Feature – News Updates

THE MAINSTREAM media narrative of events unfolding in Iran has been set out for us as clear as a fairytale: an evil dictatorship has rigged elections and now violently suppresses its country’s democrats, hysterically blaming foreign saboteurs the while. But the Twitter generation is on the right side of history (in Obama’s words), and could bring Iran back within the …

Listening to people talk since the vote in the Human Rights Council, anybody would think that Sri Lanka’s approach to international relations was now clear. Newspapers have been full of praise for Dayan Jayatilleka and the principles he has been advocating. If they were genuinely convinced, I’d be delighted. I’ve always believed that a foreign policy based on solidarity with …

I refer to Demos’ comment under the above heading in the Island of June 22 on my article and that of Kath Noble in The Island of June 15 and 17 respectively. There has been much confusion about what has been meant by what came to be called megaphone diplomacy. It referred to statements made both by bureaucrats and politicians …

The statement emphasized that the Election Law strongly protects the rights of the voters and the candidates. The Foreign Ministry on Wednesday in a communiquŽ said the cheap and lowly attitude of a few western governments cannot undermine the democratic nature of the presidential election. It called on the said regimes to review their faulty approach to Iranian developments. Part …

In the six days after the presidential election the people have again seen the contradictory attitude of some western governments toward Iran. When it was announced that an unusually large number of people participated in the democratic exercise, most if not all western circles admired the political climate in Iran and confessed that such a development was unparalleled in the …

The concept of Responsibility to Protect has triggered resistance in many countries of the Global South precisely because of its potential misapplication to situations such as the Sri Lankan one. Lakshman Kadirgamar, the former Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, was one of the most incisive legal minds of his generation. A former president of the Oxford Union, he made significant contributions …