Milinda Moragoda’s website

The mainstream news today reported that Milinda Moragoda would become one of the President’s senior advisors. Milinda was a leading light in the UNF government’s peace negotiations team during the height of the ceasefire agreement, from around 2002 to 2003. He was also a United National Front candidate during the parliamentary elections in April 2010. At the time, he was active on Twitter and also had an active website. Since the elections, both the site and the Twitter feed have gone completely dormant.

The ideas, aspirations and general political culture Moragoda says he stands firmly in support of and believes in are those inimical to the President he now advises, and the government he is now associated with. Ergo, there is every reason to believe he may delete these accounts and sites.

I have archived his main website and provided a PDF that links to an archive of his Twitter account. Not all the links in the archived version of the site work, but all the files are present and can be searched in Windows 7 or OS X using the search functionality built into the operating system, or any search tool for local content.

This content was archived on 4 May 2011.

CAFFE website

Some web reports indicate that the CAFFE website is being currently blocked by Sri Lankan authorities. I cannot verify this information at present since I’m out of the country, but just in case this is true, or even partly so, I’ve taken a full mirror of the CAFFE site.

Download the mirror of the CAFFE site here.

As with all the files on this site, once downloaded, you do not need an internet connection to access all the information on the site.

This backup was taken on 10 March 2010.

Presidential election 2010: Campaign websites of key candidates

Mahinda Rajapakse, who went on to win and Sarath Fonseka were two key candidates in Sri Lanka’s presidential election held on 26 January 2010. For around six week, the websites archived here on 27 January 2010 contained information on issues, policies and practices championed by both candidates. They also carried the usual propaganda and counter-propaganda.

These archives don’t include the content on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, along with entries in Wikipedia.

Of interest here is www.sfbalakaya.com, set up as a spoof with the clear intent of deriding Sarath Fonseka in the guise of being his official website. This site was particularly pernicious because of its publication of completely false information pegged to real individuals and organisations.

• Download www.mahinda2010.lk here.
• Download www.sarathfonseka.com here.
• Download www.sfbalakaya.com here.

Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process – .com version

Trust the Sri Lankan government to have two completely different websites for SCOPP. I discovered today that www.peaceinsrilanka.com is completely different to www.peaceinsrilanka.org. Both site have, from what I can gather, the same content, and it is completely bewildering as to why the older version of the site exists on the .com domain and the newer avatar on the .org domain at the same time.

SCOPP dot com

SCOPP dot org

Anyway, I’ve already archived the .org version here.

Click here to download the complete .com version.

Sri Lanka Democratic Forum

SLDF describes itself as a multi-ethnic forum of expatriate Sri Lankan human rights and democracy activists, with activists in North America, Europe, India and Australia. During the war, the SLDF regularly released press statements and reports.

Download a full archive of their site here.

North East Secretariat On Human Rights (NESOHR)

After the capture of Killinochchi by government forces, NESOHR unsurprisingly went silent. They are now back online, with an address still in Killinochchi.

As it is unsure how long they will be able to operate, their entire site, including archives dating back to 2007, can be download here.

Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process – Final bow

Media reports indicate that SCOPP will cease operations on 31st July 2009. SCOPP had completely redesigned its website from the time I last took a complete site archive in 2008.

The new site posed significant challenges to download and archive for offline browsing, but after a lot of muttered expletives, I managed to suck down all of the important information on it.

The new archive, the last that will be taken of this site before it officially ceases operations, can be accessed here.

Important update: Also see Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process – .com version

LTTE Department of International Relations

An archive of the LTTE’s Department of International Relations. Click here to download the archive as a ZIP file.

Click here for a related blog post contextualising this new website.

LTTE Peace Secretariat

The first archive of the LTTE Peace Secretariat was uploaded to this site on 11th April 2008. In January 2009, the LTTE was formally banned in Sri Lanka by the Government. Days before, the Government announced that it had captured the LTTE strong-hold Killinochchi, where the LTTE Peace Secretariat was physically located. 

This archive was taken today, with information on the humanitarian catastrophe that gripped the Vanni as the Army closed in on the last of the LTTE strongholds. 

Because this site does not work properly offline, you need to use this archive with a desktop search tool like MSN or Google Desktop (or Spotlight with OS X) in order to drill down to the content. 

The archive is around 270Mb and can be downloaded here.

The Sunday Leader

The assassination of the Editor in Chief of the Sunday Leader on 8th January 2009 was a significant blow to independent media in Sri Lanka. More coverage of this outrageous murder here.

Lasantha’s final editorial, published posthumously was moving and powerful. His words and his assassination were a damning indictment of the inability and unwillingness of the incumbents in power to secure media freedom in Sri Lanka and the safety of journalists. 

All the contents of the newspaper online up until 11th January 2009 can be downloaded as a ZIP archive here. The ZIP file is 725Mb. 

Click on index.htm once uncompressed to access all the content.