A 8.5 magnitude earthquake struck off Indonesia’s Sumatra island prompting an Indian Ocean-wide tsunami alert.
sri lanka
U.N. Sri Lanka Vote Redefines India’s Regional Role
In the early months of 2009 when Sri Lanka’s war was reaching its final crescendo, frantic calls were made to Colombo by Sri Lankan diplomats at the United Nations headquarters in New York. According to a top Sri Lankan diplomat, some calls were directly to Mahinda Rajapaksa himself, warning the Sri Lankan president that the U.S., …
Why Sri Lanka Remains Defiant Against New Allegations of War Crimes
“They didn’t believe that anyone in the international community was willing to stop them, and they were right.” That is the lucid explanation offered by John Holmes, the British diplomat and former chief of the U.N.’s …
Why We Should Be Talking About Sri Lanka
As 47 countries meet in Geneva to take stock of the world’s human-rights performance, Sri Lanka finds itself in the dock, haunted by the legacy of a fierce civil war that spanned two and a half decades and came to a violent end …
The Real Lessons of Sri Lanka’s War: A Global Power Shift and the End of Human Rights
The grandly named “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” submitted its final report to Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday. The document is meant to account for the failure of a 2002 ceasefire and the events leading up to the end of the country’s 26-year-long war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil …
Fox Outfoxed: Fresh Revelations Force U.K. Defense Secretary to Quit
Liam Fox must have realized he could not outrun his fate. And so on Oct. 14 Britain’s Secretary of State for Defense delivered a letter to 10 Downing Street. “I have repeatedly said that the national interest must always come before personal interest,” he wrote. “I now have to hold myself to my own standard.”
Fox’s resignation …
New Wikileaks Cables Reveal India Foreign Policy Tensions
The Indian newspaper The Hindu has published an absorbing, multi-story Wikileaks package today about 5,100 diplomatic cables covering everything from India-Pakistan relations after the November 2008 terror attacks to the end of the Sri Lankan civil war and influence-peddling in Nepal. There are also some revealing behind-the-scenes …