India’s structural dominance in the region long fostered a sense of insecurity among these smaller states. The rise of China offered a new alternative to India’s position in the region. Sri Lanka and the Maldives have relatively quickly embraced a policy of strategic autonomy and diversification. Read More Here
Sri Lanka’s turn to China amid the island nation’s worst economic crisis in decades risks surrendering more long-term sovereignty in exchange for a short-term financial lifeline. Colombo’s slip into what many critics have characteriSed as a China “debt trap” could see Beijing deepen its strategic footprint in the Indian Ocean, significantly at a time the […]
Future generations will remember what the world did, or failed to do, in the face of South Asia’s devastating second wave of the virus. India and its neighbours desperately need more vaccines, oxygen, and other supplies, and it is in everyone else’s interest to provide them as fast as possible. Read Here | Project Syndicate
Since the return of the Rajapaksa brothers to office as president and prime minister in Sri Lanka, Colombo’s relations with China have improved dramatically. Earlier in the week, the Sri Lankan Parliament decided to postpone a debate on the controversial Colombo Port City Economic Commission Bill that was scheduled for the middle of the week. […]
Sri Lanka’s relationship with China has been a controversial discussion during the last decade, dominating both domestic and international political conversations… Yet it is quite clear that Sri Lanka’s closest neighbor, India, and the United States are diligently monitoring these developments in the China-Sri Lanka relationship. Read Here | The Diplomat
Sri Lanka has a long history of insurgencies and terrorist attacks in reaction to the political marginalisation of minorities and the state’s violations of their rights. Against this backdrop, the Human Rights Council should in the present session go beyond the focus on accountability in past resolutions to sound the alarm about the rising risks […]
The relation between society and the authoritarian presidential state envisaged by the Twentieth Amendment will debilitate constitutional democracy in another highly significant way, and that is by destroying what little remains of the unstated rules of civility, restraint, proportion, tolerance, and accommodation in Sri Lankan political culture. Read Here | Groundviews
Sri Lanka’s powerful Rajapaksa brothers have secured a landslide victory in the country’s parliamentary election, according to final results. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Podujana Party (SLPP) won 145 seats and can also count on the support of at least five allies in the 225-member legislature, according to the results released on Friday. Read […]
In the last several months, (President Gotabaya) Rajapaksa has embarked on rapidly militarising the state administration. He has appointed a number of retired military officers to key positions in the civil administration, and his government has moved more than 30 agencies under the remit of the defence ministry… With each passing day, Sri Lanka appears […]
As India manages the fallout from its deadly clash with China last week—the first border skirmish in which there were troop fatalities since 1975—it would do well to take a step back and assess its broader regional situation. And if it does so, New Delhi would realise that its problems are by no means limited […]
looking beyond borders 