#Mahinda

[timetravellingkitty]

Hindu lives matter except for the Hindu minority killed and raped by the Sri Lankan Army, in which case they don't exist

[venkateshwheelsbingo]

New Mahindra XUV 7XO

 Mahindra is right now in full swing and also is the leading manufacturer in the market. This brand has a name for its  vehicles and mainly for the XUVs.  Mahindra now is in the preparation of launching a new variant as recently in March, Mahindra has registered their upcoming variants with an O ending philosophy. 

Which means that the new variants which would be coming will be ending with specifically O alphabet. Such as Mahindra XUV 7XO. As a whole Mahindra would be launching 4 variants including this one. 

It is said that this  car would be an uplift version of the previously launched  XUV 700. But the engine would be the same. And we think that’s not a problem because the engine is none less than a powerful beast! 

For more information visit our website wheelsbingo.

[metrostartup]

An open questionnaire for the joint opposition and political analysts and a note on the responsibilities of the citizens in the post-Presidential Election period.

Dr Sudath Gunasekara. President Senior Citizens Movement Mahanuwara Ranil Wickramasinha received 4,706,336 votes in 2005. This comprised mainly the UNP block vote in the other parts of the country and the Estate votes. This time too UNF got majority of Estate votes. Then how did it come down to 4,000,00 at this election. Is it the strength of the UNP defectors who are now with the government? Or…

[projectdemarco]

Remembrance

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#projectdemarco #marcoverse #collagesrilanka #marcosrilanka #marco

[thiziri]

Princess Anne and Sir Tim Laurence receive a gift from acting custodian Mahinda Dela, during a visit the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy during day two of their visit to Sri Lanka, on 11 January 2024.

[milfstalin]

While campaigning, the NPP argued that the current terms of the IMF programme are not favourable to the disadvantaged poor and working classes, Rajni Gamage, a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, told Al Jazeera.

Cuts in social welfare schemes and increases in taxes made by Wickremesinghe’s government as a result of the IMF deal have hurt economically weaker sections of society the most.

“They [the NPP] feel like the deal has been quite unfair and that it favours the more wealthier sections more,” Gamage said.

Dissanayake said he will renegotiate the IMF bailout plan to make the austerity measures more bearable.

But he and his party have made it clear that they do not plan to scrap the deal and will seek only tweaks. Dissanayake has not spelled out what provisions of the IMF pact he might look to renegotiate.

In general, though, Dissanayake’s party envisions a “protectionist local economy”, prioritising “local industrialisation, domestic production, and favouring small and medium enterprises”, Gamage said.

[...]

Even though he won the election, Dissanayake did not get the votes of many Tamils, who make up 12 percent of the population of 22 million and are the country’s largest ethnic minority.

All leading candidates in the race were Sinhalese.

Opposition leader Premadasa won 40 percent of the cumulative vote across the country’s Tamil-majority areas. He has tried to appeal to Tamil voters even though his father, former President Ranasinghe Premadasa, was assassinated by a Tamil separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in 1993. The ITAK backed Premadasa in the election.

Dissanayake, on the other hand, said he does not regret supporting the Rajapaksa government’s war against the Tamil Tigers. The civil war was quashed in 2009 under President Mahinda Rajapaksa after 26 years.

Still, Dissanayake made a call for unity in his inauguration speech.

“There are things I know and things I don’t know, but I will seek the best advice and do my best. For that, I need the support of everyone,” he said.

Tamil leaders have expressed optimism that Dissanayake will steer clear of sectarian politics.

23 Sept 2024

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Kohelethu 7:14 Hĩndĩ ĩrĩa mahinda marĩ mega, kenaga; no rĩrĩ, rĩrĩa mahinda magũthũũkĩra, ũririkanage atĩrĩ: Ngai nĩwe ũtũmaga maũndũ macio meerĩ matwarane. Nĩ ũndũ ũcio mũndũ ndarĩ ũndũ angĩmenya wĩgiĩ mũtũũrĩre wake wa thuutha-inĩ.

In the day of goodness be in prosperity, and in the day of evil look after your soul; God also makes this one opposite that one, so that a son of man will not find anything to say after him. — Ecclesiastes 7:14 | Holy Bible in Gĩkũyũ (GKY) and Peshitta Holy Bible Translated (PESH) Holy Bible in Gĩkũyũ © 2011-2024 Biblica. All Rights Reserved Worldwide and The Peshitta Holy Bible Translated by Glenn David Bauscher Copyright © 2018 Lulu Publishing; 3rd edition Copyright © 2019. Cross References: Deuteronomy 8:5; Deuteronomy 26:11; Job 2:10; Ecclesiastes 3:22; Ecclesiastes 8:7; Ecclesiastes 9:7; Ecclesiastes 10:14

Read full chapter

Ecclesiastes 7:14 - by-Verse Bible Commentary

[stele3]

[hussyknee]

I replied to @aelfwyn and @homosociallyyours the comments but I'm going to C+P them here because y'all USAmericans need to stop seeing yourselves as an exceptional kind of monster. As a settler colony, the dynamics are more complex, but being conditioned to put race solidarity above class interests isn't a uniquely white thing. It's a colonial thing that's shared by the majoritarian population of most nations in the Global South because our countries are colonial borders that we inherited. Once the Europeans fucked off after 200 years or so, suddenly there's a former administrative border that's 70% Group A and 30% Group B. Group A then consolidates power by genociding the shit out of Group B, colonizing their land. And then any yahoo from Group A can get their fellows to sacrifice their own class interests by promising to keep Group B in their place. Cue decades of separatism and militarization, keeping the country in a state of emergency that leads to an autocratic government and eroded democratic freedom.

Basically, post-colonial Global South nations like us have inherited the same violence you see in white settler societies like the US, Israel, Australia, except for the part where y'all get rich by keeping half the world in war and poverty lol. But the exploitation, war mongering and refugee crises created by that end up empowering your own fascists and creates an untouchable elite class that wreaks havoc even among the settlers at home— which is where most of the West is at now. You experience the same violence we do, but only in the end stages of colonialism.

This is why for Sri Lankans, watching the US and the West the last few years gives us déjà vu. You know how the US ousted Trump in 2020 but then the Dems were such a bunch of out of touch crony capitalists that betrayed all the minorities that turned out for them and allowed the hatred of immigrants and Muslims to became so widespread that Trump is now back in charge with control of House, Senate and Supreme Court? That happened to us in 2019.

(Putting in bullet points so you can follow easier.)

– The Rajapaksas came to power in 2005 by promising what Sinhalese Buddhists call "ending the civil war" and the rest of the world calls "the 2008 Tamil Genocide". They were all but worshipped as saviours of the nation and became a political dynasty on a wave of rabid entho-nationalist fervour.

– However, they put paid to all that loyalty and goodwill over 10 years of Marcos-level corruption, extra-judicial terrorism, embezzlement, nepotism, fraud, civil rights suppression, and autocratic rule.

– When Mahinda Rajapaksa tried to amend the Constitution and contest for the Presidency a third time in 2015, even his own home district turned out to oust the lot of them in favour of a coalition govt.

– This coalition was created between a splinter faction of the Rajapaksas's ethnofascist socialist party led by diet racist Maithipala Sirisena (nicknamed My3) and the minority-friendly neoliberal Opposition led by Ranil Wickremesinghe.

– (He is known for despotically sitting on the party leadership pot for 40 years while unable to shit.)

– This ramshackle entity was called the "Yahapalanya" Government ("Good Governance"...government) No one really trusted or liked it but they were the "lesser evil" compared to the Rs.

– (Yes, our left-wing is fiscally liberal and socially conservative and right-wing is socially liberal and fiscally conservative. The kind of situation Tankies cannot compute. But honestly the difference between them is that neoliberals sell national resources to foreign investors and pocket the money and the socialists accrue foreign debt for national infrastructure that they then rob at both ends. They're both varying levels of ethnonationalist union-busters.)

– The neoliberal policies of the Yahapalanya coalition began to rebuild the economy. But they ignored the poor and working class who were struggling and starving, ignored the minorities that were being terrorised by ethnofascist mobs, and generally reminded everyone how much they were the same kind of incompetent, corrupt, crony capitalist assholes. Pointing at dollar rates, industry gains and the rise of the gig economy while the majority of poor still can't put food on the table isn't a winning argument, especially while scamming the Central Bank and protecting your own crooked MPs. (Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.)

– They still might have won a second term, especially after the Rs jumped the gun in 2018 and attempted a Parliamentary coup by getting President My3 to defect back to them. That put the Rs back in disfavour, but much less so than they were in 2015.

– But the coup led to Yahapalanya's My3-Ranil hell marriage falling apart once and for all.

– Amid the disarray, the Rs got a bunch of ISIS radicals from nowhere to orchestrate the worst terrorist attack we've ever experienced on Easter Sunday 2019, that the Yahapalanya govt failed to prevent out of sheer shocking incompetence.

– (Anyone with a brain knew they were behind it the minute the bombs went off, but no one can accuse the average voter of having one when the alternative is the opportunity to scapegoat a minority).

– The My3-Ranil coalition proceeded to completely bungle the aftermath, refusing to resign from either government or their respective party leaderships, going after any and all Muslims as hard as the Rs ever did, and mud-slinging at each other instead of taking responsibility.

– Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Mahinda's brother and Defence Minister who was in charge of the Tamil genocide during his Presidency, became the rallying cry of the nation

– The neoliberal party (UNP) got sick of Ranil and realized they'd never win another election under his leadership with the entire country howling for his blood. All but a handful of them walked out from under him and formed their own party, the SJB, which stood as the Opposition.

– Meanwhile, the Rs created their own party, absorbing most of the socialist legacy party (SLFP), and made the SLFP itself a minor coalition partner under My3—thus effectively dismantling the two-party legacy of 75 years.

– The new neoliberal party SJB, lacking the structure and generational support of their parent, couldn't find its own ass with both hands and a mirror on a stick. And so Gotabaya Rajapaksa swept to a landslide Presidential win in 2019 virtually unimpeded on the wave of racist, Islamophobic hysteria.

– That's right, we hated Tamils and Muslims so much we elected Mahinda's barely-leashed attack dog that his own brothers feared, who was known to disappear political dissenters and feed them to crocodiles. (No, really. He did. This is a guy who has a shark tank in his house. Fuckin' James Bond-ass villain.)

– This was followed by a super majority for the Rajapaksa party in the 2020 Parliamentary elections, only the second in our history. It installed former President Mahinda Rajapaksa as Prime Minister, glutted the Parliament with Rajapaksa cronies and yes-men even worse and allowed them to introduce Constitutional amendments that basically made Gota all but king.

– Gota then disregarded all his advisors and his brother and proceeded to completely bankrupt the country via massive fraud during COVID. Within two and half years, our treasury was completely empty. We had no fuel, food, medicine, we went into 7 hour brownouts in the middle of a heatwave, people died in miles-long queues for essentials and cooking gas, the country ground to a stand still.

– This is why in April 2022, one of the most massive sustained country-wide citizen protests in the world erupted in Sri Lanka. Apparently the Sinhalese Buddhists that brought these fucks to power could stomach genocide, war crimes, tortures and murders of journalists and activists, scapegoating, terrorizing and witch hunting minorities and busting unions, but when the urban middle class SinBuds can't feed OUR children is when we have enough.

– The govt repeatedly brutalized protestors for weeks until the working class and poor finally snapped and burned down several dozen of their houses, including the Prime Minister's mansion. It was only then that PM Mahinda resigned and Parliament dissolved. (I say again, protest only works when you're prepared to resort to violence as the alternative.)

– Then instead of resigning himself, Gota went to fucking Ranil, who in 2020 had failed to win his own seat in Parliament and was only there because of a Constitutionally reserved seat for the UNP.

– After twenty fucking years being enemies, Gota made a deal that allowed Ranil to be PM again in exchange for heading an interim coalition govt with the Rajapaksa party.

– Ranil got the urban liberals to turn on the poor and unions by waving a return to stability and fuel resupply in front of them, which made the protests break down.

– Predictably, nothing got better.

– A few weeks later, hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans travelled to the capital during the fuel crisis. They came hanging off trains, loaded on top of trucks and buses, and even on foot. They all physically stormed the President's mansion and forced Gota to flee the country.

– While Gota was flying around like panicked bird trying to find a country without an extradition treaty and the Lankans lit fireworks in celebration, Ranil forced a Parliamentary vote that made him Executive President once Gota resigned, and created another interim govt.

– HE GOT THE LIBERALS TO BETRAY US AGAIN.

– He had the military crack down on protestors (firing tear gas from helicopters!!), making arrests, allowed all the Rs and their cronies to come back yet again, and refused to call elections for another 18 months.

– (I personally became suicidal over it and it's why I will kill liberals on sight. They are the worst kind of maggot in creation, a knife hovering over the back of every left-wing push for change.)

– Ranil being Ranil he fucked over the "stability"-minded libs for the second time as well.

– By the time he was forced by the Supreme Court to call elections, the entire country was furious and sick to death of the entire two-party clown show and all the career criminals on both sides of the fence.

– The left-wing 3rd party coalition the NPP, that formed around the nucleus of the former Marxist party, the JVP, was the only one that rose in people's estimation. They were the only one that had stayed on ground zero of the protests with unconditional support for the unions and students without trying to co-opt them. They had run on an anti-racist, truly progressive platform, promising to crack down on corruption in 2020 and had been reduced to just three seats, but those three seats were occupied by charismatic, erudite, canny and organized MPs free of scandal. They were literally the only feasible option by virtue of being the only one that wasn't a disorganised, flaming dumpster fire run by crooks.

– But even then, 30 years of Red Scare was so effective that JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) is the only one to become President without an over 50% majority in the first preferential vote.

– AKD dissolved Parliament immediately and announced General Elections, operating until then with a Cabinet that only comprised the three seated NPP members (himself, my professor, and Vijitha Herath, that ended up beating her as the MP with the most preferential votes in any election. Boo.)

– The bunch of incompetent nepo babies in the Opposition SJB further alienated, enraged and disaffected even the ones that had turned out for them six weeks previously—

– —so that at the General Election, every single district turned red. The whole country has never turned any one colour in our 75 years of universal franchise. Even people who predicted a 2/3rds majority are shocked. Apparently the Tamils and Muslims of the North and East are just as sick of their own representatives.

So now we're in this new era of what-the-fuck where we can apparently expect things of our elected representatives other than "please don't fuck us over too badly", but it remains to be seen whether any long term lessons will stick.

Basically, if you live in the US, you can also look forward to this kind of thing if Trump burns the whole place to the ground in less than 4 years, along with the GOP. Sooner or later it will be the white liberal's turn to be eaten, and that is when the left will be able to rise up and answer fascism with violence. Nick Fuentez's house got burned down so you can already see it starting to happen. All you had to do was get white women on your side.

Also the reason our protestors weren't massacred like others have been historically, and how Bangladeshis were this year, is because enough of the military and police personnel were also disaffected that they decided they weren't paid enough for this and even joined the protestors in the end. At some point, even the enforcers of the elite must realize that they are the working class. The army and cops that protected Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh did not, and it did nothing to deter the student protestors that led the charge. Students of public unis here were also the ones who were our vanguard. Student leaders are the great white hope of society and every time we let the state throw them to their dogs we're letting ourselves get eaten alongside them.

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats. The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems destroyed and purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government, an unmarried abortion rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House. Five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history.

On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state.

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! THERE IS A REPRESENTATIVE FOR MALAIYAHA TAMILS IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY AND IT'S A YOUNG WOMAN! This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, these people are not Marxists or anything near; they're mild social democrats who would only be threatening to like, USAmerican liberals, who are now center-right. The actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is extremely high.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

[odnewsin]

Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son indicted for alleged misappropriation of funds

Colombo: Former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s elder son has been indicted in the High Court here for alleged misappropriation from an Indian investment before 2015. Namal Rajapaksa, 38, was arrested in June 2016 for the alleged misuse of 70 million Sri Lankan rupees from the Krish Hotel project money to develop the game of rugby, for which he had been a Sri Lanka international…

[lokuhapuarachchi]

Remembering Sri Lanka’s Fallen Journalists: A Call for Justice and Support

On this solemn day, the 24th of January, we pause to honor the memories of two journalists whose lives were tragically cut short for their commitment to truth and freedom of expression.

Subramaniam Sugirdharajan (1970 – 2006) Popularly known as SSR, Sugirdharajan was a journalist for the Tamil-language daily newspaper Sudar Oli. At just 35 years old, he was brutally gunned down in the eastern port city of Trincomalee during the Sri Lankan Civil War. On the morning of 24 January 2006, assailants on a motorbike shot him at close range. A devoted father of two young children, aged three and two, SSR’s death left an indelible mark on the Sri Lankan media landscape. Today, his family, friends, and professional colleagues gather in Trincomalee to remember his courage and sacrifice.

Prageeth Ekneligoda (1960 – Disappeared 2010) Prageeth Ekneligoda, a cartoonist, political analyst, and journalist, disappeared on 24 January 2010, two days before a critical presidential election. Widely believed to have been abducted and killed under the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa, Prageeth’s disappearance remains unresolved. His ashes are thought to have been scattered, a grim symbol of the dangers faced by journalists in Sri Lanka. Today, his loved ones commemorate him at the Nawagamuwa Devalaya in Kaduwela, keeping his memory alive despite the shadows of impunity.

A War on Media Freedom The early 2000s marked a dark period for press freedom in Sri Lanka. Under the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government, which took power in April 2004, attacks on journalists escalated with alarming frequency. On 31 May 2004, veteran Tamil journalist Aiyathurai Nadesan was shot dead by government-backed paramilitaries in Batticaloa. His assassination ignited a campaign of violence against the media, silencing dissent with unprecedented brutality.

In the six years that followed, at least 43 journalists and media workers were killed or disappeared. Despite repeated promises from successive governments to investigate these crimes, no perpetrators have been brought to justice. The legacy of this violence persists, with families of murdered journalists left to bear the burden of loss, often without any financial or emotional support.

Remembering the Fallen

Thewis Guruge – Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, 23 July 1989

Premakeerthi de Alwis – Broadcaster, 31 July 1989

Sagarika Gomes – Rupavahini Corporation, 13 September 1989

Richard de Zoysa – Journalist and activist, 18 February 1990

K.S. Raja – Radio Ceylon presenter, poisoned, 1994

Rohana Kumara – Editor, Batana, 7 September 1999

Athputharaja Nadarajah – Editor, Tamil weekly, 2 November 1999

Maylvaganam Nimalrajan – Journalist from Jaffna, 19 October 2000

Aiyathurai Nadesan – Journalist, 31 May 2004

Balandaraja Iyer – Activist, writer, and poet, 16 August 2004

Tarakki Sivaram – Tamil journalist, 28 April 2005

Railangi Selvarajah – Broadcaster and actress, 12 August 2005

Subramaniam Sugirdharajan – Sudar Oli, 24 January 2006

Sampath Lakmal de Silva – Independent journalist, 2 July 2006

Suresh Kumar and Ranjith Kumara – Udayan newspaper, 2 May 2006

Selvaraja Rajivarnam – Journalist, 29 April 2007

Chandrabose Suthaharan – Editor, Nilam, 16 April 2007

P. Devakumaran – Tamil TV journalist, 28 May 2008

Lasantha Wickramatunga – Journalist and activist, 8 January 2009

Prageeth Ekneligoda – Cartoonist and journalist, 24 January 2010

A Plea for Justice and Support

The murders of prominent journalists like Lasantha Wickramatunga and Richard de Zoysa have drawn significant attention, yet many others on this list remain forgotten. Their families, often plunged into economic hardship, have received little to no support. It is time for Sri Lanka’s leaders to act decisively to address this injustice.

We urge the President, the Minister of Mass Media, and all political leaders to establish a system of financial compensation for the families of murdered journalists. Beyond bringing the perpetrators to justice, the state has a moral duty to ensure the economic security of these families.

Let this commemoration not only honor the lives and legacies of our fallen colleagues but also serve as a rallying cry for accountability, justice, and meaningful support. A society that silences its truth-tellers cannot claim to be free or just. The time for change is now.

- Anuruddha Lokuhapuarachchi

[thezeusos]

Apolitical dynasty chased out by Srilanka people plots its comeback

Rajapaksas’ fall, certain the family was finished. But was it? Cut to two years later, and Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son, Namal, has thrown his hat into the ring for the presidential election to be held on 21 September. “It is bad enough that the people who were driven out after the aragalaya [mass protests] are contesting these polls,” Lakshan Sandaruwan, a university student who took part in the…

[indiaepost]

SL's largest party splits as 92 MPs pledge support to President Wickremesinghe's candidacy

 After deciding not to back President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka’s largest political party in parliament split into two with 92 lawmakers pledging support for his re-election. A large number of MPs of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s party, Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) promised their unconditional support for the victory of Wickremesinghe in the upcoming presidential election set…

[metrostartup]

Common Candidate a Storm in a Tea Cup? It is only another political gimmick by the dormant opposition and reactionary forces to destabilize the government

Dr Sudath Gunasekara. President Senior Citizens Movement, Mahanuwara 2.11.2009. Politically popular but utterly stale terms like political solution, devolution of power, minority aspirations and Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism and even independence of the press etc appears to have been eclipsed and temporally replaced by a newly invented political catch word; ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”¹…”Common…

[lankavnews]

Grand Opening of Golden Gate at Ruhunu Kataragama Maha Devalaya

The grand opening of the Golden Gate at the Ruhunu Kataragama Maha Devalaya took place on Sunday morning, July 21, with a remarkable turnout of pilgrims from across the country. The event was presided over by Mahinda Rajapaksa, the fifth Executive President of Sri Lanka. The ancient tradition of cleaning feet (pa dowanaya kireema) for pilgrims visiting the Devalaya, in gratitude (prathi anumodana…

[thiziri]

The Princess Royal and Sir Tim Laurence visit Sri Lanka.

Day 2: Kandy and Jaffna

Today, Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal and Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence began the day at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, in Kandy, the most significant Buddhist Temple in Sri Lanka. 

The Temple, located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy houses the relic of the tooth of the Buddha.

At the Temple, The Princess Royal was met by the Acting Chief Custodian of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, Mahinda Dela who hosted Her Royal Highness for the visit. Her Royal Highness took part in a traditional ceremony and offered a plate of Jasmine flowers to the tooth relic.

Next, Her Royal Highness travelled to Jaffna, a city on the northern tip of Sri Lanka. At the Jaffna Public Library, The Princess Royal was greeted by the Commissioner of Jaffna Municipal Council, Mr. Thanabalasingham Jayaseelan and Chief Librarian of Jaffna Public Library, Ms Anushiya Sivaharan. 

The Princess Royal received a traditional welcome and was presented with a garland of flowers and received a pottu in the middle of her forehead. During the tour, Her Royal Highness met members of Sri Lanka’s Tamil and northern communities to hear how the Jaffna public library is a symbol of northern education and culture.

On the final visit of the day, HRH visited The Halo Trust’s Muhamalai Demining and Resettlement Site in Muhamalai.

Joined by The Halo Trust, Mines Advisory Group (MAG), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Her Royal Highness heared more about the work of UK-funded and international organisations in supporting the clearing of mines and the sustainable resettlement of people on cleared and safe lands.

The princess met members of the community who have been resettled on the land following the successful mine clearance.

© Royal UK | 11 January 2024