Sunday, September 11, 2011By Tisaranee Gunasekara
Shanties will disappear with the beautification of Colombo - Photos courtesy: www.wsws.org
“Do not make us development orphans”. A slogan at the September 6th protest against Rajapaksa land-grabbing
The Rajapaksa plan to evict almost 70,000 poor families from Colombo and sell/lease their lands to favoured bidders has been put on the backburner – until the Colombo Municipal Council election is over. A protest which took place last week demonstrated that land-grabbing is not the exclusive problem of Colombo’s poor. With actual and potential victims belonging to all ethnic and religious groups, from both urban and rural areas, land-grabbing by the state in the name of national security and development has become a truly Sri Lankan malaise.
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Prime Minister Spends Millions For Wedding Invitations
Saturday, September 10, 2011
By Ashwin Hemmathagama
Wedding and Homecoming Invitations
Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne is believed to have spent approximately Rs. 3.6 million for his son’s wedding and homecoming invitations.
These invitation cards manufactured using crafted wood and brass that depicts the sun and the moon were purchased from Da Vinci Digital Imaging, a well known up-market personalised wedding stationery designer store. According to sources at Da Vinci, some 700 wedding invitations and 500 homecoming invitations were purchased. The wedding is to take place at 6 p.m. on September 15, at the Colombo Hilton.=======================================
Amnesty seeks int'l probe on Sri Lanka war crimes
GENEVA |
(Reuters) - Between 10,000 and 20,000 civilians were killed in the final months of Sri Lanka's civil war but a national inquiry has failed so far to investigate war crimes by both the army and Tamil rebels, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.
The London-based human rights group called on the United Nations to establish a credible international investigation into the killings at the end of the quarter-century conflict in 2009. Full Story>>>
