Unfortunate American approach to Human Rights in Sri Lanka

A couple of days back I was asked by the BBC Sinhala Service in London to comment on the 2010 Human Rights Report: Sri Lanka issued by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour of the American State Department. I had come across these reports previously, when I was Secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, and I assume that, with there being lack of clarity about administrative responsibility now for Human Rights, the BBC thought they might as well ask me about the issue now as well.

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Arguing about accountability

One must re-scrutinise the emphatic assertion that post-war accountability, democracy, good governance and post-conflict reconciliation are integral parts of a single package or located on a continuum. It is argued that greater democratisation and fuller accountability regarding the war are indispensable complementarities.

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Yuri Gagarin :

Great Russian hero

Yuri Alexayevich Gagarin was born on March 9, 1934 in a remote village called Agsatsky. There were four children in the family. Valentin was his elder brother born in 1924 and Zoya his elder sister, Yuri third in the family and Bovis was his younger brother. His father Alexei Ivanovich Gagarin was a Carpenter and his mother Valantina was a dairymaid in a collective farm.

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