China becoming Si Lanka's tourism lifeline

Sri Lanka government's economic lifeline tourism seems moving from lucrative European market, in which the country failed, to China as the government's tarnished international image hinders expansion into high end tourism markets.

Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau says that the Chinese tourist market has improved immensely during the first six months of the year 2013.

Accordingly, the number of tourists that arrived in Sri Lanka during the first six months of the year 2013 increased to 16,582 from 9622 from the same period of the previous year.

The increase is a growth of 72.3 percent, the bureau says.

The Assistant Director of the Tourism Promotion Bureau Yuvaraj Athukorala said to media that the attempts of the country to tap the Chinese tourism market had gathered momentum.

512,281 tourists arrived in Sri Lanka in the first six months of the year 2013 and it is an increase of 13.1 percent compared to the same period of the previous year.

Sri Lanka, China Form Strategic Shield against the West

FRIDA GHITIS | 02 SEP 2010
WORLD POLITICS REVIEW
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- On a steamy afternoon in the Sri Lankan capital, if you glance across the water at Colombo's legendary Galle Face Green seaside promenade, past the spray of the Indian Ocean, you can make out a milky line of giant cargo ships at the point where the sky blends with the sea. That ocean traffic on the horizon, those dashes of gray steel, glide along the world's busiest sea lane, navigated by anywhere from 100 to 200 ships every day. This is the maritime pipeline that makes it possible for China to remain the world's fastest-growing economy. It is also the visible explanation for China's generosity toward Sri Lanka and a centerpiece of this country's vision for the future.

Sri Lanka, the small tear-shaped island at the foot of India, has always held a special place in the hearts of global strategists. In earlier centuries, Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonial invaders sought to exploit its riches, but they also coveted the island for its location. Now, in what may become the Chinese Century, it is Beijing that has its sights on the country formerly known as Ceylon.

China's interest has been warmly reciprocated by Sri Lankan authorities, who see Beijing's embrace as the key to prosperity at a time when the West demands pesky human rights standards in exchange for its largesse.

While the West today is removing preferential trade treatment from Sri Lanka, citing its failure to cooperate with human rights investigations, Beijing is happily expanding its presence. Last year China became the country's biggest financial investor, and the level of cooperation is increasing by the day. Chinese businessmen and technical experts are a regular presence in Colombo's hotels, and government delegations make frequent visits. China is allowing Sri Lanka to develop its economy, while Sri Lanka is providing China with a key strategic position in the Indian Ocean -- one that could evolve into a political and even a quasi-military alliance.

Sri Lanka has become one of the beads in China's so-called "String of Pearls," a series of ports between the Persian Gulf and China that protect Chinese trade routes and create the foundation for what could become a series of bases for China's fast-growing navy.

In order for China to access the Middle East oil that fires the pistons of its economy, freighters carrying petroleum must slice through the Persian Gulf waters, sail within sight of Sri Lanka's shores, and make their way around Southeast Asia until they reach a Chinese port. Similarly, Chinese exports destined for Europe must reverse the route, passing near Sri Lanka on their way to the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean Sea. Freighters headed to the east coast of the United States, where hungry American consumers gobble up Chinese products, continue on to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Chinese presence in Sri Lanka has become inescapable. Strong bilateral relations are nothing new, but the ties have strengthened greatly since Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa came to office five years ago, and even more since his forces won an apparently decisive victory in the war against the separatist LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

That military victory against an organization that perpetrated acts of extraordinary brutality was widely cheered by Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese -- as well as by large sections of the minority Tamil, who dreaded the extreme methods of the Tamil Tigers and breathed a sigh of relief at the war's end. But the victory came at a horrific cost to civilians.

As the controversial final offensive pushed relentlessly ahead last year, China blocked efforts to bring the matter to the U.N. Security Council. But China was already on its way to forging the alliance years earlier. In 2007, when Washington stopped direct military aid to Colombo on human rights grounds, China quickly picked up the slack, providing powerful new weaponry that made America's decision irrelevant. Chinese weapons played an important role in the government's ultimate success against the LTTE in 2009.

Sri Lanka has resisted international pressure to open itself to human rights investigations about what transpired during the final months of the war, when hundreds of thousands of civilians were displaced and thousands more are believed to have been killed. The U.N. launched such an investigation, charging some 7,000 civilians died as the fighting reached its final climax.

In order to pressure Colombo to allow a war crimes probe, the European Union last February threatened to remove favorable trade status. The threat failed to change the government's stance, and in August, Sri Lanka lost tariff preferences under the union's so-called Generalized System of Preference Plus.

Sri Lanka remains defiant in the face of Western pressure, partly because China's help is easing the pain. Authorities say the country received $1.2 billion from China in 2009 in the form of grants, loans and credits, constituting the majority of what Sri Lanka received last year and making Beijing easily the largest contributor among foreign countries and multilateral agencies.

Chinese funds built the gleaming convention center near the airport, but the most important project for both countries is the one under construction in the south of the island. The Hambantota deep-sea port, whose first phase was recently completed, is one the largest of China's String of Pearls ports. Its 55-foot depth makes it one of the deepest in the region. The joint venture, expected to cost $1.5 billion, will give China a place to dock its most massive ships and provides Sri Lanka with an opportunity to expand its position in international shipping. Sri Lanka aims to lure large ships traveling between Asia and the West to use the port for refueling and maintenance.

Other Chinese projects in Sri Lanka include a major power plant in the town of Norochcholai with a price tag of $1.35 billion, financed by Exim Bank of China. The first phase of the plant already went online. China is also engaged in a number of crucial and costly road-building projects, including one that would cut the travel time between Colombo and the main airport at Katunayake to about 20 minutes. It now takes between one and two hours, depending on the capital's unpredictable traffic congestion.

For Sri Lanka, the end of the war with the Tamil Tigers means a new era. Pressure from the West to look back at what transpired during the conflict, or at the cost civilians paid for that victory, are seen by the government as an affront to its sovereignty and an unnecessary rehashing of a necessary war. Instead of looking back, it prefers to look to the future. And a big part of the future can be seen from the country's shores, where the big Chinese ships dotting the horizon symbolize new opportunities for Sri Lanka.


You may also like to visit our Sinhala Blog W3Lanka

Can Sri Lanka monk party get Russia and China to veto Ban Ki Moon?

(July 04, 2010, Colombo - Lanka Polity) In the present international political context especially related to Sri Lanka, anything seems possible. Sri Lanka once managed to defeat a proposal supported by mighty nations to investigate war crimes during the last phase of war at the Human Rights Council of UN. It is somehow eluding any punitive action of the international community regarding the human rights violation and war crime charges leveled against it.

The powerful nations are too busy to think of the repercussions of their carelessness on the downtrodden nationalities and classes. They simply cannot imagine the magnanimity of the anti system triumphal mentality of the backward political elements of this island. Following is a news story that depicts the phenomenon.

Sri Lanka's Sinhala Buddhist monk-led political party Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) says it has decided to urge Russia and China to use veto power not to let UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon to contest for a second term.

Moon’s first term ends in December 2011 and needs the blessing of the five veto power holding nations to vie for a second term, said a Sri Lankan Sinhala newspaper Lankadeepa that quoted a senior spokesman of the JHU.

JHU has decided to hold a march to Russian and Chinese embassies soon and to hand over letters to the Ambassadors of the two nations urging them to use veto to deny Moon a second term, said the newspaper.

The JHU spokesman said to the newspaper that the request is made from these two nations since they have already protested the UN General Secretary’s panel to advise him on Sri Lanka’s accountability issues.

Will these countries use veto against Ban Ki Moon? There is ample time to wait and see. But the pressure on Ban Ki Moon will work on him and his panel.



You may also like to visit our Sinhala Blog W3Lanka

Sri Lanka regime's ugly game in between India and China

(June 14, 2010, Colombo - Lanka Polity) 'Though the Tiger is no more and Lankan Tamils are cowed, Indian Tamils and Diaspora Tamils together can still pose a formidable challenge to Colombo. And their capacity to do so will remain so long as the problems of the Lankan Tamils are unresolved."
-Thisaranee Gunasekara evaluating the outcome of the IIFA-2010 Bollywood award ceremony held in June in Colombo.

Sri Lanka President visited India following the IIFA debacle and the Hindustan Times had to report "The Pro-Tamil group's protest against visit of Sri Lankan president Mahenda Rajkapsa turned violent on Saturday (June 12) when suspected pro-tamil activists blasted railway tracks, just before a passenger train was to enter Perani railway station in Villupuram district, some 70 km south of Chennai in the wee hours."

This news creates a picture of a Tamil struggle in which the Sri Lankan part appears relatively peaceful amidst miserable conditions of the war-affected community while the Indian section looks getting more militant than before in addition to its successful lobby politics that made the IIFA a great disaster for Sinhala chauvinist Sri Lanka government.

Tamil struggle poses to envisage in a broader spectrum of a struggle of world Tamils for a state. Being the heart of the Tamil polity, the Tamil Nadu with its 70 million Tamils naturally becomes the epicenter of the new struggle.

In a time the capitalist world is facing its worst economic crisis in the history, it is natural that the struggles against the system may restructure aiming outcome amidst a possible world crisis.

India is a nation threatened by a number of nationalist struggles seeking restructuring of geo-politics. Therefore, due to clearly understandable reasons, India cannot give way to the rise of the new wave of Tamil nationalism in Tamil Nadu.

One way of curtailing the trend is to find a sustainable solution for the ethnic problem of Sri Lanka. The island nation is the melting pot of the Tamil nationalism.

Thisaranee Gunasekara says "In a speech to a group of businessmen, on the first anniversary of the defeating of the LTTE, (Sri Lanka Army Commander) Gen. Jayasuriya said that “it is up to the government and the people now to fund the root cause of the problem and give a proper solution… I believe in the end a proper solution is needed” (The Straits Times – 11.6.2010).

"Unfortunately his words are likely to be unheeded, if not scorned. The Rajapakses will not deliver a political solution, because they do not believe in the existence of an ethnic problem, as the President himself had stated, publicly, time and time again. Disbelieving in the existence of an ethnic problem, they, logically, do not see the need for a political solution."

However, The Hindu reported Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said on Saturday that there are positive signals from Sri Lanka on finding an amicable and acceptable solution to the issue of Tamils, who are fighting for equal rights.

But Thisaranee Gunasekara contradicts this idea. She says "Not only will the Rajapakses not deliver a political solution; even the restoration of normalcy or a real improvement in the living conditions of the North-Eastern Tamils is unlikely to happen, except marginally and minimally. The fact that the 2010 budget sets aside Rs.201 billion for defence but only Rs.2 billon for resettlement demonstrates the very low priority accorded by the government to Tamil wellbeing. It also reveals the regime’s inability/unwillingness to see the nexus between development and security. Given such a militarist mindset, reconciliation is but a mirage, a delusion spun occasionally by the state media, for purposes of propaganda."

Thisaranee points out that Sri Lanka will swing like a pendulum between India and China to manage the situation and eventually the island nation can be the battleground of the cold war between the two super powers. But one point she forgets is that India is more important to China than Sri Lanka and another 1987-like scenario can re-emerge.

In 1987, J.R. Jayawardane, who was playing in between India and Western super powers keeping all its eggs in the West's basket was eventually betrayed to India by the West that he venerated and kept his all trusts. China never bothers about the ethnic problem of Sri Lanka. She will not wage war against India once India attempts to use its powers to solve the problem. The possibility of China advising Sri Lanka one day to give way to India is very high. In such context, it will be the end of the road for the game of the Rajapaksas.

Wihat is this game? It is none other than playing in others' soft corners permanently hoodwinking the world and sustaining the misery of the minorities of the island. Rajapaksas should be defeated in this game if Sri Lanka as well as the world polity needs to progress.

What Dr. Dayan Jayathilaka has to say is different. "When we antagonized India we could not win the war, but when we correctly managed relations with India, we won the war. If India had opposed us or not supported us, we may not have been able to win or withstand the Western moves to stop the war. There is a saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Every relationship is reciprocal. Sri Lanka has to reciprocate for India’s support," he says.

"We must bear in mind that we still need that support because, though the hot war has been won by us, a cold war continues against us in the global arena.

"We need India’s support to balance off those who are hostile to us or are influenced by the pro-Eelam trend in the Tamil Diaspora. India is our buffer with the USA. Delhi is under pressure to take a stand hostile to us, or to stop supporting us. That pressure comes from Tamil Nadu but not only from Tamil Nadu...from India’s civil society as well as some of India’s Western friends. If India stops supporting us, not even the Non Aligned Movement will defend us fully, because they take their cue from respected Third World states such as India." Dr. Dayan Jayathilaka adds.

In this context, the progressive elements of Sri Lanka must try their best to manage the conflicts as subtly as they can to achieve better results for the polity.

It should be understood that the attempts of a section of Sri Lankan business community and the left forces to mobilize people against India citing 'aggressive' nature of proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) etc. are indirectly promoted by the ruling elite to maintain their chauvinist base of the politics. Progressive forces of the Lankan polity should work to broaden the purview of the polity to enhance their ability to grasp the better and sustainable outcome instead of narrow, quick popularity.


You may also like to visit our Sinhala Blog W3Lanka

Norway, Solheim helped establish LTTE-Eritrea links for arms deals - Sri Lanka's Sinhala nationalist newspaper

(September 27, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Sri Lanka's leading Sinhala nationalist English daily The Island reported today that the former peace facilitator Norwegian government helped the Tamil rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) to establish relations with Eritrea, which allowed the group to purchase arms, ammunition and equipment from China on Eritrean end-user certificates and other documents needed to legally buy weapons, according to 'well informed sources'. 

The rest of the feature is as follows:

Sources said the tripartite understanding had been reached in Norway as far back as 2002-2003, when it facilitated negotiations purportedly aimed at ending Sri Lanka’s war. Sources said the on-going investigations had revealed that Norway facilitated the meeting between Eritrean representatives and the LTTE.

Responding to The Island queries, sources said the then Sri Lankan government had not been aware of Norway’s surreptitious move to strengthen the conventional fighting capability of the LTTE. Sources added that some members of the LTTE negotiating team, too, had been involved with the Eritreans. Government sources said that the international community should investigate the Norwegian role in destabilizing a UN member state.

The interrogation of Kumaran Padmanathan aka ‘KP’ captured by Sri Lanka over two months ago had confirmed the Eritrean deal, sources said.

India is also seeking to interrogate ‘KP’ though New Delhi never allowed Sri Lanka access to LTTE terrorists arrested during eelam war IV. Over 90 per cent of all heavy equipment, including a range of artillery pieces and 14.5 mm four barrelled anti-aircraft guns captured by the army were of Chinese origin.

Sources said ‘KP’, though unable to shed light on terrorist operations in Sri Lanka could help expose the vast international network of supporters, including the direct involvement of Norway in supporting terrorism. According to sources, the Norwegians, during bilateral talks with the LTTE had promised the outfit to develop ocean resources. Discussions had centred on oil exploration as well as the fisheries sector, sources said adding that the far reaching Norwegian project was believed to have started as far back as the arrival of NORAD in Sri Lanka.

Sources said that the LTTE had used Eritrean and also North Korean end-user-certificates to procure arms from China and smuggled them in several consignments before the Sri Lanka Navy destroyed eight floating arsenals on the high seas between September 2006 and October 2007.

Sources revealed that the Norwegian embassy in Colombo had gone to the extent of contacting the Maldivian government in May 2007, when the Maldivian Coast Guard intercepted a trawler carrying LTTE cargo. But, the Norwegians failed to save Sri Krishna, belonging to Indian fishermen from destruction and the SLN intelligence got an opportunity to question captured LTTE cadres as well as the Indian Captain of the vessel.

The then Chief Norwegian facilitator Erik Solheim had been directly involved in forming the Eritrean-LTTE relationship, sources said. An official said that the bottomline was that Norway had eyed Sri Lanka’s ocean resources and ministers, who had represented Sri Lanka in negotiations, had been totally unaware of what was going on behind their backs.

Sri Lanka recently decided to establish diplomatic relations with Eritrea. Although the former Navy Chief Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda revealed the LTTE relationship with an African country shortly after the killing of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon in May, in an interview with the ITN. The Island was the first to name the country.

Clash between Chinese employees of the coal power project and villagers in Sri Lanka

(July 07, 2009) A Chinese national was injured and hospitalized following a clash with a group of villagers of Bingiriya area in the Northwestern Province of Sri Lanka on July 05.

The Chinese national is an employee of a concrete workshop belonged to the contractors of the Norochcholai coal power plant.

Reports from the area said that the Chinese employees tied a villager in the workplace and the villagers clashed with the employees after that. Four villagers were also injured.

Sri Lanka's first coal power plant is under construction in the Northwestern Province with credit facilities provided by the Export and Import Bank of China.