Sri Lanka’s Army Of Buddhist Power
Eric Ellis
A
founder of Sri Lanka’s Army of Buddhist Power tries to explain his
militant views on Muslims, and how they fit with the government’s
triumphant story of post-war reconciliation
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 – to be completed, a sparkling new
tollway to the beachy Rajapaksa heartland in the south has cut the
journey from Colombo from a congested three-to-six hours to just one.
In the conflict-ravaged Tamil north, Indian engineers are re-connecting
the war-severed train line that once carried passengers from Colombo to
Jaffna.
In the mostly Sinhalese ‘deep south’ of the island, President
Mahinda Rajapaksa’s home region of Hambantota is being lavished with
the country’s biggest infrastructural project, a US$1.5 billion stampede
of white elephants that’s giving the town a new port, international
airport and cricket stadium – all named after President Rajapaksa – and a
convention centre and even an alternative Bollywood complex.
Read more in the The Globalmail
*Eric Ellis is
an award-winning journalist who writes about the politics, economics
and societies of South and South-East Asia. He has written for a range
of international journals; Fortune Magazine, Forbes, the Financial
Times, Time Magazine, The Times, The Bulletin/Newsweek, The
Spectator,Institutional Investor, Euromoney, The Sydney Morning
Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review and the International
Herald Tribune.
