Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, peace be on him, Promised Messiah and Imam-al-Mahdi and Holy Founder of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Islam, in 1905, he warned the world in the following words:
Remember, God has informed me of many earthquakes. Rest assured, therefore, that as earthquakes have shaken America and Europe, so will they shake Asia. Some of them will resemble the Day of Doom. So many people shall die that rivulets of blood shall flow. Even the bird and the beasts will not be immune against this death. A havoc shall sweep the surface of the earth which shall be the greatest since the birth of man. Habitations shall be demolished as if no one had ever lived in them. This will be accompanied by many other terrible calamities which the earth and the heavens will send forth, till their extraordinary nature will become evident to every reasonable man. All the literature of science and philosophy shall fail to show their like. Then mankind shall be sorely distressed and wonder what is going to happen. Many shall escape and many perish. The days are near, in fact, I can see them close at hand, when the world shall witness a terrible sight; not only earthquakes, but also many fearsome calamities shall overtake man, some from the skies, and some from the earth. This will happen because mankind has stopped worshipping their true God and have become lost in their affairs of the world with all their heart and their effort and their intent. If I had not come these afflictions would perhaps have been delayed a little. But with my coming the secret purposes of an affronted God which were hidden so far, became manifest.
Says God: ‘We never punish until We send a Messenger’.
Those who repent, shall find security and those who fear before calamity overtakes them shall be shown mercy. Do you think you will be immune to these calamities?
Or can you save yourselves through artifice or design? Indeed not. That day all human schemes shall fail. Think not that earthquakes visited America and other continents but that your own country shall remain secure. Indeed, you may experience a severe hardship.
O Europe, You are not safe, and O Asia, you are not immune. I see Cities fall, and settlements laid waste. The One and the Only God kept silent for long. Heinous deeds were done before His eyes. He said nothing. But now he shall reveal His face Majesty and Awe.
Let him who has ears hear that the time is not far. I have done my best to bring all under the protection of God, but it was destined that what was written should come to pass
Truly do I say that the turn of this land, too, is approaching fast. The time of Noah shall reappear before your eyes, and your own eyes will be witnesses to the calamity that overtook the cities of Lot. But God is slow in his Wrath. Repent that you may be shown mercy! He who does not fear Him is dead, not alive.” (Haqiqathul Wahi – pp: 256, 257).
Note: The time of Noah refers to the people who rejected Prophet Noah – and had become lost in the affairs of the world, punished by God with mighty floods. Similarly Prophet Lot – the people who rejected him and extremely had foul practice of sodomy – because of, they were punished by God through devastated earthquakes.
July 4 (Xinhua) – A program to gauge the resistance of buildings and new constructions against earth tremors is being conducted across Sri Lanka, the country’s Geological Survey and Mines Bureau (GSMB) said on Monday.
Several small tremors have been felt in the country in the past year, said senior geophysicist of the GSMB Mahinda Seneviratne on TV. Seneviratne said they are paying special attention to buildings in Colombo due to the high density of structures in the city.
He added that a 5.8-magnitude earthquake was reported in the seas off the southeast coast of Sri Lanka on Saturday, and the GSMB has received many inquiries about the safety of buildings, especially following Saturday’s tremor.
The tremor was located around 1,260 km from Colombo and took place in the deep seas, the GSMB official said, adding that residents of Colombo and Galle districts reported feeling the tremor.
As the summer travel peak approaches, Air China and other Chengdu-based airlines are increasing domestic and international flights to seize the market
According to Air China, its Southwest Branch, which is based in Chengdu, a hub city in Southwestern China, will launch, resume, and put extra flights from Chengdu to multiple international destinations this July to cope with the upcoming summer travel peak.
New and resumed international routes to foreign capitals
Among them, starting on July 2nd, Air China launched a new direct flight from Chengdu Tianfu International Airport (TFU) to the capital of the Philippines, Manila, operating three flights per week. The outbound flights will be on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, while the return flights will be on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
Yesterday, on July 3rd, Air China resumed the direct flight from Chengdu Tianfu Airport to the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, with three flights per week, operating on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Additionally, on July 19th, a new direct flight from Chengdu Tianfu Airport to the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, will commence with four flights per week, operating on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
During the initial period of these new routes, Air China launched some promotional activities. For example, the one-way economy class ticket from Chengdu Tianfu to Manila starts from 750 yuan ($104), and the round-trip fare starts from 1,090 yuan ($151).
After the operation of the routes mentioned above, Air China will have launched a total of 13 international destinations in Chengdu. These destinations include cities such as Frankfurt, London, Singapore, and Bangkok, expanding the route network to cover Asia and Europe.
An alarming number of cases reported of people dying or suffering severe visual impairment after routine eye surgeries. Some doctors say the cause is an anesthetic purchased by the ministry in India from companies on the blacklist of unreliable products. But the government in Colombo rejects the allegations.
Colombo (AsiaNews) – Alarm is growing in Sri Lanka over several cases of patient deaths, including a woman pregnant with twins, that have occurred in Sri Lankan hospitals, which may be linked to an uncertified anesthetic drug purchased on the black market from the Ministry of Health.
There are also many people who underwent routine surgeries-such as cataracts-at hospitals in Nuwara Eliya (in the country’s central province), Anuradhapura, and Polonnaruwa (in the north-central area) and lost their eyesight because of the corrupted drug. They are now awaiting compensation from the authorities.
Many experts and health system workers themselves consider this affair one of the biggest failures of the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA). White coats who found themselves operating with these products are of the opinion that they were purchased by the Ministry of Health on the black market from an Indian company.
Among them are surgeons Gayantha Meddegoda, Nilupuli Waidyaratna, and Dinesh Herath, who told AsiaNews that they had checked the labels of the pharmaceuticals: “Most of those imported in recent months were from some companies on the blacklist of unreliable and uncertified products. We reported this to senior officials in the Ministry of Health and NMRA, but instead of ensuring patient safety, they turned a blind eye to this problem.”
Sriyalatha Manampaeri (62) and Karunawathie Nissanka (49) from Teripehe and Hunnasgiriya in Central Province are some of the family members of the victims of these substandard drugs who have protested “this negligence of the health authorities.”
Similarly, the parents of Gunapala Rathnasiri (42), Miyuru Pathiraja (38) and Yasawathie Sedara (44) from Anuradhapura, who became blind overnight when they simply had to undergo cataract surgery in the hospital.
Coming from families in economic poverty, this situation makes it impossible to care for their relatives and go to work. “So now we will have to decide who will stay at home sacrificing their jobs to take care of our parents who have been disabled by the health service,” they explain.
In Colombo at a press conference, Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella dismissed the allegations, saying that “even when you buy 100,000 U.S. FDA-approved drugs, some may turn out to be defective.”
Similarly, when questioned in Parliament on the issue of the anesthetic drug imported from India linked to deaths and visual impairment, he simply recalled that “initial investigations revealed that the controversial drug was used on only five patients, the others are to be ascertained.”
Meanwhile, Mihiri Tillakaratne, a lawyer who is providing free legal assistance to relatives of the victims, is of the opinion that “people who trivialize the sanctity of human life and dismiss with contempt accidental or negligent hospital deaths are not worthy of being responsible for the nation’s health.”
It is crystal clear that the language is powerful engine of human intellect and creativity, allowing for ultimate combination of words to generate an endless number of new structures and ideas out of ‘old’ ones. It has the main role in the human brain. It directs how we specify visual attention, explain and memorise events, categorise objects, distinguish smells and musical tones, present mental mathematics, make financial judgments, experience and express emotions, allow communication, which leads to exchange information, build relationships and create art.
On the other hand, the brain is a complex organ that controls thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger and every process that regulates our body.
This three-pound organ is the seat of intelligence, interpreter of the senses, initiator of body movements and controller of behaviour. Lying in its bony shell and washed by protective fluid, the brain is the source of all the qualities that define our humanity. It is the crown jewel of the human body.
The brain is like a group of experts. All the parts of the brain work together, but each part has its own special responsibilities. The brain can be divided in to three basic units; the forebrain, the midbrain and the hindbrain.
The hindbrain includes the upper part of the spinal cord, the brain stem and a wrinkled ball of tissue called the cerebellum. The hindbrain controls the body’s vital functions such as respiration and heart rate.
The cerebellum coordinates movements and is involved in learned rote movement, when you play the violin or hit the cricket ball you are activating the cerebellum.
The uppermost part of the brainstem is the midbrain, which controls some reflex actions and is part of the circuit involved in the control of eye movements and other voluntary movements.
The forebrain is the largest and most highly developed part of the human brain. It consists primary of the cerebrum and the structures hidden beneath it.
When people see picture of the brain it is usually the cerebrum that they notice, the cerebrum sits at the topmost part of the brain and is the source of intellectual activities. It holds your memories, allows you to plan, enables you to imagine and think. It allows you to recognise friends, read books and play games.
The cerebrum is split into two halves by a deep fissure. Despite the split, the two cerebral hemispheres communicate with each other through a thick tract of nerve fibres that lie at the base of this fissure.
Although the two hemispheres seem to be mirror images of each other, they are different, for instance, the ability to form words seems to lie primarily in the left hemisphere, while the right hemisphere seems to control many abstract reasoning skills.
It is evident that the right cerebral hemisphere primarily controls the left side of the body and the left hemisphere controls the right side.
When one side of the brain is damaged, the opposite side of the body is affected for example a stroke in the right hemisphere of the brain can leave the left arm and leg paralysed.
It is a significant fact that the two hemispheres in our brain are connected by a thick bundle of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum. Those fibres, called the corpus callosum, ensure both sides of the brain can communicate and send signals to each other.
You may have even heard the term ‘GoldenBrain.’ Used to refer to people who used both side of their brain equally. This is very similar to how most people are either right handed or left handed and some people are even Ambidextrous!
However, if we use both sides of our brain, it will help improve learning and memory, the left side of the brain controls logical thinking and speech while the right side handles our imagination and spatial awareness, when we use either hand to write, we activate these two parts of the brain at once; this gives us an edge over those who only use one half.
It is high time to see the role of the brain in language processing. The Broca area is in the brain’s frontal lobe and is responsible for language processing.
Pierre Paul Broca provided the first anatomical proof of what part of the brain was responsible for what, Neuro, scientists say the Broca area can understand language through memories, meanings and emotions.
Broca’s area is associated with speech production and articulation. Our ability to articulate ideas, as well as to use words accurately, in spoken and written language, has been attributed to this crucial area.
Studying a language engages memorisation skills (learning new words and rules) as well as recalling the producing of new language in class activities. So it is no surprise that people who regularly use a second language have more powerful memories. Those are the benefits of the language on the brain.
Broca’s and Wernike’s areas are cortical areas specialised for production and comprehension of human language, respectively. Broca’s area is found in the left inferior frontal gyrus and Wernicke’s area is located in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus.
Wernicke’s area controls the ability to understand the meaning of words, Broca’s area in conjunction with the motor cortex, controls the ability to speak those words.
It Broca’s area is damaged there is a break down between one’s thought and one’s language abilities. Patients often feel that they know what they wish to say but are unable to translate their mental images and representations into words. Remembering earlier movements is also part of Broca’s area functions.
Damage in particular areas of the brain can lead to disrupted language because the means of processing language is damaged.
This phenomenon is commonly called language disorder. Written language and spoken language differ in many ways. Injury to language centres of the brain leads to a condition called aphasia, there are different levels of impairment and the term, dysphasia refers to partial loss of language.
If the brain spilts, the messages sent to the hemispheres cause different responses, for example objects place in the left hand (Right hemisphere) object can be used but not named. Object placed in the right hand (Left hemisphere) object can be named and described immediately.
Many patients with spilt brain syndrome retain intact memory and social skills. Split brain patients also maintain motor skills that where learned before the onset of their condition and require both sides of the body for example walking, swimming and biking.
On the other hand, using only one hemisphere to engage in a task leaves the other hemisphere free to engage in other functions, this provides evidence for the advantages of brain lateralisation and demonstrates how it can enhance brain efficiency in cognitive tasks.
Anyone who undergoes hemispherectomy will have some functional limitations, for example when half of the brain is damaged, disconnected or removed, it causes weakness on the opposite side of the body.
When the left cerebral hemisphere is removed, one will lose most, but not all of their linguistic competence to speak and process complex syntactic patterns and will retain some language comprehension ability.
When his right cerebral hemisphere is removed one will find it difficult to understand jokes and metaphors.
He or she cannot use loudness and intonation as cues to whether a speaker is angry, excited or merely joking. So the right hemisphere also has a role in normal language use.
Last but not least, the brain plasticity is very important. It is the ability of the brain to modify its connections or re-write itself without this ability. Any brain, not just the human brain, would be unable to develop from infancy through to adulthood or recover from brain injury. The child hemispherectomy patients are able to reacquire a linguistic system.
Albeit delayed, but in adults the right hemisphere cannot take over linguistic functions any more.
The memory capacity of a human brain was testified to have equal to 2.5 petabytes of memory or a million gigabytes so that the average adult human brain can accumulate the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes of memory.
The human brain can work 24 hours a day without rest and about six minutes after the heart stops the brain essentially dies.
(R. Madidaran is a Senior Lecturer of English, British Way English Academy)
In the wake of the elephant Muthu Raja who was badly abused while being kept at a Buddhist temple, several Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are attempting to publicize the notion that elephants should be removed from the perahera culture, Asgiriya Chapter Venerable Narampanawe Ananda Thera said.
He told the media that Muthu Raja was a well-tamed elephant.
This is a planned propaganda that NGOs always resort to during every perahera season, Thera said.
“Every nation in any country has its own culture. In the Sinhala Buddhist culture, we used to use elephants. In England, horses are used for their royal ceremonies as part of their own culture,” he said.
According to the reports issued by the Wildlife Department, a large number of elephants were killed during the human-elephant conflict in 2022. But none of the tamed elephants have died yet due to abuse.
While condemning the statement made by Venerable Pahiyangala Ananda Sagara Thera, the Asgiriya Chapter said that there is no vocational training or education that can be given for the care of elephants, and that always comes from practice.
Therefore, people should stand against those NGOs to protect our own perahera culture, the Thera added. (Chaturanga Pradeep Samarawickrama)
The Sri Lankan government’s proposal for treatment of domestic debt marks a significant step towards resolving uncertainties around the impact of the sovereign’s debt restructuring on the local banking sector, but complications may arise from a number of factors, says Fitch Ratings.
The proposal excludes banks’ holdings of Sri Lankan rupee-denominated treasury securities, which will alleviate some of the pressure on their already stressed capital positions from weakening loan quality and the rupee’s depreciation.
Fitch’s base case did not expect treasury bills held by banks to be subject to restructuring, but assumed banks’ treasury-bond holdings would be. Bank holdings of Sri Lanka Development Bonds (SLDBs), which are foreign-currency denominated but governed by local law, will be affected, as we had anticipated, and we still expect an impact on international sovereign bonds (ISBs) as well.
However, these together account for only about 5.5% of banks’ combined assets, a much smaller share than treasury securities (26.4% for Fitch-rated domestic banks). The proposal also includes a restructuring of foreign-currency bank loans to the government (less than 1% of combined assets for Fitch-rated banks), though without detailed plans.
The government has outlined three treatment options for SLDBs. We expect banks will generally opt for the choice involving conversion of such debt into local currency-denominated instruments; banks have so far opted to convert maturing SLDBs to rupee-denominated treasury bonds since the announcement of suspension of foreign debt servicing in April 2022.
Provisioning should help to moderate the hit to bank capital from the debt treatment. Fitch-rated Sri Lankan banks have already made provisions of 35% or higher for ISBs, with SLDBs being subject to lower provisioning due to the possibility of obtaining rupee-denominated treasuries.
Nonetheless, worsening impaired loans (end-May 2023: 13.3% of system loans, from 1Q22: 8.4%) in line with the economic stress associated with the sovereign default and the unwinding of forbearance provided during the Covid-19 pandemic are already exerting pressure on banks’ thin capital buffers.
We do not believe a restructuring of the sovereign’s local-currency obligations is likely to trigger a loss of depositor confidence in the banking system, based on the proposed plans. However, funding stress remains a negative sensitivity for bank ratings.
Fitch-rated Sri Lankan banks’ national ratings remain on Rating Watch Negative (RWN) to reflect the potential for the banks’ creditworthiness relative to other entities on the Sri Lankan national ratings scale to deteriorate. This reflects heightened near-term downside risks to credit profiles from capital and funding stress.
A downgrade of the sovereign’s ‘CC’ Long-Term Local-Currency Issuer Default Rating would not automatically drive a downgrade in Sri Lankan bank ratings. To resolve the RWN on these ratings, we will need to assess the impact to the banks’ capital once debt treatment terms are finalised, including the effects of any present value reductions from an exchange of bonds and those of any regulatory or accounting forbearance.
We may resolve and affirm the banks’ ratings if we think risks from funding and capital stresses have abated, at both the individual bank and the sector level, to the extent that we believe the banks’ ability to service obligations in local and foreign currency is not hindered and/or banks are able to continue as a going concern and avoid failure.
Although the government’s domestic debt treatment announcements go some way towards resolving uncertainties over Sri Lankan bank ratings, many risks remain. It is still unclear, for example, whether the government’s proposals have received support from the sovereign’s key external creditors. If not, the risk of further domestic debt restructuring could linger, resulting in further instability for the banking sector.
Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera has assured that the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) is on a path towards achieving financial stability.
Participating in a media briefing held at the Presidential Media Centre themed ‘Collective path to a stable country’, Wijesekera expressed confidence in the government’s program, led by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, to promote financial stability in both the Electricity Board and the Petroleum Corporation.
Meanwhile, addressing accusations from various parties regarding the electricity price revision, the Minister highlighted that in June’s price revision, the government provided a significant 55% relief in electricity prices to 3.5 million out of the total 6 million consumers.
Addressing the press conference the minister said;
In the past year, our country faced challenges such as fuel queues and power cuts. However, under the decisions made by the new government, significant progress has been achieved in eliminating fuel queues and ensuring continuous electricity supply.
The revision of electricity prices took place in January and June, benefiting around 6 million household consumers. A 55 per cent price reduction was implemented for approximately 3.5 million consumers using 30 to 60 units of electricity.
Additionally, concessions were provided to the industrial sector during the price revision. There are approximately 40,000 registered religious shrines, and about 15,000 of them consume less than 30 units of electricity.
The electricity board had been facing significant financial losses, with a total loss of Rs. 409 billion in the past.
However, last year’s loss was reduced to Rs. 167.2 billion. The government has successfully completed all payments to suppliers and has created a favourable environment for initiating new renewable electricity projects.
Additionally, steps have been taken to remove a Rs. 120 billion debt from the balance sheet of the Petroleum Corporation, resulting in the electricity board’s improved financial position.
With the strengthened financial position, the electricity board plans to resume maintenance work and provide new connections that were put on hold in the past three years.
Out of the 36,000 new connection applications received, 20,000 connections have already been completed, and efforts are underway to fulfil the remaining connections within the next two months.
Furthermore, the Petroleum Statutory Corporation has established contracts with two new agencies for a consistent supply of fuel since September last year.
These agencies are scheduled to commence fuel supply by the end of this month, and the first fuel shipment is expected to arrive in Sri Lanka at the same time. Around 150 fuel stations have been registered by these agencies so far, ensuring reliable fuel availability.
After the arrival of their ship in Sri Lanka, fuel distribution was initially carried out under the name of Ceypetco.
However, future distribution will be conducted under their own company name. To address outstanding debts, including those owed to Indian and Iranian creditors as well as fuel suppliers, the Ministry of Finance has imposed a tax of Rs.50 per liter of fuel during distribution.
The Petroleum Corporation has successfully repaid all loans owed to the Bank of Ceylon and the People’s Bank, resulting in its strengthened financial position.
Despite this, the restructuring process of the Petroleum Corporation will continue as planned. The revised draft for the restructuring of the Electricity Board has been forwarded to legislators, and once received, it will be submitted to the Attorney General and subsequently presented to the Cabinet for recommendations.
There is a possibility of passing a new act in this regard. There is no pressure on the employees of the electricity board, and efforts are being made to verify the status of employees who have completed NVQ courses but are currently unemployed.
Legal actions are being taken against fuel stations that failed to maintain oil stocks during the fuel price revision. One such station, the Rajagiriya petrol station, has already been taken over by the government.
Complaints have been received regarding 120 fuel filling stations that did not comply with stock maintenance requirements during fuel price revisions, and future plans involve implementing appropriate legal measures.
The decision has been made not to hire new employees, as the current number of employees in the Ministry and its associated institutions is deemed sufficient.
The President, along with the Prime Minister and the government, has planned to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of government institutions based on collective decisions.
Investors who previously submitted tenders for renewable energy have not yet responded. It has been discovered that some of the organizations that were awarded tenders have sold them to other entities.
As a result, the tender call for 500 megawatts of renewable energy is expected to be cancelled in the upcoming cabinet meeting, and a fresh tender call will be issued.
Additionally, the necessary permissions have been granted to the ‘Adani’ company for the construction of a 500 MW renewable energy power plant. Their energy generation is projected to be integrated into the national grid by December of next year.
While the majority of employees from these institutions have expressed their desire for the restructuring of the Petroleum Corporation and the Electricity Board, some protests have emerged due to concerns regarding potential loss of trade union privileges.
However, granting salary increments and bonuses to loss-making organizations is not deemed acceptable. Such practices are not prevalent in any country worldwide. A 25% salary increase every three years for the 24,000 employees of the Electricity Board has been discontinued.
Salary increments are allocated exclusively to employees who are actively working and demonstrate productivity.
It is a common practice worldwide to provide salary increments selectively rather than uniformly across an organization. Similarly, bonuses distributed in April and December is contingent upon the company’s profitability and is awarded solely to employees who contribute effectively.
In collaboration with Indian loan assistance, plans are underway to equip government institutions and religious sites with solar panels. Each religious place will be provided with a five kilowatt solar panel, while government institutions will receive solar panels suitable for their roof sizes. The implementation of this project is scheduled to commence within the next two months.
Attention has also been directed towards exploring nuclear energy options, with plans to incorporate it into the 2023-2042 generation plan.
A comprehensive evaluation will determine the suitability and viability of nuclear energy for our country, and subsequent decisions will be made accordingly.
The Colombo Stock Exchange’s All-Share Price Index (ASPI) showed significant performance today (July 04), gaining 633.69 points at the end of trading today to close at 10,076 points.
As a percentage, this is an increase of 6.71 per cent.
Meanwhile, the S&P SL20 index also moved up by 279.17 points to close at 2,992.82 points at the end of trading today, marking an increase of 10.29 per cent.
The market generated a turnover of more than Rs. 7.41 billion today.
When Sri Lanka ended the ethnic war fourteen years ago, many analysts expected that the declining trend of additional military expenses, combined with the reducing of many public expenditures, improving productivity, would be positively accomplished the economic potential of the country and the external value of Sri Lanka rupee will increase. Addition to the above gains, the increasing of economic performance and the growth of merchandise exports and the development of export related services would be supported to an increase in external value of the Sri Lanka rupee. Despite such expected progress, rupee value has not been improved during the past fourteen years and it is a question for many. When critically evaluating the problem, the significant reason was foreign debt service that demands a large volume of foreign reserves to make debt service during the one and a half decade and political influence by corruption also contributed to the problem.
While giving major reasons for not improving rupee value, another vital factor to consider is whether the proceeds of foreign loans have actually been used for the purpose and did political leaders in the country have misused the proceeds of foreign loans. If foreign loans have been used for productive purposes, a positive impact on the economy would have incurred an increase in foreign exchange earnings. People don’t know how spent the earned foreign exchange, but responsible persons who were in the monetary authority have an accurate picture about it and the members of the authority were back scratchers of powerful politicians and the truth was camouflaged.
The outcomes generated from the economy are not encouraging and shown as an opposite direction than expectation. The external value of the Sri Lanka rupee during the past 10 years has in a declining trend with a slight improvement in certain situations, and some experts express that the external value of Sri Lanka rupee would be improved by the worldwide de-dollarization process. How far this idea would become practical could not exactly express, however, the size of economic transactions of the country might not provide supportive evidence for the positive outcome of exchange reserves. The trade between India and Sri Lanka for a reasonable volume has supported for a barter system and if this situation expands to transaction between China and Sri Lanka, the de-dollarization might support to improve Sri Lanka rupee. However, such changes would not be positive as long as an enormous volume of foreign reserves needs for debt service.
The official statistics published by the government and the annual report of the Central Bank evidence that the external value of the currency unit has been declined rather than an improvement during the past ten years. It is an actual result despite the expectation, and when many considered the foreign value of rupee, the debt servicing related exchange costs have not taken into consideration and the holding of debt service would not be a positive policy action for the external value of Sri Lanka rupee. Although the president of Sri Lanka states that the economy will recover in September, it is just estimation and if the president could make the way to write-off, the foreign debt it might positively support.
Import costs have been increased during the past 10 years, supporting the upward inflation and declining the foreign value of the currency unit. It was a significant reason for the decline in foreign value, despite expected improvement? The other factors were growing foreign debt and spending earned foreign exchange for foreign debt service than the cost of imports. The importing goods and services and gaining foreign loans had resulted in the corruption and misuse of exchange earnings.
Policymakers introduced various rules and regulation however, they were not working in the economy, and corruption that was supported by the political authority allow to misuse of foreign exchange earned. They were major contributing factors for not improving the external value as expected. Compared to many countries in the world, ruling political parties unreasonably being worked against the value determination of the currency unit and the market operation of the currency unit gained a declining trend.
The administration of foreign exchange earned by the country was par with the regulation issued by the Central Bank. Regulation was flexible to break them by politicians and many evidence recorded that earned exchange was misappropriated by politicians and their associates.
The practice of Sri Lanka regarding the foreign asset management has not been accustomed to generate benefits to the country despite the public talks. The other nature that negatively affected on the foreign value of rupee was increasing foreign debt, which increased to above 35% of GDP. Increasing foreign debt was caused the increase in payment (expenditure) of foreign exchange, it has been affecting the external value of the currency unit. The authority knew this situation and did not advise the politicians to stop misuse of foreign reserves. And the monetary authority made a blind eye and allowed politicians to decide what they want.
Many politicians and their henchmen used foreign exchanges earned by the country for personal using purposes, violating regulation and the monetary authority directed the blind eye to these corruptions.
However, now the authority attempts to explain that the external value of Sri Lanka rupee has been improved after the agreement with IMF since this year, and such analysts have not given detailed reasons for the sudden improvement of the external value, they are reluctant to openly talk about the influence of a de-dollarization campaign in the world for the improvement of rupee value. A considerable reason is changing the economic environment of the world after the COVID-19 downturn, resulting the new environment for international business. Influence of the de-dollarization is negligible to the external value of the Sri Lanka rupee because the quantum related to international transaction of Sri Lanka is diminutive and it is not comparable to oil transactions of Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Demand and supply of foreign exchange will be the fundamental factor for the foreign value of Sri Lanka’s rupee and when it considers the power of Sri Lanka’s economy, the possibility of influencing the Sri Lanka Rupee is negligible. However, the quantum of foreign exchange earned and carefully spending such earned exchange would be influenced the determination of external value.
The factors which are influencing the improvement of external value of Sri Lanka rupee are macroeconomic in nature, and the reviving the economy after the downturn of COVID-19 is the major reason, and if the Sri Lankan analysts consider the impact of the de-dollarization is misleading. Mathematically, the price elasticity as a factor of export demand and supply may be calculated and my opinion is it would be tiny that would the imperceptible portion. Many analysts in Sri Lanka are stuck with micro economic factors, because they are in a difficult situation to identify them or nothing in a position to count them. Therefore, many analyses are not realistic analysis.
Although the campaign of de-dollarization appeared like a dream by the supporters of the US Dollar at the beginning, now it shows de-dollarization will be a reality. Many countries have used other currencies, such as Indian rupees, Chinese currency for large bill settlement in international trade. There were various factors concerning with the campaign of de-dollarization and, for instance, Sri Lanka uses Indian rupees for the settlement of bills with India. It reduces the stress of Sri Lanka’s economy.
The currency authority in the world must understand that the US Dollar based settlement system procreated many problems to developing countries and making small credit supports is not give a successful solution to stick in US Dollar base payment system. The US authority should have understood this truth and should have proposed a more reasonable payment system like a multiple currency system on the globe. If such a system originated from the USA, the de-dollarization headache would not arise and more harmonise system works throughout the world.
The sudden improvement of the external value of the Sri Lanka rupee concerns with several factors and they are macroeconomic elements and all factors relate to this economic consequence cannot be openly discussed because macroeconomic factors like various plants in a jungle. Sometimes, they may not be all elements because complex of influence, and many factors are hidden and the value of factors influencing needs to be mathematically calculated. The best action is to conduct mathematical research that identifying factors and calculating the relationship between factors and the value of the improvement of the external value. A multi-correlation investigation would be an excellent method and many analysts have not done such detailed research and express views.
According to assumption, de-dollarization may have a strong relationship with the improvement of the external value of the Sri Lanka rupee, but it is not a truth acceptable and subject to scrutiny. Public speaking of many analysts who gain benefits from the Western funded research institutes are reluctant to talk about the subject and they attempt to show silence on the matter.
De-dollarization and many embargos for Russia might be influenced to improve the external value of currencies of developing countries. After the conference of BRICS could be known about this and financial analysts in Sri Lanka should not scare to express independent opinion.
Bitcoins are a type of digital currency, often referred to as cryptocurrency.
They exist only in digital form and are not physical coins or notes that you can hold.
Just like regular money, you can use bitcoins to buy goods and services, but they are mainly used for online transactions.
Bitcoins are created through a process called mining.
However, it’s not like traditional mining where you dig the ground.
In Bitcoin mining, powerful computers perform complex calculations to validate and record transactions on a public ledger called the blockchain.
Miners compete to solve these calculations, and the first one to solve it correctly gets rewarded with newly created bitcoins.
This is how bitcoins came into existence.
Unlike traditional currencies that governments or central banks control, bitcoins are decentralized.
This means that no single person or entity controls them. Instead, they are governed by a computer network that participates in the Bitcoin system.
This decentralized nature is one of the key features of bitcoins, as it makes them resistant to censorship and manipulation.
As for the future of bitcoins, it’s challenging to predict with certainty.
Some people believe that cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, have the potential to revolutionize the financial system and become widely accepted as a mainstream form of payment.
Others are more sceptical and see bitcoins as highly volatile and risky investments.
The value of bitcoins can fluctuate significantly in a short period, which makes them attractive to some investors but also risky.
Additionally, the regulatory environment around cryptocurrencies is still evolving in many countries, which can affect their future adoption and acceptance.
In summary, bitcoins are digital currencies created through a process called mining, and they are controlled by a decentralized network of computers.
Their future is uncertain, with some seeing them as a transformative technology while others consider them risky.
It’s important to remember that investing in bitcoins or any cryptocurrency carries risks, and it’s advisable to do thorough research and exercise caution before getting involved.
Jayatunge, R.M.(2008). Buddhism and Psychology. Godage International Publishers. Colombo.
Jayatunge, R.M. (2018). Essays On Psychology. Godage International Publishers. Colombo.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil (BGE), trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1989 [1886]).
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science (GS), trans. Josefine Nauckoff, ed. Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001 [1882]).
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian del Caro, ed. Adrian del Caro, Robert Pippen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Santaniello, W. (2007) Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Religion, Ars Disputandi, 7:1, 136-138, DOI: 10.1080/15665399.2007.10819958.
The country faces the challenge of restructuring its foreign and domestic debt ahead of an IMF deadline.
COLOMBO China will not join” the official creditors’ platform negotiating a common debt treatment plan with Sri Lanka, but Colombo is very confident” of Beijing’s bilateral support to the island’s economic recovery, Foreign Minister Ali Sabry said.
We are very hopeful of China’s cooperation. I was recently in China and met with the Foreign Minister, Finance Minister, and Chairman of the Exim Bank [Export-Import Bank of China]. They have said they will not come on board the common platform…but will support us bilaterally. We are very confident,” he told a media conference in Colombo on Monday.
In May this year, 17 countries that have extended loans to Sri Lanka formed an official creditor committee”, co-chaired by India, Japan, and France, to discuss Sri Lanka’s request for debt treatment, after last year’s debilitating financial crisis pushed the country to a sovereign default.
China has attended the committee’s meetings as an observer, but its decision to stay out of the official creditors’ committee complicates the exercise for Sri Lanka, especially with other creditors repeatedly underscoring creditor equitability. While private creditors holding International Sovereign Bonds (ISBs) have the largest share of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, China is the island’s biggest bilateral lender, followed by Japan, and India.
Issuing a statement following the first meeting of the creditors’ committee the Paris Club — an informal group of official, mostly western, creditor nations — highlighted President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s assurance of transparency and comparability of treatment for all external creditors, and that no side arrangements inconsistent with comparability of treatment” will be made with any creditor.
Reiterating Mr. Wickremesinghe’s promise, Minister Sabry said on Monday: All bilateral debt treatment will be comparable. That means no one will get anything better than the other. So, it is understood that ultimately, everybody must agree to the same kind of treatment,” he said, implying that regardless of whether China joins the creditors’ committee, or negotiates its debt treatment bilaterally with Sri Lanka, the terms will be the same.
China’s bilateral debt, the Minister said, is three-fold”, including loans from the Chinese government, the Exim bank of China and the China Development Bank. Although not part of the platform, China is taking part as an observer, that means they know exactly what is being discussed, what kind of relief is required,” he added.
Sri Lanka is racing against time to restructure both its foreign and domestic debt, ahead of the September deadline set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for its first review after the Fund extended a nearly $3 billion package to the debt-distressed island.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan parliament on Saturday approved the government’s plan to restructure its domestic debt, by recasting pension funds, a decision that has drawn a strong backlash from the political opposition and government critics.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe urged the Opposition and Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa to prioritize national interests over politics.
Addressing the “Amaraviru Abhiman 32” commemoration ceremony held in Hambantota today, the President urged them to fulfill their responsibilities to the people and help rebuild the country, President’s Media Division (PMD) said.
https://youtu.be/NlW3FV5qQLM
Speaking at the tribute ceremony,he emphasized the development of the agriculture and livestock sectors to not only fulfill domestic demands but also establish them as export-oriented industries.
The article under the title ‘Timely action must be taken to preserve Buddhism in Sri Lanka’ by a virtually anonymous writer, signing as R.W.W., published in the Sunday Island/June 11, 2023 provided the cue for the following. I sincerely thank him or her for expressing those factually unsupported ideas about the issue of preserving and protecting the Buddha Sasana because those views opened this opportunity for me to set the record straight at least belatedly. Had s/he given her or his name instead of just initials, her or his writing would have acquired a better claim to the readers’ attention, notwithstanding the fact that a writer on shaky ground could still hide their identity behind a false name, if they so wished.
I had a sneaking suspicion that the initials R.W.W. in bold were probably meant to be a sly reminder of my name (Rohana R. Wasala: R.R.W). A public proposal of mine to the Mahanayake Theras under the title ‘Please take charge of Poson celebrations……..’ published in The Island as a feature article (and simultaneously carried in Lankaweb with a slightly altered title) on May 31, 2023, had also touched on the subject of preserving and protecting the Buddha Sasana. I wanted to take responsibility for what I wrote. To leave no vagueness about my identity I even mentioned my email address (which The Island published, but Lankaweb didn’t). I got a faint notion that, by trying to have the reader mistake him or her for me, R.W.W. could be mocking my concerns and making fun of me as well as of my ideas. But of course, a really responsible writer with something serious to communicate will not indulge in such lame jokes. Please bear with me, R.W.W., if I am mistaken about this trivial matter.
It is a self-evident fact that the island nation’s Buddhist civilizational foundation and heritage are being deliberately and maliciously targeted by certain parties with vested interests in politics, trade and religion. They are holding it responsible for the current political and economic crises that Sri Lanka is facing, without any justification whatsoever. The Buddha Sasana in Sri Lanka has an unbroken recorded history of well over twenty-three centuries (when we take 306 BCE as the date that Mahinda Thera arrived in the island to officially establish Buddhism as its state religion under the royal patronage of King Devanampiya Tissa in compliance with the imperial edict of Emperor Ashoka of India).
R.W.W. ‘s piece goes off at a tangent about the subject hinted at in the foregoing paragraph. The writer starts the short article with a reference to a June 4th Sunday Island news report about government authorities having ‘taken timely action to safeguard the most venerated Bo tree in the world’. Before I say something that needs to be said about AFP correspondent Amal Jayasinghe’s narrative about the alleged ‘timely action’ taken by the authorities concerning the Sri Maha Bodhi appearing in the Sunday Island of June 4, 2023, let me point out some factual inaccuracies in R.W.W.’s piece of writing on June 11.
The historic Bo tree (ficus religiosa) is usually known and reverentially mentioned among Buddhists by the name Sri Maha Bodhi or Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi or by various equivalents. Bo is the Sinhala derivative from the Pali Bodhi, meaning (theTree of) Enlightenment, so called because it is sacred to Buddhists as the tree under which ascetic Siddhartha Gautama attained Buddhahood or Enlightenment at a spot known as Gaya in modern Bihar in India and hence famous as Buddhagaya or Bodh Gaya. (Incidentally, the name Bihar itself is a version of ‘Vihara’ {Sanskrit/Pali} meaning a Buddhist monastery.)
R.W.W. erroneously claims that the Sri Maha Bodhi (at Anuradhapura) is a ‘symbol of national sovereignty on the majority Buddhist island of 22 million people’. That assertion is a piece of deliberate misinformation. The custodianship of the Sacred Tooth Relic (at present enshrined in the Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy) came to be held to give legitimacy to a monarch’s rule over the island. That concept evolved after the Sacred Tooth Relic was brought to Anuradhapura from Kalinga in India in the 4th century CE during the reign of king Kithsiri Mewan (304-332 CE).
It is true, going by the Mahavamsa account, that Sangamitta Theri, Mahinda Thera’s sister, inaugurated the Bhikkhuni Sasana in the island. We are told that she did so when she brought a sapling from the right side of the original Bodhi tree at Gaya which sheltered Siddhartha Gautama during Enlightenment; she had it planted at Anuradhapura during king Devanampiya Tissa’s rule (247-207 BCE) some time after her brother’s arrival there for the formal introduction of Buddhism to the island. But the Bhikkhuni order completely disappeared due to the devastating impact, particularly, of the European invasions of the last five hundred years. Even the (male) Bhikkhu order hung by a thread in the form of a Samanera (novice monk) system until the Upasampada karma (higher ordination ritual/ceremony) was restored in the 18th century with assistance from Siam (Thailand). The Bhikkhuni order has not been definitively revived yet as far as I know (but I might be wrong about this).
R.W.W. regrets that at present the Bhikkhuni Sasana is not given the recognition it deserves. But is there for sure a duly established Bhikkhuni order in Sri Lanka to be recognized? Actually, I have no knowledge of a proper bhikkhuni order in Sri Lanka today, except an order of Dasa Sil Matas, ordained as ‘Mothers’ who have taken a vow of the ‘ten precepts’. I stand to be corrected if I am wrong here.
Be that as it may, it is a misrepresentation to assert that the ‘Buddha sasana comprises of Bhikku, Bhikkuni, upasaka and upasika’. (For the information of readers who are not familiar with these terms: the pairs of words Bhikkhu Bhikkhuni and Upasaka Upasika mean respectively male and female bhikkhus/monks, and male and female lay Buddhists, who together constitute the ‘sivvanak pirisa’ (Sinhala) or the ’fourfold mass of Buddhists’. Buddha Sasana means the whole Buddhist dispensation including Buddhism and its practical religious manifestation, ritualistic observances, places of worship both ancient and modern, Buddhist archaeological sites, lands and other properties donated by ancient kings and later rulers for the maintenance of those places and for the upkeep of the Sangha.The fourfold mass of Buddhists live under the umbrella of that dispensation.
R.W.W. is perplexed ‘why the government authorities are not issuing Bhikkuni Identity cards, while the Bhikkus even though some break the vinaya rules in public from time to time are allowed to continue with their Bhikku identity cards’. Is he raising an issue of gender bias in this respect on the part of government authorities? I don’t know whether such an issue can arise, since the existence of a Bhikkhuni order is in doubt. I was under the impression that Buddhist monks are given registration cards issued by their respective Nikaya hierarchies to officially identify them as such, while they also carry normal NICs (issued by the Department for Registration of Persons) where the bhikkhu identity information is also entered. I don’t know whether this is the real situation. If it is, there is nothing wrong with that. In any case, the issuance of identity cards to Bhikkhus does not depend on whether they faithfully observe vinaya rules. My problem is why the Ven. Mahanayakes are doing little or nothing to control monks who misbehave in public, often featured in live videos in the media, by tracking them to their monasteries after identifying them through their identity details obtained from the aforementioned government department with the help of the police. It is a well known fact that certain non-Buddhist mischief makers disguise themselves as Buddhist monks and engage in activities that are prejudicial to the reputation of the Sangha order. This happened during the recent Aragalaya as shown with video evidence. (I just read, at this moment of writing, in lanka C news/June 18, 2023, that a Buddhist monk, an alleged Viharadhipathi/chief incumbent of a Buddhist Vihara in the Pannala area, was arrested by the police with heroin in his possession. Isn’t it the responsibility of the Nayake monks to do something tangible about such cases? )
Let’s come back to R.W.W. ‘s apparently mocking çoncerns. It is absurd to argue that ‘If timely action is not taken to rectify the situation to protect the Bhikkuni Sasana, it will face the same fate as the Dhamma Chakraya …’. Why are you so worried about bhikkhunis, R.W.W., unless you wanted to make it a laughing matter? But let that pass. What are you suggesting has happened to the Dharma Chakra? You will find nothing to suggest that the Dharma Chakraya has suffered an untoward fate, except perhaps cases of attempted misinterpretation of its symbolic meaning through disinformation (which you are obviously doing yourself)?
There is no connection between how the Sri Lankan Bhikkhuni order gets along (if there is one) and how the Dharma Chakraya fares in the world as the foremost symbol of Buddhism. Nothing has happened to the Dharma Chakra. Don’t worry about that. You wrongly say that the Dharma Chakra represents the Noble Eightfold Path. Its meaning should not be confined to the Noble Eightfold Path, which is the last of the Four Noble Truths, Magga/the Path, the other three being Dukkha/Suffering, Samudaya/Cause of Suffering, and Nirodha/Cessation of Suffering. The Four Noble Truths form the vital essence of the Buddha’s teaching.
The Dharma Chakra symbol actually comes from the first ever sermon that the Buddha preached after attaining Enlightenment. Before the Buddha preached to anyone else, he visited his five former longtime colleagues and told them about what he had found. Going to see his friends, the first thing he did after enlightenment, to communicate the new knowledge he had acquired by himself, was a very moving gesture on the part of the Buddha as the humble unassuming human being he was throughout his ministry (though Buddhist literature tends to often depict him as superhuman and supramundane). This comes in Buddhist scriptures as the formalised ‘Dhamma Chakka Pavattana Sutta (Setting in Motion the Wheel of Dhamma/Truth discourse)’. Emperor Ashoka adopted the Dharma Chakra as a symbol of righteousness based on the Buddha’s teaching that he wanted to prevail in his vast empire (c. 250 BCE). It is found carved in the numerous Ashokan pillars, and also in the famous Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath near Benares in India, where the Buddha preached his first sermon. (However, it should not be forgotten that the word dharma originated in Hinduism, as in sanatana dharma or Eternal Truth. It is shared by other Dharmic religions like Jainism.)
The Indian national flag also has the same Dharma Chakra. At Independence, the Indian leaders who were designing the national flag first wanted to have in it as the emblem the Spinning Wheel of the leading agitator for freedom from the British, Mahatma Gandhi. But Dr B.R. Ambedkar (the chief drafter of the Constitution of the Republic of India), Jawaharlal Nehru (the main lieutenant of Mahatma Gandhi) who was to become the first prime minister of independent India), and others who had been inspired by the revival of Buddhism in the country of its origin proposed the Dharma Chakra instead. The Buddhist revival movement that inspired all of them was spearheaded by Anagarika Dharmapala of Sri Lanka/then Ceylon, with the support of the likes of poet, author, and journalist Sir Edwin Arnold and sympathetic White imperial civil functionaries. It was not for nothing that the Indian government issued a postage stamp in commemoration of Anagarika Dharmapala on October 30, 2014, the 150th anniversary of his birth.
It is due to crass ignorance that some people mistake the helm or the rudder of a ship or boat for the Dharma Chakra. It was hilarious when once a couple of years ago, some young Buddhist monks made a big issue out of a rudder wheel embossed on a shoe as a brand mark by a footwear manufacturer somewhere.
Before I wind up, let me say something about the first page news article written by AFP’s Amal Jayasinghe in Sunday Island/June 4, 2023 under the title: ‘Phoney claims swirl around Lanka’s holiest tree’. Jayasinghe explains what ‘timely action to safeguard the most venerated Bo tree in the world’ was taken by the authorities under the prompt direction of the president. After necessary investigations, they revealed that the Sri Maha Bodhi was not exposed to any harmful effects of 5G signal transmission in its environs (contrary to what some social media activists claimed) because, in the first place, there were no 5G signals being transmitted around the place, Jayasinghe explained.
According to Jayasighe, the ‘episode highlighted the speed with which fake news travels in Sri Lanka — but even more so, it illustrated the reverence in which the country holds the Sri Maha Bodhi.’ A lot of social media news vendors deal in fake news to support themselves financially. There are enough gullibles to patronise them. So, the first part of Jayasinghe’s statement is mostly true, except for the fact that the concerns previously raised by some professionals about such a danger to the Sri Maha Bodhi were perhaps genuine and had to be seriously investigated. The second part reflects the supercilious scepticism of a foreign correspondent who has no empathy with the local Buddhist culture. The deep veneration of the Sri Maha Bodhi in the Buddhist majority country seems to have struck Jayasinghe as a strange phenomenon, which shows Jayasinghe’s anti-Buddhist bias.
R.W.W. has borrowed his piece of misinformation about which Buddhist relic is associated with sovereign claims over Sri Lanka (which I clarified above) from Jayasinghe: ‘It (i.e. The Sri Maha Bodhi) is both an object of worship and a symbol of national sovereignty on the majority Buddhist island of 22 million people’.
Jayasinghe may be right about the numerous messages shared among FB and WhatsApp groups about a non-existent threat to this object of worship. But it must be admitted that these groups are not all fake news vendors. I remember some visiting Australian telecom engineers of Sri Lankan origin raising this issue in a YouTube video a couple of months ago. However, Jayasinghe quotes the chief monk who is the custodian of the Sacred Tree:
I am not a scientist, nor a botanist, so I raised the issue with the president in February,” monk Pallegama Hemarathana, 68, told AFP. He immediately appointed a panel of experts. … The government and the Buddhists will do whatever it takes to protect the Sri Maha Bodhi.”
Though Jayasinghe doesn’t mention it, there is a tendency on the part of politicians of all parties (in the government and the opposition) to abuse religious centres, sacred objects, and often the credulousness of gullible monks and devotees who readily believe in fictions, to promote their own schemes. Whether the monk’s words give a hint of this reality is worth a thought.
It is also very important to be alert to the constant onslaught of misinformation that has been directed against the country’s age-old Buddhist religious establishment for many years now. A popular Sinhala saying is that it is fruit laden trees that people throw stones at. But that is cold comfort for those who tend that tree.
The British administration settled the ‘Ceylon Tamil’ in Mullativu in the mid 19 century.”The 19th century saw the settlement of Tamils along the coastline in Mullativu, Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts” said historian D.G.B. de Silva.
As soon as they got into Mullaitivu the ‘Ceylon Tamil’ started to destroy the Buddhist heritage of Mullativu. JP Lewis Government agent for North, said in his Manual of Vanni ( 1895) There are several damaged ruins on the Kurundi hill and the tank bund. The damage seems to have been caused through willful defacement by the Tamil occupants than by the action of time.
Lewis continued, The Tamil residents built a temple in Kurundi, and they demolished the vihara and other buildings and removed nearly all the bricks and the stoneworks .Stones were removed from Kuruntunurmalai in 1858, I believe, to build the Mullivaikkal temple. The doorway of that temple is constructed of carved stones from Kuruntanurmalai.”
The Tamil Separatist Movement never thought that a young bhikkhu, Ven. Galgamuwe Santhabodhi would discover Kurundi and decided in 2018 to revitalize the monastery. In 2016, Santhabodhi went in search of Kurundi, after reading about it. There was no proper road to Kurundi. He wandered around and managed to find Kurundi. Santhabodhi is following in the footsteps of other dedicated monks who, single handedly, saved valuable temples, such as Tantirimale, during British rule.
Ven. Santhabodhi is a young, active bhikkhu who wishes to conserve not only Kurundi but other selected Buddhist structures in Mullativu as well. Ven Santhabodi has given many television and YouTube interviews to drum up interest in the viharas he is promoting in Mullativu. Hope what happened to Dimbulagala monk will not happen to Santhabodhi.
In one of his television interview, Santhabodhi also said, the public do not know the difficulties we bhikkhus undergo in these archaeological locations, ‘api vindina duka’. At Kurundi, there were no lights for one year, water was not readily available, mobile phones could not be recharged, but there were plenty of mosquitoes. He had one other person with him. There was no protection whatsoever. The nearest police station was Oddusuddan, 24 km away.
Excavation started, in 2018 with the ceremonial participation of the Minster for Buddha Susana and Director General of the Department of Archaeology. The Archaeology department had done very good work there.
One archaeology officer stated, I was working in the Archaeology department in Vavuniya .I did site inspection and recorded findings at Kurundi I was there when Tamil Seperatist Movement caused problems. The Archaeology department officers, worked with much dedication at Kurundi .their contribution must be appreciated.
Kurundi started to get support. Bauddhaloka Foundation and Sakyputra Organization promised funds and about 70 million was available as at 2022.Two security posts and soldiers from the 24th Battalion of the Sinha regiment were stationed. Channa Jayasumana saw the need for a definitive book on Kurundi. He appointed a team to prepare the manuscript, he will fund its publication.
Kirundi vihara is strategically placed, that is why the Tamil Separatist Movement opposes its conservation. It is on the East coast, though listed as Northern Province. It is the first of a long list of Mahayana temples running down the East coast, facing the Bay of Bengal. Below it comes Tiriyaya, Gokanna, Seruwila, Dighavapi and Rajagala.
Kurundi monastery is also the largest archaeological site found in the North. The monastery consisted of more than 400 acres. It had a large inscription on its premises, which contains the rules and regulations for monasteries. These two items indicate that Kurundi was the leading monastery in the area.
If Ven. Santhabodhi succeeds in developing Kurundi, Kurundi will once again become a sought after monastery and meditation centre. Santhabodhi has ambitions for Kurundi. Kurundi is not only the heritage of the Sri Lankan Buddhists but also of all the Buddhists of the world, said Santhabodhi. Kurundi should be listed and protected as a World Heritage Site.
The Kurundi project will be the start of a new Sinhala Buddhist penetration into Mullaitivu. This return of Buddhism to the north-east of Sri Lanka will be applauded by the Buddhist world, and the Tamil Separatist Movement will not be able to hold it back. There is now a large economically powerful Buddhist region in Asia which could be roped in for support.
The Sinhala Buddhist civilization is greatly respected for its long history, its ability to withstand 450 years of Christian rule, its preservation of doctrinal Theravada Buddhism and its assistance to the Buddhist countries of South and South east Asia . Sinhala Buddhism is recognized as Sri Lanka’s contribution to world civilization, together with Sinhala language and Sinhala literature.
Sinhala scholarship has also now received world recognition. UNESCO has recognized the Mahawamsa as the first of its kind in South Asia, initiating a mature historiographical tradition, and presenting Sri Lanka’s history in a chronological order from the 6th century BCE”.
Tamil Separatist Movement sees the arrival of any sort of Buddhism into the north as a threat to its shaky position. Kurundi is a good example of the strong opposition of Tamil politicians toward the Buddhist temples in the north and east.
Tamil Separatist Movement is using six different strategies to stop Kurundi. They plan to chase the Buddhists out of Kurundi by (1) threats and physical harassment (2) through the law courts (3) through intervention by the President of Sri Lanka. Tamil Separatist Movement also plans to (4) encircle each Buddhist temple by Tamil owned territory to prevent further expansion, to declare that (5) Kurundi was an ancient kovil, and also that (6) the Buddhist temples in the north were built by Tamil Buddhists. Sinhala Buddhists have no claim.
The Tamil Separatist Movement was opposing and harassing the Kurundi project from the start, said Ven Santhabodhi. As soon as we started in September 2018, they came and assaulted us, he said. There was a huge clash, with blows. We were alone. We had no protection at the time. In September 2021 about 100 persons came, hit us and uttered death threats. No work was done till Nov 23, 2022.
The Department of Archaeology did their work under continuous opposition, he said. Archaeology officials, sangha, and visitors to Kurundi were harassed on many occasions and work on the vihara halted. Visitors stopped coming. Earlier, lots of pilgrims came, now they are staying away, he said in 2022.
On one occasion, two Tamil MPs and two Tamil officers accosted two monks who were visiting. What a ‘sahasika darunu akalapayak’ they showed by raising hands against a monk, said the horrified Santhabodhi. I made a complaint to the police on the matter.
Buddhist activity was opposed. In 2023 when officials of the Archaeology Department attempted to place a Buddha statue in the land taken over for Kurundi, there was a protest campaign.
The strongest opposition was seen on June 14.2022, when relics were to be enshrined at Kurundi. This would have immediately made the vihara a place of worship. It had to be stopped somehow. Tamil Separatist Movement went into action.
Video footage shows a line of Tamil protestors, standing between the chaitiya and audience. Chairs, with white sheets, ready for the sangha were empty. They shouted that this land belonged to the Tamils, Kurundi was a kovil, not a vihara, and Buddhist conservation was illegal. Lastly, they asked, why this interest now? Why has the Archaeology Department started on this now?
Ven Santhabodhi said about 50 protestors came, trampled the decorations, destroyed the carpets ,pushed the monks away, scolded and surrounded the Chaitiya, so we could not get to it. Tamil MPs were present. The Tamil Separatist Movement filed a case on 16.6.22. The Chief Justice had intervened and stopped the order.
Sarath Weerasekera, who had been there at Kurundi, complained in Parliament. A recording is available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mnnRlGoLE4 He said he wished to speak of the violent threats made by the Tamil MPs.
Sarath Weerasekera said A week ago during the ceremony to deposit Sacred Relics at the Kurundashoka Chaitiya in Mullaitivu, two TNA-MPs had come there with a group of thugs and sabotaged the whole event. Two TNA MPs Selvarasa Gajendran and Vinoradha Linghum had disrupted the event and had not allowed them even to offer a flower. If it had been any other religion these two would have been killed the next day. The order was revoked, due to the efforts of the police and the sangha. The Department of Archaeology can now continue at Kurundi. We will continue our conservation work, he concluded.
The second tactic tried by the Tamil Separatist Movement regarding Kurundi, was to stop the Kurundi conservation by obtaining a court order. The same charges were filed again and again and work on Kurundi was stopped from time to time, said Santhabodhi. Buddhist lawyers and the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress (ACBC) took an interest in the matter.
In 2018, TNA obtained a temporary restraining order from the courts by saying that the conservation efforts may cause unrest in the area. This was revoked. TNA filed a case in Supreme Court on August 2021. This seems to have been settled in favor of the Department of Archaeology.
TNA filed a case on July 18.2022 in Magistrate Court. Mullaitivu magistrate R.Sarvanarajah ordered the removal of new constructions at Kurundi and no further construction work. The order was in Tamil. Santhabodhi and his team obtained a translation and found that The Magistrate had been told that this was a kovil and a stupa had been built on top.
To break a stupa, as ordered, is a serious thing. Also it was not possible for us to say what we dug up and what we added. We asked Chief Justice for instructions, said Santhabodhi. Mullativu Police also informed the Magistrate that issues may crop up, if the constructions were removed. On the orders of the Chief Justice, Magistrate Saravanarajah came to Kurundi, looked around and withdrew the order. The Archaeology Department could continue. Work resumed. (Continued)
‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’
e-Con e-News July 2023 Part 1
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‘The days of government funding are gone.
It really needs to be a private enterprise,
just as exploration was at the turn of the last century
where people with means make the exploration possible.’
– Stockton Rush (see ee Workers, OceanGate & How the Wealthy Kill)
Stockton Rush, now ‘former’ CEO of OceanGate, ‘maker’ of crewed submersibles to meditate on Titanic ruins, in his last moments perhaps wished to regulate himself? Greed – wellspring of recklessness – usually sinks them to the bottom of the sea. The trouble is, they wish to take us with them…
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• Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former owner of Yukos oil group, is another symbol of ‘freed’ enterprise. He was arrested, charged with fraud, tax evasion, criminal conspiracy, etc, in 2003. Russia’s rising President VV Putin then had Yukos reorganized under state control. Last week from his hideout in London, ‘in a publication sponsored by The Economist’, Khodorkovsky pronounced putative mutineer Yevgeny Prigozhin to be a ‘thug and war criminal’, but notwithstanding, ‘truly a revolutionary’. ‘Only an armed populace can topple this dictatorship’, Khodorkovsky said, appealing for England & NATO to militarily intervene ‘across the Russian border, all the way to Moscow on Abrams, Challenger & Leopard tanks!’ (see ee Economy, Political Power out of the Gun Barrel)
We recall Khodorkovsky’s dialectics – ‘criminal yet revolutionary’ – when reading the weekly column of the Sunday Times’ domesticated economist & shareholder, Nimal Sanderatne. He writes, the economy has stabilized, goods are available, however, there’s ‘discontent… owing to the high prices… decreased real income of people, higher unemployment, increased poverty, and malnutrition are serious concerns’. People can’t afford the essentials on display (see ee Economists, The economy in the first half of this year). The media declares the surgery successful, yet finds the patient gasping…
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‘On June 28, China’s ambassador Qi Zhenhong
visited Keppitipola, Uva, and paid tribute to the statue
of Keppitipola Disawe, a national hero of Sri Lanka,
who led the Great [1818] Rebellion against colonization & invasion
and sacrificed his life for its freedom & independence’
– Twitter, Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka
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In Sri Lanka, traders still determine national policy, prevent industrialization, and oppose regulation (like the OceanGate CEO). These oligarchs would also go orgiastic if NATO rolls, Khodorkovsky-style, beyond Colombo – eager suburb of London, and now Wall Street.
So why have our eager democrats not been able to mount an ‘aragalaya’ against these Kolombot Khodorkovskys who are openly sacrificing the state on the stock exchange, and would happily sink Sri Lanka to the ocean floor? (see ee Focus). Their anarchic and ultra-idealistic rhetoric recalls the salaried recipients of NATO’s printed Dollar largesse showered on other locales that have now descended into war. Yet those calling the Aragalaya an ‘imperialist plot’, have been labelled ‘wildly lunatic’!
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• ee recalls an ominous omen in 2019 when President Gotabhaya Rajapakse was elected by unprecedented landslide: ‘The business community accepts the choice of the people’ stated Chair & Managing Director of Imperial Teas Group & Chair of Colombo Tea Traders Association, Kantha Karunaratne. Hmmm. So they are not the people?
At that time, ee wondered, ‘So what happens when they choose not to accept the people’s verdict?’ (ee 23 November 2019 – The Merchant Oligarchy’s ‘Boundless Ingenuity’ at Derailing Independence). Now we know. ee also noted then: ‘The CBSL this week feebly took on Fitch for its cavalier ratings game, acting as guard dog of the financializers, salivating sour over the recent election. Their immediate defence was to point to the buoyant stock market immediately after GR’s election. But others point out the dangers of quoting a casino (the Colombo Stock Exchange), clearly fixed by a cabal of banks & conglomerates, measuring what is good or not good for the economy. Such indices are no indication of the health of the people…’ Indeed, more than any, these ‘Tea Traders’, with their Dollars parked in cooler climes (no, not Nuwara Eliya) certainly knew and know what lies in store…
If you are still curious about the lineages of present goings-on, join novelist of Jathika Chinthanaya – National Consciousness – Gunadasa Amarasekera, who with author of 9: the Hidden Tale, MP Wimal Weerawansa, will launch Galle Face Protest: Systems Change or Anarchy – Politics, Religion & Culture in a Time of Terror in Sri Lanka by Sena Thoradeniya on July 4, 3:30 pm. at the National Library Services Board – yes, on the edge of Independence Square.
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‘The Finance Minister & the Central Bank Governor
have misled the people for several months
until the fact is revealed in the Cabinet Paper at the last moment.
[They] told a complete lie several months ago
that they would guarantee that there will be no haircut on domestic debt…
The government has struck a deal with primary dealers.
Working people have no chance…’
– NPP MP Vijitha Herath (see ee Quotes)
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‘When it comes to implementing trade reforms,
it is not merely a matter of economic theory,
but of a communication strategy that needs to be in place.’
– England’s Ceylon Tobacco Co (CTC) Chair Suresh Shah,
Head of Govt State-owned Enterprises Restructuring Unit (SRU)
• Wonder how this week’s fake ‘threats’ against private banks trumpeted by media, syncs with CTC Shah’s communication strategy?: The private international sovereign bond (ISB) holders’ demand for ‘Domestic Debt Restructuring‘ (DDR) dominated much of the economic news. DDR is another trope of this ‘open communication’ that few understand. Economists, academics & their discontents however jumped in, much of their financial ballet dancing over our heads. The media of course did not highlight this DDR (or DDO) as a demand from ‘Wall Street’.
This DDR was supposedly threatening the private banks (many having ‘foreign links’, including with the World Bank & other imperialist ‘development’ banks!). The private banks whined that 18%(?) of their loans are not being repaid. The IMF & their local subsidiary, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, then announced they will let these banks off the hook and made a grab at the pension funds – Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Employees Trust Fund (ETF). So this is what ‘domestic restructure’ means in plain rupees. If the EPF does not submit, the Central Bank Governor warned he would hit them with a higher 30% income tax increase. The EPF, the biggest fund in the whole of South Asia, was set up after a struggle launched by the Communist Party of Sri Lanka in 1957.
In this ee Focus, Howard Nicholas (& Son) argue such moves portend worse repercussions. The Nicholases argue that the IMF, and their local traders in money & imports, wish to screw the country more in our ‘desperation’. Nicholas Sr (co-founder of the now-hijacked Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) & Social Scientists Association, SSA) suggests it would be better to quit this IMF rollercoaster, and wonders why the Central Bank and the government are not pushing back harder:
‘We now have ‘Domestic Debt Restructuring’ being imposed on us. We are told, ‘Unless you do that, foreign bond holders will not accede to restructuring’… The foreigner now says, ‘You must treat us equally’, even though the 2 ‘asset classes’ are totally different. That’s why the foreigner gets far more than the person buying Sri Lankan debt…The question I ask is, ‘Why aren’t we fighting back, pushing back?’ [We should declare]: ‘This is ludicrous. You should not be doing this. You should not be imposing this on us.’
‘What they are trying to do is push us further and further because we are desperate. And the fear factor is always there: ‘If you don’t do this, we’re not going to continue supporting you, you won’t get the second tranche, etc etc.’ So we do everything they say – it’s the monkey jumping for the peanuts basically – we will do anything. We are not only undermining the democratic essence of our system, but we are also abrogating our responsibility to the people of the country, by doing this. Because one of the consequences of this Domestic Debt Restructuring is we are going to make domestic debt, a risky asset – and the minute you do that…
‘And we are doing all of this because we are so frightened that the IMF will pull the plug and say, ‘Well, sorry, if you don’t agree to domestic debt restructuring, we are not going to give you the second tranche.’ Meanwhile, we are actually destroying ourselves, and it’s going to be far more damaging than actually not continuing with the IMF agreement.’ – ee Economists, Howard Nicholas on Domestic Debt Restructuring (also, see ee Focus)
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• Sri Lanka’s ‘Human Resource’ luminaries (ranging from managers of plantations to moneylenders to Coca-Cola) shepherded themselves this week to plot their ‘hire & fire’ strategies for the year. They broadcast a selection of their public thoughts through the media (see ee Random Notes). The Chief Human Resources Officer of Singapore Prime Minister’s Public Service Division presumably highlighted ‘open communication between management and employees’. Yet the IMF (& their local running poodles, the Employers Federation etc,) demand ‘flexibility’ – a euphemism that does not exactly lubricate ‘open communication’. The World Bank appears more ‘transparent’: The WB wails Sri Lanka’s ‘rigid’ labor laws lead to ‘very high firing costs!’ Workers are already informal & insecure, yet these whites demand more precarity! (see ee Focus)
Singapore is not a real country anyway. It is a trading centre for multinational corporations and the foreign militaries that gird them. It is indeed an industrial powerhouse. However, it has no water. It has no peasantry. It is at best a city-state, a stationary imperialist aircraft carrier. There is no compare to Sri Lanka, where the favored ‘human resource’ expression is to call a worker a ‘buffalo’. ee truly loves buffalos (Bubalus Bubalis!). ee sees their culling as symbolic of the increasing privatization of water resources and asphyxiation of the national ethos.
The HR meeting included Borah merchant Murtaza Jafferjee, stated as representing US thinktank Advocata. No mention that in May 2022, Jafferjee was appointed by then-PM-&-Minister of Finance, now President, the unelected Ranil Wickremasinghe, to form an ‘Economic Stabilization Dialogue’ between the Ministry of Finance & ‘independent’ economists. Brother Jafferjee is working overtime, we hope he gets adequate recompense. Some ee readers argue, he too is a worker! (see ee Comments).
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‘Weknow so little of ourselves, so little of our history…’
This was a constant tocsin of SBD de Silva. He also struck notes on the curious absenting of an economic history. A foundational record that could inform all other accounts, base our knowledge in material lives, including of course the strivings of people themselves. After all, all manner of ‘other’ histories are promoted. Many funded by that bountiful Ford Foundation (whose founder Henry is famously quoted as saying, ‘History is Bunk’) have been published and celebrated. Political histories! Cultural histories! Anthropology. Archaeology. Fiction. All without strategic reference to people’s lived experience, or rather their experience of making a living and a life. Bunk? Fictions, indeed!
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‘This was the first time that a participatory, non-bureaucratic method
was used for the creation of land records in the developing world.’
(see ee Focus,Participatory Origins: the Paddy Lands Register)
SBD de Silva, for example, identified many types and relations of rice and agricultural production: in the dry zones and wet, in Jaffna, and in the East, in the highlands, along the Mahaveli, Hambantota’s gambara system, etc. Meantime, much is passionately written about Sri Lanka’s this & that magula, our utter backwardness, our primitivity, despotism, chauvinism, etc, and reams of books published about it, many PhDs & professors awarded, rewarded & tenured for such forays into our hearts of darkness. And here we are. This ee Focus looks again at the creative attempts to implement the revolutionary Paddy Lands Act against all odds, and the attempt to identify tenant cultivators. The Act was enacted for humanitarian reasons, and secured tenure, but, said SB, had no impact on the supply of labor. Labor required to power rural industrialization…
Colonial and Neoliberal Origins: Ecological and Collective Alternatives
Overview
About this book
This book provides a broad picture of Sri Lanka’s on-going political and economic crisis as the culmination of several centuries of colonial and neo-colonial developments. The book presents the Sri Lankan crisis as an exemplification of a broader global existential crisis facing more and more debt trapped countries, especially in the post-colonial Global South. The book’s in-depth case study raises important questions pertaining to sovereignty and political and economic democracy in Sri Lanka and the world at large.
The book also explores the emergence of the crisis in the context of the accelerating geopolitical conflict between China and the USA in the Indian Ocean. It ponders if the debt crisis, economic collapse and political destabilization in Sri Lanka were intentionally precipitated to the advantage of the Quadrilateral Alliance (USA, India, Australia and Japan).
Moving beyond geopolitical rivalry, the book juxtaposes Sri Lanka’s political-economic crisis with the broader ecological crisis of climate change and sea-level rise.
The book concludes with a consideration of the ethical dilemmas behind the debt and survival crisis in Sri Lanka and across the world. It points out a range of social movements and initiatives in Sri Lanka and the Global South which subscribe to collective and ecological alternatives and a Middle Path of sustainability and social justice.
Timely and well-researched
A global perspective on the Sri Lankan crisis
Offers ecological and collective alternatives as crisis resolution
Author information
Asoka Bandarage, California Institute for Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Reviews
“In this well-written, well-researched scholarly text, Asoka Bandarage brilliantly combines a detailed historical analysis of the political and economic crisis in Sri Lanka and a global ethical perspective pertaining to similar crises elsewhere in the world.” T. Lalithasiri Gunaruwan, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
“A very useful analysis providing depth and background to understanding the current Sri Lankan economic crisis. Bandarage goes well beyond the standard tropes of ‘policy errors’ or culture/identity-based explanations, to locate the Sri Lankan experience in the wider context of profit-, technology- and finance-driven globalization.” Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
“Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World is a most timely book – and urgently needed for the world that is at a critical crossroads of extreme and accelerating possibilities. For alternatives that are just and sustainable, the crisis needs to be understood both historically as well as in the contemporary context. I cannot think of very many who can do that – both with scholarship and passion – with a fusion of global as well as local and holistic perspectives as Asoka Bandarage has been able to do here.” Sajed Kamal has taught at Boston University, Northeastern University, Antioch New England Graduate School, and Brandeis University
“A powerful, riveting and in-depth analysis of the structural and destructive legacy of colonialism on post-colonial and debt-trapped countries like Sri Lanka … Dr. Bandarage’s superb book is well-researched, expertly synthesized and presented with rigor in an engaging and accessible writing style. It is a tremendous achievement and a must-read for every scholar and student of history, colonialism, underdevelopment, hegemonic domination and ecological disasters. Its cutting-edge scholarship is of critical importance in the fields of economics, political science, environmental studies and policy coordination at the national and international level.” Filomina C. Steady, Professor Emerita, Anthropology and Africana Studies, Wellesley College, USA
Colombo, July 2: UNESCO has included the Sri Lankan historical account, the Mahawamsa”, in its list of 64 new items of documentary heritage inscribed on the Memory of the World International Register.
The Memory of the World (MoW) Register lists documentary heritage which has been recommended by the International Advisory Committee, and endorsed by the Executive Board of UNESCO. on the basis of their world significance and outstanding universal value.
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Inscription on the Register publicly affirms the significance of the documentary heritage, makes it better known and allows for greater access to it, thereby facilitating research, education, entertainment, and preservation over time. There are 494 inscriptions on the International MoW Register, as of May 2023, the UNESCO’s website says.
Regarding the Mahawamsa, UNESCO says that it is one of the world’s longest-unbroken historical accounts. The Mahavamsa is the first of its kind in South Asia, initiating a mature historiographic tradition, presenting Sri Lanka’s history in a chronological order from the 6th century BCE.”
The authenticity of the facts provided in the document has been confirmed through archaeological research conducted in Sri Lanka and India. It is an important historical source in South Asia containing crucial information about the lifetime of the Buddha, Emperor Asoka and the rise of Buddhism as a world religion. The document played a significant role in popularizing Buddhism in Southeast Asia and contributed singularly to the identity of Emperor Asoka in Indian history.”
The existence of a number of manuscripts of the Mahavamsa in several countries as well as the transliteration and translation of the text to several Southeast Asian and European languages stand testimony to its immense historical, cultural, literal, linguistic and scholarly values,” it added.
George Turnour
The man who brought the Mahawamsa to the world outside Sri Lanka (or Ceylon as it was called) was a British colonial civil servant George Turnour.
Hugh Karunanayake, writing in the Daily Island said that George was born in Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then known) in 1799. His father had come over to Ceylon in 1789 with the 73rd British Regiment and was appointed Fort Adjutant in Jaffna in 1795. Young George was sent to England for his education, and on his return as an 18-year-old, joined the Ceylon Civil Service.
Harry Williams writes in his Ceylon Pearl of the East” that the Colonial Service at that time, attracted men of culture for whom the betterment of mankind in general, and not personal prosperity, was the principal objective.” George Turnour who was Government Agent in Ratnapura, was one of these men.
It was by chance that Turnour became aware of the Mahawamsa. A Buddhist monk who he knew had placed some palm-leaf manuscripts on his desk.
Williams says: The documents which lay on the desk before him that morning (in 1826) were not connected with his routine duties as Government Agent. They afforded the key if a scholar could be found to decipher them, to such fabulous historic riches that the mere sight of them filled Turnour with excitement. He resolved to dedicate his own life to the task of solving the problem.”
At that time, the existence of a historical record called the Mahavamsa, or Great Dynasty, was known only to a handful of Buddhist priests.
Williams explains: It was a metrical chronicle, hiding in mystical verse the most astonishing dynastic history of any people, covering a period of no less than twenty-three centuries from the year 543 B.C. to A.D 1758. The language employed was Pali, which had long passed out of use, and to those who had, with difficulty, managed to translate a verse or two, the work had not seemed worth proceeding with.”
The authors of the chronicle had, it appeared, sacrificed sense for rhyme, the poem being mystical, verbose, and incomprehensible. It had fallen into such disrepute that few, even among the Buddhist priesthood, knew of its existence.”
One of the priests, however, named Gallé, recognized in Turnour a man of genius, and it is certain that, without Gallé, the history of Ceylon would have been lost. He sought out the Government Agent and told him of his conviction that a tika” of the Mahavansa was still in existence. Now, a tika” is a prose key, which, fitted into the mystical verse of the earlier poets, and reduces it to a commonsense narrative. Gallé was convinced that that was just what the Mahavansa was, an accurate record of events obscured by the flowery outer cover of metrical rhetoric.”
Proceeding further, Williams writes: Turnour ’s interest was aroused, and between them, a search was made of the only possible repositories of such a set of documents: the old Buddhist temples. They were successful. The missing tika” was found at Mulgirigalla, near Tangalle, a temple founded one hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ. It was this manuscript which lay on Turnour ’s desk that morning in 1826.”
The difficulties of his task must have appalled the Government Agent. Although fluent in the Sinhalese vernacular, with considerable knowledge of Sinhalese script, he knew nothing of Pali; an extinct language at that time. It is the root language of Sinhalese, but clearly distinct from it. There were no textbooks nor vocabularies available, and no parallel documents for comparison. Turnour knew that he would be compelled to spend months delving into the minds of the very few Buddhist priests who were still able to remember a few words of Pali. And he would have to dedicate many years of his life to the work of research, for there were one hundred books of the Mahavansa, and they covered, in detail, two thousand years of Ceylon history during which fifty-four kings of the Great Dynasty-the Mahavansa of the title -and one hundred and eleven sovereigns of the Sulavansa or lower race, sat on the throne of Lanka.”
Williams goes on to say that Turnour was inspired by the beauty of Ratnapura’s imposing landscape to take up the onerous task of translating the manuscripts. The result: some thirty books of the Mahavamsa were translated, edited and arranged by him during his lifetime and published in 1836; ten years after his first glimpse of the tika.”
Sadly, Turnour did not live to complete the whole vast chronicle But recognition of the value of the record was instantaneous.
It was revealed as one of the most remarkable histories in existence, unrivalled as a dynastic narrative of an ancient and cultured civilization. That was not all. Turnour ’s research opened the path to the study and translation of carved inscriptions found all over India and among the countless monuments of two of the most remarkable lost cities in the world: Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, abandoned and forgotten in the arid plains of central Ceylon,” Williams writes.
When the news of Turnour’s death in 1843 reached Ceylon, there was widespread grief in the island among colonial officialdom and local elites, writes Hugh Karnanayake.
It was decided to establish a suitable memorial to Turnour and subscriptions were collected for the purpose. The subscription list was headed by the Chief Justice Sir Anthony Oliphant with a donation of £2-2sh. This was matched by similar donations from the following: Mr Justice Stark, Donald Davidson, Capt Kelson, Dr Cameron, Joseph Read, Lt Col Fletcher, J Jumeaux, JG Firth, CR Buller, Francis Hudson, Lt Hawkins, Capt Lillee, William Morris, F de Livera, TC Power, FB Norris, JH Rabinel, R Jefferson, H De Alwis Mudyr, David de Silva Mudyr, C Webster, S Northway, Don Hendrick Mudyr.”
Be that as it may, according to Williams, Turnour never received the recognition which was his due. He was almost unknown. A small and obscure road in Borella in Colombo, named after him, is the only reminder.
But his work is of an importance which increases with the passing of the years,” Williams says.
Thailand airlifted an elephant from Sri Lanka after the authorities accused the island nation of mistreating the animal. The elephant — Muthu Raja — was gifted to Sri Lanka almost two decades ago, in 2001.
More than two decades ago, in 2001, a Thai elephant was gifted to Sri Lanka. (Photo: AFP).
By Agence France-Presse: A Thai elephant that was gifted to Sri Lanka twenty years ago was flown back to Thailand on Sunday due to a diplomatic dispute over its alleged mistreatment. Thai authorities had given the 29-year-old elephant, Muthu Raja, also known as Sak Surin, to Sri Lanka in 2001. However, they demanded its return last year following allegations of torture and neglect while it was at a Buddhist temple in the southern part of the island.
The 4,000-kilogram mammal was transported from Colombo airport on a one-way commercial flight, costing USD 700,000 according to Thai officials. After arriving in Chiang Mai, the elephant will be quarantined at a nearby nature reserve.
Muthu Raja was taken from his temporary home at a zoo in Colombo before dawn in a specially designed steel cage. Four Thai handlers and a Sri Lankan keeper accompanied the elephant on the flight, while two CCTV cameras monitored its health during transit.
According to the chief veterinarian at Dehiwala Zoo, Madusha Perera, Muthu Raja was in pain and covered in abscesses when it was rescued from its previous abode last year. Animal welfare groups claim that the elephant had been forced to work with a logging crew, and its wounds, some allegedly inflicted by its handler, were neglected.
Once back in Thailand, the elephant will undergo hydrotherapy to treat a remaining injury to its front left leg, as per Perera’s statement. In Sri Lanka, elephants are considered sacred and protected by law. The organization Rally for Animal Rights and Environment (RARE), which campaigned for the elephant’s rescue from the temple, expressed dissatisfaction over its departure and is seeking prosecution for those responsible for neglecting the animal.
A nationalist group in Sri Lanka staged a demonstration outside the Thai embassy in Colombo, demanding the elephant’s continued stay in Sri Lanka for another six months. The wildlife minister, Pavithra Wanniarachchi, stated that Thailand was firm in its demands for the elephant’s return. Thai environment minister Varawut Silpa-archa did not comment on whether Muthu Raja had been mistreated but mentioned that the Thai government had halted the practice of sending elephants abroad. Bangkok’s diplomatic missions are now inspecting the condition of elephants that were previously sent overseas.
Dr. Aurangasri Hinriksson receiving the Order of the Golden Falcon at the President’s House in view of National Day of Iceland
During most of my adult life I was interested in international affairs, violation of human rights and the harm caused by racial and religious prejudices
All adopted children have the right to find their biological parents, but the parents do not have the same right as they have signed a document giving up that right
In my opinion, a mass DNA analysis of the mothers who gave away their babies for adoption, is the only way to locate some of the adoptees´ biological parents
Over the years I have formed a network of searchers and informers in various parts of Sri Lanka
I also got inolved in raising funds to build a music school in Isafirdi using my eastern cultural knowledge and also managed to raise funds to buy a life-saving boat for the Accident Prevention Society. In appreciation of the above charitable activities, I was awarded immediate citizenship. Today my son and I are dual citizens
Some of the cases that I investigated, demonstrated that newborns were stolen from hospital from unsuspecting mothers and whisked away to Colombo and kept in safe houses run by the above said lawyer in Kotahena and in Punchi Borella, till such time they were ready to be adopted by a prospective adoptee parent from Europe
Adoptions these days are very few and mainly from the Czech Republic and last year there were none. The Icelandic Adoption Society became a registered legal binding institution during the years 1999 to 2000. The Society follows strict rules and regulations set out by the 1993 Hague Convention on intercountry adoptions
Nowadays, when I find a mother, I use different tactics. I tell her something like that she has won the lottery because her son or daughter living abroad is looking for her and the best period of her life has dawned etc. I say that her lucky stars are shining before I determine whether I have found the correct person or not
In early 1980s, Dr. Aurangasri Hinriksson decided to settle down in Isafirdi, Iceland with her husband and little son. Her interests to serve the community were such that she not only taught English and Mathematics to her community, but even went to the extent of reuniting adopted children from Sri Lanka with their families. Back in the ‘80s, Sri Lanka was infamous for its baby farms and baby smuggling rackets. According to Dr. Hinriksson, during the 1985/86 period, Sri Lanka not only had baby farms, but there had been active child abductors, child agents and sellers who fell into the illegal child trade. On June 17, Dr. Hinriksson was bestowed with the Order of the Golden Falcon, the highest honour awarded by the Icelandic government to appreciate individuals who have done an exemplary service to society. In a candid interview with the Daily Mirror, Dr. Hinriksson shed light on how Sri Lankan babies were smuggled to countries such as Iceland, her experiences dealing with baby rackets and reuniting these children with their families and living the greater part of her life in one of the happiest countries in the world. Excerpts :
Q : Tell us about yourself and how it has been to live in a country like Iceland?
I was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka and educated at Visakha Vidyalaya. During my final school years I became the President of the Music Society and the Debating Society. After Leaving school, I studied German and Japanese and followed a Secretarial course. In the early 1970s I took up a job with the Food and Agricuture Department of the United Nations in Colombo. It was a secretarial and an administrative job. Later I got involved in organising conferences and workshops. During that time, I met my future husband to be-Thorir Hinriksson-a Fisheries Adviser attached to the United Nations. My marriage to him was severely opposed by my family and only 100 people, mostly close friends and UN diplomats, attended the wedding. A year later, my only child, Neil Shiran Kanishka was born and with his birth my family reconciled. My husband took up jobs with the FAO, Danida and Norad which took me and my little son to various parts of the world. In whatever country we lived in, I strived to learn the local language and study their culture and cuisine. In India I completed a BA and MA in Telugu at the University of Andhra. After living in countries like Bahrain, Iran and travelling widely in the Middle-East, Far-East and Europe, we decided to settle down in Iceland during the early 1980s. During most of my adult life I was interested in international affairs, violation of human rights and the harm caused by racial and religious prejudices. At first in Iceland, life was difficult for me because I did not speak Icelandic and because of that I had little choice in employment. Icelandic is a very difficult language to learn and I had no linguistic connection to any Nordic languages before. The family settled down in a north-western town called Isafirdi and soon the word spread around that I was good in Mathematics and English. For 20 years I helped students and then decided to become a teacher in the main stream education system. I completed a Masters in Pedagogy, a BA, MA and finally a Phd in English. I also got involved in raising funds to build a music school in Isafirdi using my eastern cultural knowledge and also managed to raise funds to buy a life-saving boat for the Accident Prevention Society. In appreciation of the above charitable activities, I was awarded immediate citizenship. Today my son and I are dual citizens.
Q : When did you first come across a child adopted from Sri Lanka?
I first got to know about the 1984/85 adoptions of children from Sri Lanka to Iceland, when a childless couple owning a lucrative bakery business in Isafirdi contacted me and asked me for advice. This family continued to become very close friends of mine ever since and I have found both parents of their adoptee daughter.
Q : Could you shed light on how babies were smuggled for adoption in Iceland back in the 80s?
In 1985/86 during which period most of the adoptions to Iceland took place, there was no proper Adoption Agency in Iceland, but an interest-based, non-profit making society without particular powers which was formed by some aspiring adoptee parents. They heavily depended on an infamous Dutch national called Damass for facilitating adoptions. Damass, ran an Adoption Agency called Flash based in Holland and he was working with a reputed (now disreputed) lawyer in Colombo. The latter had a sister working in the Child Welfare and Probation Department in Colombo who facilitated speedy approval for adoptions, legal as well as illegal. During this period there were baby farms in Sri Lanka, active child abductors, child agents and sellers who fed into the illegal child trade. Some of the cases that I investigated, demonstrated that newborns were stolen from hospital from unsuspecting mothers and whisked away to Colombo and kept in safe houses run by the above said lawyer in Kotahena and in Punchi Borella, till such time they were ready to be adopted by a prospective adoptee parent from Europe. At any given time the lawyer had child providers scattered all over Sri Lanka as well as collection centres. I have been in contact with some of these agents and they are still known as Billas”. The lawyer’s laundry man, a guy called Bettage Gamini Fernando of Wadduwa signed as uncle or guardian to thousands of children. Thirty one (31) years ago I detected false information given in adoption papers when Gamini was still signing for dozens of children. The fact that some of the children were recorded as born in two different hospitals and the parental names, ages and addresses were different in various documents, aroused my suspicions. Some of the adoptions to Iceland during this period were evidently illegal, though some were quite legal and currently tracing their parents is possible.
All adopted children have the right to find their biological parents, but the parents do not have the same right as they have signed a document giving up that right. The adoptees whose documents are false will not be able to locate their parents and as such their human rights have been violated. Further, some of the 1980s adoptions were to families who have failed in parental responsibilities in providing a happy home. At that time, with regards to the above mentioned cases, the adoption agency and the Ministry of Justice have failed to determine the social, mental and financial stability of the adoptee parents, as well as scrutinise the veracity of information given in the adoption papers. The relevant authorities have also failed in providing early, as well as continuous psychological support to adoptees whenever necessary. Today the Adoption Society is addressing the issue regarding psychological assistance to adoptees, as well as examining whether the adoptee parents are capable of providing a family environment comprising happiness, safety, love and understanding. Unfortunately, so far, providing assistance to find the parents or monetary compensation have not been looked into. In my opinion, a mass DNA analysis of the mothers who gave away their babies for adoption, is the only way to locate some of the adoptees´ biological parents. This is a very difficult task as many mothers will not come forward and also, such a venture will involve an enormous cost. This raises the question as to who will bear that cost and who will locate the mothers.
Q : You have done a lot of work to reunite these children with their families as well as find their roots. Could you share your experiences with us?
I was very clumsy and ignorant of the dangers involved when I started finding parents of adoptees at first; 31 years ago. I used to visit villages and ask for the woman who got illicitly pregnant and gave away a child in the 80s. My bulldozer tactics have exposed me to danger and on some occasions I have got surrounded by irate villagers who were annoyed because I was trying to dig out a dark secret the family wanted so desperately to hide. Nowadays, when I find a mother, I use different tactics. I tell her something like that she has won the lottery because her son or daughter living abroad is looking for her and the best period of her life has dawned etc. I say that her lucky stars are shining before I determine whether I have found the correct person or not. Whenever there is a serious doubt, I do a DNA test. Though there is a Company in Colombo which does DNA analysis it is difficult to use their services as both parties have to be present at the same time. Presently, I go through a Holland based society called Sri Lanka DNA to obtain DNA kits, which originally come from FamilyTree DNA in the USA.Over the years I have formed a network of searchers and informers in various parts of Sri Lanka, whom I remotely instruct. I use my own personal resources to fund the searches. Some of the searches I do myself whenever I am in Sri Lanka. I visit slums, remote villages for my work and often interact with criminals, drug addicts, alcoholics, ruthless child abductors and agents and also simple village folk. Sometimes it takes a few days to crack a case and sometimes it takes as long as 8 years or more. No doubt there is a huge element of risk involved in my work, but it is challenging; specially when there are positive results, I find it immensely rewarding. On the other hand, when I pull out an emaciated, toothless and wrinkled mother out from a slum, the adoptees in Iceland- who have led priviledged lives- are visibly disappointed. I tell them that I am sorry that I cannot bring forward Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as their parents!
Q : Are there any unforgettable experiences you could recollect?
Each case is different from another. Some of the stories that the birth mothers say are poignantly and palpably sad and heart wrenching, while others I find hilarious. For instance, I was trying to find the father of one of the adoptees and I sought information from the birth mother who claimed that she had no connection to the father of the baby after she became pregnant. One day she said the father was Bada”, the next day it was Suda”, a week later she said it wasKota” and I panicked as to how many DNA tests I had to perform to find the real father. One of the names given in her list was also that of a Buddhist monk! A half a dozen names were given to me, but luckily, the second DNA test confirmed that the father was Hunga”, whatever that name means! Many of the destitute parents have been helped both by me and the adoptees.
Q : What are the inter-country adoption laws in Iceland?
In 1986 an Icelandic couple legally adopted a baby girl who unfortunately died in the hotel room the day before they were to fly home. The lawyer immediately substituted the dead baby girl with a new born baby boy. The papers of the girl was used for this purpose and the couple did not go to the courts again. On arrival in Reykjavik, they confessed about the substitution to the relevant Icelandic authorities. Adoptions from Sri Lanka were instantly banned. But what the authorities failed to do at that time and even now, was to examine the previous adoptions of 1985/86 adoptees to determine as to how many of their papers were false. After this incident, adoptions continued from other countries like India, Romania, Chile, Guatemala, China and Turkey. Adoptions these days are very few and mainly from the Czech Republic and last year there were none.The Icelandic Adoption Society became a registered legal binding institution during the years 1999 to 2000. The Society follows strict rules and regulations set out by the 1993 Hague Convention on intercountry adoptions. Eighty percent (80%) of the funding of the Society comes from the Ministry of Justice which is the Central Authority.Today, the Society runs a high-quality mediation service based on catering to the best interests of the children.
Q : You were recently bestowed with a knighthood by the Iceland government. How do you feel about receiving this accolade?
Receiving the Order of the Golden Falcon, which is the highest honour that the country could bestow on anyone who has done something exemplary, was the biggest surprise of my life. When I started putting families together, I did not even know that such an award existed and never worked towards getting that recognition. During the last years, I have struggled with the Icelandic/Sri Lankan adoptees over their human rights violations and racism that they have faced in this country. Often I have acted as a psychologist to them, though that is clearly not my profession. In some cases, I am their mother and keep daily contact with them, giving them the moral support they so desperately need. To me, this Knighthood I received, is a recognition of human rights and the struggle against racism and I thank the adoptees and everyone including the Icelandic Media for having brought my work to the attention of the President and the general public of Iceland. This award has humbled me and made me aware as to how much more work is required to assist the adoptees.
Q You have been living in one of the happiest countries in the world for the greater part of your life. Do you think Sri Lanka would achieve this status in future?
Living in a highly developed and affluent country is a great priviledge and I am thankful to my late husband for having taken the decision to move to Iceland many years ago. As a foreigner or rather an immigrant, to become qualified and recognised as an academic was an up-hill task. I often became a sitting duck for work-place bullies and racists. I can safely say that racial hatred and professional jealousies are lethal. Though humble pie is not my favourite dish, I have often been forced to taste it. Those experiences devastated me initially, but eventually steeled my resolve to move on, work harder and achieve a few of my goals. During the years I have lived here, I promoted Sri Lanka, contributing to all kinds of cultural events for fund raising purposes. I am a Buddhist and I believe in Karma and I feel that I came to Iceland for a specific purpose, and that is to learn, to give my best to whoever who asks for my help and whatever short-time is left in my life, I will try my best to serve that purpose wherever I am. Though I have lived in Iceland for decades and I am a citizen of Iceland, heart and soul I am a proud Sri Lankan. Whatever hardships the country is experiencing Sri Lanka is my country and that is where I truly belong. Iceland has been one of the top countries regarding happiness. Happiness seems to be measured by the country‘s wealth, education and health systems and over all salaries. However, Iceland is one of the most expensive countries in the world and it is known that a significant sector of the Icelandic population is dependent on antidepressants and sleeping pills! Drug addiction is also an existing social problem. For me, happiness is a state of mind and although financial prosperity can provide material objects and a good lifestyle, one can find happiness with lot less and by being contented with what you have. Sri Lanka has a long way to go to become a politically stable and an affluent country. But I strongly believe that, Sapathei, vipathei, nosalei, nothalei, ata lo dama huru helaya!”
Ex-President Maitripala Sirisena‘s counsel told the Supreme Court that Jude Shramantha Jayahama was released from prison following the due Constitutional process which the petitioner had suppressed to Court.
Faizer Musthapha PC contended this while challenging the Fundamental Rights petition filed by the organisation ‘Women and Media Collective’ against the pardon granted by former President Maithripala Sirisena to Jude Shramantha Jayamaha.
Counsel further asserted that it is unfair to target President Maithripala Sirisena as he had followed the due process of law.
Counsel underscored the fact on what the status would be of 69 other convicts whose death sentences were also commuted by the President.
Counsel questioned whether any Fundamental Rights applications have been filed against the President in those instances. Counsel Musthapha said the process was initiated during the tenure of Ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa after which the death sentences imposed on 70 other convicts had been committed to life.
He also emphasized that former Attorney General Palitha Fernando had given an opinion that there was no premeditation by Jaymaha to commit the murder.
Counsel Musthapha told court that President Maithripala Sirisena had acted on the advice of the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice and the pardon granted to Jayamaha after three and a half years from commuting his death sentence into life imprisonment.
Counsel Faizer Musthapha PC made these assertions before the three Supreme Court Judges, Justice S. Thurairajah, Yasantha Kodagoda and Janak De Silva during the inquiry into the FR petition filed by the Women and Media Collective against the decision taken by Ex-President Maithripala Sirisena to release Jayamaha from life imprisonment by allegedly violating the law.
Counsel Sanjeewa Jayewardene PC appeared for the petitioner. Counsel Romesh De Silva PC appeared for the aggrieved parents of the deceased Yvonne Johnson.
Further hearing was postponed to July 13. (T. Farook Thajudeen)
A team of scientists from NASA is reportedly on a visit to Sri Lanka these days, in order to carry out research related to the alleged similarities in the stones found in Sri Lanka to those on the planet Mars.
The team of experts is led by Mr. Sunithi Karunathilake, a Sri Lankan national who is a Senior Scientist at NASA.
They will first join an observation tour in the Ginigalpalassa (GGP) and Indikolapalassa (IP) areas and then travel to the Ussangoda area in the Southern Province of the country.
When inquired by Ada Derana, Mr. Karunathilake mentioned that the geographical features in Sri Lanka have shown that the island composes of significant similarities to some of the rocks and soil on Mars.
Meanwhile, commenting on the matter, Ven. Kapugolle Anandakiththi Thero, a senior lecturer of the University of Kelaniya, pointed out that there are two specifically identified types of rocks found in these areas.
One of them is the Blue Marble Rock (Nil Garuda) and the other one is the Moonstone (Chandrakantha)”.
Ven. Kapugolle Anandakiththi Thero further stated that it is more important to decide on whether those are the exact names that should be given for these two types of rocks in Sinhala, after conducting further research on this…”
The Civil Aviation Authority of Israel has confirmed that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will be signed by the relevant authorities of Israel and Sri Lanka in order to commence the air service of providing direct passenger flights from Tel Aviv in Israel to Katunayake.
During a discussion held in this regard, Minister of Ports Shipping and Aviation Nimal Siripala de Silva said that the new air service will provide convenience to Israeli tourists who are looking forward to travelling to Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile, Israeli representatives said aircrafts belonging to Israel’s ‘Arkia’ airline are scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka by October.
A special discussion regarding the commencement of direct passenger flights from Tel Aviv in Israel to Katunayake was held recently between civil aviation authorities of the two nations at the Ministry of Ports shipping and Aviation under the patronage of subject Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva.
Representatives from the Civil Aviation Authority of Israel including Israel’s Air Transport Division Senior Director were present at the discussion.
During the meeting, the Civil Aviation Authorities of the two countries also held discussions regarding coming into an agreement by resolving the existing issues regarding the commencement of the new air service.
Accordingly, the Civil Aviation Authority of Israel said a memorandum of understanding between the authorities of the two countries is yet to be signed.
The Israeli representatives further said aircrafts belonging to its ‘Arkia’ airline are scheduled to arrive in Sri Lanka by October.
Minister of Ports Shipping and Aviation Nimal Siripala de Silva said the opportunity to commence direct flights between the two countries was obtained following a discussion between President Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Government of Israel.
The Minister further said that Israeli tourists are looking forward to travelling to Sri Lanka adding that this air service will be very convenient to Israeli tourists.
The Minister also expressed that Sri Lankan workers who are engaged in various jobs in Israel will be given great convenience and financial benefit in purchasing air tickets.
The Ministry of Labour alleges that neither the union leaders nor officers have provided asset liability statements within the granted period.
When inquired by Ada Derana”, Secretary of the Ministry R.P.A. Wimalaweera stated that none of those 2,000 representatives has so far submitted asset liability statements.
In general, the officials including trade union leaders of state and semi-government institutions must submit their asset-liability statements to the Secretary of the Ministry of Labour, as per the Asset Liability Act.
Wimalaweera also stressed that although he has informed the relevant parties regarding the matter, no response has been received in this regard.
However, the ministry’s secretary further emphasized that he has not been granted authority through the act to take any further actions regarding the matter.
When Prime Minister Sirimavo lost the General Election in Sri Lanka in mid 1977, Sri Lanka did not have a foreign debt. During the time of Sirimavo and earlier, Sri Lanka got foreign loans on projects, where once the development project was completed the production brought about due to the completion of the project enabled the payment of the loan. They were all project loans. In 1975, Sri Lanka/s foreign debt was negligible. Then, the foreign debt, only $ 743 million, $ 75 million at the end of 1976 and at $ 750 million in 1977 were all incurred on projects and never on consumption. Thus we have to differentiate between foreign loans taken for projects, i.e.for development and foreign loans taken for consumption.
When President Jayawardena won the elections in mid 1977 instead of continuing the economy as Sirimavo had done , turned to the IMF for assistance. The IMF readily agreed to grant loans provided the Government relaxes rules re the use of foreign loans, allow anyone to use foreign exchange, relax all import controls, in short use the funds of these loans for consumption- to allow the rich to live in luxury. This was a major deviation from the manner we ran the economy since we achieved independence, when we somehow restricted imports and managed without falling into debt. Even in the 1950-1954 period when we implemented the major Gal Oya Development Programme retaining a US firm to build the tank, paid by us in dollars, we had restrictions in place for all imports. The essence was to manage all foreign expenses with the dollars we had. The rest- all development work running all Ministries etc.was done with printed Rupees.
The Minister of Finance Mr Ronnie de Mel in his Budget Speech of 1978 was over the moon regarding changing the modus operandi in running the economy. :
We cannot go round the World begging for Aid like international beggars for ever. We must get out of this vicious circle of no growth, stagnation and mounting internal and external debt.”
An year later,President Jayawardena was highly taken up and thought of it as a wonderful achievement,. In his words:
We adopted a package of new economic policies which envisaged a sweeping departure from a highly controlled, inward looking welfare oriented economic strategy to a more liberalized, outward looking and growth oriented one. Fundamental to the new economic policy was the adoption of realistic rate for the Sri Lankan Rupee with a view to reducing the price distortions arising from the previous attempts to maintain an over valued currency by means of stringent trade and payments control. The then prevailing multiple exchange system was unified and the Rupee was allowed to float. The resulting trade liberalization was expected to revive domestic industry by freer flows of raw material, spares and machinery by higher capacity utilization and by greater competition which at the same time was expected to provide better export incentives by inducing the import substituting industries to expand outward to export markets.” ( Address to the Federation of Economic Organizations of Japan, 12/09/1979, from Peace Unity and Coexistence by JR Jayawardena,Govt Press, 12,9,1985.)
Creating any production of any sort was totally not possible because, the bulwark of production oriented development tasks by various Government Departments was either totally abolished or sidelined, as dictated by the StructuralAdjustment Poliicy which the IMF forced us to follow-the Department for Development of Agricultural Marketing which purchased vegetables and fruits and ran a successful cannery was totally abolished. Other Departments like Small Industries and many development activities of other Departments were totally curtailed on the grounds that the Private Sector was to be the engine of growth and the officialdom that had attended to development tasks were confined to the barracks- finding some work to attend to.
This process forced on Sri Lanka inevitably caused total disaster as stated by the The World Bank in 1990:
In 1986, the deterioration of the economy had become evident. The growth rate of the GDP slowed to under 4%. Unemployment rose to around 17% and gross official reserves to less than two months’ imports.”(Trends in Developing Econmies:1990.
It is important to note that this utter deterioration had happened within eight years of following the Structural Adjustment provisions!
The foreign debt balooned to $ 1845 million by 1980, to $ 4063 million by 1986, to as much as $ 6723 million by 1993, to $ 9407 million by 1995 and $ 9191 million by 1996.
When Chandrika took over in November 1994, the foreign debt was at $ 9.7 billion and there was no turning back. The Development Infrastructure that been developed from 1948 to 1977 and which had achieved the country becoming self sufficient in paddy, the staple crop and all other development programmes had been either abolished or sidelined and there was no turning back.
Once in around the late Eighties on my trip to Kataragama, at Ambalantota I turned towards my office in 1958 and then my office covering the Southern Province for paddy purchases and rice milling was a part of an integrated complex including a large Lewis Grant Rice Mill, the summun bonum of the day that milled a thousand bushels a day. Over a hundred lorries of paddy were accepted a day. When the Mill was switched on, every Monday morning it will work nonstop till Saturday evening when it was switched off for cleaning and resurfacing the rollers on Sunday. If it stopped otherwise I had to interfere and get it working and I was held personally responsible. The Mill had been abandoned and was in pieces. The land some five acres was apportioned to various departments that had fenced them in and total neglect was the order of the day. The machinery which we doted on and cared for with our lives was in pieces, strewn everywhere. It was a scene that I could never have believed. That was what did happen to all over the island under President Jayawardena’s move to follow the IMF. The development infrastructure was in tatters and there was never a turning back.
The annual foreign exchange deficit is also an important indicator of development. In my words, Sri lanka was a country that could boast of the fact that it held a credit of $ 170 million in its foreign exchange budget of 1977. In less than five years of liberalization the foreign exchange deficit was as much as $ 892 . In 1995 this figure was at $ 997million.”
This increase in foreign exchange deficit happened due to the major changes that were made in the economy from the end of 1977. In 1980 the Minister of Finance boasted
We liberalized the economy and did so effectively and thoroughly.’(Budget Speech:1980)
Both President Jayawardena and Finance Minister Ronnie de Mel were taken for a ride. As the erudite South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation commented in 1992:
The Industrial Countries are for the first time since World War II are in need of markets for their produce. So they have put into effect the Structural Adjustment programme… the industrialized countries are pressurizing the reciepients of Structural Adjustment loans to open their economies to goods from them:(From; Meeting the Challenge:1992)
In this process of importing what we could have made the loans we took ended up in the donor countries in some form or other- for holiday travel, for financing their universities etc, while leaving the loans as a debt on Sri Lanka. It was a grand manipulation to make us fall into debt.
Sri Lanka’s foreign debt balooned to $ 11.3 bn by 2005 and the IMF backed out of giving loans. Then we sought finance somehow and even raised funds through issuing International Sovereign Bonds(ISB) at very high interest rates. At the end of 2014 our foreign debt was 42.9 billion and during the Yahapalana 2014 to 2019, as much as $ 12.5 billion of ISBs were taken. Yet none of these funds were utilized to create any production. Instead, they were used for extravagant living. In 2022 the debt had reached $56 billion and today in June the Government talks of foreign debt below $ 50 billion, which is very doubtful.
To be realistic what we can do and have the immediate ability to do is to find an agloritham of action to get into producing what we import. This too has to be on Government sector programmes because the private sector investors have fairly given up enterprise development due to high interest rates, and are satisfied with parking their capital in banks and enjoying high interest rates.
Thus the only option is to concentrate on import substitution type of programmes, making what the consumer needs. .This will reduce imports and help the country to save foreign exchange.
In the living memory of some of us we can recall the Divisional Development Councils Programme of the days of Prime Minister Sirimavo. It was directed by Professor Haalso deS Gunasekara, the eminent Professor of Economics of the University of Peradeniya and it was successful in training thousands of youths to become scientific farmers and handle livestock. It created employment for 33,300 youths and many new industries like making paper at Kotmale and building motor fishing boats and Crayons at Matara were very successful.
May our leaders consider such an employment cum poverty alleviation programme urgently,
