 2,924 fuel orders. He assured that distribution was ongoing as usual.

Rajakaruna also stressed that the new pricing formula was designed to protect distributors and prevent unfair profits at the expense of consumers. We consider distributors as part of the fuel network,” he added.

Minister of Labour and Deputy Minister of Economic Development Prof. Anil Jayantha Fernando echoed these reassurances in Parliament yesterday (1), stating that there was no fuel shortage in the country. He accused organised groups of attempting to create an artificial fuel crisis to exaggerate the situation.

The Ministry of Energy has backed the CPC’s decision to revise commission rates, rejecting calls for negotiations with the Petroleum Dealers’ Association. 

Ministry of Energy Secretary Prof. Udayanga Hemapala explained that the dealers’ demands for higher profits were unreasonable, as commissions should not fluctuate with fuel prices.

Previously, the dealer margin was around 2.5%, which was later increased to 3% when fuel prices were lower. Now that prices have doubled, continuing to calculate commissions as a percentage would result in excessive profits for dealers to the detriment of consumers,” he said.

Despite concerns over fuel shortages due to the Petroleum Dealers’ Association’s threat to halt new fuel orders, Hemapala reassured the public that there was no crisis. 

Fuel remains available in the country and any issues are related to distribution, not supply,” he explained. Even if private dealers refuse to place new orders, CPC-owned stations and Lanka IOC outlets will continue operations.

Hemapala stated that the situation primarily affected privately owned stations but noted that it was not a significant concern, as the situation could be managed without them.

In response to reports of long queues in Colombo, he attributed this to public panic rather than an actual shortage. He expressed confidence that the dealers would understand the rationale behind the Government’s decision and ultimately comply.

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced its Executive Board has ​completed the third review under the 48-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF) Arrangement, allowing the authorities to draw SDR 254 million (about US$334 million). 

This brings the total IMF financial support disbursed to SDR 1.02 billion (about US$1.34 billion).

IMF Deputy Managing Director Kenji Okamura issued a statement saying that reforms in Sri Lanka are bearing fruit and that the economic recovery has been remarkable. Inflation remains low, revenue collection is improving, and reserves continue to accumulate. 

Economic growth has averaged 4.3 percent since growth resumed in the third quarter of 2023. By the end of 2024, Sri Lanka’s real GDP is estimated to have recovered 40 percent of its loss incurred between 2018 and 2023. The recovery is expected to continue in 2025.

” As the economy is still vulnerable, it is critical to sustain the reform momentum to ensure macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability and promote long-term inclusive growth. There is no room for policy errors,” he said. 

Courtesy Hiru News

The Matara Magistrate’s Court has issued a foreign travel ban on former IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon, along with a warrant for his arrest issued earlier.

The court has also ordered the arrest of eight suspects, including Tennakoon, in connection with the shooting incident that occurred on December 31, 2023, in front of the W 15 Hotel in the Weligama-Pelana area of Matara.

The suspects have been ordered to be produced before the court as investigations continue.

උපුටා ගැන්ම දේශය පුවත්

ශ‍්‍රී ලංකාවේ හිටපු ජනාධිපති රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතාගේ ඉදිරි දර්ශනය තමා අගය කරන බව ඉන්දීය අගමැති නරේන්ද්‍ර මෝදි මහතා පවසයි.

ඉන්දියාවේ පැවත්වෙන NXT Conclave 2025″ සමුළුවට සහභාගි වීමට ඉන්දියාවට ගොස් සිටින රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා හමුවූ අවස්ථාවේ ඉන්දීය අගමැතිවරයා එහි ඡායාරූපයක් තම සමාජ ජාල ගිණුමේ පල කරමින් මේ බව සඳහන් කර තිබේ.

” මගේ මිත්‍ර රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා NXT සමුළුවේදී හමු වුණා. මම සැමවිටම අපගේ අන්තර්ක්‍රියා දෙස බලා සිටි අතර විවිධ ගැටළු සම්බන්ධයෙන් ඔහුගේ ඉදිරි දර්ශනය අගය කර ඇත්තෙමි”

ඒ අතර රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ යනු තනිකර හිඟන්නෙක් සහ හොරෙක් බවත් එක්සත් ජාතික පක්ෂය බිමටම වැටී පරාජය වී සිටිද්දී ගෝඨාභය රාජපක්ෂ මහතා විසින් ඇල්ලුව අඩවුව හේතුවෙන් පිනට ජනාධිපති වීමට රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතාට හැකියාව ලැබූ බව අධිකරණ ඇමැති හර්ශන නානායක්කාර මහතා සඳහන් කරයි.

රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා ජනාධිපති කාලයේ උපදේශකයන් තිස් නවයක් සියලු පහසුකම් දී නඩත්තු කර ඇති බවද ඔහු පාර්ලිමේන්තුව අමතමින් පැවසීය.

ඊට අදාළ වියදම් ලේඛනයක්ද ඔහු පාර්ලිමේන්තුවට ඉදිරිපත් කළේය.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=476&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fsinhala.adaderana.lk%2Fvideos%2F1026815702708152%2F&show_text=false&width=476&t=0

KAMALIKA PIERIS

ARMING SINHALA SETTLEMENTS, 1984

The Tamil response to the Maduru Oya settlement was an eye-opener for the small coterie of Colombo elite who had taken an interest in the matter. They found that settling Sinhalese in Eelam needed much more strategy than they thought.  Tamils who arrived here through settler colonialism were determined to prevent the return of the Sinhalese to the East. They intended to completely stamp out these Sinhala settlements by killing off the Sinhala settlers and the bhikkhus who supported them.

The first cold-blooded killing of Sinhala settlers was in 1984. LTTE attacked the Sinhala settlements at Kent and Dollar farms on 30 November 1984, and Kokkilai and Nayaru fishing villages on 1 December 1984. It was an orgy of killing. [1]

After the attacks, Sinhala farmers living north of Padaviya and the Sinhala fishermen settled along the Trincomalee-Mullaitivu coast and started fleeing to their original villages.  They left with their families and with whatever they could carry with them. [2]

Lawyer S.L.Gunasekara informed his friends in Colombo that Kent and Dollar farms have been attacked by the LTTE and settlers killed. Now Padaviya will fold up, he said. Padaviya is about 30 minutes drive from Kent and Dollar farms, one hour from Kokkilai.

A group led by S.L.Gunasekara   including Malinga Gunaratne and B.H. Hemapriya  went to Padaviya on 7^th December. They saw Sinhala villagers from Kokkilai and Nayaru piled into lorries and   leaving for refugee camps at Negombo, Duwa and Pitipana. Padaviya villagers were also getting ready to leave for refugee camps. This meant the Padaviya settlement would collapse

Ven. Halmillawe Ratanasara whose temple was at Parakramapura, told them that Padaviya residents were poor and had no resources.  We have no organization to support us, no finances. The villagers are living in the fear of death. they are no longer tending their crops.   The mood is of dejection and despair.

The Colombo visitors decided that Padaviya must not be allowed to fall. To do so, they must stop Padaviya residents from leaving. They announced that they will help only if the Padaviya residents continued to stay in Padaviya.

Despite the panic that had gripped Padaviya some farmers still remained with their families, said Malinga in his book. They had been given guns by Major Bohran of the army unit there. Gunasiri, who was from the Maduru Oya project, emerged as the leader. He said better to die fighting than run for the rest of our life.  

S.L. Gunasekera returned to Colombo, much concerned. He met Devinda Senanayake in Colombo on a private matter. Devinda Senanayake was the son of Robert Senanayake, brother of DS Senanayake. Gunasekera   told Devinda about the situation at Padaviya. Devinda went to Padaviya to see for himself.

Devinda and S.L. then drafted a report to Chief of Civil Defense, Brigadier Dennis Hapugalle. The report recommended two items.  The first was to arm and train the Sinhala villagers in the use of firearms.  The second was to station an army brigade in Weli Oya and to establish a string of army posts to guard the Sinhala villages. 

This report went to Security Council   and from there it came to the attention of Ravi Jayawardene who had returned to the country from Australia, where he was living. He contacted Devinda, whom he knew socially. They discussed how to stop the Sinhala retreat.

In the meantime, a handful of the Colombo elite were also concerned about the matter. There was Malkanthi (pseud) a Colombo socialite and her   husband Harendra (pseud). There was Sonia and Mithra   who hosted meetings at their houses. Others in the group included Malinga, Hemapriya and some members of the army. They had realized the need for discretion. we must fade away after the projects are completed, they said.

After the Maduru Oya fiasco, and the Yan Oya non-event, this group decided that now was not the time for new settlements. We must first consolidate what we have. The settlements needed armed protection. Their solution was to provide weapons and training to the settlers so that they could withstand an LTTE attack.

Malinga said in his book, with deep feeling that they had tried to inform Colombo politicians, about the threat to Padaviya. They knew about this because Karunatilleke and   Hemapriya had reported in 1983 to Mahaweli authorities that the LTTE were getting ready to attack Padaviya. they were training for this at Kent and Dollar farms. Padaviya settlers were going to be killed by the LTTE.

 Malinga and Co tried to ‘inject a sense of urgency’ to Colombo but failed miserably. Despite our pleadings, Padaviya remained unprepared, said Malinga.  Padaviya’s situation did not interest Colombo. It was as though Padaviya was not a part of the country.

Ravi Jayewardene’s interest in the matter was theretofore a tremendous boost to Malinga and his group.   They met with Ravi. In Ravi we found the support we needed, Malinga said. Ravi told them how to set about the matter. This must be a low key operation done in the strictest of secrecy, said Ravi.

he would select the trainers and supervise the training. They must be put through an assault course, given firing practice and brought up to combat level. This will take some time.  Ravi would also   obtain   the guns and ammunition needed by the settlers.  

Ravi found the future trainers. They came from the army. he trained them for the task. He had to personally supervise the operation to the minutest of detail. He received very little cooperation from the authorities.  His team was   ready by December 1984.

In the meantime the Colombo group met daily to work out the   logistics. Malinga was asked to identify the key Sinhala settlements.  Malinga told them that there were three critical areas, Padaviya, Trincomalee and Malwatu Oya,    in    that order. LTTE will strike at them all.  If we can hold these three settlements, LTTE will face a setback.  5000 guns around Trincomalee, 7000 round Padaviya and 5000 around Malwatu Oya plus training and they will look after themselves.

Further, If we   hold these three settlements, we can afford t lose small pockets in Mannar Mullaitivu and Jaffna, Malinga added.   The Sinhala concentrations in Jaffna and Mannar have already retreated.

The group discussed the possibility of getting monks in Yan Oya, Padaviya and Trincomalee to resettle people around the temples in those areas but did not carry out the idea. They focused on arming the settlements.

The group decided   to arm and train Padaviya settlers first.   Padaviya was of strategic significance. The settlement was only two miles from the sea. They went to Padaviya in first week of January 1985 taking Ravi Jayewardene, the team of trainers and the guns. Weapons went by road, people went by helicopter.

Dimbulagala Hamuduruwo was also brought there. Malinga had suggested this. Dimbulagala has the ability to muster support.  He is the only person who can take 50,000 people to any part of the country, said Malinga.  Malinga addressed the crowd.  Then Dimbulagala spoke. He chanted pirit for a few moments, tucked up his robes, gave a stirring speech and asked the settlers to hold on to Padaviya.

Halmillawa Ratanasara of Parakramapura together with the chief priest at Sinhapura had organized the volunteers for the training. Trainers had been given clear instruction on what to do. I won’t give the details, said Malinga in his book.  Later historians can find out how the defense system was mounted. But a fine defense system was developed at Padaviya. That is why Padaviya still stands today.

However, the Padaviya farmers had complained that they could not till the soil and earn their livelihood while at the same time watching out for the LTTE. After a full day’s farming it was not possible to function as security as well.

The Colombo group next decided to fortify Trincomalee and its hinterland. Morawewa was selected as the location for training, as there were Sinhala settlers there who were ready to defend Morawewa. Morawewa, Gomarankadawela and Tiriyaya leaders were contacted. They were told to get people form Yan Oya delta as well and come along.

The group went to Morawewa on third Saturday of January 1985 .They used the air force agriculture base camp at Morawewa for the training. Ravi supervised the training.  The trainers came from the STF. They were unable, however, said Malinga, to fortify south of Trincomalee, such as s Ali Oluwa and Muttur.

Then they went to Malwatu, where the settlements at Tantirimale and Villachchiya were under threat. They   selected Tantrimale for training.  Two aircrafts took the people and the guns.  

Looking back, Malinga notes that the whole operation was done silently, Padaviya, Trincomalee and Malwatu. No publicity, no fanfare.   Ravi was invisible. Malinga Gunaratne drew attention to the contribution of Ravi Jayawardene.

The fortification of   Padaviya, Trincomalee, and Tantirimale, using trained and equipped civilians was done by Ravi Jayewardene. The world must know this. There were no attacks on civilians there after this, concluded Malinga Gunaratne,

 Journalist T Sabaratnam, writing to Tamilnet provides another account of this period. He said that the  Devinda- S.L. report had reached Security Council. In one of the Security Council meetings, Brigadier Dennis Hapugalle submitted a report prepared by S. L. Gunasekera- and Devinda Senanayake. [3] KEEP

The  report advocated two measures.  The first was to arm and train the Sinhala villagers in the use of firearms.  The second was to station an army brigade in Weli Oya and to establish a string of army posts to guard the Sinhala villages. 

Those recommendations were accepted and Weli Oya Brigade Headquarters was established four kilometers from Kent Farm.  The former Chief of Staff of the Army, General Janaka Perera, was appointed the Commanding Officer.  Janakapura, a new town built in Weli Oya, was named after him, said Sabaratnam.

Arming of the Sinhala villagers began in mid- January 1985.  It was   announced in January 1985 that 50 to 100 Home Guards would be trained and deployed to guard Weli Oya. Ravi Jayewardene and the voluntary organization he founded, Sath Sevana, undertook that job.  Funds were provided by the government.  Sath Sevana started the arming operation from Padaviya and concluded with Gomarankadawela in the in the Trincomalee district.  By the end of April, all Sinhala villages in Weli Oya had been armed.

That policy resulted in the militarization of the Weli Oya settlements.All Sinhala border villages had been militarized by the middle of 1985.  The army became the enforcer of civil rule among the Sinhala villages in the region. But, arming of Sinhala border villages   only heightened Tamil militant activity.  It created a situation where an entire brigade of the army had to be deployed to protect the Sinhala settlers, concluded Sabaratnam.

In 2000, there was   another bout of support for the Sinhala settlers at Weli Oya, (former Manal aru) .This time it was for bunkers, not arms.

Weli Oya was attacked by the LTTE November 1999 using guns they had captured from the Army. These attacks on the Weli Oya villages resulted in a mass exodus to Padaviya. A group of Sinhala expatriates were at the Chaitiyagiriya temple on November 12, 1999. We were able to witness the confusion that resulted due to these attacks.

An alert Army Commando suddenly shouted for us to take cover when he heard the sound of an artillery shell pick up. We immediately ran for cover to an abandoned pond below ground level. that was the safest place in the absence of an underground bunker. Three artillery shells fell in the adjacent paddy field in quick succession, but no one was hurt.

It was on this day that we of the Thawalama Development Foundation decided to fund the construction of underground bunkers in Weli Oya, if and when the people decided to return to their homes from the refugee camps to which they were now rushing.

 With the readjustment of the forward defence line closer to the Weli Oya settlement, more than 60% to 70% of those who were displaced as a result of the November LTTE artillery attack, returned home, However, a similar exodus cannot be ruled out if another LTTE attack is staged unless underground bunkers are built .

We set up a project to construct underground bunkers for the protection of the Weli Oya Sinhala villagers and called for patriotic Sinhala organizations and citizens here and abroad to consider contributing t.

A project proposal was prepared by the 223 Brigade Commander. The total cost of the project was approximately Rs. 6.5 million for the construction of 622 underground bunkers in the settlement. The cost of a family underground bunker was estimated at Rs. 10,000 and nine larger underground bunkers were to be built for the five schools. Each of these bunkers was estimated to cost Rs. 30,000.

The Thawalama Development Foundation based in Colombo  could not implement such a large project single-handed. We therefore requested that an organization named the Weli Oya Development Foundation be established in the project area to assist us in this Endeavour with Ven.  Kuda Halmillewa Ratnasara Nayake thero of the Chaitiyagiriya temple as its president. This organization is presently successfully implementing the project at grassroots level in Weli Oya with the finances we provide.

Visiting Weli Oya on August 23, 2000 to see the progress achieved, we saw that at Janakapura, construction work on 15 family bunkers had been completed with the funds so far provided.  Funds for a further 30 family bunkers at Janakapura have been promised by expatriates living in the Middle East. 

At Athawatunuwewa construction work on 18 family bunkers had been completed with the funds sent in by the Sri Lanka Association North West UK. Two larger bunkers were under construction at the Athawatunuwewa village school.

 We have already received the necessary funds to construct the nine bunkers necessary for the five schools from the Buddhist Village Trust Sri Lanka based in the UK. This same trust also funded the construction of 17 family bunkers at Kalyanapura 1. The construction work on  family bunkers at this village too had been completed.

It was at Kalyanapura that we were made to realize the tremendous value of our timely action. Villagers pointed out to us several craters near their houses where artillery shells had fallen on August 18, at around 4.30 in the evening. They told us that on hearing the sound of the artillery shell pick up, all the villagers had rushed into the newly constructed family bunkers carrying their children with them.

They had hardly reached safety when the first shell exploded in the compound of Herath Banda. 25 shells followed before the bombarding ceased. No villagers were hurt thanks to the bunkers. The destructive power of the artillery shells was clearly evident to us from the banana trees that had been ripped to shreds and the deep gashes the shrapnel had cut on the barks of hardwood trees. Had it not been for the bunkers, that shell attack would have taken the lives of many of us, villagers said.

While we live in the unaffected areas of the country sleep soundly in comfortable bedrooms the families of Weli Oya spend their nights cramped up bunkers for the sake of survival concluded Thawalama Development Foundation,  in 2000. [4](Continued)

[1]  Malinga Gunaratne. For a sovereign state p 219?

[2] https://sangam.org/pirapaharan-vol-2-chap-43-the-massacres/ sabaratnam

[3] https://sangam.org/pirapaharan-2-chapter-23-manal-aru-becomes-weli-oya/

[4] https://www.sundaytimes.lk/000924/plus5.html

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Cao Fei (China), My Future Is Not a Dream 05, 2006. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. In his first month back in the White House, US President Donald Trump indicated his interest in annexing Greenland and brokering a peace deal for Ukraine that would include access to Ukrainian minerals and metals. It is important to note that Greenland has already been a point of contention around its vast holdings of rare earth minerals with such remarkable names as dysprosium, neodymium, scandium, and yttrium (there are seventeen rare earth minerals that are central to any advanced technology). Given that Greenland is part of Denmark, it is therefore beholden to European Union (EU) rules. In 2011, the EU published a list of critical raw materials, which included these rare earth minerals. Then, in 2023, the EU passed the Critical Raw Materials Act, which urged domestic production of these critical minerals and metals and their import into the continent. Ukraine, meanwhile, has an enormous trove of rare earth metals (from apatite to zirconium) as well as reserves of lithium and titanium. Trump demanded at least $500 billion of these reserves from Ukraine as payment for the US’s support in the war. ‘I want to have security of rare earth’, Trump told reporters in early February, sounding like a character from the Lord of the Rings. Currently, both the United States and Europe import almost all of these crucial rare earth metals from China. In late December 2024, in retaliation for the US tightening sanctions and tariffs on China’s technology sector, the Chinese government banned the export of antimony, gallium, and germanium as well as superhard materials (matter with a hardness greater than 40 gigapascals or GPa) to the United States. Under former President Joe Biden, the US had tried to derail China’s developments in artificial intelligence and chipmaking equipment by restricting the export of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to China. China’s ability to squeeze the supply chain has created a crisis in the West, which is precisely why Trump made his remarks about Greenland and Ukraine’s rare earth cache. Liu Xiaodong (China), Diary of an Empty City No. 2, 2015. It makes total sense from the US national security position to seek a ceasefire in Ukraine. The US gains nothing from this war, which has become a matter of prestige for Europe’s elites. If Trump can restart relations with Russia, he could use that to leverage rights over minerals and metals in Ukraine as well as to demand control over Greenland’s resources (rather than outright annexation). But more than anything, if the United States is able to revive relations with Russia, it will seek to weaken the country’s alliance with China. This is the ‘Reverse Kissinger’ strategy: under US President Richard Nixon, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger pursued an approach in the late 1960s to befriend China in order to isolate the Soviet Union, while Trump’s Reverse Kissinger approach seeks to isolate China by rupturing its links to Russia. On 4 February 2022, China and Russia signed a ‘no limits’ friendship agreement; twenty days later, Russian troops invaded Ukraine, and despite misgivings about this development, China supported the Russians throughout the war. It is, therefore, unlikely that Russia will accede to a Reverse Kissinger strategy, although there are sections of the Russian elite that are eager for a rapprochement with the West. The United States loses nothing if it enforces a ceasefire in Ukraine. Russia is not a major threat to US control over the world economy. It is merely a commodity exporter, namely of oil, natural gas, and other minerals and metals. The US knows that Russia will not attack it with its nuclear arsenal because that would be suicidal, and the US knows that Russia merely would like a security guarantee that its cities not be threatened by intermediate nuclear weapons held in neighbouring states. China, however, is seen by the United States as a serious existential threat. In the weeks since Trump began to announce his tariffs and potential annexations, a small Chinese company unveiled an open-source machine learning platform called DeepSeek that significantly outperforms US-based ChatGPT in a number of respects, including technical and mathematical tasks. Concurrently, during the impending ban of the social media platform TikTok, US users abandoned it not for a Western replacement but for China’s Xiaohongshu (or Red Note). Finally, China’s nuclear fusion device Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), Physics World wrote, ‘produced a steady-state high-confinement plasma for 1,066 seconds, breaking EAST’s previous 2023 record of 403 seconds’. This last development is an advance for the potential of a fusion power plant, a promise of almost limitless clean energy without significant radioactive waste. Yu Hong (China), A Man Playing the Hula Hoop, 1992. These advances are not accidental but a consequence of long-term planning by the Chinese government, led by the Communist Party. Since the 1978 reform era, China has been cautious about allowing foreign capital and industry into the country without benefit for the Chinese economy. That benefit came in the way of technology and science transfer in exchange for market access, a deal that the companies of the Global North – eager for a high-quality workforce and low wages – accepted. The Chinese government funded its higher education systems, provided incentives to private innovation, and used the surplus from exports to build infrastructure. The planned advances enabled China’s industrial sector to improve its productive forces and not rely merely on labour-intensive production or production using old technologies. By the time President Xi Jinping used the term ‘new quality productive forces’ during a visit to Heilongjiang Province in September 2023, this idea had manifested itself in the new factories across China (namely ‘dark’, or fully automated, factories). The following March 2024, at the Two Sessions meeting, the phrase ‘new quality productive forces’ entered the government work report. The Third Plenum in July 2024 deepened the concept by focusing on the promotion of ‘revolutionary technological breakthroughs, innovative allocation of productive forces, and in-depth industrial transformation and upgrading of industries’. Fang Lijun (China), Series 2 No. 10, 1992–1993. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, established by the Australian government in 2001 and partly funded by the Australian military, has developed a Critical Technology Tracker that keeps close records of sixty-four critical technologies. Their latest report in August 2024 provides a twenty-one-year assessment of which countries lead in the development of critical technologies. Between 2003 and 2007, the United States led in sixty of sixty-four technologies, while China led in only three of them. Between 2019 and 2023, however, the US led in only seven of the sixty-four technologies, whereas China led in fifty-seven of the sixty-four. China leads in such diverse areas as advanced integrated circuit design and fabrication (semiconductor chipmaking), gravitational sensors, high-performance computing, quantum sensors, and space launch technology. The United States leads in atomic clocks, genetic engineering, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy, quantum computing, small satellites, and vaccines and medical countermeasures. The report notes that ‘China’s enormous investments and decades of strategic planning are now paying off’. The commitment to innovation has spread across Chinese society. In the Lingang New Area in Shanghai, the local government has articulated policies for an industrial area with high-level computing power to accelerate industrial innovation through the new quality productive forces that have been established. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has announced deep cuts to science funding in the United States. A Chatham House essay appeared at the end of January with the urgent title ‘The World Should Take the Prospect of Chinese Tech Dominance Seriously, and Start Preparing Now’. Interesting that the headline did not directly focus on the United States but on ‘the world’ because the writer worried that ‘in the most extreme scenario, China could eclipse the US rapidly’. Liu Wei (China), Revolutionary Family, 1992. In 1891, the late Qing poet and diplomat Huang Zunxian (1848–1905) took the elevator to the viewing gallery of the Eiffel Tower (opened only two years earlier). Huang wrote a poem, ‘On Climbing the Eiffel Tower’ (登巴黎铁塔), about the extraordinary views he enjoyed from there, looking down at the ‘million acres of the world’s most fertile lands’. Though the technology that enabled him to enjoy this view impressed him, he was less captivated by what was on the ground: All of Europe is an ancient battlefield; Its people love war and don’t compromise lightly. Today six great emperors divide the continent, Each boasting that he’s the strongest leader of the world. These fellows resemble the proverbial kings in a snail shell. Who wasted their time chalking up victories and defeats. Today, not much has changed but the vocabulary of the battlefield: tariffs, unilateral coercive measures, intermediate nuclear missiles, and the iron dome. During the pandemic, the watchword in US allies like India was ‘collaboration, not confrontation’. It would be so much better if the United States decided to collaborate with China for the well-being of the planet rather than trying to force the country to reverse its development. Warmly, Vijay

උපුටා ගැන්ම ලංකා සී නිව්ස්

ජනාධිපති අනුර දිසානායක මහතා මෑතකදී සිදු කළ විදේශ සංචාරයන් සඳහා වැය වූයේ රුපියල් ලක්ෂ දහඅටක් පමණක් යැයි පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේදී අගමැතිනි හරිනි අමුරසූරිය කළ ප්‍රකාශයට පාර්ලිමේන්තු මන්ත්‍රී දිලිත් ජයවීර මහතා අභියෝග කරයි.

ඔහු පෙන්වා දෙන්නේ එම ගමන් එම මුදලින් රටවල් තුනකට සංචාරය කලේ යයි විශ්වාස කල නොහැකි බවයි.

‘ජනාධිපතිතුමා විදේශ සංචාර වියදම් අඩු කර ඇතැයි අගමැතිතුමිය කියනවා. ඔහු පා පුවරුවේ ගියත් මෙතරම් අඩු මුදලකින් රටවල් තුනකට ගියේ කොහොමද කියලා මම දන්නේ නැහැ’

වියදම් අඩු කිරීමෙන් පමණක් ලාභ උපයාගත නොහැකි බවද පැවසූ මන්ත්‍රීවරයා ආදායම් උත්පාදනය කෙරෙහි අවධානය යොමු කළ යුතු බවද කියා සිටියේය.

අයවැය හිගය පියවන්නේ කෙසේද, මෙරට ණය ආපසු ගෙවන්නේ කෙසේද යයි විමසූ මන්ත්‍රීවරයා අප අපවම රවටා නොගත යුතු බවද පාර්ලිමේන්තුව අමතමින් පැවසුවේය.

2010- 2014 දක්වා වසර හතරක කාලයේදී විදේශ සංචාර සඳහා හිටපු ජනාධිපති මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ මහතා රුපියල් කෝටි තුන්සිය පනස් හතකට වැඩි මුදලක් වැය කර ඇතැයි අගමැතිනී ආචාර්ය හරිනි අමරසූරිය මෙනවිය පාර්ලිමේන්තුවේදී අද පැවසුවාය.

හිටපු ජනාධිපති මෛත්‍රිපාල සිරිසේන මහතා 2015-2019 අතර කාලයේදී විදේශ සංචාර වෙනුවෙන් රුපියල් තිස් අට කෝටියකට වැඩි මුදලක් වැය කර ඇති බවත් හිටපු ජනාධිපති ගෝඨාභය රාජපක්ෂ මහතා 2020-2022 කාලයේදී රුපියල් කෝටි දොළහකට වැඩි මුදලක් වැය කර ඇති බවත් ඇය ප්‍රකාශ කළාය.

හිටපු ජනාධිපති රනිල් වික්‍රමසිංහ මහතා 2023-2024 කාලයේදී රුපියල් කෝටි පනස් තුනකට වැඩි මුදලක් වැය කර ඇති බව පැවසු අගමැතිවරිය අනුර කුමාර දිසානායක ජනාධිපතිවරයා 2024 සැප්තැම්බර් සිට 2025 පෙබරවාරි දක්වා ගිය විදේශ සංචාර වෙනුවෙන් වැය කර ඇත්තේ රැපියල් ලක්ෂ 18ක මුදලක් පමණක් බවද කීවාය.

Courtesy The Daily Mirror

Colombo, Feb 27 (Daily Mirror) – The Singaporean authorities have cited inability to extradite former Central Bank Governor Arjun Mahendran to Sri Lanka in terms of the legal system of that country, posing a fresh challenge for the government in its attempt to investigate the bond scam which caused a loss of Rs.10 billion in 2015, Daily Mirror learns.

The Sri Lankan Attorney Generals Department sought the extradition of Mr. Mahendran who is implicated in the bond fraud that took place under the Yahapalana government. Mr. Mahendran, a Singaporean of Sri Lankan origin, was appointed Central Bank Governor at that time.

Last year, the Colombo Magistrate’s Court noticed him to appear before the court on February 25, 2025 over a case filed by the Bribery Commission.

The Colombo Permanent Trial-at-Bar bench has already issued a warrant through Interpol for the arrest of former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran in connection with the Central Bank bond scam

The case has been filed over the alleged misappropriation of bonds causing a loss of over Rs. 10 billion to the government of Sri Lanka in 2015.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in the run up to the presidential elections last year, vowed to bring him back to Sri Lanka. He even said it would be a priority of his government. After the presidential election, then Cabinet spokesman Foreign Affairs Minister Vijitha Herath announced that the Public Security Ministry had commenced legal investigations into the bond fraud, taking into account the findings of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry and the Parliamentary Select Committee.

The Central Bank bond scam, which occurred on February 27, 2015. The scam involved the issuance of government bonds by the Central Bank under the leadership of Mr. Mahendran as the governor.

Perpetual Treasuries Limited, a primary dealer in the bond market and owned by Mahendran’s son-in-law Arjun Aloysius, was a major beneficiary of the bond issuance.

A top source said that the legal authorities of Singapore had informed their Sri Lankan counterpart that Mr. Mahendran could not be extradited according to the law of that country.

The Commonwealth Schemes provide for extradition of fugitive criminals between Sri Lanka and Singapore as commonwealth countries.