Returning ISIS Fighters viewed as Threat to European Society

ONE =Kim Willsher, “Returning jihadists ‘threaten new wave of terror in Europe” 20 December 2018,  

Europe is facing a new wave of terrorism as radicalised individuals return and jihadists are released from jail, the general secretary of Interpol has warned. Jürgen Stock, Interpol’s chief, who is also a criminologist and law enforcement officer from Germany, said: “We could soon be facing a second wave of other Islamic State linked or radicalised individuals that you might call Isis 2.0.”

“A lot of these are suspected terrorists or those who are linked to terrorist groups as supporters who are facing maybe two to five years in jail. Because they were not convicted of a concrete terrorist attack but only support for terrorist activities, their sentences are perhaps not so heavy.  In many parts of the world, in Europe but also Asia, this generation of early supporters will be released in the next couple of years, and they may again be part of a terrorist group or those supporting terrorist activities.”

In Memory of Richard de Zoysa

Anurang Singh, in Sunday Observer, 17 February 2019, where the title is Remembering Richard, a multifaceted personality””

At three in the morning on February 18 1990, Arjuna Ranawana, a news producer for Rupavahini woke up to a call at his residence. Wondering as to who it could be, he answered the phone to hear Kenneth Honter’s voice at the other end. “What is Richard’s address,” he asked and Ranawana said that he didn’t in fact know of an address but gave directions. The line was then disconnected. Ranawana was baffled as to what was going on when he got a second call just 10 minutes later.It was Honter agian. Explaining what had happened Honter told Ranawana that the police had come to his residence asking for Richard’s address and to warn Richard immediately of it.

UK confirms Pursuit of UNHRC Vendetta: Naseby Motion Rejected

Item in The Island, 8 February 2019, entitled “UK demands full implementation of Geneva Resolutions on Lanka …Says US pullout from Geneva body irrelevant

The UK government has again dismissed Lord Naseby’s call to terminate Geneva Resolution 30/1 in 2015 and Resolution 34/1 in 2017 on the basis that the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government didn’t perpetrate war crimes as alleged by the UN. Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con) on Wednesday (Feb. 05) during a House of Commons debate on UNHRC Resolution declared that the UK expected the full implementation of both Resolutions.

Simple Blundering Simon: Gideon Haigh’s Venture into Sri Lankan Political History

Michael Roberts

Gideon Haigh is an incisive and formidable researcher. He is a whiz-kid on the financial underpinnings of the business of cricket in India and even more adept in analysing the processes surrounding cricket matches in Australia, India and beyond. But in his recent excursion into Sri Lankan politics, he has dived into a morass he is not familiar with.[1]

He has seized on the standard interpretations in the western media world and, willy-nilly, become an agent of US-UK-EU imperialist designs. Take note of this summary survey on his part.”In noting that 2018 was a bad year for Sri Lankan cricket, we should note also that it was a very bad year for Sri Lankan democracy, rocked by President Maithripala Sirisena’s attempts to install his notoriously authoritarian predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister over the head of incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe……. by the estimate of The Economist Intelligence Unit, in no country did the cause of democracy retreat so far as Sri Lanka last year.”

British Government Stance on War and Aftermath castigated by Defenders of Lanka’s Realm

Rajeewa Jayaweera. in Island, 26 January 2019, with this title “Boycott UK Defense Advisor”

According to a recent media report, UK government (GoUK) has recently appointed a Resident Defense Advisor in Sri Lanka after an absence of ten years. The story was accompanied by a photograph of the newly appointed Colonel David Ashman with Chief of Defense Staff Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne taken during a courtesy call paid by the British RDA on the CDS. His purported mission is to help the Sri Lankan military to fulfill the obligations as required by the UNHRC 30/1 Resolution originated by the US and UK and so pusillanimously co-sponsored by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe-Samaraweera triumvirate.

Pathos. Comedy. Revelation. President Sirisena’s Sermon to a ‘Captive’ Cabinet

Michael Roberts

Having been forced to accept an UNP government by a Supreme Court decision in December 2018 after he had attempted to ditch them in a coup from above in late October, President Maithripala Sirisena utilised the opportunity provided by the swearing in of a new UNP Cabinet under Ranil Wickremasinghe on 16^th December 2018 to deliver a sermon to a captive audience of ‘enemies’ who were, ironically, about to enjoy the fruits of victory and destined to assume state power.[1] Sirisena’s Address was delivered in Sinhala and is marked by pathos, recrimination and selective biographical tales from the past that illuminate aspects of Sri Lankan politics.

 

Prejudiced and Infantile Readings of Sri Lanka at Chatham House in 2019

Introductory Note from Michael Roberts

 The public event organised by Chatham House to discuss recent events in Sri Lanka on 17^th January was chaired by a University Lecturer at University College London whose specialty is “human rights,” rather than any one of the Sri Lankan specialists teaching at British Universities (for e.g. Rajesh Venugopal, Asanga Welikala, Sujit Suvisundaram, Zoltan Beidermann and Alan Strathern).  The combination of ignorance, distortion and prejudice that guided the organisation and direction of the debate was exposed in the opening lines of this Chairperson, one Kate Cronin-Furman. “[We are meeting today some ten years after the “final push” of the Sri Lankan Army in a war that ended in May 2009 – “a final phase where the UN estimates said that more than 40,000 civilians were killed by that military [action].”