Sri Lanka police officer abducts and tortures an IT student due to enmity with his son

(August 06, 2009 - Lanka Polity) A student of Sri Lanka's IT campus in Malabe says that he was tortured by police due to an enmity with an offspring of a senior police official. The offspring is also a student of the same campus.

The victim Nipuna Ramanayaka of Rathnapura says that a police team abducted him and took him to the house of the Director of the Colombo Crime Division Vaas Gunawardhana. Ramanayaka said while being treated for injuries in National Hospital that he was beaten by the wife of the above mentioned police officer, the son of the police officer who is also a student of the university and by others. They even uprooted his hair and beard and made him to eat them, the student said. A similar act took place in the incident of abduction and assault of the Working Journalists' Association Secretary Poddala Jayantha.

Later, the parents found the student in Dematagoda police station. The victim says that police threatened him to link him to the underworld and to commit a summary killing.

(Photo courtesy of Lanka E News)

Dialog and Airtel competing to buy Tigo

(August 06, 2009 - Lanka Polity) Telecom Malaysia that owns Sri Lanka's largest mobile communication network with 5.8 million subscribers and Bharathi Airtel that has invested $125 million and boasts about one million mobile connections within the launch of its operations in Sri Lanka are competing to buy the Tigo.


Tigo, owned by Luxembourg-based Millicom International, has a network with over two million subscribers. Tigo  is Sri Lanka's third largest mobile operator and it is worth $150-200 million.

India's Bharathi Airtel, Malaysia's Axiata Group, Russia's Vimpelcom and UAE's Etisalat are competing for Tigo. Axiata Group owns 85% of Dialog Telecom.

Last month, Millicom said it had received expressions of interest for its Asian assets and that it had appointed Goldman Sachs as advisor for the transaction. The company said it may either break up its Asian assets and sell them separately or may consider selling them together.

Pressure mounting on Sri Lanka government to hold the operation against underworld

(August 05, 2009 - Lanka Polity) The operations of Sri Lanka state against the underworld goons has come under severe pressure from the government politicians as the hand has stretched 'too far' to the official staffs of the Ministers.

A prominent Minister who is eying to the foreign affairs job is now talking about human rights following one of the members of his personal staff was taken into custody with weapons due to links with the underworld.

Another Minister who is ill-famous for his notoriety had to accompany a well known drug dealer via VIP exit to board in a flight to England and had to stay in the aeroplane till it was ready to take off to save the life of his companion.

Sources say that the Ministers are pointing out to the leaders that they will need these underworld goon to run election campaigns. However, reliable sources say that the leaders are unable to hold the operation since they cannot get the officials that lead it bowed to political influence.

Meanwhile, many underworld goons are killed as they are fired at by police when they are try to escape as accused in the middle of the night as they accompany police to show the weapon caches.

Some other underworld goons are killed on streets by unknown persons.

Sri Lanka to have a true census after 30 years

(August 05, 2009 - Lanka Polity) Sri Lanka Statistics Department is preparing for a country wide population census in 2011. This is the first time in 30 years the Department is to hold a complete and accurate island wide census.

After the 1981 census, the government failed to conduct census in most parts of the Northern and Eastern Provinces that were under influence of the Tamil Tiger guerrillas who were militarily defeated in May 2009.

The population figures the state has now are inaccurate due to theese incomplete census. This was clearly displayed with the government's calculations on the number of people in the uncleared areas during the last leg of the siege against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE). There are around 280,000 internally displaced persons in refugee camps now although the government calculated far less number of people in the no-fire zone during the last stage of the war.

Sri Lanka Statistics Department projects the population is above 20 million now. It is believed that 80,000 people were killed in the 30 year civil war in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka Human Rights Minister's coordinating secretary abducted; suspected of being an underworld leader

(August 04, 2009 - Lanka Polity) Shan Jayasinghe, a coordinating secretary of Sri Lanka Minister of Human Rights has been abducted by a an unknown group that came in a white van. The fate of the victim is yet to be known.

The person is known as an underworld gang leader in his residential area, Mathugama in the Kaluthara district despite his being a coordinating secretary of the minister of Human Rights.

Sri Lanka government has launched an operation against the underworld.

LTTE re-organizing among Diaspora Tamils; elections for a transnational government in April 2010

(August 04, 2009 - Lanka Polity) Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE), the movement that fought for a ethnic Tamil dominated separate state in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka for three decades is silently re-organizing among the Diaspora Tamils following Sri Lanka Government militarily uprooted their forces within the island.

Sources say that the new LTTE leader Kumaran Pathmanathan alias KP is consolidating power within the structure. Sri Lankan intelligence wings recently focused attention towards the involvement of a Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP who is now abroad on leave to strike a compromise between KP and the LTTE's Diaspora Affairs leader Castro who was not in good terms with the new leader.

LTTE is trying to give it a democratic face in restructuring. However, the sources say that it has become very difficult for the movement to adjust to democracy following decades of militant politics.

Meanwhile, US resident Viswanathan Rudrakumaran, an offspring of a one time Jaffna Mayor, who represented LTTE in peace talks has been assigned to form a Transnational Government of Tamil Ealam, a government in exile sans a host state. He said to Indian magazine Tehelka that elections for the new endeavor will be held in April 2010.

Net polythene usage gone up after Sri Lanka's ban

(August 03, 2009 - Lanka Polity) A study in markets of Sri Lanka revealed that the laws introduced by the state since the beginning of 2007 to curtail the use of polythene had completely failed and it had caused rapid increase of net usage  this environmentally hazardous material. Although the manufacturing, sale and use of less than 20 micron thickness of polythene is illegal in Sri Lanka, they can be easily acquired from all the nooks and corners of the country including the IDP camps.

All the rhetoric of the then Minister of Environment Maithripala Sirisena to introduce alternates to 'shopping bags' led the country to nowhere and the packaging industry moved to use more polythene and plastic after the introduction of these regulations. Even the curd manufacturers that traditionally used earthen pots for packaging have begun to use plastic now.

Although there were around 300 polythene manufacturing factories by the time the laws were introduced, the number has escalated by tenfold within the two years of the implementation of laws, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources sources say.The Ministry lacks resources to monitor this expanded industry, they said.