LTTE
Magnanimous Mahinda and the Foreign Media Mob
Some little man in a Colombo cafe started shouting abuse at me the other day. I don’t know him, and I don’t know why. That sort of thing is very rare here, but perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, given the current "you’re either with us or against us" climate. The vast majority of the Sri […]
Magnanimous Mahinda and the Foreign Media Mob
Some little man in a Colombo cafe started shouting abuse at me the other day. I don’t know him, and I don’t know why. That sort of thing is very rare here, but perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, given the current "you’re either with us or against us" climate. The vast majority of the Sri […]
Sri Lanka: 25 years of war
As the government of Sri Lanka declares an end to the civil war that has lasted 25 years, The Guardian newspaper looks back over the conflict in a series of 31 images.
Sri Lanka: The Gaza Connection.
It’s yet another Colombo morning filled with somewhat bizarre events and news. An SMS message from a local news service just interrupted coffee on my sixth-floor balcony in Wellawatte, saying a suspected LTTE cadre has jumped off a seventh-floor balcony in Wellawatte after security services found suicide kits in a flat. I look around, see nothing unusual and go […]
May you live long, but not here
"Ayubowan", is the first word a visitor to Sri Lanka hears on arrival. These days one could be forgiven for thinking it means something very rude. It doesn’t, and the increasingly rare tourist would probably not suspect any hostility behind the still ever-present smiles. Until, that is, she or he makes the mistake of picking […]
May you live long, but not here
"Ayubowan", is the first word a visitor to Sri Lanka hears on arrival. These days one could be forgiven for thinking it means something very rude. It doesn’t, and the increasingly rare tourist would probably not suspect any hostility behind the still ever-present smiles. Until, that is, she or he makes the mistake of picking […]