සිනාසෙමු ද, නැතිනම් හඬමු ද?
America’s Millennium Challenge fund has cut next year’s aid, citing political and economic freedom, investment in education and health, civil rights and the rule of law; Congress has cut military aid over human rights. Geneva’s answer on the national human rights commission was that it is unconstitutionally appointed and not impartial. No government fighting a war can protect rights perfectly, Ivan writes — that is as true of the West — but we answer by calling every international body a conspirator.
මහින්ද හා ප්රභාකරන්
Answering the army’s advance, the LTTE has moved from suicide attacks on significant targets to bombing buses and trains — killing ordinary people in bulk to make the war impossible to continue. Ivan sets out what that strategy is meant to achieve, then turns to the government’s own problem: a system that cannot deliver quick results and a leader who must keep showing them.
මහින්දගේ කොටි විරෝධී යුද්ධය හා දෙමළ ජනතාවගේ අනාගතය
The war has reached a decisive stage: the east taken, Mannar taken, the army inside Kilinochchi. Ivan works through the inevitability of the war, the idea of a homeland, what has changed in the fighting, who gains from it, and what it means for Tamil civilians — and argues that the LTTE’s two greatest blunders were killing Rajiv Gandhi and stopping Ranil Wickremesinghe from winning in 2005.
යුද්ධය හා ජාත්යන්තර ප්රජාව
Sri Lanka carried the vote in Geneva but the Western world voted against it, which tells Ivan that the country won the war without winning the argument that justified it — a gap he says must be closed rather than left. He warns the president against foolish friends, and turns to the appointment of a new chief justice: the court needs neither a bench allied to the executive nor one allied to the opposition, and a way must be found to do justice to those denied it.
Was there an invisible hand behind the Easter attack?
Cardinal Ranjith goes to the Pope and to Geneva, and Shani Abeysekera sits in a cell. Victor Ivan lays out what he calls the puzzle behind the Easter Sunday attack and asks who benefited from it.
Perfecting the failure
Anarchy, bankruptcy, a misread geopolitics and a Geneva resolution. Victor Ivan reads the failure of the state as something now being completed rather than merely risked.
The end of a journey and beginning of a new one
Anti-Muslim feeling, the forced cremations, and what Victor Ivan says the National Intelligence Service did. The column argues the old era has ended and asks what should be built in its place.
Sri Lanka: Out of the frying pan into the fire
Victor Ivan looks at what the Easter attacks have done to the Muslim community and to the state’s intelligence services, and asks whether a country that has swum in blood for three decades can escape the cycle.
Wounding the social psyche
A lawsuit filed in Los Angeles by Lasantha Wickrematunge’s daughter opens Victor Ivan’s account of the wounds left on Sri Lankan society by abductions, disappearances and unpunished political murder.
අශීලාචාර තත්ත්වය පවත්වාගෙන යමුද? ශීලාචාර රටක් ඇතිකර ගමුද?
Ivan frames the January 2015 election as a choice about the country’s future. After defeating a rebellion a state must heal, not keep ruling by fear; yet after Prabhakaran’s defeat the Rajapaksa government had no vision for repairing the damage to people, infrastructure, society and institutions, and turned the victory to its own ends, using the forces for power. He asks why the rebellions arose and argues that re-electing Mahinda Rajapaksa would entrench an uncivilised state.