News

The controversy over the role of Ven. Nyanatilloka Maha Thero continues with more witnesses from Sri Lanka – the spiritual home of the German Buddhist scholar – providing testimony to the pioneering contributions made by the Monk to Theravada Buddhism. Correspondent Ms. Ramani Wickramaratne writes: I have read through all postings in the “Asian Tribune” regarding the role played by erudite German Buddhist Monks starting from the late Ven.Nyanatilloka Maha Thero and Ven.Nyanaponika Thero and other westerners who came to Sri Lanka subsequently and spent their Bhikkuhood in Sri Lanka and their invaluable contributions towards the dissemination of Theravada Buddhism to Germany and other western countries.

By Walter Jayawardhana

The Karuna group has continued with its death threat calls to the editor of Asian Tribune and has demanded that the news website should stop publishing the group’s forced child recruitment activities for war, its fratricidal killings against members of it own group and activities of abducting people for ransom to raise money for the paramilitary group. Asian Tribune’s editor K. T. Rajasingham, a man hailing from the war torn Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka told this correspondent that he has been threatened by an anonymous caller this time who said he was calling on behalf of the Karuna group.

By Walter Jayawardhana

Karuna - a spent force?Sri Lanka Army and the Special task Force has come to the conclusion that it is useless to wait any longer for Karuna’s men to make a forward thrust in the Thopigala jungle terrain and to follow it up with a large contingent of regular armed forces to flush out the remaining Tiger cadres in the East. “Asian Tribune” leant that Karuna came forward to send his cadres as advance force in the Thoppigala jungle region prior to the split with Pillaiyan before 04 May. After the split more than 850 armed cadres left Karuna and joined Pillaiyan in Trincomalee. Karuna was left with a balance of 300 cadres out of which a majority of them are underage recruits who have been forcefully recruited by Jeeventhiran and Thileepan.

Dr. Palitha KohonaAddressing the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Dr Palitha Kohona, Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka, argued that there should not be any difference between "corrigible and incorrigible terrorists". Dismissing the semantics of terrorism he said:”The incorrigible terrorists are dealt with militarily with no space for negotiations and the others with the carrot and stick approach, mostly with carrots. It is ironic that whilst all civilized societies abhor violence and the use of it to achieve political objectives, that we still engage in the semantics of terrorism. This is misleading; it assesses the validity of the cause when terrorism is an act. One can have a perfectly valid cause and yet if one commits terrorist acts it is terrorism regardless.”