Features

Preface summarizing Raj Rajaratnam’s tell-all book

Published

2 years ago

2023/01/1

In October 2009 I was arrested and charged with insider trading. I chose to fight the charges against me because I was innocent. The prosecutors alleged that 0.01% of my trades between 2005 and 2009 were illegal.

I understood that in the US there is a 97% conviction rate (similar to China and Russia) and a punitive trial penalty for those who dare to go to trial. Empirical studies have shown that the trial penalty is just about double that handed to those who plead guilty. If a defendant agrees to become a cooperating witness, helping the government with testimony — irrespective of the truth — to convict another defendant, the co-operating witness gets a much-reduced sentence and in many cases just parole.

I understood the stakes. I chose to go to trial. Why? It’s a question I’ve since been asked hundreds of times. Why. Why jeopardize everything. Because to my core I believed I would get a fair hearing. And with a fair hearing and a rational exposition of the facts, the truth would have prevailed. Until my arrest I had the highest regard for the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). I believed that most Americans felt that way in 2009. Since then of course, the American public has become jaded about the sanctity of these institutions with multiple examples of overreach and excess.

Certain DOJ and FBI sections operate, each attempting to further its own agenda without regard for Constitutional checks and balances. The term “fake news,” the “Dark State” are now bandied about with almost wild abandon, humor, and satire. The public now assumes the existence of “fake news” alongside “authentic” news with little effort towards journalistic integrity. During the time of my arrest and trial, information from the media, DOJ, and FBI was absorbed as unquestioned Trust. While I still believe that the vast majority of those who work for the DOJ and the FBI are people of integrity, this book is an attempt to shed light on the corrupt few who act with impunity and destroy lives and families to further their career ambitions.

From the moment of my arrest, the narrative of my story was recast with a precise agenda, shaped to direct public attention away from the stark horror of the 2007-2008 financial crisis while promoting media idolatry of the publicity hungry and ambitious rookie US Attorney, Preet Bharara, who became a demi-God, the “Sheriff of Wall Street” riding into battle against myself, relentlessly personified as evil incarnate on the front pages of major newspapers around the world.

Wanton disregard for the law, recognized by the judge at my trial, allowed a corrupt element within the FBI, Agent Kang, to falsify documents leading to my arrest and falsify testimony leading to my conviction. I faced prosecutorial misconduct at its finest. The overzealous media, feasting on a human story they could sell every day, also profoundly prejudiced any hope of gathering an impartial jury by the time of the trial. These three institutions, ostensibly guardians of the public interest, charged with impartiality and integrity, bore down in a concerted campaign to make me the face of the financial crisis. My arrest and subsequent trial, a two-year process, deflected attention from a glaring fact: Not one major banker was held accountable for the 2008 global meltdown. No arrests. No searing prosecution. No jail time.

In the midst of a financial crisis which brought a multi-trillion-dollar world economy to its knees, these three institutions, independently and collectively, targeted a tiny slice of the US financial industry, hedge funds; honed in on a single hedge fund, Galleon; isolated only me, its CEO, who had recently become one of the few immigrants on Wall Street to be identified as a billionaire; and built a fabulous and intricate tale of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” to entertain the public and build their own reputations. Their two-year reality series was successful beyond measure.

Preet Bharara, the then-US attorney for the Southern District of New York, used my prosecution to launch an unprecedented press campaign to promote himself. Bharara ran roughshod over the truth, standard Department of Justice protocols, and the office’s own dignity in his extraordinary zeal to convict me. Time Magazine put Bharara on its cover, their headline proclaiming “this man is busting Wall-Street.” It was Preet’s finest moment. Bharara did not touch the real perpetrators of the 2008 financial crisis – Wall Street’s top bankers. In a rare moment of public acknowledgement, both Preet and the influential New York Magazine observed in 2014 that Bharara was almost sheepish about the insider cases — “they made our careers, but they (didn’t) change the world.”

Bharara’s impotent and poisoned approach to the non-prosecution of criminal activity on Wall Street — ranging from the mortgage bankers who precipitated the financial crisis (Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers), the money-laundering of drug cartels (HSBC), and the encouraging of tax evasion by US citizens (UBS, CSFB) — would become the defining legacy of his tenure. Each of these firms settled civil charges by paying billions of dollars in fines using shareholder money, but no single person was criminally charged or individually fined. Every one of the insider trader prosecutions was criminal. The towering hypocrisy remains startling.

The prosecution under Bharara’s watch advanced a theory of trading to prosecute me and several others which the second circuit appeals court subsequently overruled, criticizing it for “doctrine novelty.” Soon after my trial in May 2011, the then-SEC commissioner Mary Shapiro gloated that “the beauty of insider trading laws is the flexibility in interpreting them.” The lead prosecutor in my case, Jonathan Streeter said in December 2012, “Insider Trading cases are confusing to investment professionals.” He went on to add, “There is incredible confusion on what is illegal and it’s a real problem. The law is very complicated and the lines are a bit murky.” A US Attorney, the prosecution in my trial, and the head of the SEC, all acknowledged their reservations about a “murky” set of laws but had no “murky” reservations using them liberally in my case and at my trial.

The FBI agent overseeing my case Special Agent BJ Kang lied on his sworn affidavit to obtain wiretap authorization of my phone. Recognizing there had been government misconduct, Judge Richard Holwell who presided over my trial case, issued a searing criticism of the wiretap application used by Agent Kang, reprimanding him for “reckless disregard for the truth with respect to both probable cause and necessity.” The Judge went on to add that “false and misleading statements and omissions pervaded the affidavit (submitted by Special Agent Kang) so extensively that it was impossible for the authorizing judge to have the constitutionally required determination for the issuance of the wiretap…rather than provide a full and complete statement as required by the law, the wiretap affidavit made full and complete omissions and included literally false information.

“Kang did not stop at blowing through truth on paper. He menaced and threatened my family and employees with prosecution, frightened away crucial defense witnesses, and routinely leaked false information to the media churning up an unabated feeding frenzy that shredded me in the court of public opinion. Kang took his cues from the playbook of the publicly reviled former FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover. I was tried, convicted, and sentenced in the press even before I fully understood the charges against me. The atmosphere was so toxic that my lead counsel, veteran defense lawyer John Dowd said “the prejudicial publicity orchestrated by the USA was so palpable in the courtroom…It was the most toxic atmosphere of any case I ever tried.”

My defense team led by John Dowd, along with expert testimony from a former SEC legal counsel, repeatedly highlighted that all the information discussed in the wiretaps was already in the public domain. Every bit of information was in the public domain. It did not matter. No amount of truth could overcome the false testimony trained into the co-operating witnesses by Streeter, his team of prosecutors, and Bharara, who sat on the sidelines, waiting in eager anticipation for any opportunity for a press conference.

Each of the cooperating witnesses had committed his own set of crimes, unrelated to Galleon. Yet each chose to testify against me as an opportunity to reduce their probable sentences. That they were perjuring themselves was irrelevant; the government coerced them into an immediate mandate to take me down. Even the government’s star witness, Anil Kumar, offered damning testimony under oath in my case only to recant the very same sworn testimony three years later during the trial of my brother. My brother was subsequently acquitted as a result of the revised and opposite version of Anil Kumar’s testimony. A few newspapers picked up on this gross disparity, but that was it. The fact of perjury had no consequence. The cycle was vicious. “Innocent until proven guilty,” the cornerstone philosophy of the American judicial system was proving to be a farce.

I was convicted by a jury, sentenced to 11 years in jail, and paid fines of over $150 million. The irony is that even in setting the fines, the prosecutors working in tandem with the media kept up the unceasing drumbeat of punishment for the financial crisis. Never mind that I did not personally make any money from the alleged trades. And never mind that not one single investor sued me. Galleon went through an orderly process of closing down the firm and returned all the funds with a gain of 22%. Not a single investor lost money. Most important to me, personally, was that not one single investor sued me.

In July 2019, I was released after serving 7.5 years of my 11-year sentence under the First Step Act.

I wrote this book entirely in prison and by hand. I began by writing about an hour a day. Soon that increased to two hours. Then three. I am choosing to publish the book for two specific reasons: First, I want my peers, professionals who understand the nuances of managing money, to hear the facts of my case. I want them to judge me. It is my assertion that I was entrapped, framed, unlawfully wiretapped, surveilled, and then made to endure a brutal and very public media lynching.

Secondly and more importantly, I want to begin a public discussion by creating awareness of how certain corrupt prosecutors and FBI agents are allowed to get away with criminal behavior. There are no checks and balances in our Justice system. Recently there has been a lot of discussion as to whether the President should be above the law. The President is so closely scrutinized that doing anything against the law would ring alarms bells the world over. Instead, my assertion is that the focus should be on the corruption within the American judicial system, on a handful of corrupt US attorneys who live their lives exempt from the law by which they control the lives of others and the rest of the country. In this book I will show how ambitious prosecutors actively take advantage of murky laws and coerce testimony from government witnesses to obtain wrongful convictions. Winning at all costs, regardless of the truth appears at every level to be an operative mantra. I realize there is only one book I can write to set the record straight. This is it.

My story is also about greed. In all its forms, greed boils down to avarice, hunger, power, money, ambition. All of these are readily available and identifiable in the financial industry, by definition. In fact, I would say that in the financial industry, greed is effectively a cliché with fear being on the flip side of a pair trade. Fear and greed are easy to communicate, and the media hones in on these aspects of Wall Street. But what I would like to do in this book is to hone in on the excess and greed in the judicial system. Ambition in the judicial system also translates to power and money, a far more insidious and dangerous consequence to society because it goes unchecked. After I was convicted, the press had a field day speculating whether the “new sheriff” of Wall Street, Preet Bharara, was actually in line to succeed Eric Holder as the next US Attorney General when Holder stepped down. While Bharara was at first coy about his intentions, he eventually made clear his goal to secure the job based on his work prosecuting Wall Street. He may have wanted the job but did not get it.

The same ambitions were true for the three government prosecutors in my case – all three left government shortly after closing out my case for higher paying jobs as partners in leading law firms. They and their new employers spent considerable effort drumming up business on the heels of the skills honed during their time as former prosecutors to future defendants accused of insider trading. They had no problem making the transition from denouncing apparent “greed” in the financial markets to defending that same greed, switching sides in an effective demonstration of greed. As partners at leading law firms they would be highly compensated. The “protectors from greed” sold themselves to the highest bidder, all under the trusting gaze of an unaware public. The door meant to separate and maintain a balance between the public and the private sectors revolves efficiently and profitably.

It is important to understand context of the time and the prevailing mood of the country in October 2009 when I was arrested. In 2008 we had seen the near collapse of the financial system and the wiping out of trillions of dollars of home equity and life savings of the American middle class. The government was forced to bail out the major banks. Mortgages that were bundled up or securitized and sold by banks had contributed to the crisis. Millions of American homes went into foreclosure. Institutions such as Lehman Brother, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, AIG and Freddie Mac either filed for bankruptcy or lost over 90% of their market value. An estimated $7 trillion in US household assets were wiped out. And to add to the catastrophe, in late 2008, Bernie Maddoff admitted to running the largest Ponzi scheme under the very eyes of the regulators. Politicians and the public placed the blame squarely on Wall Street. The pubic was clamoring for blood and there was no blood forthcoming. From anywhere.

I had nothing to do with the housing crisis. I was an easy target for politicians, for prosecutors, for pundits, and for Bharara who had just been handed leadership of the Southern District of NY including a mandate for bringing Wall Street under control. I was a successful and expendable hedge fund manager who employed just 250 people. We obtained an overwhelming amount of information on a daily basis and my trading was 100% consistent with the written recommendations of my analysts. In ALL cases, I had a pre-existing position in the stock before allegedly receiving the “tip.” In 2009 and even today, insider trading laws are murky at best and often (intentionally) misinterpreted by prosecutors. The government painted our systematic, well-researched investing as being criminal. Theirs was an overreach of enormous proportions to show that “Wall Street fat cats” were being brought to justice. If I am guilty, then the entire investment business should be declared illegal.

As the Wall Street Journal noted insightfully, “Under standard rhetoric, the public is somehow cheated by all this, but the standard rhetoric is nonsense. The public isn’t damaged because another party wants to sell or buy (and most hedge funds strive to make sure their trading doesn’t affect prices anyway). But a cynic might note one thing: insider-trading law provides a bottomless reservoir of (supposed) financial ‘crime’ for Washington to investigate whenever it needs a Wall Street prosecution to flounce in front of the press.” [Endnote 1]

As a child, having gone to boarding school in a foreign country at the age of 11, I learned quickly and early to be a fighter, a scrapper. This is a blessing and a curse. Over the years, I have learned that you don’t always have to fight. The kindness of many people has defanged and disarmed me to a large extent. However, when people try to take advantage of me, I have to respond. I don’t back down. And I am fortunate to have been blessed with the mental fortitude and financial resources to fight for my innocence. Too many people do not. They plead guilty to indictments they cannot challenge. In my experience about 10% of the inmates at the prison in which I spent seven-and-a-half years were innocent.

When I was researching the Justice Department while in prison, I came across a paragraph that struck a chord in me. Unfortunately, I did not write down the name of the author or the source. “Criminal punishment is the greatest power that governments use and wield against their own people. When employed justly and appropriately, it is vital to any safe and productive society. But when employed aggressively based on vague laws and personal agendas the criminal justice system unnecessarily destroys lives, livelihoods, and families.”

Oddly, my experience of the law has left me without rage or a sense of victimhood. While I would never say I am grateful for the experience, I can say with confidence that I like myself better because of it. When I finally broke through the wall of despair, I realized I had gained a sense of peace and awareness that had opened me up and cracked me free. I realized how incredibly strong the human mind is and that nothing can beat a person who refuses to be beaten.

Finally, I want to say that despite what happened to me as a result of a corrupt prosecutor, I love this country just as much as I did before I went to prison. I feel truly blessed to be one of the five percent of the world population who live in America. I do not see people lined up to emigrate to China, Russia, or Japan, for example.

As I reflect on my circumstances and my past, if God had arrived at my doorstep when I was 11 – with a crystal ball — and told me, “Raj, I will give you the wife and children you see here, these friends, and ensure that both your parents live long and happily and give you also the ability to help the less fortunate — But you need to sacrifice about seven years of your life,” I would have taken that deal in a New York second.

I feel very fortunate. I am very fortunate.

Raj Rajaratnam

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Features

The Great and Little Traditions and Sri Lankan Historiography

Published

23 hours ago

2025/04/2

Sahan Weerasooriya

Prof. Obeyesekere

Power, Culture, and Historical Memory:

History, broadly defined, is the study of the past. It is a crucial component of the production and reproduction of culture. Studying every past event is neither feasible nor useful. Therefore, it is necessary to be selective about what to study from the countless events in the past. Deciding what to study, what to ignore, how to study, and how deeply to go into the past is a conscious choices shaped by various forms of power and authority. If studying the past is a main element of the production and reproduction of culture and History is its product, can a socially and culturally divided society truly have a common/shared History? To what extent does ‘established’ or ‘authentic’ History reflect the experiences of those remained outside the political, economic, social, and cultural power structures? Do marginalized groups have their own histories, distinct from dominant narratives? If so, how do these histories relate to ‘established’ History? Historiography today cannot ignore these questions, as they challenge the very notion of truth in History. Due to methodological shifts driven by post-positivist critiques of previously accepted assumptions, the discipline of history—particularly historiography—has moved into a new epistemological terrain.

The post-structuralism and related philosophical discourses have necessitated a critical reexamination of the established epistemological core of various social science disciplines, including history. This intellectual shift has led to a blurring of traditional disciplinary boundaries among the social sciences and the humanities. Consequently, concepts, theories, and heuristic frames developed in one discipline are increasingly being incorporated into others, fostering a process of cross-fertilization that enriches and transforms scholarly inquiry

In recent decades, the discipline of History has broadened its scope and methodologies through interactions with perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities. Among the many analytical tools adopted from other disciplines, the Great Tradition and Little Tradition have had a significant impact on historical methodology. This article examines how these concepts, originally developed in social anthropology, have been integrated into Sri Lankan historiography and assesses their role in deepening our understanding of the past.

The heuristic construct of the Great and Little Traditions first emerged in the context of US Social Anthropology as a tool/framework for identifying and classifying cultures. In his seminal work Peasant society and culture: an anthropological approach to civilization, (1956), Robert Redfield introduced the idea of Great and Little Traditions to explain the dual structure of cultural expression in societies, particularly in peasant communities that exist within larger civilizations. His main arguments can be summarized as follows:

a) An agrarian society cannot exist as a fully autonomous entity; rather, it is just one dimension of the broader culture in which it is embedded. Therefore, studying an agrarian society in isolation from its surrounding cultural context is neither possible nor meaningful.

b) Agrarian society, when views in isolation, is a ‘half society’, representing a partial aspect/ one dimension of the broader civilization in which it exits. In that sense, agrarian civilization is a half civilization. To fully understand agrarian society—and by extension, agrarian civilization—it is essential to examine the other half that contribute to the whole.

c) Agrarian society was shaped by the interplay of two cultural traditions within a single framework: the Great Tradition and the Little Tradition. These traditions together provided the unity that defined the civilization embedded in agrarian society.

d) The social dimensions of these cultural traditions would be the Great Society and the Little Society.

e) The Great Culture encompasses the cultural framework of the Great Society, shaped by those who establish its norms. This group includes the educated elite, clergy, theologians, and literati, whose discourse is often regarded as erudite and whose language is considered classical.

f) The social groups excluded from the “Great Society”—referred to as the “Little Society”—have their own distinct traditions and culture. The “Great Tradition” represents those who appropriate society’s surplus production, and its cultural expressions reflect this dominance. In contrast, the “Little Tradition” belongs to those who generate surplus production. While the “Great Tradition” is inherently tied to power and authority, the “Little Tradition” is not directly connected to them.

g) According to Robert Redfield, the Great and Little Traditions are not contradictory but rather distinct cultural elements within a society. The cultural totality of peasant society encompasses both traditions. As Redfield describes, they are “two currents of thought and action, distinguishable, yet overflowing into and out of each other.” (Redfield, 1956).

At the time Redfield published his book Peasant Society and Culture: an Anthropological Approach to Civilization (1956), the dominant analytical framework for studying non-Western societies was modernization theory. This perspective, which gained prominence in the post-World War II era, was deeply influenced by the US geopolitical concerns. Modernization theory became a guiding paradigm shaping research agendas in anthropology, sociology, political science, and development studies in US institutions of higher learning,

Modernization theory viewed societies as existing along a continuum between “traditional” and “modern” stages, with Western industrialized nations positioned near the modern end. Scholars working within this framework argued that economic growth, technological advancement, urbanization, and the rationalization of social structures drive traditional societies toward modernization. The theory often emphasized Western-style education, democratic institutions, and capitalist economies as essential components of this transition.

While engaging with aspects of modernization theory, Redfield offered a more nuanced perspective on non-Western societies. His concept of the “folk-urban continuum” challenged rigid dichotomies between tradition and modernity, proposing that social change occurs through complex interactions between rural and urban ways of life rather than through the simple replacement of one by the other.

The concepts of the Great and Little Traditions gained prominence in Sri Lankan social science discourse through the works of Gananath Obeyesekere, the renowned sociologist who recently passed away. In his seminal research essay, The Great Tradition and the Little in the Perspective of Sinhalese Buddhism (Journal of Asian Studies, 22, 1963), Gananath Obeyesekere applied and adapted this framework to examine key aspects of Sinhalese Buddhism in Sri Lanka. While Robert Redfield originally developed the concept in the context of agrarian societies, Obeyesekere employed it specifically to analyze Sinhala Buddhist culture, highlighting significant distinctions between the two approaches.

He identifies a phenomenon called ‘Sinhala Buddhism’, which represents a unique fusion of religious and cultural traditions: the Great Tradition (Maha Sampradaya) and the Little Traditions (Chuula Sampradaya). To fully grasp the essence of Sinhala Buddhism, it is essential to understand both of these dimensions and their interplay within society.

The Great Tradition represents the formal, institutionalized aspect of Buddhism, centered on the Three Pitakas and other classical doctrinal texts and commentaries of Theravāda Buddhism. It embodies the orthodoxy of Sinhala Buddhism, emphasizing textual authority, philosophical depth, and ethical conduct. Alongside this exists another dimension of Sinhala Buddhism known as the Little (Chuula) Tradition. This tradition reflects the popular, localized, and ritualistic expressions of Buddhism practiced by laypeople. It encompasses folk beliefs, devotional practices (Bali, Thovil), deity veneration, astrology, and rituals (Hadi and Huunium) aimed at securing worldly benefits. Unlike the doctrinally rigid Great Tradition, the Little Tradition is fluid, adaptive, and shaped by indigenous customs, ancestral practices, and even elements of Hinduism. These Sinhala Buddhist cultural practices are identified as ‘Lay-Buddhism’. Gananath Obeyesekera’s concepts and perspectives on Buddhist culture and society contributed to fostering an active intellectual discourse in society. However, the discussion on the concept of Great and Little Traditions remained largely within the domain of social anthropology.

The scholarly discourse on the concepts of Great and Little Tradition gained new socio-political depth through the work of Newton Gunasinghe, a distinguished Sri Lankan sociologist. He applied these concepts to the study of culture and socio-economic structures in the Kandyan countryside, reframing them in terms of production relations. Through his extensive writings and public lectures, Gunasinghe reinterpreted the Great and Little Tradition framework to explore the interconnections between economy, society, and culture.

Blending conventional social anthropology approach with Marxist analyses of production relations and Gramscian perspectives on culture and politics, he offered a nuanced understanding of these dynamics. In the context of our discussion, his key insights on culture, society, and modes of production can be summarized as follows.

a. The social and economic relations of the central highlands under the Kandyan Kingdom, the immediate pre-colonial social and economic order, were his focus. His analysis did not cover to the hydraulic Civilization of Sri Lanka.

b. He explored the organic and dialectical relationship between culture, forces of production, and modes of production. Drawing on the concepts of Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser, he examined how culture, politics, and the economy interact, identifying the relationship between cultural formations and production relations

c. Newton Gunasinghe’s unique approach to the concepts of Great Culture and Little Culture lies in his connection of cultural formations to forces and relations of production. He argues that the relationship between a society’s structures and its superstructures is both dialectical and interpenetrative.

d. He observed that during the Kandyan period, the culture associated with the Little Tradition prevailed, rather than the culture linked to the Great Tradition.

e. The limitations of productive forces led to minimal surplus generation, with a significant portion allocated to defense. The constrained resources sustained only the Little Tradition. Consequently, the predominant cultural mode in the Kandyan Kingdom was, broadly speaking, the Little Tradition.

(To be continued)

by Gamini Keerawella

Features

Celebrating 25 Years of Excellence: The Silver Jubilee of SLIIT – II

Published

23 hours ago

2025/04/2

Sahan Weerasooriya

Founded in 1999, with its main campus in Malabe and multiple centres across the country—including Metro Campus (Colombo), Matara, Kurunegala, Kandy (Pallekele), and Jaffna (Northern Uni)—SLIIT provides state-of-the-art facilities for students, now celebrating 25 years of excellence in 2025.

Kandy Campus

SLIIT is a degree-awarding higher education institute authorised and approved by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and Ministry of Higher Education under the University Act of the Government of Sri Lanka. SLIIT is also the first Sri Lankan institute accredited by the Institution of Engineering & Technology, UK. Further, SLIIT is also a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and the International Association of Universities (IAU).

Since its inception, SLIIT has played a pivotal role in shaping the technological and educational landscape of Sri Lanka, producing graduates who have excelled in both local and global arenas. This milestone is a testament to the institution’s unwavering commitment to academic excellence, research, and industry collaboration.

Summary of SLIIT’s

History and Status

Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) operates as a company limited by guarantee, meaning it has no shareholders and reinvests all surpluses into academic and institutional development.

* Independence from Government: SLIIT was established in 1999 as an independent entity without government ownership or funding, apart from an initial industry promotion grant from the Board of Investment (BOI).

* Mahapola Trust Fund Involvement & Malabe Campus: In 2000, the Mahapola Trust Fund (MTF) agreed to support SLIIT with funding and land for the Malabe Campus. In 2015, SLIIT fully repaid MTF with interest, ending financial ties.

* True Independence (2017-Present): In 2017, SLIIT was officially delisted from any government ministry, reaffirming its status as a self-sustaining, non-state higher education institution.

Today, SLIIT is recognised for academic excellence, global collaborations, and its role in producing IT professionals in Sri Lanka

.A Journey of Growth and Innovation

SLIIT began as a pioneering institution dedicated to advancing information technology education in Sri Lanka. Over the past two and a half decades, it has expanded its academic offerings, establishing itself as a multidisciplinary university with programmess in engineering, business, architecture, and humanities, in addition to IT. The growth of SLIIT has been marked by continuous improvement in infrastructure, faculty development, and curriculum enhancement, ensuring that students receive world-class education aligned with industry needs.

Looking Ahead: The Next 25 Years

As SLIIT celebrates its Silver Jubilee, the institution looks forward to the future with a renewed commitment to excellence. With advancements in technology, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the increasing demand for skilled professionals, SLIIT aims to further expand its academic offerings, enhance research capabilities, and continue fostering a culture of innovation. The next 25 years promise to be even more transformative, as the university aspires to make greater contributions to national and global progress.

Sports Achievements:

A Legacy of Excellence

SLIIT has not only excelled in academics but has also built a strong reputation in sports. Over the years, the university has actively promoted athletics and competitive sports by organising inter-university and inter-school competitions, fostering a culture of teamwork, discipline, and resilience. SLIIT teams have secured victories in national and inter-university competitions across various sports, including cricket, basketball, badminton, rugby, football, swimming, and athletics. SLIIT’s sports achievements reflect its dedication to holistic student development, encouraging students to excel beyond the classroom.

Kings of the pool!

Once again, our swimmers have brought glory to SLIIT by emerging as champions at the Asia Pacific Institute of Information and Technology Extravaganza Swimming Championship 2024. They won the Men’s, Women’s, and Overall Championships. Congratulations to all swimmers for their dedication and hard work in the pool, bringing honour to SLIIT.

Winning International Competitions

SLIIT students have participated in and excelled in various international competitions, including Robofest, Codefest, and the University of Queensland – Design Solution for Impact Competition, showcasing their skills and talent on a global stage.

Here’s a more detailed look at SLIIT’s involvement in international competitions:

Robofest:

SLIIT’s Faculty of Engineering organises the annual Robofest competition, which aims to empower students with skills in electronics, robotics, critical thinking, and problem-solving, preparing them to compete internationally and bring recognition to Sri Lankan talent.

Codefest:

CODEFEST is a nationwide Software Competition organized by the Faculty of Computing of Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT) geared towards exhibiting the software application design and developing talents of students island-wide. It is an effort of SLIIT to elevate the entire nation’s ICT knowledge to achieve its aspiration of being the knowledge hub in Asia. CODEFEST was first organised in 2012 and this year it will be held for the 8th consecutive time in parallel with the 20th anniversary celebrations of SLIIT.

University of Queensland – Design Solution for Impact Competition:

SLIIT hosted the first-ever University of Queensland – Design Solution for Impact Competition in Sri Lanka, with 16 school teams from across the country participating.

International Open Day:

SLIIT organises an International Open Day where students can connect with distinguished lecturers and university representatives from prestigious institutions like the University of Queensland, Liverpool John Moores University, and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Brain Busters:

SLIIT Brain Busters is a quiz competition organised by SLIIT. The competition is open to students of National, Private and International Schools Island wide. The programme is broadcast on TV1 television as a series.

Inter-University Dance Competition:

SLIIT Team Diamonds for being selected as finalists and advancing to the Grand Finale of Tantalize 2024, the inter-university dance competition organised by APIIT Sri Lanka. The 14 talented team members from various SLIIT faculties have showcased their skills in Team Diamonds and earned their spot as finalists, competing among over 30 teams from state universities, private universities, and higher education institutes.

Softskills+

For the 11th consecutive year, Softskills+ returns with an exciting lineup of events aimed at honing essential soft skills among students. The program encompasses an interschool quiz contest and a comprehensive workshop focused on developing teamwork, problem-solving abilities, leadership qualities, and fostering creative thinking.

Recently, the Faculty of Business at SLIIT organised its annual Inter-school Quiz Competition and Soft Skills Workshop, marking its fifth successive year. Targeting students in grades 11 to 13 from Commerce streams across State, Private, and International schools, the workshop sought to ignite a passion for soft skills development, emphasising teamwork, problem-solving, creativity, and innovative thinking. Recognising the increasing importance of these soft skills in today’s workforce, the programme aims to fill the gap often left unaddressed in the school curriculum.”

The winners of the soft skill competition with Professor Lakshman Rathnayake: Chairman/Chancellor, Vice Chancellor/MD Professor Lalith Gamage, Professor Nimal Rajapakse: Senior Deputy Vice – Chancellor & Provost, Deputy Vice Chancellor – Research and International Affairs Professor Samantha Thelijjagoda, and Veteran Film Director Somarathna Dissanayake.

VogueFest 2024:

SLIIT Business School organised VogueFest 2024, a platform for emerging fashion designers under 30 to showcase their work and win prizes.

T-shirt Design Competition with Sheffield Hallam University:

SLIIT and Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) UK collaborated on a T-shirt designing competition, with a voting procedure to select the best design.

SLIIT’s Got Talent

: The annual talent show, SLIIT’s Got Talent 2024, was held for the 10th consecutive year at the Nelum Pokuna Mahinda Rajapaksa Theatre on 27th September 2024. SLIIT’s Got Talent had the audience energised with amazing performances, showcasing mind-blowing talent by the orchestra and the talented undergraduates from all faculties.

Other events:

* SLIIT also participates in events like the EDUVision Exhibition organised by the Richmond College Old Boys’ Association.

* They hosted the first-ever University of Queensland – Design Solution for Impact Competition in Sri Lanka.

* SLIIT Business School also organised the Business Proposal Competition.

SLIIT Academy:

SLIIT Academy (Pvt.) Ltd. provides industrial-oriented learning experiences for students.

International Partnerships:

SLIIT has strong international partnerships with universities like Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), The University of Queensland (UQ), Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), and Curtin University Australia, providing opportunities for students to study and participate in international events.

(The writer, a senior Chartered Accountant and professional banker, is Professor at SLIIT University, Malabe. He is also the author of the “Doing Social Research and Publishing Results”, a Springer publication (Singapore), and “Samaja Gaveshakaya (in Sinhala).

Features

Inescapable need to deal with the past

Published

2 days ago

2025/04/1

Sahan Weerasooriya

The sudden reemergence of two major incidents from the past, that had become peripheral to the concerns of people today, has jolted the national polity and come to its centre stage. These are the interview by former president Ranil Wickremesinghe with the Al Jazeera television station that elicited the Batalanda issue and now the sanctioning of three former military commanders of the Sri Lankan armed forces and an LTTE commander, who switched sides and joined the government. The key lesson that these two incidents give is that allegations of mass crimes, whether they arise nationally or internationally, have to be dealt with at some time or the other. If they are not, they continue to fester beneath the surface until they rise again in a most unexpected way and when they may be more difficult to deal with.

In the case of the Batalanda interrogation site, the sudden reemergence of issues that seemed buried in the past has given rise to conjecture. The Batalanda issue, which goes back 37 years, was never totally off the radar. But after the last of the commission reports of the JVP period had been published over two decades ago, this matter was no longer at the forefront of public consciousness. Most of those in the younger generations who were too young to know what happened at that time, or born afterwards, would scarcely have any idea of what happened at Batalanda. But once the issue of human rights violations surfaced on Al Jazeera television they have come to occupy centre stage. From the day the former president gave his fateful interview there are commentaries on it both in the mainstream media and on social media.

There seems to be a sustained effort to keep the issue alive. The issues of Batalanda provide good fodder to politicians who are campaigning for election at the forthcoming Local Government elections on May 6. It is notable that the publicity on what transpired at Batalanda provides a way in which the outcome of the forthcoming local government elections in the worst affected parts of the country may be swayed. The problem is that the main contesting political parties are liable to be accused of participation in the JVP insurrection or its suppression or both. This may account for the widening of the scope of the allegations to include other sites such as Matale.

POLITICAL IMPERATIVES

The emergence at this time of the human rights violations and war crimes that took place during the LTTE war have their own political reasons, though these are external. The pursuit of truth and accountability must be universal and free from political motivations. Justice cannot be applied selectively. While human rights violations and war crimes call for universal standards that are applicable to all including those being committed at this time in Gaza and Ukraine, political imperatives influence what is surfaced. The sanctioning of the four military commanders by the UK government has been justified by the UK government minister concerned as being the fulfilment of an election pledge that he had made to his constituents. It is notable that the countries at the forefront of justice for Sri Lanka have large Tamil Diasporas that act as vote banks. It usually takes long time to prosecute human rights violations internationally whether it be in South America or East Timor and diasporas have the staying power and resources to keep going on.

In its response to the sanctions placed on the military commanders, the government’s position is that such unilateral decisions by foreign government are not helpful and complicate the task of national reconciliation. It has faced criticism for its restrained response, with some expecting a more forceful rebuttal against the international community. However, the NPP government is not the first to have had to face such problems. The sanctioning of military commanders and even of former presidents has taken place during the periods of previous governments. One of the former commanders who has been sanctioned by the UK government at this time was also sanctioned by the US government in 2020. This was followed by the Canadian government which sanctioned two former presidents in 2023. Neither of the two governments in power at that time took visibly stronger stands.

In addition, resolutions on Sri Lanka have been a regular occurrence and have been passed over the Sri Lankan government’s opposition since 2012. Apart from the very first vote that took place in 2009 when the government promised to take necessary action to deal with the human rights violations of the past, and won that vote, the government has lost every succeeding vote with the margins of defeat becoming bigger and bigger. This process has now culminated in an evidence gathering unit being set up in Geneva to collect evidence of human rights violations in Sri Lanka that is on offer to international governments to use. This is not a safe situation for Sri Lankan leaders to be in as they can be taken before international courts in foreign countries. It is important for Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and dignity as a country that this trend comes to an end.

COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTION

A peaceful future for Sri Lanka requires a multi-dimensional approach that addresses the root causes of conflict while fostering reconciliation, justice, and inclusive development. So far the government’s response to the international pressures is to indicate that it will strengthen the internal mechanisms already in place like the Office on Missing Persons and in addition to set up a truth and reconciliation commission. The difficulty that the government will face is to obtain a national consensus behind this truth and reconciliation commission. Tamil parties and victims’ groups in particular have voiced scepticism about the value of this mechanism. They have seen commissions come and commissions go. Sinhalese nationalist parties are also highly critical of the need for such commissions. As the Nawaz Commission appointed to identify the recommendations of previous commissions observed, “Our island nation has had a surfeit of commissions. Many witnesses who testified before this commission narrated their disappointment of going before previous commissions and achieving nothing in return.”

Former minister Prof G L Peiris has written a detailed critique of the proposed truth and reconciliation law that the previous government prepared but did not present to parliament.

In his critique, Prof Peiris had drawn from the South African truth and reconciliation commission which is the best known and most thoroughly implemented one in the world. He points out that the South African commission had a mandate to cover the entire country and not only some parts of it like the Sri Lankan law proposes. The need for a Sri Lankan truth and reconciliation commission to cover the entire country and not only the north and east is clear in the reemergence of the Batalanda issue. Serious human rights violations have occurred in all parts of the country, and to those from all ethnic and religious communities, and not only in the north and east.

Dealing with the past can only be successful in the context of a “system change” in which there is mutual agreement about the future. The longer this is delayed, the more scepticism will grow among victims and the broader public about the government’s commitment to a solution. The important feature of the South African commission was that it was part of a larger political process aimed to build national consensus through a long and strenuous process of consultations. The ultimate goal of the South African reconciliation process was a comprehensive political settlement that included power-sharing between racial groups and accountability measures that facilitated healing for all sides. If Sri Lanka is to achieve genuine reconciliation, it is necessary to learn from these experiences and take decisive steps to address past injustices in a manner that fosters lasting national unity. A peaceful Sri Lanka is possible if the government, opposition and people commit to truth, justice and inclusivity.

by Jehan Perera