If you didn't know, there is a war going on in Sri Lanka. Jailed journalist Jayampathy Wickramaratne discusses what a political solution to the conflict might entail. Noam Chomsky offers up his opinions on the war and its eventual aftermath. Want to hear from some Tamils? MIA offers up her take on the situation. And in a very precient article from May of last year, D.B.S Jeyaraj discusses the LTTE at 32. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Feb 13, 2009 - 18 comments

Images of Ceylon - Hundreds and hundreds of photos taken in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) from the mid 1800's to around the turn of that century.

Warning: A handful out of the ones I've seen show topless women so maybe NSFW.
posted by selton on Sep 4, 2006 - 18 comments

Violence that had been building up in the Eastern coast of Sri Lanka has errupted in the capital with the assassination of the foreign affairs minister. Presumably the LTTE are involved in the killing, as they have been complaining for some time that the government has been sheltering a splinter group, conducting a covert-war. As one would expect, LankaWeb supplies a strong opinion on the assassination. One wonders if we will see Sri Lanka return to the state it was in some 10 years ago.
posted by chunking express on Aug 12, 2005 - 9 comments

Sri Lankan Maids Pay Dearly for Perilous Jobs Overseas The teacher held up an electric cake mixer and told the class of wide-eyed women before her to clean it properly. If it smells, "Mama," as the aspiring maids were instructed to call their female employers, "will be angry and she will hammer and beat you." Sriyantha Walpola for The New York Times More than a million Sri Lankans - roughly 1 in every 19 citizens - now work abroad, and nearly 600,000 are housemaids. Sriyantha Walpola for The New York Times Some maids being trained in Kegalla, Sri Lanka, will find brutal work conditions in the Middle East. "This is where you go wrong," the teacher continued. "That is how Mama beats you and burns you - when you do anything wrong."
posted by kmtharakan on May 8, 2005 - 27 comments