Sri Lanka’s post-war troubles

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena is speaking on "Braving the seas: Sri Lanka’s post-war troubles". Pinto-Jayawardena argues that a climate of impunity existed in Sri Lanka for decades and remains after the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War, with the concept of justice loosing meaning. They argue that poor rural members of the Sinhalese, majority suffer along with other groups from government endorsed military oppression, the example of land takeover ("Is Sri Lanka a military state that devours land?", Kishali Pinto-Jayawarden, November 3, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian). Pinto-Jayawarden questioned if the Australian government's support for Sri Lanka's CHOGM meeting was in return for cooperation on the return of boat people. While Pinto-Jayawarden presneted no evidence, it should be noted that Australian Senator Lee Rhiannon was recently detained on a visit to Sri Lanka. In April I presented a paper at the 2013 International Conference on Computer Science and Education (ICCSE 2013) in Colombo, Sri Lanka. I visited universities and IT companies in Sri Lanka with links to Australia, the USA and the USA. So I asked Pinto-Jayawardena if such links were beneficial to the situation Sri Lanka, they suggested it was (which was a great relief to me).