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Believe it or not! A brothel located in a posh landmark building in a high security zone in the city was having a roaring business day and night for more than a decade until Police raided it early this week. Continue Reading

Commissioner General of Rehabilitation Brigadier Sudantha Ranasinghe said that the rehabilitation process in Sri Lanka needs drastic expansion. According to Brig. Ranasinghe there are over 3,000 ex-LTTE combatants in Sri Lanka who have surrendered to government forces who need rehabilitation.The Brigadier made this comment while attending a ceremony at the Rehabilitation Centre at Senapura in Welikanda where ex-LTTE cadres who had completed their vocational training were awarded their certificates. The Senapura Rehabilitation Centre accommodates over 362 ex- LTTE combatants. So far 233 of the combatants from this centre alone have returned to their homes after rehabilitation.Brig. Ranasinghe also emphasised the need for vocational training in order to complete the rehabilitation process.”Having understood the post war need for rehabilitation much emphasis needs to be given to vocational training,” Brig. Ranasinghe said. He added that the support that they receive through vocational training is the key to rehabilitating ex-combatants.The Brigadier explained that vocational training will provide the assistance that the ex- combatants need to fit back into society.He added that the rehabilitation process was also changed to concentrate more on counselling and positive value cultivation.Meanwhile the military guarantees that the at the end of the year long rehabilitation process the ex-LTTE combatants will be reformed into responsible citizens.

Minister of Science and Technology Professor Tissa Vitarana, said that Sri Lanka will ride the wave of nanotechnology, to move into the next stage of development.Making a presentation on Industrial Development Challenges in the 21st century on Friday the Minister said, “We can never buy the best technology available because no country is willing to part with the best they have. Therefore, we have to develop our own technology. We missed the earlier buses of ICT and biotechnology, other countries such as India and Korea rode those buses and have benefited a great deal”. The minister stated that in the 1960′s the per capita income of Sri Lanka was around 320 US dollars, compared to a per capita income of 86 US dollars in South Korea. However, as a result of Sri Lanka’s failure to improve its technology and industries, last year when Sri Lanka’s per capita income was 2,200 US dollars, in South Korea it had been 29,000 US dollars. “With the help of some private companies and the BOI we have started experimenting more on developing nanotechnology. Slimtech is one such institution where we experiment with this technology. Today we export ilmenite, and then pay more money and import it when it is transformed into other things. If we had nanotechnology we wouldn’t have to do that”, the Minister explained. Furthermore, he said that Sri Lanka only had around 4,000 research scientists, and that there was a need for at least 4 times more scientists. “We have to be innovative. We need to have our own industries and technology. But we cannot get that done when we don’t have enough scientists. The Government will be taking steps to fill that void”.  

China yesterday reiterated its commitment to the economic development of Sri Lanka, with its investment and association with the major economic, infrastructure and socio-cultural development projects in the country, when the visiting Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang was hosted to a breakfast meeting by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Presidential Secretariat.

According to a presidential secretariat media release at the cordial and constructive discussions that took place the Chinese Vice Premier, leading a large delegation from China, discussed the progress of key aspects of economic co-operation between Sri Lanka and China, and the progress of projects such as the Colombo-Katunayake Expressway, extension of the railway from Matara to Kataragama, the Norochcholai Coal Power Project, the Hambantota Port Development, the Mattala International Airport and the Centre for the Performing Arts in Colombo, where construction work was proceeding at speed to achieve agreed targets for completion.

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The marriages of 53 couples, who were former LTTE combatants, will be registered today at a massive ceremony in Vavuniya. The ex-LTTE combatants, who had been detained at rehabilitation centres in Vavuniya, will be allowed to return to their homes afterwards. Meanwhile, some of the newlyweds, who have no permanent residence, will also be resettled by the government. According to the Minister of Rehabilitation and Prisons, DEW Gunasekare, most of these ex-combatants have been living together for sometime now.

“What we will do tomorrow is legally register their marriages and then ceremoniously marry them off according to Hindu tradition”, Minister Gunasekare said adding that ‘the couples have successfully gone through the rehabilitation programme for a year and are ready to start their own lives together’. The minister added that through actions like these the Sri Lankan Government has shown compassion and their interest in reconciliation.

Legal experts and human rights activists have slammed the Sri Lankan Police for arresting young couples allegedly for ‘indecent behaviour’ in public. “The police is clearly abusing their power. There are brothels, illegal liquor stores, drug smuggling, bribery, corruption and a dozen other criminal acts happening right under our nose, and the police ignores all that and decides to chase hundreds of teenagers who are overly affectionate. It doesn’t make sense”, constitutional law expert and head of the Centre for Policy Alternatives Rohan Edrisinha said. “I think they are using the penal code from the 19th century to carry out these arrests. Times have changed a lot. Today, you can’t go arresting young people for being affectionate or for holding hands”.The former chairman of the National Child Protection Authority, and ardent child rights activist Professor Harendra de Silva said, “It’s very hard to define indecent behaviour. Of course, if a couple engages in a sexual act in public they can be charged. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happened here. You can’t arrest couples for holding hands or cuddling. That is a total misuse of the power entrusted in the police. They should be chasing real criminals”.

Speaking on the psychological effects on the arrested teenagers, Professor de Silva said, “When you arrest a child and bring him or her to courts that child is scared forever. It’s a crime to scar these children the way the police is doing in this case”. Renowned legal expert and Executive Director of the Center for Policy Alternatives, Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu said, “The police have abused their powers and acted arbitrarily without using any common sense. It defies all logic to see arrests such as these happening”. However, when the Nation contacted the Police Spokesperson SP Pryshantha Jayakody, he said, “Yes some couples have been arrested because of indecent behaviour in public. I don’t have anymore details on the matter”. Independent reports indicate that over 200 young couples have been arrested, and that around 22 of them have been asked to appear before court because of kissing, cuddling or holding hands in public. Most of the girls involved are said to be school children aged around 15 years.

Train services were disrupted for about six hours Saturday after a bomb blast damaged three feet of track in Tamil Nadu’s Villipuram district Saturday, police said.The incident took place around 2 a.m. near Perani railway station, around 160 km from here.’The blast damaged three feet of track and caused a four-feet crater,’ a police officer told IANS.

The passengers of the Chennai-bound Rockfort Express from Tiruchirappali had a miraculous escape because the driver stopped the train after getting a warning about the blast. He halted it about 200 feet from the spot.No one claimed responsibility for the explosion. But unconfirmed reports said the police recovered a paper stating the blast was to protest against the visit of June 8-11 Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to India.Train services resumed around 9 a.m. After the track was set right, the first train to use it was the Rockfort Express. (IANS)

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has so far authorised the release of about 4,000 LTTE suspects detained in rehabilitation centres and the number of detainees who are yet to be released has dwindled to less than 8,000, government sources said. The President has disclosed these figures during the talks he held with the TNA delegation on the eve of his departure for New Delhi on a three-day official visit.About 12,000 Tamil youth suspected to have had close ties with the LTTE were taken into custody during and after the final phase of the Eelam War Four which ended with the decimation of the LTTE leadership by May last year. Most of these suspects were separated from among some 300,000 displaced Tamil civilians who were sheltered in refugee camps in Vavuniya through an identification process soon after the war. Some of them had been arrested at checkpoints etc.

The TNA which has been urging the government to grant a general amnesty to detainees who are not facing serious charges and release those against whom there is no incriminating evidence, had asked the President at the recent talks to provide them with a list of the names of detainees who had already been released. However, the TNA delegates had been told that such a list of names could not be released as the released detainees themselves had requested that their identities be kept a secret. “The youth who gained freedom had feared that if their names were revealed, the rump of the LTTE leadership still active in some Western countries would try to recruit them again with a view to using them as combatants in the future,” a government spokesman explained.

Traditional Industries and Small Enterprise Development Minister, Douglas Devananda, who accompanied President Mahinda Rajapaksa to India, in an hard hitting interview with the IANS has said that the Tamil diaspora’s refusal to give up the Tamil Eelam dream is only hurting his community.”Expatriate Tamils in Western countries who continued to be loyal to the goal of forming an independent state were no way serving the Tamil masses in Sri Lanka,” Minister Devananda said.”The fact is there is going to be no Tamil Eelam, now or ever. It remained a dream even when LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran was alive. Today it is like dreaming about a dream,” he elaborated.”Can these Tamils achieve what Prabhakaran failed to?,” he asked. “They cannot. But their actions create suspicions in the minds of a section of the government in Sri Lanka. It makes life more difficult for the Tamils.”Ever since the Sri Lankan military crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and wiped out its leadership in May last year, pro-LTTE Tamils in the West have kept alive hopes of forming an independent Tamil Eelam state.The need of the hour, Devananda said, was to speed up the process of reconstruction of the island’s war-battered northeast and the rehabilitation of the thousands who suffered during the quarter century of conflict.President Rajapaksa succeeded in conveying this to the Indian leadership during the June 8-11 visit to India, said Devananda who took part in the delegation level discussions.”True, there are shortcomings in the process of rehabilitation in what we have achieved since the LTTE’s demise,” he said.”This is because of the existence of a large number of landmines plus other factors. We told the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh that we needed more aid to help people start lives afresh,” he said referring mainly to the Tamils who were the worst victims of the LTTE’s separatist war and the military offensive.Meanwhile, The Hindu in its editorial yesterday stressed the importance of a political will on the Sinhala side to find a just and enduring solution and the responsibility on the part of Tamil parties to make up their minds quickly on what kind of devolution, development and future they want for their people within a united Sri Lanka. “They must overcome their differences and liberate themselves from the separatist mindset of the Prabakaran era which prevented even so-called moderates from making any workable proposals in talks with successive Sri Lankan governments,” The Hindu editorial said.

Post conflict Sri Lanka has the unique opportunity of scripting a fairytale future if it takes the right steps within the next two years, according to the Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), Dr. Kandeh K. Yumkella.

While making a presentation on industrial development challenges faced by Sri Lanka, at a seminar organised by the Ceylon National Chamber of Industries on Friday, Dr. Yumkella said, “Sri Lanka has two years to consolidate peace, rebuild the country, and move to the next stage of development. Unique opportunities such as this to script the fairytale future you want do not come about often.”

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