• Killings after Katchatheevu

    An investigation by the Times of India found 378 recorded attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen by the Sri Lankan navy (SLN) between 1983 and 2005.

    Interestingly, however, most cases were closed in a few months with the comment "action dropped" or "unidentified", the paper found.

    There have been many more attacks since 2005, with the issue repeatedly appearing in bilateral relations between the two states and prompting a bilateral agreement, which proved non-consequential, in October 2008.

    However, the paper quotes researchers as saying SLN attacks began well before 1983.

    "Firing and high-handedness by the Sri Lankan navy started in 1975, a year after Katchatheevu was ceded to them," said researcher L Selva Prakash.

    Katchatheevu, a tiny islet close to Rameswaram, was ceded to Sri Lanka in 1974. (See map and discussion of the deal here)

    In March 2010, Chinese and Sri Lankan naval personnel were reported to be training on the islet. In Jan 2008, the SLN planted sea mines near it.

  • Foreign exit of Colombo bourse continues

    Foreign funds are continuing to exit Sri Lanka’s stock market, Reuters reported Friday, sustaining a trend since the end of the armed conflict.

    [See also our post: 'Sri Lanka's stocks: a closer look']

  • Tamil Nadu wants stronger Indian naval presence

    As India again warned Sri Lanka that the killing of Indian fishermen by the latter's navy was damaging bilateral relations, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi Tuesday called for a stronger Indian naval presence,

    “The coastal waters of south need to be paid some attention through resources and personnel [just] as land borders in north, west and east are being attended to,” Karunanidhi said.

    “It is requested that our demand for more vessels, police stations and manpower, and better air surveillance capabilities may be considered favourably,” he said.

    [See also related posts: 'Terror in Jaffna II: blocking international efforts' and 'Sri Lanka's fishy story'.]

    Delhi Tuesday rejected Sri Lanka's claim a 'third force' was to be blamed for the attacks on Tamil Nadu fishermen and noted that such incidents don't happen even on the Pakistani border.

  • Why should borders be sacrosanct?

    “It is clearly unreasonable to expect all disputing couples to behave like the Czechs and the Slovaks [who peacefully separated in 1993]. But is it reasonable in this day and age to set treat secession as somehow worse than unwilling union?

  • Boycott campaign continues in London

    Groups of protestors outside retailers and business in Britain are not unusual. Most recently UK-Uncut activists launched a wave of sit-ins in and around corporations associated with tax dodging. That campaign turn on consumers not wishing to put money into pockets of those they believe are behaving unethically or exploitatively.

    Amidst other campaigns-through-consumer, Tamil activists are also continuing to push for a boycott of Sri Lankan products.

  • Future Tense

    "There is no reason to believe that Sri Lanka will return to a rights-respecting government any time in the near future.

    “Until wartime abuses are prosecuted, minority grievances are addressed, and repression against the press and civil society ends, only the president and his family members in power have reason to feel secure in Sri Lanka."

  • Sri Lanka to export war crimes

    “For now impunity is ruling the day.  So much so, that Sri Lanka is apparently seeking to export its brand of counter-insurgency to other countries.

  • Why the world needs a radically new approach to secession

    Prof. Timothy William Waters, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, writes:

    The real danger to peace is not peoples’ desire to form new states. It is the willingness of the present world powers to resist that desire with violence. We have stumbled onto that truth in Sudan.

  • Bank lending and ethnicity

    Figures released recently by Sri Lanka’s Central Bank reveal an increase in bank lending to the private sector (see p6 here). But an industry body said this week major exporters were not borrowing  as they are gloomy about economic prospects.

    What could this contradiction mean?

  • America and Jaffna

    This is what US Ambassador to Colombo, Ms. Patricia Butenis, said Monday at the opening of the American Corner in Jaffna:

    “Not everyone may realize that Americans have a long relationship with the people of Jaffna.

  • Why Sri Lanka’s exporters are gloomy

    Despite credit being readily available, Sri Lanka’s exporters say they don’t want to borrow because they can’t expand their businesses in the present economic conditions - despite the end of the war.

    “Exporters are not borrowing because they are not expanding,” National Chamber of Exporters (NCE) President Sarath de Silva said last week.

    High electricity tariffs, the loss of trade concessions from the EU and US, and a stronger rupee made it difficult to survive in the global export market, he said.

    (See reports in The Island and the Sunday Times)

  • Hawaii temple joins Thai Poosam celebration

    The Kadavul Temple in Hawaii was amongst the thousands of Saivite temples celebrating the festival of Thai Poosam this month.

    The Kadavul temple is attached to the Kauai Aadheenam or monastery, which traces its guru lineage directly from Jaffna’s well known sage Yogaswami.

    The guru lineage is named Kailasa Parampara, after the Kailasa mountain range in the Himalayas where the earliest of these yogis is said to have meditated.

    Kauai is the oldest of Hawaii’s main islands. The Kauai Aadheenam was established in 1973, by Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, an American priest initiated by Yogaswami in Jaffna in 1949.

    In 1986, the World Religious Parliament in New Delhi honored Sivaya Subramuniyaswami as one of the five Hindu spiritual leaders outside India who had most dynamically promoted Hinduism in the previous 25 years. He passed away in 2001.

  • Batticaloa children face food crisis

    After the worst floods in almost a century,

  • So much for ‘resettlement’ ...
    This is what Sri Lanka considers 'resettlement' of displaced Tamils.
Subscribe to Tamil Affairs