Word: lanka
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...will only know how wonderful walking on the road like this feels if you have gone through what we have." Dharmeshwaran, 30, was walking toward Vavuniya, a town in the north of Sri Lanka and a journey of about 18 miles (30km) from Menik Farm, the camp for displaced persons where he and his family have been detained for about seven months. They were among the 225,000 to 280,000 people who were held in several detention camps after fleeing the fighting in the last stages of the 26-year-long war between the Sri Lankan Army...
...been under intense international pressure to release the 130,000 civilians still living at Menik Farm. Local and international human rights groups have said the camps violate the human rights of civilians by indefinitely detaining civilians, including women and children. (Watch an audio slideshow about civilians caught in Sri Lanka's civil...
...begins to address the human rights issues raised by human rights groups, aid agencies and other countries. United Nations Humanitarian head John Holmes, who visited Menik Farm and a resettlement area last month, called the lack of freedom of movement a "fundamental concern." Two days after Holmes left Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced that restrictions in the camps would be eased. The European Union has indicated that the treatment of those in the camps could sway a decision on whether to extend a crucial trade concession later this month. (Read a Q&A with Rajapaksa...
...fate of those in the camps will also be a key issue in next January's presidential election. Having ended what once seemed like an endless war, Rajapaksa would appear to be unbeatable. But Sri Lanka's numerous opposition parties have come up with a consensus candidate whose stature as a war hero is unquestioned: retired General Sarath Fonseka, the army commander who defeated the Tigers. Fonseka has softened his once die-hard Sinhala nationalism and criticised the government for holding civilians in camps, calling for rapid and complete resettlement. "We did not win the war to lose the hearts...
...often, however, he writes in a voice so chronically self-indulgent that by the end of this monumental poem even its most grandiose aural gestures are reduced to ambient noise. Alexander has chosen a deeply unusual setting for his epic: both Sri Lanka and old-fashioned nautical adventuring are idiosyncratic interests for an American poet. The island, despite its physical loveliness and tragic recent history, is yet to inspire a fitting work of poetry or prose, and for all its ambition, “The Sri Lankan Loxodrome,” does not do justice to its subject...