• Sri Lanka's February tourist arrivals up 11.6 per cent yr/yr
• Sri Lanka's 2012, December tourist arrivals hit record high
• Sri Lanka promises elections for former war zone

• Sri Lanka: Transcendental Meditation boosts student achievement at computer institute
• Transcendental Meditation as an effective treatment for PTSD - Sri Lanka Guardian
• Sri Lanka looks to Consciousness-Based Education to create invincibility and self-sufficiency: Raja Ior Guglielmi

• UN rights body urges more thorough Sri Lanka probe
• Sri Lanka war investigation lags, abuses persist - UN
• Sri Lanka and Nepal's search for the missing

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Positive Trends
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Sri Lanka's February tourist arrivals up 11.6 per cent yr/yr
29 April 2013 - Tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka rose 11.6 per cent year-on-year in February, government data howed on Monday, with the number of foreign visitors rising for the 46th straight month since a 25-year civil war ended in May 2009. Arrivals rose 12.5 per cent in the first two months of this year. (more)

Sri Lanka's 2012, December tourist arrivals hit record high
22 January 2013 - Sri Lanka's tourist arrivals hit a record high in 2012, surpassing the previous year's peak, while monthly arrivals also hit a record in December, government data showed. The number of visitors has risen annually in the past 44 months since a 25-year civil war ended in May 2009. Revenue from tourism rose 23 per cent to $905.3 million in the first 11 months of 2012 from the same period last year. (more)

Sri Lanka promises elections for former war zone
8 November 2012 - Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa promised Thursday to hold provincial council elections next year in the island nation's former northern war zone. While presenting the government's annual budget in Parliament Thursday, Rajapaksa said the government remained 'firmly committed to conduct (northern) provincial council elections next year, to facilitate democratic representation to promote peace and development'. In his budget speech, Rajapaksa said 'the government has implemented many development initiatives' in the north, where 'access to electricity, education, water, and health facilities is improving rapidly.' (more)

Sri Lanka study: A quiet water revolution
25 August 2012 - Quietly, a revolution to develop cheap ways to draw water for irrigation is unfolding in small villages and rural regions in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, a new three-year study has found. This movement has the ability to turn agriculture around in the developing world. The study -- by the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a nonprofit research centre -- found that small farmers, tired of waiting for governments to deliver aid, have found ways to access motor pumps or build reservoirs or ponds to harvest rain water to improve their crop yields. And it is paying off. (more)

Sri Lanka: Milking cattle's potential
3 August 2012 - Dairy farming could boost incomes and the nutritional status of tens of thousands of returnees in Sri Lanka's former war zone in the north of the island, where wage-paying jobs are still scarce. 'The livestock sector has vast potential for contributing towards economic development, poverty alleviation and nutritional deficiency, and creating opportunities for involving [more] women in the economic development process,' said Patrick Charignon, Head of Livelihood Development at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Sri Lanka. Current dairy production meets less than 15 per cent of the demand in Northern Province, which IOM estimated at more than 91,000 tons of milk annually in a recent assessment, and concluded that there is untapped potential in dairy farming. (more)

Sri Lanka tourist arrivals hit new record high in 2011
9 November 2011 - Sri Lanka's tourist arrivals in the first 10 months of the year has surpassed 2010's record as visitors to the island nation has continued to rise every month on a year-on-year basis since a 25-year civil war ended in May 2009. The government is targeting annual revenue of $2.75 billion by 2016 from 2.5 million expected visitors attracted by Sri Lanka's beaches, hills and religious and historic sites, while aiming for $3 billion in foreign direct investment. (more)

Sri Lanka releases 1,800 former Tamil rebels
30 September 2011 - Sri Lanka's government on Friday released nearly 1,800 former Tamil Tiger rebels who had been held since the island nation's civil war ended more than two years ago. President Mahinda Rajapaksa handed over the former rebels to their families at a ceremony at an auditorium in his office complex. Rajapaksa said those who were released had been rehabilitated according to accepted international norms and standards, and that they had been trained in masonry, carpentry, tailoring, and agriculture. (more)

Sri Lanka eyes $3 billion FDI in tourism by 2016
6 September 2011 - Sri Lanka expects $3 billion foreign direct investments into its post-war tourism sector by 2016 and the government has revised up its annual revenue target to $2.75 billion in the same year, officials said on Tuesday. The Indian Ocean island nation's tourist arrivals and revenue in the post-war tourism has surged year-on-year basis since the quarter century war end in May 2009. (more)

Sri Lanka proposes end of wartime emergency laws
25 August 2011 - Sri Lanka's President announced plans Thursday to lift wartime emergency laws that have curbed civil and political liberties for most of the past 30 years. President Mahinda Rajapaksa told the legislature the laws were no longer needed, signalling that they would be allowed to expire by the end of next Wednesday. (more)

Sri Lanka targets 8 per cent growth in 2012 - budget paper
18 August 2011 - Sri Lanka is targeting economic growth of at least 8 per cent next year as looks to trim its budget deficit to a 20-year low. (more)

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Success of Maharishi's Programmes
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Sri Lanka: Transcendental Meditation boosts student achievement at computer institute
3 September 2011 - Many students and faculty at a computer institute in Sri Lanka have learnt the Transcendental Meditation Programme, which has contributed to their academic success, as demonstrated at an international conference. (more)

Transcendental Meditation as an effective treatment for PTSD - Sri Lanka Guardian
12 April 2011 - The Sri Lanka Guardian recently published an article titled 'Find the best way for combating PTSD in the Sri Lankan military'. The article explores the value of using meditation to reduce post-traumatic stress suffered by active duty military personnel and veterans. Citing research findings that different meditation practices have different effects on the brain, and lead to different benefits, the authors encourage research on the Transcendental Meditation Technique--which has been shown by extensive scientific research to reduce stress--as a promising treatment modality for PTSD. (more)

Sri Lanka looks to Consciousness-Based Education to create invincibility and self-sufficiency: Raja Ior Guglielmi
18 July 2009 - On 11 July 2009, during a series of special presentations following the global Guru Purnima Assembly in MERU, Holland, Raja Ior Guglielmi, Raja of Invincible Sri Lanka for the Global Country of World Peace, reported trends towards the establishment of national invincibility in his domain through education, building construction, and agriculture. (more)

Offering Invincible Defence in Sri Lanka: Eliminating the root cause of violence, terrorism, and war
10 May 2009 - Lasting peace can be achieved through group practice of Yogic Flying, which effectively removes collective stress--the breeding ground for violence, terrorism, and war. The principles of Maharishi's Invincible Defence were featured last month in the Sri Lanka Guardian as part of an interview with Colonel Gunter Chasse, International Deputy Minister of Invincible Defence for the Global Country of World Peace. Col Chasse is a retired German Air Force officer with 40 years of decorated military experience. (more)

Buddhist monks enjoy Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation Programme
24 January 2008 - Reverend Koji Oshima, a Buddhist monk from Japan, has reported outstanding achievements from Sri Lanka and Thailand, where thousands of Buddhist monks have learned Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation Programme. (more)

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Flops
Short Summaries of Top Stories

UN rights body urges more thorough Sri Lanka probe
21 March 2013 - For the second time in as many years, the UN's top human rights body approved a US-backed resolution Thursday calling on Sri Lanka to more thoroughly investigate alleged war crimes committed by both sides during the country's quarter-century civil war with the Tamil Tiger rebels. The resolution followed a UN report alleging the government may be to blame for tens of thousands of civilian deaths during the military campaign to defeat the rebels. Like a similar resolution in March 2012, the measure asks Sri Lanka to probe allegations of summary executions, kidnappings, and other abuses, but stops short of calling for an international investigation. Rights groups and government critics say the regime of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has ignored previous calls for accountability -- including last year's resolution -- and has dragged its feet in implementing even the limited recommendations made by its own war panel. (more)

Sri Lanka war investigation lags, abuses persist - UN
13 February 2013 - Sri Lanka is failing to investigate alleged atrocities committed by government forces in defeating a Tamil insurgency and activists and opposition politicians are still being killed or abducted, the United Nations said on Wednesday. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called on authorities to allow international experts in criminal and forensic investigations to help resolve outstanding wartime crimes and end impunity. 'The steps taken by the government to investigate allegations of serious violations of human rights further have also been inconclusive and lack the independence and impartiality required to inspire confidence,' Pillay said in a report on a UN mission that went to Sri Lanka in September. (more)

Sri Lanka and Nepal's search for the missing
5 December 2012 - Nepal and Sri Lanka have one similarity in their post-conflict experiences: grieving relatives of the missing who are now searching for answers. There are thousands still unaccounted for in both these South Asian countries. In Nepal, the tracing unit of the Nepal Red Cross, which helps reunite family members by tracking down the missing, is trying to locate 1,401 missing persons. In Sri Lanka, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded 5,671 reported cases of wartime-related disappearance, not counting people who went missing in the final stages of fighting from 2008 to 2009. At the end of 2011, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Sri Lanka had compiled a database of 15,780 cases of missing persons, some of which dated back to 1990. (more)

Gunfight at biggest Sri Lanka prison kills 13
9 November 2012 - Thirteen people were killed and a senior police officer was seriously wounded in a gunfight in Sri Lanka's biggest prison that began when police came under fire from inmates, officials and police said on Saturday. The army was called in to help control the violence that continued overnight, and some staff at the Welikada prison in the capital Colombo were being held hostage by inmates, jail officials said. Prisons Commissioner PW Kodippili told Reuters that the prisoners had obtained the weapons -- some of them machineguns -- by breaking into the prison armoury. The violence erupted when officers from the Special Task Force (STF), Sri Lanka's elite police commandoes, were searching the jail for drugs and illegal mobile phones. 'When they were coming out, prisoners started to attack them with stones. The STF used teargas and the prisoners fired at the STF,' Police Spokesman Prishantha Jayakody said. (more)

Sri Lanka plans to amend press law to include websites
9 July 2012 - Sri Lanka will amend a decades-old media law in order to bring in all news websites and electronic media under regulation, the government said on Monday, a week after it raided and temporarily cl o sed down two anti-government websites. Sri Lanka ended a nearly three-decade civil war with Tamil separatists in 2009 that saw censorship and restrictions on reporting, including banning the rebels' main website in 2008. But since the war's end, the government has not eased press freedom, drawing criticism from the United States and European Union among others for arrests of journalists critical of the government. In March, the government censored mobile news alerts about the military or police. Sri Lankan media groups slammed the move to amend the press law. 'Any strengthening of media laws will be used to further the interest of political parties in power rather than the national interest,' said Manik de Silva, a director of Sri Lanka's Press Complaint Commission and a member of the country's Editor's Guild. (more)

Sri Lanka: Donor interest in north waning
6 July 2012 - Donor assistance is waning in northern Sri Lanka, where the critical priorities of food, shelter, protection, and nutrition are not being covered, and many displaced people still need outside assistance more than three years after a decades-long civil war ended. 'We're now at a critical juncture in time,' Vincent Lelei, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) told IRIN in the capital, Colombo. 'It's imperative that donors remain engaged if we are to ensure the valuable gains that have already been achieved.' Of the US$147 million requested under the Joint Plan for Assistance (JPA) for Northern Province 2012, launched by the UN and its humanitarian partners on 21 January, just 17.5 percent had been funded by 6 July -- a gap of nearly $122 million. Those in need have yet to realize durable solutions and will continue to need assistance, the UN warned. According to the UN Financial Tracking Service (FTS), a global, real-time database that records all reported international humanitarian aid (including that of NGOs, the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, bilateral aid, in-kind aid, and private donations), significant gaps exist in the areas of shelter, livelihoods and demining. 'Some areas have not received any funding at all,' Lelei noted. Of the $5 million requested for water and sanitation (WASH), and $29 million requested for mine action, donors have yet to come forward, while a request of almost $40 million for shelter and permanent housing assistance faces a shortfall of more than 70 per cent. (more)

UN finds cluster bombs in Sri Lanka
26 April 2012 - A report from a UN mine removal expert says unexploded cluster munitions have been found in northern Sri Lanka, appearing to confirm that the weapons were used in that country's long civil war. The revelation is likely to increase calls for an investigation into possible war crimes stemming from the bloody final months of fighting. The government has repeatedly denied reports it used cluster munitions. Cluster munitions are packed with small 'bomblets' that scatter indiscriminately and often harm civilians. Those that fail to detonate often kill civilians long after fighting ends. They are banned under an international treaty adopted by more than 60 nations. The nations that haven't adopted the treaty include Sri Lanka, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and the US. A New York-based human rights group said it would have been disastrous to use such weapons among the hundreds of thousands of civilians crowded into the Sri Lankan war zone. (more)

Sri Lanka to demolish a Muslim mosque and a Hindu temple after monks' protest
23 April 2012 - Sri Lankan officials have decided to demolish a mosque and a Hindu temple under pressure from Buddhist monks who demanded their removal from a Buddhist sacred area. Thousands of Buddhist monks and lay supporters stormed the mosque in the central Sri Lankan town of Dambulla on Friday, saying it was constructed illegally. They forced their way into the building and damaged some furniture, dispersing only after officials promised a solution on Monday. Mohamed Saleemdeen, a board member of the mosque, denied it was an illegal building and said it had been there long before the area was declared a sacred zone about 20 years ago. Buddhism is Sri Lanka's state religion and monks are powerful in political and social affairs. (more)

Sri Lanka's survivors tormented by horrors of war
22 September 2011 - More than two years since Sri Lanka's 25-year-old conflict ended, mental health experts say thousands of survivors are living in torment typical of war survivors -- haunted by memories. 'The horrific, abrupt end to the war saw people witnessing their family members die, but most could do nothing but run, forced to abandon the bodies of their loved ones without performing important last rites,' said a Western aid worker. As a result, many of the war-affected have failed to gain closure, and are haunted by flashbacks, hallucinations, nightmares, suicidal thoughts, and anti-social behaviour. Experts suggest the poor mental health of men in particular has driven many to alcoholism and led to numerous reports of domestic violence, child abuse. and family separation amongst war-hit communities in the Indian Ocean island's ravaged north. (more)

Sri Lanka's war-weary north votes amid intimidation, mistrust
23 July 2011 - Citizens in Sri Lanka's old war zone voted for local leaders for the first time in at least a dozen years, in a poll marked by intimidation, vote-buying, and scepticism by the mostly Tamil electorate of any kind of post-war political change. Around 350,000 people were registered and turnout was 46 percent in Jaffna and 65 percent in the other major cities of Mullaittivu and Kilinochchi, robust figures despite the intimidation and violence -- low by the standards of voters used to wartime voting seasons where murder was the norm for defying the LTTE. In at least 20 villages, uniformed men offered 1,000 Sri Lanka rupees ($9.14) for people to sell their voting cards, and beat those who refused, the Campaign for Free and Fair Election (CaFFE) observer group said. Elsewhere, government supporters handed out free food near polling stations, and men linked to a government proxy group threatened others to vote for the ruling party. (more)