Sri Lanka
The Brothers’ Grip
Meet Sumanadasa Abeygunawardena. He’s every saver’s dream come true – a bank director who can predict the future. Abeygunawardena is the ‘working director’ of one of Sri Lanka’s biggest banks, the state-owned National Savings Bank (NSB) – that is, when he’s not being a celebrity soothsayer. Abeygunawardena’s main claim to … read more >>
Sri Lanka – Rajapaksa Calls “Bull Shit” On Global Mail Coverage
Last weekend, as a courtesy, The Global Mail emailed Sri Lanka’s unelected Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa a link to our story on the nepotism among Sri Lanka’s powerful elite. Gota, as Sri Lankans know him, is the country’s enforcer-in-chief. The former soldier is credited with having masterminded his presidential brother … read more >>
Sri Lanka Part Three – The Smugglers’ Prey
WHAT does a Sri Lankan would-be asylum seeker look like? Many look like this man. His name is Gnanaseelan. He’s 32. He’s a Tamil, though never a Tiger. A father. A widower.He lives in this desperate shanty outside the seaside hamlet of Mullaitivu, on Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged north-east coast, with … read more >>
Sri Lanka Part Two – The Monks’ Army
Sri Lanka’s raffish capital, where we begin our series, is in economic catch-up mode. Colombo is replacing the colonial-era roads and railways built when Churchill was a boy and ‘Ceylon’ was a languid tropical afterthought for the British who ruled the plantation island.Though it took its time – 10 years … read more >>
Sri Lanka Part One – How Not To Win A War
FOUR years after its brutal victory over Tamil Tiger rebels that ended a 26-year-long civil war, Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-led government is at pains to persuade the world that it has at last brought peace and unity to this troubled island. And the captain of the flag-carrying SriLankan Airlines flight 423 … read more >>
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 >>