Sri Lanka
The Last Grande Dame of Australian Art
DAZZLING in a sarong of a shade best classified as unspeakably orange, Mitty Lee Brown emerges regally from a nap through Sri Lanka’s tropical torpor to receive an unexpected well-wisher. She’s a little startled at the intrusion because these days, at 89, Mitty doesn’t get too many guests … read more >>
Getting away with murder in Colombo
COLOMBO: When governments kill the people they are mandated to protect and help prosper, what is the world’s tipping point for outrage? How horrific must despotism be to compel the ”international community” to pursue and prosecute national leaders whose regimes commit war crimes? In the Bosnian war of the 1990s, … read more >>
With Tamil Tigers slain, booming Sri Lanka makes up for lost time
What to call the emerging Sri Lanka? The country seems like a construction zone, with ports, highways and airports sprouting and former rebel strongholds blossoming, writes Eric Ellis in Colombo. SO TINY Sri Lanka has made it to today’s Cricket World Cup final, to face mighty India in Mumbai in … read more >>
Sri Lankan brotherhood
The model in war-weary Sri Lanka is Singapore but the feel is more Suharto’s Indonesia, writes Eric Ellis in Colombo. NATIONS can be run as democracies or dictatorships, monarchies or even as products, for instance the widely admired production-to-port ”Singapore Inc” model. But is there a country run by a … read more >>
Sri Lanka: A one family state?
A conversation about the extraordinary political influence exerted in Sri Lanka by the newly re-elected president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his family. With the long civil war over, optimists hope Rajapaksa will use his formidable mandate to heal ethnic divisions and rebuild a shattered economy. The president is a hero to … read more >>
After the war comes Sri Lanka’s refugee crisis
Menik Farm refugee camp, Northern Sri Lanka. LAST week at her bowls club, in a bucolic town in Victoria’s whitebread Western District, my mother mentioned to ‘the girls’ that I’d soon be in town for a school reunion. Her bowling mates know that I’m a foreign correspondent, reporting from sometimes … read more >>
Sri Lanka’s Next Battle
AFTER the end of Sri Lanka’s long and often barbaric civil war, there’s no avoiding President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Banners espousing his election manifesto Mahinda Thought line the nation’s roads and railways. Pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV and his mustachioed visage appears a dozen times, illustrating the … read more >>