Sri Lanka is going to start offer dual citizenship again, for people of Sri Lanka descent (ie, those who migrated or their kids). Which is good. Still not an actual immigration policy, but getting, well getting back to the status quo. I got dual citizenship years ago.

I recently wrote about gay marriage, which is not even on the radar in Sri Lanka. But we have another type of marriage discrimination here as well. Foreign marriage. If you marry someone non Sri Lankan, they can never become a citizen. Their lives and their rights to even be in the same country as their children are permanently unstable, and it’s patently unfair.

A parcel of magazines addressed to a former beauty queen was found to contain 356 grams of hashish. Which is about 40 tolas. Which is a lot. And stupid. One British national was caught at customs and another bolted. They were subletting a house from some people I know, on Hudson Street. Neither Angela Seneviratne (the celebrity addressee) nor the couple were in the house or seem to be involved, but it’s still a damn mess.

Around Kollupitiya, you can see Chinese women (who I think are prostitutes) walking between the casinos and karaoke joints or whatever. Recently one was picked up for ‘loitering’, but only fined Rs. 10 because the laws are so old. It’s kinda funny.

Firstly, the Indian government has released a cache of police and crime statistics, for which they should be commended. This is an infographic detailing complaints against the police and what happens to them. Basically, most are rejected, more are processed internally, and a fraction make it to court. Of those that make it, only a sliver ever make it out.

I just read that 29% of MPs in India have criminal charges. Some have been convicted once, but in India you can keep serving as long as the case is under appeal. Sri Lanka doesn’t have similar RTI or disclosure laws, but off the top of my head I can name one Minister charged with murder in India (Douglas Devananda) and one that should be charged for a recent shoot out (Duminda Silva).

I’m no monkey for copyright. This video amply describes how corrupted that system has become. Credit, however, is simply polite and helps people find their way around. In mainstream Sri Lankan media it’s completely cool to copy/paste from the net and link either not at all or with Source: Internet. Which is not useful. At all.

Wrote something for the Indian site MyLaw.net on grease devils. Everybody spins the story their own way. Being a panic, it’s of course prone to multiple interpretations. My point here is that people don’t trust the police or even army that much, so this shows the underlying fragility of law and order, and the cost in terms of survival of the state.

Anna Hazare is calling off his anti-corruption fast after the Indian Parliament agreed to some of his demands. I shan’t get into his demands or the response too deeply, the NYTimes link before or this Hindu link should help with that. The broader question is, what is democracy? Is it representative or deliberative? Are laws the domain of a Parliament or of the people?

Today, President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced that Sri Lanka will not renew Emergency Regulations. So, phew, everybody can relax now. Emergency Law gave ‘extensive arrest and detention powers to authorities over citizens [and presumably, yakas]‘. So, now they need warrants and stuff. Except, of course, ‘Sri Lanka also has another law, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which gives extensive powers to law enforcement authorities over citizens’ (LBO). So, uh, yeah.