In Sri Lanka as everywhere 1 May – Labour Day – 2025 is now a thing of the past. Except not in Colombo, largely thanks to the image reproduced above of President Dissanayake, snapped by award-winning local photographer Lahiru Harshana, captured in an intense, seemingly quasi-religious moment during his May Day speech. The photo seems not to have pleased the president’s team, in particular his media outfit, who according to Sanjana Hattotuwa rapidly went into overdrive in their efforts to stop Lankan media outlets publishing it once it had first been sighted. As is often the way with… More
The Illegals
I’d heard rumours of this story a while time back: but nothing prepared me for the reality presented in The Guardian correspondent Shaun Walker’s new book, The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West. Drawing on copies of KGB files made by a dissident Soviet archivist who defected to Britain in 1992 that are now open to the public, Walker explains how the KGB used spies from its co-called ‘illegals’ programme – Soviet citizens who had spent years training to pose as genuine Westerners. These spies were initially deployed to inflitrate oppositional movements in Western… More
Jurist Interview
An interview pegged to my forthcoming modern history of Sri Lanka with Jurist, an online review for US law students and professionals, has just been published. Here it is (link and text): https://www.jurist.org/features/2025/04/25/a-crisis-of-governance-and-the-fluidity-of-ethnic-identity-understanding-modern-sri-lanka-interview-with-journalist-mark-salter/ A Crisis of Governance and the Fluidity of Ethnic Identity: Understanding Modern Sri Lanka — Interview with journalist Mark Salter Pitasanna Shanmugathas | University of Windsor Faculty of Law, CA April 25, 2025 10:16:01 pm Mark Salter, a journalist, analyst, and writer with over 25 years of professional experience in democratization, governance, and post-conflict peacebuilding, speaks to JURIST’s Senior Editor for Long-Form Content, Pitasanna Shanmugathas, about his… More
The Great Lenin Makeover
Even though I never made it to the original Lenin Museum in Tampere (wish I had), over the years I’ve heard plenty about the place. Following a major facelift the museum reopened recently. Renamed ‘Nootti’ – Finnish for a diplomatic note – the refashioned exhibits are said to reflect the seachange in relations between neghbours Finland and the Soviet Union that developed in the wake of Russia’s February 2022 all-out invasion of Ukraine. A recent piece by The Guardian’s Nordic correspondent notes that when the original museum first opened in 1946, it was intended to serve as symbol of… More
The Great Elk Migration
Starting on Swedish TV (SVT) this week, earlier than usual due to warmer April weather: a livestream of northern Sweden’s annual ‘Great Elk Migration’ (Den Stora Älgvandringen). What started in 2019 as a minority ’slow TV’ interest has since blossomed into a phenomenon with a mass fanbase. Thus during April this year millions of Swedes – and increasingly, people from all around the world – will be dropping everything for days at a time to follow these sturdy, quizzical-looking creatures on their annual springtime trek through northern Sweden. While much of the time on the livestream you’ll see peaceful… More
South Asian domestic worker’s suffering in Lebanon: another Gaza fallout
By the end of 2024 the Gazan conflict had also enveloped Lebanon, a country with a large number of migrant workers, many from South Asia. Following Israeli airstrikes in the country’s south, by November, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that approximately 25,000 migrant workers had been displaced from their homes and workplaces because of the conflict – in many cases bereft of shelter or identification, their employees having taken their passports from them. The day after the November Israeli airstrikes, one women highlighted in the report listed below sought shelter at multiple locations in Beirut but was… More
UK moves on Sri Lankan accountability
The British government has announced that it is placing sanctions on a four individuals alleged to have command responsibility for crimes committed during Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983 – 2009). The group of those alleged to be responsible for war crimes are all high ranking military figures: three commanders from the Sri Lankan armed forces, the other a former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader turned government supporter. Further details are provided in the DailyFT article reproduced below. While the British move’s practical effect is likely to be small, its wider potential political impact is considerable. First and foremost, … More
Colombo Telegraph
The Colombo Telegraph has just published my latest Sri Lanka commentary. Here it is: Fixing Sri Lanka’s Economy: A Governance Approach
Fixing Sri Lanka’s economy: a governance approach
Ever since Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic meltdown, it has been popular – if not the mainstream consensus – to argue that the country’s travails were chiefly the result of poor economic decision-making and policy. Absent swinging tax cuts and a decision to go organic in agricultural production, so the argument goes, things would (probably) have gone a whole lot better for the country. But other approaches to understanding the economic crisis are increasingly in evidence, not least a so-called ’governance approach’ to understanding the country’s economic travails? In his foreword to this Policy Brief CPA Director Paikiasothy Saravannamuttu emphasizes the… More
Pause AI Development – Before It’s Too late
This just in from my son Jonathan Salter on why AI development needs to be paused (not stopped) – as a matter of existential urgency for us humans. (Here’s the English translation of Svenska Dagbladet’s Swedish original). 𝐇𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐀𝐈 – 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 AI agents deceive and mislead researchers. As they grow more powerful, they could threaten humanity, argues the organization Pause AI. “We need to buy time for researchers to regain control,” says Sweden’s Pause AI chair, Jonathan Salter. 𝐀 𝐑𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐀𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 Jonathan Salter pours himself a cup of tea, watching the steam rise and… More