Opinion

Amid winds and waves: Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean – III

Published

3 months ago

2025/11/5

Sahan Weerasooriya

Sirimavo / SWRD / DS

Small-State Strategy: Navigating Asymmetry through Ambiguity

In navigating asymmetry through ambiguity, Sri Lanka’s experience is filtered through two deep and persistent frames that shape both its social consciousness and its foreign policy behaviour. The first is Sri Lanka’s long held an exaggerated sense of its own geopolitical indispensability. This perception, rooted in colonial and early postcolonial experiences, assumes that global powers view the island as a critical hub in the Indian Ocean. In practice, however, strategic value is fluid and shaped by technological and logistical developments. When Sri Lanka nationalised the British air base at Katunayake in 1956, the British swiftly developed the Gan base in the Maldives, illustrating that alternatives always exist. Over time, advances in aviation, satellite communication, and maritime technology have further reduced Sri Lanka’s earlier military and logistical centrality. Yet this inflated self-image continues to influence how decision-makers assess leverage and external engagement, often leading to overconfidence in negotiations and misjudged assumptions about international attention.

The second conditioning frame is a persistent belief that the international community is predisposed to harm or undermine Sri Lanka—whether due to ideological bias, geopolitical competition, or humanitarian critique. This perception has fostered a defensive, inward-looking national psyche that often interprets external pressure as existential threat rather than as opportunity for policy recalibration or reform.

Together, these two psycho-political frames—overestimation of strategic importance and an entrenched sense of external hostility—have deeply influenced Sri Lanka’s foreign policy behaviour. Successive political leaders have strategically mobilized these sentiments to consolidate domestic legitimacy, portraying themselves as protectors of sovereignty and national pride. However, this approach has also generated policy rigidity and self-imposed isolation. Ultimately, Sri Lankan leaders have become victims of their own narratives, as the very perceptions they cultivated for political survival have constrained the country’s strategic flexibility and reduced its capacity to engage pragmatically with an evolving international system.

In international relations scholarship, the foreign policy behaviour of small states has been a recurring site of inquiry for what it reveals about the exercise of agency under structural constraint. Classical realist and neorealist perspectives have tended to define small states primarily in terms of material capability deficits, emphasising their limited ability to shape systemic outcomes and their consequent need to navigate international hierarchies through alignment choices (Walt 1987; Rothstein 1968). Within this framework, strategies such as balancing, bandwagoning, hedging, and omni-enmeshment have been conceptualised as adaptive responses to external pressures (Schweller 1994; Kuik 2008). Yet, as critics of systemic determinism have argued, such typologies often obscure the domestic, ideational, and historical foundations of small-state behaviour (Hey 2003; Thorhallsson and Steinmetz 2017). More recent constructivist and post-structural approaches thus call attention to how small states actively construct their strategic identities, redefine vulnerability, and deploy narratives of autonomy or insecurity as instruments of statecraft (Ingebritsen 2006; Browning 2006). In this view, small states are not merely reactive but engage in continuous meaning-making processes that mediate between systemic constraints and national self-conceptions. Sri Lanka’s foreign policy behaviour, situated at the intersection of postcolonial identity, regional geopolitics, and domestic political contestation, illustrates this dynamic interplay between structural limitation and agential assertion—one that cannot be fully apprehended through systemic categories alone.

For Sri Lanka, smallness is not merely quantitative but situational: it derives from the island’s exposure to multiple centres of power within a confined maritime space. Geography ensures that external influence is perpetual; the challenge lies in managing its intensity. As such, Sri Lanka’s strategy cannot be understood simply as the pursuit of neutrality or non-alignment in a binary world. Rather, it represents a continuous process of interpretive balancing—adjusting posture and rhetoric in response to shifting configurations of regional and global power.

Central to Sri Lanka’s small-state outlook is a besieged mentality—a historically conditioned sense of vulnerability born from geography, colonial experiences, and post-independence insecurity. As an island adjacent to a continental giant and situated along vital sea-lanes, Sri Lanka has long perceived itself as simultaneously exposed and encircled. This strategic psychology has produced a defensive reflex in foreign policy: the pursuit of autonomy through caution, ambiguity, and balance.

This mentality does not imply passivity; rather, it provides the cognitive backdrop against which strategic choices are made. The fear of domination—by larger neighbours, external powers, or global institutions—has consistently shaped Sri Lanka’s diplomatic posture. It explains why successive governments have oscillated between engagement and withdrawal, openness and resistance. Whether confronting India’s regional predominance, Western human-rights pressures, or Chinese economic leverage, Sri Lankan leaders have tended to respond through a logic of managed uncertainty—keeping multiple relationships active while avoiding exclusive dependence.

In this sense, the besieged mentality functions as both constraint and catalyst. It constrains by fostering caution and a tendency toward defensive rhetoric, but it also catalyses creativity by compelling the search for diplomatic space in crowded strategic theatres. The result is a persistent preference for strategic ambiguity—a deliberate blurring of commitments that allows flexibility while signalling non-hostility to all sides. Sri Lanka’s small-state behaviour is not purely transactional; it is also profoundly normative. The island’s leaders have consistently justified diplomatic choices in the language of moral balance, restraint, and global peace. This moral vocabulary has allowed Colombo to elevate pragmatism into principle—to turn caution into an ethical stance.

D. S. Senanayake’s “Middle Path”

was the first clear expression of this ethos. As the country’s inaugural Prime Minister, Senanayake pursued moderation between rival power blocs, seeking cooperation without subordination. His vision of a balanced, independent foreign policy framed neutrality not as weakness, but as wisdom grounded in ethical restraint.

S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike

advanced this normative impulse through his aspiration to make Sri Lanka the “Switzerland of Asia.” His call for “Asian solidarity” and peaceful coexistence positioned the island as a moral actor in the decolonising world—one that could bridge East and West through principled neutrality and dialogue rather than alignment or confrontation.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike

gave this moral diplomacy its most ambitious institutional form through her leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the Indian Ocean Peace Zone (IOPZ) proposal. Introduced in 1971, the IOPZ sought to transform the Indian Ocean into a demilitarised space dedicated to peace and development. This initiative embodied Sri Lanka’s attempt to recast small-state vulnerability as a platform for global moral leadership—an effort to shape international norms despite limited material power. Under her guidance, Colombo projected a peace-oriented identity that married normative aspiration with strategic foresight.

Together, these approaches reveal a continuous thread in Sri Lankan foreign policy: the fusion of strategic caution with ethical ambition. The “besieged mentality” of a small state has been reframed as a “peace drive”—the conviction that survival depends not only on careful calculation but on the ability to claim moral legitimacy in world affairs. In this sense, Sri Lanka exemplifies a broader small-state tradition in the Global South, where the projection of moral authority functions as a form of soft balancing. By framing neutrality as peace leadership, Colombo has sought to convert its lack of material power into diplomatic capital. This normative posture cannot erase vulnerability, but it provides a compelling language through which vulnerability can be managed, justified and reimagine.

However, the eruption of the ethnic conflict in the early 1980s fundamentally altered the trajectory of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy. The long-drawn war against the LTTE introduced an internal security crisis that reshaped Colombo’s external posture.

The diplomacy of moral balance and peace leadership gradually turned into the diplomacy of defence, justification, and damage control. The moral and peace-oriented diplomacy that had characterized Sri Lanka’s early decades was profoundly tested by the eruption of internal conflict. The ethnic crisis that escalated into civil war forced Colombo to shift its foreign policy focus from normative leadership to existential security. As the confrontation with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) intensified, external relations were increasingly defined by the logic of the battlefield rather than the ideals of non-alignment. Diplomacy of principle and persuasion gradually had evolved into diplomacy of defence and justification. This transition marked a turning point in Sri Lanka’s foreign policy trajectory, as the island’s international engagement became dominated by the imperatives of war and survival.

From 1984 onward, the challenge posed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) became the dominant lens for Sri Lanka’s external relations. A foreign policy once anchored in non-alignment and regional cooperation gradually hardened into security-driven diplomacy. The pursuit of weapons and international recognition replaced earlier moral–normative ambitions. Colombo’s overriding priority became obtaining military assistance free from the human rights conditions imposed by Western partners. This pragmatic shift led Sri Lanka to cultivate ties with states willing to supply arms and intelligence on transactional terms. The long civil war thus reshaped both the priorities and methods of diplomacy: trade, development, and regional dialogue were increasingly viewed through a security lens. The search for external legitimacy mirrored the government’s domestic struggle for authority, marking a clear break from the island’s earlier idealism.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the global discourse on terrorism reshaped the international environment in ways that momentarily favored Colombo. The government successfully reframed its conflict with the LTTE within the emerging global war on terror, aligning its domestic struggle with a broader international narrative. Yet this new flexibility also deepened Sri Lanka’s dependence on selective bilateral partnerships, further eroding its earlier multilateral engagement. Where Sri Lanka had once sought to influence regional and global forums as a moral voice of the Indian Ocean—guided by the winds of non-alignment—it now navigated more turbulent waters, steering toward bilateral alliances dictated by immediate security needs.

The end of the civil war in May 2009 appeared to open a new chapter in Sri Lanka’s international relations. The military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) allowed the state to reassert territorial sovereignty and reimagine its strategic role within the Indian Ocean order. This post-war moment also revealed a deeper contradiction: the triumph of military victory coincided with a loss of international legitimacy. Freed from the immediate pressures of conflict, Colombo embarked on ambitious reconstruction and development initiatives, seeking partners beyond its traditional Western sphere.

Since the end of the war, Sri Lanka’s strategic position has evolved significantly, shaped by both its geostrategic location and the international response to alleged violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) during the final stages of the conflict. Western powers—particularly the United States, Britain, Canada, and the European Union—pressed Colombo to investigate alleged war crimes committed by both the government and the LTTE. These calls, gaining traction in global diplomatic forums, led to a marked deterioration in relations with Western capitals. Responding to a series of U.S.-backed resolutions at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) became the central preoccupation of Sri Lanka’s post-war diplomacy. Driven by this overriding concern, Colombo increasingly aligned itself with powers capable of shielding it from Western diplomatic and economic pressure (Keerawella 2025)

In this context, relations with China acquired renewed politico-strategic significance. Beijing emerged as a principal defender of Sri Lanka in multilateral arenas, especially the UN Security Council, while simultaneously becoming the island’s largest source of foreign direct investment. Massive infrastructure projects—the Hambantota Port, Mattala Airport, the Southern Expressway, the Norochcholai coal power plant, and the Colombo South Harbour expansion—symbolized this deepening engagement. The 2013 Strategic Cooperative Partnership formalized cooperation across trade, finance, and strategic affairs, anchoring Sri Lanka more firmly within China’s sphere of influence. Alongside China, Pakistan and Russia offered diplomatic cover, reinforcing a pragmatic “Eastern turn” in Colombo’s diplomacy.

However, this reorientation came at a cost. Relations with the United States, the European Union, and India grew increasingly strained as accountability issues dominated international discussions. In response, Sri Lanka adopted a defensive diplomatic posture reminiscent of wartime rhetoric—reasserting sovereignty and rejecting external interference. Although official discourse shifted from war to peace and development, the underlying psychology of resistance persisted.

By 2015, the Yahapalana government sought to regain Sri Lanka’s lost international legitimacy by re-engaging with Western democracies and regional partners such as India, while preserving cooperative ties with China. This ambitious recalibration of foreign policy was closely intertwined with its commitment to domestic reconciliation and accountability mechanisms—objectives that had become central to restoring credibility abroad. Yet, these international undertakings soon collided with entrenched domestic political realities. Although the government introduced several initiatives to promote reconciliation and accountability, growing resistance in the South and divisions within the ruling coalition weakened their implementation. The Yahapalana leadership thus found itself caught between the crosswinds of international expectations and domestic opposition. Its inability to reconcile these competing pressures exposed the fragility of its consensus politics and ultimately left the government adrift—unable to sail successfully in either wind.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa

, foreign policy again gravitated toward a more security-centered and China-friendly orientation, though domestic political and economic crises soon overwhelmed these ambitions. By the early 2020s, Sri Lanka found itself entangled—by design and by default—in the geopolitical currents of the Indian Ocean, its ports, debt obligations, and maritime position becoming focal points of great-power rivalry.

The emergence of the National Peoples’ Power (NPP) government marks yet another phase in Sri Lanka’s evolving foreign policy trajectory. Inheriting a complex political and strategic heritage, the new regime faces the enduring winds and waves of the Indian Ocean—an arena shaped by competing regional and global forces. As Karl Marx observed, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living” (Marx 1852). This observation aptly captures the predicament confronting the NPP leadership: they must chart a new course in external relations while bearing the weight of accumulated legacies—strategic dependence, debt, and geopolitical vulnerability. Early indications suggest that the government is navigating these turbulent waters with caution, balancing idealistic aspirations for sovereignty and equity with the pragmatic necessity of engaging major powers in a volatile regional environment. Only time will reveal whether this cautious navigation will yield a more autonomous and principled foreign policy, or whether structural constraints will once again define the limits of Sri Lanka’s diplomatic agency.

The post-2009 era thus embodies both continuity and transformation. The moral–normative ideals of earlier decades—sovereignty, peace, and independence—continue to inform official discourse, but they now coexist uneasily with pragmatic alignments, economic dependency, and strategic vulnerability. Sri Lankan diplomacy seeks equilibrium in a multipolar world while remaining haunted by the psychological legacies of siege and moral loss. This ambivalent posture is not entirely new. During the Cold War, Colombo’s adherence to non-alignment masked a pragmatic recognition of regional realities: while championing anti-imperialist causes in global forums, Sri Lanka quietly cooperated with Western and Indian security interests to safeguard its own stability. The post-2009 period represents a contemporary parallel. As Chinese investment expanded under the Belt and Road Initiative, Sri Lanka sought to reassure India and the United States through parallel gestures—naval cooperation, affirmations of neutrality, and participation in Indo-Pacific dialogues—without formally aligning with any military bloc.

Such behaviour reflects a distinctive small-state hedging strategy: economic bandwagoning combined with political balancing. It aligns with the concept of “omni-enmeshment,” whereby smaller powers embed themselves in multiple, overlapping networks—economic, diplomatic, and security-related—to mitigate dependency on any single actor. For Sri Lanka, these networks encompass bilateral partnerships, multilateral institutions, and normative appeals to international law. Yet ambiguity carries its own risks. The flexibility that preserves autonomy can also generate mistrust among partners and domestic critics alike. The controversy over the 2017 Hambantota Port lease—often mischaracterized as a “debt trap”—illustrated the delicate balance between economic necessity and perceptions of sovereignty loss. Similarly, oscillations between alignments with India, China, and the West underscore the limits of strategic ambiguity when domestic institutions are weak and policy coherence erodes. (Part III to be published tomorrow)

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Opinion

Remembering Cedric, who helped neutralise LTTE terrorism

Published

1 hour ago

2026/01/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

Salute to a brave father-son

Cedric Martenstyn was a very affluent man. He owned a house in Colombo 7, valuable properties throughout the country, vehicles / speed boats and ran the lucrative business of importing Johnson and Evinrude Outboard Motors (OBM) and sold them to local fishermen and businessmen.

Cedric was the local agent for the OBMs, which were known for reliability and after-sales service, and among his customers were humble fishermen. He was fondly known as Sudu Mahattaya “(white Gentleman) by humble fishermen and he would often travel in his double cab across the country to meet his customers and solve their problems.

He had a loving wife and children. He was an excellent scuba diver, member of Sri Lanka Navy Practical Pistol Firing team and his knowledge of wildlife and reptiles was amazing.

A member of the Dutch Burgher community of Sri Lanka, he was a true patriot, who volunteered to protect country and people from terrorists. An old boy of S. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia, he was an excellent sportsman.

The founding father of Sri Lanka Army Commando Unit, Colonel Sunil Peris, was his classmate at S.Thomas’.

I first met Cedric when I was a very junior officer at Pistol Firing Range at Naval Base, Welisara. I helped him catch a poisonous snake in the Range. I think he carried that snake home in a bottle! That was the type of person Cedric was!

We became very close friends as we both loved “guns and fishing rods”. His experience and tactics in angling helped me catch much bigger Paraw (Trevallies) in the Elephant Rock area at the Trincomalee harbour. He was a dangerous man to live with at Trincomalee Naval Base wardroom (officers’ mess), because he had various live snakes kept in bottles and fed them with little frogs!

Even though he was a keen angler, he was keen to conserve endangered species both on land and in water. He spent days in Horton Plains and the Knuckles Mountain Range streams to identify freshwater species in Sri Lanka. Did you know there is an endangered freshwater fish species he found in Horton Plains and Knuckles Mountain Range has been named after him?

Feeding of snakes was an amusement to all our stewards at the wardroom at that time! They all gathered and watched carefully what Cedric was doing, keeping a safe distance to run away if the snake escaped. Our Navy stewards dare to enter Cedric’s cabin (room) at Trincomalee wardroom (officers’ mess), even keeping his tea on a stool outside his cabin door. One day pandemonium broke in the officers’ mess when Cedric announced that one snake escaped! We never found that snake, and that was the end of his hobby as the Commander Eastern Naval Area, at that time, ordered him to ” get rid of all snakes! Sadly, Cedric released all snakes to Sober Island that afternoon.

Cedric was a volunteer Navy officer, but still joined me (he was 47 years old then) to help SBS trainees (first and second batch) on boat handling and OBM maintenance in 1993, when I raised SBS. It was exactly 31 years ago!

The Arrow Boat

Being an excellent speed boat race driver and boat designer, he prepared the blueprint of the first “18-foot Arrow Boat” and supervised building it at a private Boat Yard in 1993. This 18- foot Arrow Boat was especially designed to be used in the shallow waters of the Jaffna lagoon, fitted 115 HP OBMs, and with two weapons he recommended; 40mm Automatic Grenade Launcher (AGL) and 7.62×51 mm General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMGs). In no time, we had highly trained and highly motivated four SBS men on board each Arrow Boat at Jaffna lagoon, and they were very effective.

Same hull (deep V hull) developed during the tenure of Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda, as Commander of the Navy, by Naval architects, with knowledge-gained through captured LTTE Sea Tiger boats, designed 23- foot Arrow Boats and implemented the “Lanchester Theory” (theory of battle of attrition at sea in littoral sea battles) to completely nullify LTTE’s superiority which it had gained with small craft and deadly suicide boats.

Thank you, the Admiral of the Fleet for understanding the importance of Arrow Boat design and mass production at our own boatyard at Welisara. Karannagoda, under whom I was fortunate to serve as Director Naval Operations, Director Maritime Surveillance and Director Naval Special Forces during the last stages (2006/7) of the Humanitarian Operations, always used to tell us “You cannot buy a Navy- you have to build one”! Thank you, Sir!

Cedric craft display at Naval Museum, Trincomalee

The Hero he was

When I was selected for my Naval War Course (Staff Course) conducted by the Pakistan Navy Staff College at Karachi, Pakistan, (now known as Pakistan Navy War College relocated at Lahore), Cedric took over the command (even though he was a VNF officer) as Commanding Officer of SBS.

Being one of the co-founders of this elite unit, he was the most suitable person to take over as CO SBS. He was loved by SBS officers and sailors. They were extremely happy to see him at Kilali or Elephant Pass, where SBS was deployed during a very difficult time of our recent history – fighting against terrorists during the 1996-97 period.

Motivated by father’s patriotism, his younger son, Jayson, who was a pilot working in the UK at that time, came back to Sri Lanka and joined the SLAF as an volunteer pilot to fly transport aircraft to keep an uninterrupted air link between Palaly (Jaffna) and Ratmalana (Colombo). Sometimes Jayson flew his beloved father on board from Palaly to Ratmalana. Cedric was extremely happy and proud of his son.

Tragically, young Jayson was killed in action in a suspected LTTE Surface-to-Air missile attack on his aircraft. Cedric was sad, but more determined to continue the fight against LTTE terrorists. He would also lead the rescue and salvage operation to identify the aircraft wreckage his son flew in. The then Navy Commander advised him to demobilise from VNF and look after his grieving family or join Naval Operations Directorate and work from Colombo which he vehemently refused. When I called him from Pakistan to convey my deepest condolences, he said, he would look after the “SBS boys”, he had no intention of leaving them alone at that difficult hour of our nation. That was Cedric. He was such a hero—a hero very few knew about!

The young officers, and sailors in SBS were of his sons’ age, and Cedric would not leave them even when he was facing a personal tragedy. He was a dedicated and courageous person.

Scientific name: Systomus Martenstyni
English name : Martenstyn’s Barb
Local name: Dumbara Pethiya

Sadly, like many who served our nation and stood against terrorists, Cedric would go on to be considered Missing In Action (MIA) following a helicopter crash off the seas of Vettalikani with Lt. Palihena (another brave SBS officer- KDU intake). He was returning to Point Pedro after visiting the SBS boys at Elephant Pass, Jaffna.

Cedric and his son, Jayson, will go down in history as a brave father-son duo who paid the supreme sacrifice for the motherland. MAY THEY REST IN PEACE ! Salute!

Commander Martenstyn was considered missing in action (MIA) on 22 January 1996 in the sea off Vettalaikerni, while returning to Palaly Air Force Base in an SLAF helicopter when it was lost to enemy fire. He was returning from visiting an SBS detachment in Elephant Pass near the Jaffna Lagoon. Considering his contribution to the war effort, his gallentry and valour in fighting the enemy, and his steadfast service to the Sri Lanka Navy in manufacturing Arrow Boats, and training the SBS, all SLN Arrow Boats were renamed ‘Cedric’ on his 70th Birthday.

(The writer is former Chief of Defence Staff and Commander of The Navy, and former Chairman of the Trincomalee Petroleum Terminals Ltd.)

By Admiral Ravindra
C Wijegunaratne
(Retired from Sri Lanka Navy)
Former Chief of Defence Staff and Commander of the Sri Lanka Navy,
Former Sri Lanka High Commissioner to Pakistan

Opinion

History of St. Sebastian’s National Shrine Kandana

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/20

Sahan Weerasooriya

According to legend, St. Sebastian was born at Narbonne in Gaul. He became a soldier in Rome and encouraged Marcellian and Marcus, who were sentenced to death, to remain firm in their faith. St. Sebastian made several converts; among them were master of the rolls Nicostratus, who was in charge of prisoners, and his wife Zoe, a deaf mute whom he cured.

Sebastian was named captain in the Roman army by Emperor Diocletian, as by Emperor Maximian when Diocletian went to the east. Neither knew that Sebastian was a Christian. When it was discovered that Sebastian was indeed a Christian, he was ordered to be executed. He was shot with arrows and left to die but when the widow of St. Castulas went to recover his body, she found out that he was still alive and nursed him back to health. Soon after his recovery, St. Sebastian intercepted the Emperor; denounced him for his cruelty to Christians and was beaten to death on the Emperor’s order.

St. Sebastian was venerated in Milan as early as the time of St. Ambrose. St. Sebastian is the patron of archers, athletes, soldiers, the Saint of the youths and is appealed to protection against the plagues. St. Ambrose reveals that the parents that young Sebastian were living in Milan as a noble family. St. Ambrose further says that Sebastian, along with his three friends, Pankasi, Pulvius and Thorvinus, completed his education successfully with the blessing of his mother, Luciana. Rev. Fr. Dishnef guided him through his spiritual life. From his childhood Sebastian wanted to join the Roman army. With the help of King Karnus, young Sebastian became a soldier and within a short span of time he was appointed as the Commander of the army of King Karnus. The Emperor Diocletian declared Christians the enemy of the Roman Empire and instructed judges to punish Christians who have embraced the Catholic Church. Young Sebastian, as one of the servants of Christ, converted thousands of other believers into Christians. When Emperor Diocletian revealed that Sebastian had become a Catholic, the angry Emperor ordered for Sebastian to be shot to death with arrows. After being shot by arrows, one of Sebastian supporters, Irane, treated him and cured him. When Sebastian was cured he went to Emperor Diocletian and professed his faith for the second time disclosing that he is a servant of Christ. Astounded by the fact that Sebastian is a Christian, Emperor Diocletian ordered the Roman army to kill Sebastian with club blows.

In the liturgical calendar of the Church, the feast of the St. Sebastian is celebrated on the 20th of January. This day is indeed a mini Christmas to the people of Kandana, irrespective of their religion. The feast commenced with the hoisting of the flag staff on the 11th of January at 4 p.m. at the Kandana junction, along the Colombo-Negombo road. There is a long history attached to the flag staff. The first flag staff, which was an areca nut tree, 25 feet tall, was hoisted by the Aththidiya family of Kandana, and today their descendants continue hoisting of the flag staff as a tradition. This year’s flag staff, too, was hoisted by the Raymond Aththidiya family. Several processions, originating from different directions, carrying flags, meet at this flag staff junction. The pouring of milk on the flag staff has been a tradition in existence for a long time. The Nagasalan band was introduced by a well-known Jaffna businessman that had engaged in business in Kandana in the 1950s. The famous Kandaiyan Pille’s Nagasalan group takes the lead, even today, in the procession. Kiribath Dane in the Kandana town had been a tradition from time immemorial.

According to available history from the Catholic archives and volume III of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka, the British period of vicariates of Colombo, written by Rev. Ft. Vito Perniola SJ, in 1806, states that the British government granted the freedom of conscious and religion to the Catholics in Ceylon and abolished all the anti-Catholic legislation enacted by the Dutch.

The proclamation was declared and issued on the 3rd of August 1796 by Colonel James Stuart, the officer commanding the British forces of Ceylon stated “freedom granted to Catholics” (Sri Lanka national archives 20/5).

Before the Europeans, the missioners were all Goans from South India. In the year 1834, on the 3rd of December, XVI Gregory the Pope, issued a document Ex Muwere pastoralis ministeric, after which the Ceylon Catholic Church was made under the South Indian Cochin diocese. Very Rev. Fr. Vincent Rosario, the Apostolic Vicar General, was appointed along with 18 Goan priests (The Oratorion Mission in Sri Lanka being a history of the Catholic Chruch 1796-1874 by Arthur C Dep Chapter 11 pg 12). Rev Fr. Joachim Alberto arrived in Sri Lanka as missionary on the 6th of March 1830 when he was 31 years old and he was appointed to look after the Catholics in Aluthkuru Korale, consisting Kandana, Mabole, Nagodaa and Ragama. There have been one Church built in 1810 in Wewala about three miles away from Kandana. The Wewala Chruch was situated bordering Muthurajawela which rose to fame for its granary. History reveals that the entire area was under paddy cultivation and most of them were either farmers or toddy tappers. History further reveals that there has been an old canal built by King Weera Parakrama Bahu. Later it was built to flow through the Kelani River, and Muthurajawela, up to Negombo, which was named as the Dutch Canal (RL Brohier historian). During the British time this canal was named as Hamilton Canal and was used to transport toddy, spices, paddy and tree planks of which tree planks were stored in Kandana. Therefore, the name Kandana derives from “Kandan Aana”.

Rev. Fr. Joachim Alberto purchased a small piece of land, called Haamuduruwange watte, at Nadurupititya, in Kandana, and put up a small cadjan chapel and placed a picture of St. Sebastian for the benefit of his small congregation. In 1837, with the help of the devotees, he dug a small well where the water was used for drinking and bathing and today this well is still operative. He bought several acres of land, including the present cemetery premises. Moreover, he had put up the Church at Kalaeliya in honour of his patron St. Joachim where his body has been laid to rest according to his wish of the Last Will attested by Weerasinghe Arachchige Brasianu Thilakaratne. Notary Public, dated 19th July 1855. The present Church was built on the property bought on the 13th of August 1875 on deed no. 146 attested by Graciano Fernando. Notary Public of the land Gorakagahawatta Aluthkuru Korale Ragam Pattu in Kandana within the extend ¼ acre from and out of the 16 acres. According to the old plan number 374 made by P.A. H. Philipia, Licensed surveyor on the 31st of January 195, 9 acres and 25 perches belonged to St. Sebastian Church. However, today only 3 acres, 3 roods and 16.5 perches are left according to plan number 397 surveyed by the same surveyor, while the rest had been sold to the villagers. According to the survey conducted by Orithorian priest on the 12th of February 1844 there were only 18 school-going Catholic students in AluthKuru Korale and only one Antonio was the teacher for all classes. In 1844 there was no school at Kandana (APF SCG India Volume 9829).

According to Sri Lanka National Archives (The Ceylon Almanac page 185) in the year 1852 there were 982 Catholics Male 265, female 290, children 365, with a total of 922. According to the census reports in 2014, prepared by Rev. Ft. Sumeda Dissanayake TOR, the Director Franciscan Preaching group, Kadirana Negombo a survey revealed that there are 13,498 Catholics in Kandana.

According to the appointment of the Missionaries in the year 1866-1867 by Bishop Hillarien Sillani, Rev. Fr. Clement Pagnani OSB was sent to look after the missions in Negoda, Ragama, Batagama, Thudella, Kandana, Kala Eliya and Mabole. On the 18th of April 1866, the building of the new Church commenced with a written agreement by and between Rec. Fr. Clement Pagnani and the then leaders of Kandana Catholic Village Committee. This committee consisted of Kanugalawattage Savial Perera Samarasinghe Welwidane, Amarathunga Arachchige Issak Perera Appuhamy, Jayasuriya Arachchige Don Isthewan Appuhamy, Jayasuriya Appuhamylage Elaris Perera Muhuppu, Padukkage Andiris Perera Opisara, Kanugalawattage Peduru Perera Annavi and Mallawa Arachchige Don Peduru Appujamy. The said agreement stated that they will give written undertaking that their labour and money will be utilised to build the new Church of St. Sebastian and if they failed to do so they were ready to bear any punishment which will be imposed by the Catholic Church.

Rev. Fr. Bede Bercatta’s book “A History of the Vicariate of Colombo page 359” says that Rev. Fr. Stanislaus Tabarani had problems of finding rock stones to lay the foundation. He was greatly worried over this and placed his due trust in divine providence. He prayed for days to St. Sebastian for his intercession. One morning after mass, he was informed by some people that they had seen a small patch of granite at a place in Rilaulla, close to the Church premises, although such stones were never seen there earlier, and requested him to inspect the place. The parish priest visited the location and was greatly delighted as his prayers has been answered. This small granite rock amount provided enough granite

blocks for the full foundation of the present church. This place still known as “Rilaulla galwala”. The work on the building proceeded under successive parish priests but Rev. Fr. Stouter was responsible for much of it. The façade of the Church was built so high that it crashed on the 2nd of April of 1893. The present façade was then built and completed in the year 1905. The statue of St. Sebastian, which is behind the altar, had been carved off a “Madan tree”. It was done by a Paravara man, named Costa Mama, who was staying with a resident named Miguel Baas a Ridualle, Kandana. This statue was made at the request of Pavistina Perera Amaratunge, mother of former Member of Parliament gatemuadliyer D. Panthi Jayasuirya. The Church was completed during the time of Rev. Fr. Keegar and was blessed by then Archbishop of Colombo Dr. Anthony Courdert OMI on the 20th of January 1912. In 1926, Rev. Fr. Romauld Fernando was appointed as the parish priest to the Kandana Church. He was an educationalist and a social worker. Without any hesitation he can be called as the father of education to Kandana. He was the pioneer to build three schools in Kandana: Kandana St. Sebastian Boys School, Kandana St. Sebastian English Girls School and, the Mazenod College Kandana. Later he was appointed as the Principal of the St. Sebastian Boys English School. He bought a property at Kandana, close to Ganemulla Road, and started De Mazenod College. Later, it was given officially to the Christian Brothers of Sri Lanka, by then Archbishop of Colombo, Peter Mark. In 1931, there were 300 students (history of De Lasalle brothers by Rev. Fr. Bro Michael Robert). Today, there are over 3,500 students and is one of the leading Catholic schools in Sri Lanka. In 1924, one Karolis Jayasuriya Widanage donated two acres to build De Mazenod College for its extension.

The frist priest from Kandana to be ordained was Rev. Fr. William Perera in 1904. With the help of Rev. Fr. Marcelline Jayakody, he composed the famous hymn “the Vikshopa Geethaya”, the hymn of our Lady of Sorrow.

The Life story of St. Sebastian was portrayed through a stage play called “Wasappauwa” and the world famous German passion play Obar Amargavewchi whichwas a sensation was initiated by Rev. Fr. Nicholas Perera. Legend reveals that in the year 1845 a South Indian Catholic, on his way to meet his relatives in Colombo, had brought down a wooden statue of St. Sebastian, one and half feet tail, to be sold in Sri Lanka. When he reached Kalpitiya he had unexpectedly contracted malaria. He had made a vow at St. Anne’s Church, Thalawila, expecting a full recovery. En route to Colombo, he had come to know about the Church in Kandana and dedicated to St. Sebastian. In the absence of the then parish Priest Rev. Fr. Joachim Alberto, the Muhuppu of the Church, with the help of the others, had agreed to by the statue for 75 pathagas (one pahtaga was 75 cent). Even though the seller had left the money in the hands of the “Muhuppu” to be collected later, he never returned.

On the 19th of January 2006, Archbishop Oswald Gomis declared St. Sebastian Church as “St. Sebastian Shrine” by way of a special notification and handed over the declaration to Rev. Fr. Susith Perera, the Parish Priest of Kandana.

On the 12th of January 2014, Catholics in Sri Lanka celebrated the reception of a reliquary containing a fragment of the arm of St. Sebastian. The reliquary was gifted from the administrator of the Basilica of St. Anthony of Padua and was brought to Sri Lanka by Monsignor Neville Perera. His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjit, Archbishop of Colombo, accompanied by priests and a large gathering, received the relic at the Katunayake International Airport, and brought it to Kandana, led by a procession, and was enthroned at the St. Sebastian Shrine.

Rev. Fr. Srinath Manoj Perera, the present administrator of the shrine, and assistant Priest Rev. Fr. Asela Mario, have finalised all arrangements to conduct the feast of St. Sebastian in a grand scale.

The latest book, written by Senior Lawyer Godfrey Cooray, named “Santha Sebastian Puranaya Saha Kandana” (The history of St. Sebastian and Kandana), was launched at De La Salle Auditorium, De Mazenod College, Kandana.

The Archbishop of Colombo His Eminence Most rev. Dr. Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith was the Chief Guests at the event.

The book discusses about the buried history of Muthurajawela and Aluth Kuru Korale civilisation, the history of Kandana and St. Sebastian. The author discusses the historical and archaeological values and culture.

158th Annual Feast of St. Sebastian’s National Shrine, Kandana, will be held on 20th of January 2026. On the 19th of January, Monday, Solemn Vespers were presided by His Lordship most Rev. Dr. Maxwell Silva Auxiliary Bishop of Colombo.

Festive High Mass will be presided by His Lordship Most Rev. Dr. J. D. Anthony, The Auxiliary Bishop of Colombo, on the 20th of January at 8pm.

By Godfrey Cooray
Senior Attorney -at -Law,
Former Ambassador to Norway and Finland
President, National Catholic Writers’ Association

Opinion

American rulers’ hatred for Venezuela and its leaders

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/20

Sahan Weerasooriya

The long-standing desire of the United States to subjugate, control, or overthrow the Venezuelan government has been driven primarily by two interconnected factors. The first is Venezuela’s vast mineral wealth, and the second is the emergence of anti-Imperialist and leftist political leadership that has consistently challenged US dominance in the region.

This hostility intensified dramatically in 1999, when Hugo Chávez—an outspoken leftist leader inspired by the legacy of Simón Bolívar, the father of Latin American independence from Spanish colonial rule—came to power. Chávez initiated a historic process of reclaiming Venezuela’s natural resources from US corporations and returning them to the Venezuelan people. From that moment onward, Venezuela became a central target of US imperial strategy.

Venezuela was one of the five founding members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and became the world’s eighth-largest oil producer. The country possesses the largest proven oil reserves globally, estimated at 303 billion barrels. Beyond oil, Venezuela also plays a major role in heavy industries such as steel, aluminum, and cement. Its total mineral wealth is estimated at nearly US$14 trillion, and approximately 95 percent of its exports are derived from mineral resources.

Prior to the Chávez era, more than 500 US companies operated in Venezuela, dominating its extractive industries and using the country as a captive market for American exports. This economic dominance was directly challenged under Chávez and later under his political and ideological successor, President Nicolás Maduro. As a result, Venezuela increasingly came into conflict with US strategic and corporate interests.

Over the past two decades, the United States has directly, or indirectly, intervened in several oil-producing nations, including Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and Libya. In some cases, rulers were assassinated and replaced with pro-American puppet regimes. Saudi Arabia, by aligning itself completely with US interests, has avoided invasion and survives as a compliant client state.

Venezuela, however, has stood firm for more than 20 years as a major obstacle to US efforts to dominate the global oil market. In this resistance, President Nicolás Maduro has emerged as one of the region’s most prominent anti-imperialist leaders.

After assuming office in 2013, President Maduro took decisive measures to counter the impact of long-standing US sanctions. Despite sanctions that disrupted nearly 50 percent of essential medicine supplies, Venezuela succeeded in rebuilding its pharmaceutical sector. By 2016, the country was producing approximately 80 percent of its essential medicines domestically. This policy of resistance and non-submission prompted the United States to escalate its pressure through new mechanisms, including direct restrictions on oil exports—which was called “oil quarantine.”

One notable incident in this campaign was the seizure of a commercial vessel by the US Coast Guard on December 10, while it was transporting Venezuelan petroleum to Cuba.

Simultaneously, the US intensified military provocations in Venezuelan maritime zones, including attacks on small naval vessels under the pretext of combating drug trafficking. US Senator Chris Coons himself acknowledged that more than 20 Venezuelan vessels had been destroyed and over 80 people killed under those operations, allegedly on the grounds of drug interdiction.

Beginning in early 2020, Venezuela and its leadership were formally accused of involvement in drug trafficking. In October of that year, a US federal court conducted a one-sided trial and convicted President Nicolás Maduro of “narco-terrorism” and conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States. This legal farce culminated in August 2025 with the announcement of a US$50 million bounty for the capture of President Maduro.

Many political analysts warned that these measures were designed to pave the way for a direct invasion and the arrest of Venezuela’s legitimate head of state. These warnings proved accurate, when On September 6, a Bill introduced in the US Senate, ostensibly to require congressional approval for military action against Venezuela, was defeated. Its rejection effectively granted the US president the authority to launch military operations against Venezuela without congressional consent.

Yet the central justification for these actions—drug trafficking—has been contradicted by official US sources themselves. According to reports by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, neither Venezuela nor President Maduro appears on the list of countries, or leaders, posing a drug-trafficking threat to the United States. Furthermore, the 2025 World Drug Report identifies the United States as the world’s largest drug market and distribution hub. Drug consumption, trafficking, and profit circulation are deeply embedded within the American economy itself.

It is, therefore, evident that the accusations against President Nicolás Maduro are false and politically motivated. Their real purpose is to legitimize invasion, regime change, and the arrest of a leader of a sovereign country. Parallel to this strategy, the US has consistently attempted to destabilise Venezuela internally. Opposition figures such as María Corina Machado were promoted to incite unrest using the “colour revolution” model. Her subsequent international recognition for these actions reveals the extent to which violence and destabilisation have been repackaged as “democracy promotion.”

These destabilisation efforts have been partly facilitated by unresolved structural weaknesses in Venezuela’s socio-economic system. Nearly 88 percent of the population resides in urban areas, while agriculture contributes only about 4 percent to the national economy. During periods of high inflation, low-income urban populations are the most vulnerable and, consequently, the most susceptible to manipulation for political unrest.

Another decisive factor behind US hostility is Venezuela’s strategic partnership with China. Under both Chávez and Maduro, Venezuela became China’s fourth-largest oil supplier. The China–Venezuela Joint Fund, established with the China Development Bank, financed major infrastructure projects. China extended a US$10 billion concessional loan during the 2010 financial crisis and later signed a US$16 billion agreement for joint oil venture for 450,000 barrels of oil per day. These developments significantly intensified American opposition.

The culmination of this entire process marks an unprecedented moment in world history: a powerful sovereign state invading another sovereign state without provocation, attacking civilian and military targets, killing more than 80 civilians, and forcibly removing the legitimate president from the country. While previous regime-change operations in Iraq and Libya followed prolonged military invasions justified by fabricated narratives, the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro represents an even more dangerous precedent.

Even more alarming is the paralysis of the United Nations, which has failed to convene either the Security Council or the General Assembly to address this blatant violation of international law.

Although China and Russia have publicly opposed US aggression, the silence and inaction of global institutions threaten to erode faith in international law itself.

This situation sets a grave precedent and poses a serious danger to world peace. It underscores the urgent need to build global public opinion in favor of sovereignty, non-intervention, and the formation of a new international anti-imperialist alliance.

by Dr. Wasantha Bandara
General Secretary
Patriotic National Movement