Word: colombos
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...heard concern that new roads make it easier for people from the [Sinhalese-majority] south to move to the Tamil-majority north and east. Is there an effort to change the demography of the Tamil-majority areas? No, but it's happening in Colombo. The eastern-province Muslims have come here. The Tamils have come here. You ask them, Why are you coming here? Can I stop them? No. If anybody wants to come and live in any part of this island, it is the right...
...long banquet table, presiding over what looks like a hotel's lunch buffet. The mood is informal as Cabinet ministers, their clerks and assorted relatives and friends line up patiently to eat in the main dining room of Rajapaksa's official compound. Outside, on the streets of Colombo, he is the all-conquering hero. In May, Rajapaksa's government ended Sri Lanka's 26-year-long civil war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the capital's broad avenues are dominated by enormous banners glorifying him: "You are a divine gift to the country...
...east. The LTTE took up arms in the name of those grievances, raising the call for a separate Tamil homeland and eventually becoming one of the world's most feared terrorist organizations. Over the years, moderate Tamil political leaders worked to reach a political solution, and several governments in Colombo tried talks with the LTTE, but by 2006 a shaky cease-fire had fallen apart. The army pushed full-bore to finish off the Tigers, particularly its charismatic leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and Rajapaksa would not brook questioning, by the press or his opponents, of his government's tactics...
...right things: that Sri Lanka is one nation, which respects all peoples and faiths. Yet the strident Sinhalese nationalism, in Rajapaksa's party and in his more extreme allies, helped mobilize support for the war and influenced the way it was conducted. The U.N. issued several warnings - which Colombo ignored - about civilian casualties as the Sri Lankan army closed in on the Tigers, and estimates Tamil civilian deaths at 7,000. Nearly 300,000 Tamils from the northern war zone - including 45,000 children - have been detained in internment camps beginning in early 2008, without freedom to leave. Even some...
...that's a massive new Chinese project. It's a Sri Lankan project. China helped us. It's a commercial loan. Hambantota is my area, and it had been neglected for so many years. It's my duty, my obligation to develop that area. We must develop not only Colombo, but other districts...