Author: TELO Admin

Sri Lanka is in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to borrow at least USD 3 billion via the lender’s extended fund facility (EFF), sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The island state’s government expects another round of technical talks with the IMF in early June and hopes to reach to a staff-level agreement as soon as the end of this month, two of the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A spokesperson for the IMF didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. Spokespeople for Sri Lanka’s finance ministry and central bank didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Sri Lanka has requested a rescue plan to overcome its worst economic crisis since independence in 1948. It defaulted on some overseas debt earlier this year and is struggling to pay for imports of basics such as fuel and medicine.

An EFF programme, which would be the 17th IMF plan for the nation, requires countries to make structural economic reforms “to correct deep-rooted weaknesses,” according to the IMF’s website. These programmes normally last three years with a grace period of 4-1/2 years to start paying back the loan, once the plan is approved.

A USD 3 billion deal would represent almost four times the country’s quota with the IMF.

The IMF said last week it was in talks with Sri Lanka for a “comprehensive” reform package, but didn’t specify what type of programme was being negotiated.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took office in May after mass protests forced the resignation of his predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, plans to present an interim budget within weeks.

The government announced on Tuesday a taxation overhaul to boost revenue, hiking corporate tax and raising the value added tax (VAT) rate to 12% from 8% with immediate effect.

Sri Lanka recently appointed financial and legal advisers to kick off talks with bondholders and bilateral lenders, such as China and Japan.

Source: Reuters

Leader of the JVP Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Qi Zhenhong have held discussions at the JVP headquarters today.

The JVP said the economic crisis and present political situation were discussed while the talks also focused on enhancing cooperation between parties.

Propaganda Secretary of the JVP Parliamentarian Vijitha Herath and two officials of the political unit of the Chinese Embassy to Sri Lanka were present during the talks.

Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Wednesday (01) once again extended the tenure of the ‘One Country One Law’ presidential task force headed by a controversial Buddhist monk, days after police informed a magistrate court that the Attorney General wanted charges filed against the monk.

The tenure of the task force was extended by three weeks as of May 27 to “complete the task assigned” to it, according to a gazette issued on Wednesday.

The task force is headed by General Secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) Galagodaaththe Gnanasara Thero, who according to media reports is currently in Saudi Arabia to discuss religious extremism. Sri Lanka’s privately owned Daily Mirror reported that the monk was in Saudia Arabia upon official invitation by the Saudi government.

Meanwhile, the Colombo Crime Division (CCD) of the police informed Colombo Fort Chief Magistrate Thilina Gamage on Tuesday (31) that the Attorney General had instructed the CCD to file charges against Gnanasara Thero for using language deemed hurtful to religious sentiments.

The charges are to be filed under Sections 291A of the Penal Code, which reads: “Whoever, with the deliberate intention of wounding the religious feelings of any person, utters any word or makes any sound in the hearing of that person, or makes any gesture in the sight of that person, or places any object in the sight of that person, shall be punished.”

President Rajapaksa gazetted the One Country One Law task force in late October 2021 to come up with proposals for “one law” for all Sri Lankans abolishing all other personal laws including the Muslim marriage law and some other regional laws that go back centuries. The Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA) in particular has been the focus of much debate, with many women’s rights activists within the Muslim community calling for reform and an end to child marriage.

The BBS chief’s appointment as the head of the task force was widely panned by some opposition lawmakers, civil society groups and others including those within the government’s own ranks.

The firebrand monk has been accused of promoting Islamophobia in Sri Lanka.

In 2012, Gnanasara Thero was allegedly at the forefront of an anti-Muslim campaign which called on the majority Sinhalese to boycott Muslim-owned businesses.

The United States in 2014 cancelled a visa issued to the monk while social media platform Facebook blocked his account after the BBS’s alleged involvement in violence against Sri Lanka’s minority Muslims in the Western coastal town of Aluthgama.

He was arrested for contempt of court in 2018 during the previous administration but was later pardoned by President Maithripala Sirisnena.

Critics have said Gnanasara Thero has been used to create a rift between the Sinhala majority and Muslim minority for political reasons. But the monk has denied the allegation and has said Sri Lanka’s Sinhala majority has issues that have been ignored by politicians, issues that he had tried to address.

Since the 2019 Easter bombings, the monk has maintained that his cause is not against ordinary Muslims who have coexisted with the Sinhalese for centuries but with extremist, Wahabist elements in Muslim society.

Speaking to reporters in November last year, Gnanasara Thero said recommendations by the BBS, widely seen as an ultranationalist outfit, will make it to the proposals of the presidential task force he leads.

Related: BBS proposals will make it to ‘one country, one law’ task force: Sri Lanka hardline monk

The monk said the BBS had spoken about unethical conversions, destruction of archaeological monuments and cultural invasion.

The task force was also criticised for not having any Tamil representation initially, prompting President Rajapaksa to appoint three new members, purportedly representing women and the minority Tamil community. Former Justice Minister Ali Sabry was also reported to have expressed his surprise at the task force and the appointment of Gnanasara Thero as its chair without his consultation.

Opposition MP and leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna Anura Kumara Dissanayake has said the task force may be a step towards further division between communities rather than a means to bring them closer.

“This is serious. Some communities have expressed opposition to this committee and have shared their concerns. We must govern not in a direction that sees conflict intensify but in a direction that sees conflict resolved, not in a direction that sees communities grow apart but come closer,” Dissanayake told parliament,” Dissanayake told parliament on November 10, 2021.

At midnight on May 31, 1981, the Jaffna Public Library, the crucible of Tamil literature and heritage, was set ablaze by Sri Lankan security forces and state-sponsored mobs. The burning has since been marked by Eelam Tamils as an act of genocide.

Over 97,000 unique and irreplaceable Tamil palm leaves (ola), manuscripts, parchments, books, magazines and newspapers, housed within an impressive building inspired by ancient Dravidian architecture, were destroyed during the burning. Some texts that were kept in the library, such as the Yalpanam Vaipavamalai (a history of Jaffna), were literally irreplaceable, being the only copies in existence. It was one of the largest libraries in Asia.

The destruction took place under the rule of the UNP at a time when District Development Council elections were underway, and two notorious Sinhala chauvinist cabinet ministers – Cyril Mathew and Gamini Dissanayake – were in Jaffna. Earlier on in the day, three Sinhalese police officers were killed during a rally by the TULF (Tamil United Liberation Front).

Nancy Murray, a western author, wrote at the time ”uniformed security men and plainclothes thugs carried out some well organised acts of destruction”.

“They burned to the ground certain chosen targets – including the Jaffna Public Library, with its 95,000 volumes and priceless manuscripts…no mention of this appeared in the national newspapers, not even the burning of the library, the symbol of Tamils’ cultural identity. The government delayed bringing in emergency rule until 2 June, by which time the key targets had been destroyed.”

The burning continued unchecked for two nights.

Homes and shops across Jaffna town were also set alight by the mob, including the TULF headquarters and the offices of the Eelanadu newspaper.

Virginia Leary wrote in Ethnic Conflict and Violence in Sri Lanka – Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists, July/August 1981, that “the destruction of the Jaffna Public Library was the incident, which appeared to cause the most distress to the people of Jaffna.”

The Movement for Inter-racial Justice and Equality said in a report, after sending a delegation to Jaffna,

“If the Delegation were asked which act of destruction had the greatest impact on the people of Jaffna, the answer would be the savage attack on this monument to the learning and culture and the desire for learning and culture of the people of Jaffna… There is no doubt that the destruction of the Library will leave bitter memories behind for many years.”

The scholar and community leader, Reverend Father David reportedly died from shock days after the incineration of his beloved institution. While his statue in the library courtyard is surrounded now by the spirit-soothing greens of local flora, his demise epitomises the loss suffered by every member of the Tamil nation alive on that day, and each generation born afterwards: the irrevocable loss of memories, of the lives and deaths of our predecessors, of the beauty they created as well as of the destruction they may have wreaked.

In 2001, then mayor of Jaffna Nadarajah Raviraj stated that the burning “is in my memory”. ”Still I feel like crying after 20 years,” he said. Mr Raviraj was assassinated in Colombo in November 2006. Still no-one has been held accountable for his murder.

Despite Tamil attempts to memorialise the catastrophic event, by keeping part of the burnt wreckage preserved, the Sri Lankan government allegedly insisted on ensuring all areas of the building were completely rebuilt, leaving no signs of the damage done.

Yet, in 2010 the library was once again vandalised by a group of Sinhalese tourists. The Sinhalese group had attempted to gain access to the library whilst it was closed for an All Ceylon Medical Association seminar that weekend. Denied entry the “tourists reacted by running amok” said the BBC, “breaking some of the shelves and throwing books on the ground”.

They also went on to vandalise a statue of veteran Tamil politician S J V Chelvanayagam, remembered across the Tamil nation for spear heading the Vaddukoddai resolution.

In December 2016, an ‘apology’ for the burning, by current Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, was criticised – after initially receiving praise as a step towards reconciliation; the offhand manner in which it was delivered revealing a marked disregard for how deeply Tamils on the island continue to mourn the burning.

Sri Lanka is appealing for food assistance from its neighbours as the country’s debt crisis spirals into a humanitarian emergency.

The government is applying for aid from a food bank operated by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, which has supplied rice and other staples to member states during food crises.

J Krishnamoorthy, Sri Lanka’s food commissioner, told the Financial Times that her department had “just started the process” of applying. “We have contacted SAARC . . . [regarding] food bank assistance,” she said, adding that Sri Lanka was seeking about 100,000 metric tonnes of food either as donations or subsidised sales.

The request highlights how Sri Lanka is sliding from an upper-middle-income country, the most prosperous among its neighbours, to one dependent on donations and emergency loans for food, medicines and fuel.

The country, which defaulted on international debts of more than $50bn last month, has been wracked by severe shortages of essential goods since it effectively ran out of foreign reserves.

Fuel shortages have led to long blackouts as power stations close while hospitals are postponing treatment because of a lack of medicine. Aid groups also warn of a worsening hunger crisis owing to double-digit inflation.

Robert Juhkam, the UN Development Programme’s resident representative in Colombo, said that while Sri Lanka had been able to pay for most of its own food, the situation had deteriorated to a point where donations were becoming necessary.

“If the need is evident, and maybe it’s becoming more evident by the day, then it can be acted on,” he said of the SAARC food bank application, for which UNDP lobbied the Sri Lankan government.

Crop yields have fallen sharply after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa abruptly banned chemical fertilisers last year. The decision was swiftly reversed but rice imports to Sri Lanka — which was previously self-sufficient — have surged 368 per cent since then, UNDP said.

Sri Lanka is urgently seeking emergency assistance from other countries. India has provided more than $3bn this year through credit lines and currency swaps while China has offered “a few hundred million dollars” in lending, Sri Lanka’s new prime minister told the FT last week. Japan and the Indian state of Tamil Nadu have also donated food and medicine.

Efforts to engage SAARC could bump up against hard geopolitical realities, however. The body, which includes arch-rivals India and Pakistan, has been hampered by dysfunction since it was founded in 1985.

The SAARC food bank was set up in 2007 to provide rice and wheat to countries during emergencies but was used for the first time only in 2020 when Bhutan sourced a rice shipment.

Analysts said that Sri Lanka’s crisis could be a chance to invigorate SAARC.

Constantino Xavier, a fellow at New Delhi’s Centre for Social and Economic Progress think-tank, said that India — SAARC’s most powerful member — could view routing assistance through the bloc as a way to stop rivals such as China from playing a larger role.

The food bank “is operationalised and they can deliver”, said Xavier. “Maybe there is a precedent and all the politics don’t matter.”

SAARC secretary-general Esala Weerakoon said he was not aware of an application from Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan Muslims have decided not to take part in Hajj pilgrimage this year, after taking into account the ongoing economic crisis in the country.

Saudi Arabia had approved a quota of 1,585 Hajj pilgrims from Sri Lanka for the year 2022, out of the 1 million foreign and domestic Muslims allowed to travel the holy city of Makkah in the pilgrimage season.

However, it was decided not to any devotees on Hajj pilgrims this time following a discussion held by several parties including the National Hajj Committee, Hajj Tour Operators Association and the Muslim Religious and Cultural Affairs Department.