{"id":43504,"date":"2015-04-30T01:22:17","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T08:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=43504"},"modified":"2015-04-30T01:22:17","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T08:22:17","slug":"what-does-regime-change-in-sri-lanka-mean-for-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/04\/30\/what-does-regime-change-in-sri-lanka-mean-for-the-united-states\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does Regime Change in Sri Lanka Mean for the United States?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Taylor Dibbert<\/a><\/em><\/h2>\n

Tom Malinowski<\/a>,the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), recently travelled to Sri Lanka. From the looks of it, he had productive, busy visit. Malinowski even managed to visit the place in Mullaitivu<\/a> district, where Sri Lanka\u2019s civil war ended and alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law<\/a> (on a massive scale), including war crimes, took place in 2009.<\/p>\n

Based on some of the quotes<\/a> he provided to journalists during his trip, Malinowski is extremely upbeat about how things have been going. To be fair, theop-ed<\/a> he placed in a leading Sri Lankan newspaper was still optimistic, though perhaps less exuberant than some of his public comments.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration is undoubtedly delighted that the increasingly authoritarian Mahinda Rajapaksa was thrown out of office<\/a> in early January. And, since U.S.-Sri Lanka relations had turned quite sour under Rajapaksa\u2019s watch, Washington clearly wants things to be different this time.<\/p>\n

Malinowski\u2019s recent statements are in line with what other senior American officials have said about Sri Lanka\u2019s recent transfer of power. As Malinowski suggested, it appears that the Obama administration still has not decided precisely how much the bilateral relationship will evolve, particularly on controversial issues like human rights and \u2018accountability\u2019 for alleged wartime abuses. A degree of patience may be warranted, although the reform program<\/a> of newly elected Maithripala Sirisena has not been going that well<\/a>. On the other hand, parliament\u2019s passage (this week) of the 19th\u00a0amendment<\/a> to the constitution (which trims presidential powers and establishes various independent commissions) is a significant accomplishment and has opened the door to even greater optimism regarding a reform program that had been floundering.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it\u2019s likely that the Obama administration will stay upbeat for at least the next several months and continue to decrease diplomatic pressure on the new government. Sirisena is expected to dissolve parliament soon and parliamentary elections could come as early as June. Once the official electoral campaign begins, Washington would seek to avoid any perceptions of interference, aside from encouraging the government to hold peaceful, transparent elections.<\/p>\n

Full Report<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/thediplomat.com\/2015\/04\/what-does-regime-change-in-sri-lanka-mean-for-the-united-states\/?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Taylor Dibbert Tom Malinowski,the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), recently travelled to Sri Lanka. From the looks of it, he had productive, busy visit. Malinowski even managed to visit the place in Mullaitivu district, where Sri Lanka\u2019s civil war ended and alleged violations of international human rights […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}