Wednesday, August 28, 2013

How not to win a war: Sri Lanka's paradise betrayed by monks, thugs and smugglers...

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 from Bangkok seems keen to do his national bit.

Easing his Airbus over the tea-studded plantations of the island’s central highlands for the approach into Colombo, the pilot primes those on board for landing.

“A warm welcome to Paradise for all our passengers….” he cheerfully intones in a voice as rich as the coconut curries ‘Mother Lanka’ is famous for. “That is, welcome to Paradise Regained.”

Which Sri Lanka certainly is if you’ve holidayed on its hedonistic beaches – arguably Asia’s most divine. It’s also been a political Shangri-La for the many members of the triumphalist Rajapaksa clan crowding government ranks, led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa and three of his brothers. They’ve ruled Sri Lanka since 2005 and, in South Asia’s dynastic style, are now positioning the family for yet another generation at the top. Ditto for the ruling brotherhood’s business cronies and military chums, as they pile into cosy government sinecures and the lucrative reconstruction deals that are spurring a modest economic surge now that the guns have been silenced in the Tamil north.

(...)

As the Rajapaksas muzzle dissenting voices in civil society, and the media too, which has seen independent newspapers neutered, and journalists intimidated, forced into exile and even killed, Sinhalese moderates and intellectuals fret that the values and liberties of their unique multicultural ‘masala society’ are being eroded – that South Asia’s only uninterrupted post-colonial democracy is being turned into a dynastic ‘mafia state’. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Sri Lanka struggles to contain growing epidemic of child abuse...
  2. Sri Lanka Buddhists attack Colombo mosque...
  3. Sri Lanka: proposed media code threatens free speech...
  4. Free press under siege in Sri Lanka...
  5. Sri Lankan editor's astonishing article about his murder and his murderers...
  6. No Fire Zone: the killing fields of Sri Lanka...(Graphic)
  7. Sri Lanka 'intensifies crackdown on dissent' - Amnesty...

No comments:

Post a Comment