Sisira Jayasuriya
Encyclopedia
Sisira Jayasuriya, is professor of Economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

 at La Trobe University
La Trobe University
La Trobe University is a multi-campus university in Victoria, Australia. It was established in 1964 by an Act of Parliament to become the third oldest university in the state of Victoria. The main campus of La Trobe is located in the Melbourne suburb of Bundoora; two other major campuses are...

, Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

. He has extensive experience with research and policy advisory activities on agricultural and trade
policy issues in developing countries His research papers include Food safety issues, trade and WTO rules; FDI liberalization in industrial growth; Cost of War in Sri Lanka, soil erosion and environmental problems, macroeconomic and exchange rate policies in Sri Lanka and Tsunami reconstruction. He is an internationally known scholar of the political economy of developing countries and conflicts and has published widely cited several scholarly articles on the Sri Lankan conflict in international journals such as World Development, Oxford Development Studies and the Economic and Political Weekly.

He is an ethnic Sinhalese from Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

. In January 2009, he was interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...

 on the ongoing Sri Lankan Civil War
Sri Lankan civil war
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a conflict fought on the island of Sri Lanka. Beginning on July 23, 1983, there was an on-and-off insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , a separatist militant organization which fought to create an independent Tamil state named Tamil...

. This interview has generated a campaign of abuse, threats (including death threats) and vilification by extremist Sinhalese groups who want uncritical and unconditional support for the military. They have even attempted to intimidate his University in a failed attempt to get the university authorities silence him. He has been accused of supporting the LTTE terror because he has pointed out that there has been discrimination against Tamils in Sri Lanka and that there are likely to be civilian casualties in the current battles. The civilian casualties in the current battles are now well documented by UN and other independent sources and confirm his predictions.
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