Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Postby winston » Mon Feb 02, 2009 8:42 pm

Another bunch of idiots.... Again, it's the innocent bystanders that suffer. Obama, where are you ??

Aid groups: Sri Lanka situation 'nightmarish'

Story Highlights
NEW: Humanitarian aid agencies call for increased access to northern Sri Lanka
NEW: Over 200 civilians injured in past 3 days of fighting, says relief worker
Sri Lankan hospital hit by artillery shells
Children young as 4 months treated in local hospitals for shrapnel injuries

(CNN) -- International humanitarian aid agencies called Monday for increased access to the "nightmarish situation" in northern Sri Lanka, where government forces and Tamil rebels are locked in battle. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are thought to be trapped by the fighting.

A civilian, injured during fighting in rebel territory, lies on a bed at a hospital in Vavuniya on January 16, 2009.

1 of 2 The plea came as artillery shells slammed into a hospital in the northern district of Mullaittivu, where civilians -- including a growing number of children -- are being treated.

"We don't know how many lives exactly, but there was a third strike on the hospital around about midnight," said Gordon Weiss, a U.N. spokesman who talked to a member of the U.N. staff at the hospital early Monday.

"Women and kids' wards shelled ... still counting the dead bodies," he said.

Sarah Crowe of UNICEF said aid from the United Nations is getting into the war zone only every few days.

"We need open access," she said. "These children and families need to be protected and they need to get out fast."

More than 200 civilians, including at least 30 children, had been injured in the past three days of fighting, a relief worker told CNN Sunday.

"That is the absolute minimum [number of injured]," the relief worker said. The person did not want to be identified for fear of jeopardizing the work of relief organizations.

Government officials are accusing aid organizations and foreign media of sensationalizing civilian casualties.

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"It looks as if it's convenient for certain agencies to exaggerate the numbers so that this can be converted to a humanitarian crisis in the public eye, " Secretary of Foreign Affairs Dr. Palitha Kohona told CNN.

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised to "continue with the military offensive until we liberate the remaining area under LTTE [the rebel group's] control," according to Sri Lanka's state-run news agency.

A handful of U.N. staff are working round the clock to save a growing number of children caught in the crossfire, a U.N. spokesman said Saturday.

Children as young as 4 months old were being treated in area hospitals for shrapnel injuries and other wounds of war, spokesman James Elder told CNN.

"There is just intense fighting in a small area where children and other civilians are," Elder said. "The space [where conflict is taking place] is shrinking and the fighting is augmenting."

Thursday, U.N. aid workers rescued 50 critically injured children and 105 adults, he said.

"We are trying to get as many people out of there as we can," Elder said.

Humanitarian groups say as many as 250,000 unprotected civilians are trapped in the area.

"You can see on people's faces, they're full of shock, fear -- they're scared," Lisabeth List, a nurse with Doctors Without Borders, told CNN Monday. "They don't know what will happen to them and they're concerned about their families who they had to leave behind."

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has promised to allow safe passage to trapped civilians and urged the Tamil Tigers to promise the same.

"We have declared a safe zone for civilians, the coordinates of which were announced by the security forces," Rajapaksa said on his government's Web site.

"It is unfortunate that the [Tamil Tiger group] is exploiting this declared safe zone for civilians by placing their heavy artillery within the safe zone and using it as a launching pad to attack security forces and indiscriminately kill civilians."

The fighting has created a "nightmarish" situation for civilians in the conflict zone, Elder said.

An emerging shortage of humanitarian supplies and diminished access to clean water, sanitation and food are compounding a crisis, he said.

On Sunday, Sri Lankan soldiers seized a key rebel stronghold in a surprise attack deep in Tamil-held territory.

Troops crossed a lagoon and entered the town of Mullaittivu before encountering heavy resistance from Tamil fighters, according to the government-run news agency.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) -- commonly known as the Tamil Tigers -- have fought for an independent homeland for the country's ethnic Tamil minority since 1983. The civil war has left more than 70,000 people dead
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Re: Sri Lanka

Postby winston » Fri May 22, 2009 11:42 am

How does one invest in Sri Lanka ?

The market was up about 6% yesterday ..
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Re: Sri Lanka

Postby winston » Wed Sep 09, 2009 6:25 pm

The final great investment frontier

Stockmarket opportunities abound in Sri Lanka - this year's fourth-best performing equity market, with a 75 per cent return

By MICHAEL PREISS


AMID the ruins of Sri Lanka's civil war lie gems of stockmarket opportunity.

Reaping gains: Sri Lanka is bolstered mainly by agriculture and has traditionally excelled in tea, tourism, garments and rubber

Legendary billionaire investor George Soros put it best when he said: 'The most money is made when things go from terrible awful to just awful.'

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/vie ... 86,00.html?
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Re: Sri Lanka

Postby winston » Sun Nov 29, 2009 9:56 am

There goes your Sri Lanka story for a while. First it was Galleon and now, some Political Risk ...

==============================================


S.Lanka's ex-military chief to run for presidency by Sarath Fonseka

COLOMBO : Sri Lanka's ex-military chief has said he plans to run for the presidency in January elections in a bid to unseat his former boss Mahinda Rajapakse.

Sarath Fonseka is considered a war hero for having crushed Tamil Tiger rebels who had waged a nearly four-decade armed struggle for an independent homeland.

"I have never lost a battle. I can win this one (the presidency) too," the island's only four-star general told a group of lawyers and journalists late Friday.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/ ... 58/1/.html
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Re: Sri Lanka

Postby LenaHuat » Sun Oct 31, 2010 8:18 pm

Last nite, I watched an ifeng documentary about Chinese ventures in Sri Lanka.

Wow, the Chinese engineering contractors are gunning BIG in SL.

A Chinese firm is building a new airport on the south eastern shore of Sri Lanka.

One has completed SL's first X-mountain tunnel. They are now the biggest foreign $$ presence there.

How to invest in SL? I suppose buy Chinese firms listed in HKEx.
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Re: Sri Lanka

Postby winston » Sun Oct 31, 2010 8:37 pm

LenaHuat wrote: How to invest in SL? I suppose buy Chinese firms listed in HKEx.


Thanks Lena. Very good idea. But it's not easy to research unless one is in the construction line. China Railway Construction just lost a lot of money in the Middle East and it has such a good name.
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Re: Sri Lanka

Postby LenaHuat » Sun Oct 31, 2010 8:46 pm

Hi Winston :D
Yes I agree. I have never ventured into foreign construction counters because 'construction' carries BIG beta.
But this Chinese venture into SL is only the beginning. Soon, the Sri Lankans will need to import tiles, sockets, wires, furniture .....etc to support the airport operations. Very soon, the Chinese could be building condominiums, telecommunications facilities, bridges ......I will watch out for things and when I have more brainwaves, I will post more :lol:
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Re: Sri Lanka

Postby winston » Fri Jan 14, 2011 8:20 pm

And what's been affected ?

Death toll climbs in Sri Lanka floods By the CNN Wire Staff

Colombo, Sri Lanka (CNN) -- Aid workers scrambled to help more than a million people in Sri Lanka suffering from massive flooding described by the government as the worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami.

At least 27 people have died and 12 more are listed as missing, Lankapuvath, Sri Lanka's national news agency, reported Friday

The Sri Lankan government and United Nations agencies were beefing up efforts to address increasingly dire humanitarian needs.

"We share the strong concern over the immediate requirements of over one million affected, especially the most vulnerable including children," said Neil Buhne, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Sri Lanka.

He said the global body was already looking at longer-term effects from damage to agriculture, infrastructure and housing. About 125,000 acres of the nation's staple rice crop has been destroyed, the government estimated.

The full extent of the damage cannot be assessed until flood waters in northern and central provinces recede, but Mahinda Amaraweera, minister of Disaster Management, told a news conference the losses were severe.

So far, he said, the government has allocated more than $1.5 million for recovery efforts and prompted the largest military response since the 2009 defeat of the Tamil Tigers. More than 28,000 troops, backed by transport helicopters and navy boats, were engaged in rescue and food delivery operations.

Many of the people in flood-affected areas are still recovering from the 25-year bloody conflict between the government and the rebel Tamil Tigers.

George Sigamoney, secretary-general of the Catholic charitable organization Caritas in Sri Lanka, said it has been difficult to access places affected by overflowing rivers, broken dams and drowned roads.

"Hundreds of farmers had started to cultivate their fields again after the war," he said on the Caritas website. "But these efforts are turning to be futile as the rains continue to lash the rice growing areas. A lot of houses from our shelter programs have been damaged in the floods as well."

The U.N. World Food Programme said it was "facing major breaks in food supplies." It said rations for people returning home after the war has been significantly reduced since October.

Sigamoney feared more misery lay ahead with shortages and exploding prices of basic food items.

"The poor will find it even more difficult to afford the most basic food items", he said.


http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiap ... index.html
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Re: Sri Lanka

Postby winston » Sun Jan 16, 2011 11:03 pm

As if the flood is not bad enough, they have to now also worry about unexploded land mines ..

S. Lanka mine fears as floods recede

Unexploded mines planted during Sri Lanka's Tamil separatist war may have shifted during recent floods, officials said Sunday, as residents started to return to their badly-damaged homes and farms.

More than one million people were initially displaced in the flooding, with the east of the island worst affected by a week of unusually heavy monsoon rains.

The disaster management centre in Colombo said that 37 people were confirmed dead with another 12 missing, as water levels fell in some areas and residents ventured back home to survey the devastation.

"Floods and receding waters may unearth mines and explosive remnants of war and carry explosives from contaminated areas into areas thought to be safe," the United Nations situation report said.

It warned that local authorities had advised residents and aid workers to keep alert for shifted mines, and added that mine clearance agencies were deciding whether areas needed to be re-surveyed after the flooding.

Years of fierce fighting in the east of the island ended in 2007 and the army says it has cleared the majority of mines from the area, though no exact figures are available.

"There is a possibility that undetected mines could have shifted during floods and moved downstream," military spokesman Ubaya Medawala told AFP. "But we haven't had any mine casualties in the eastern regions in recent times."

A military offensive finally ended the decades-long ethnic conflict in 2009, when government forces defeated the Tamil Tiger rebels who had once controlled one-third of Sri Lanka.

Source: AFP Global Edition
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Re: Sri Lanka

Postby Muhajir » Sat Feb 12, 2011 12:55 am

Hi Everyone,

I have some investment in Sri Lankan Stocks.

I think Phillips Capital is a broker in Singapore offering Sri Lankan stocks, not 100% sure though. I am sure you guys can call them and check.
http://www.phillip.com.sg/index.htm

I figured you guys would want a broker based in Singapore.

Thanks for reading.

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