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Tag: Sri Lanka

  • Enrique Iglesias Fans Throw Bras During Sri Lankan Concert, President Says Concert Organizers Should Be “Whipped” for Uncivilized Behavior

    Enrique Iglesias fans attending a concert in Sri Lanka threw bras at the handsome singer, much to the chagrin of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena. Although the president doesn’t believe the women who threw bras at Enrique Iglesias should be punished, he believes a very severe punishment is due concert organizers.

    “I don’t advocate that these uncivilized women who removed their brassieres should be beaten with toxic stingray tails,” Sirisena said, according to the BBC, “but those who organized such an event should be. This is most uncivilized behavior that goes against our culture.”

    Enrique Iglesias appeared in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo on December 20 as part of his “Sex and Love” world tour. Apparently the Sri Lankan president had no idea what fans of the King of Latin Pop are accustomed to doing at these concerts.

    In addition to the issue of bras being thrown, President Sirisena found fault with the price of Enrique Iglesias concert tickets. The tickets ranged in price between $25 and $250.

    He also said, according to the Colombo Gazette, that local authorities failed to make the right kinds of inquiries prior to approving the Enrique Iglesias concert.

    “I need to say these things. As a Sinhalese Buddhist I cannot refrain from expressing my views. I will speak out when our traditions and culture is harmed,” he said.

    He added that some events are organized solely for the sake of making money, but people too often fail to understand that not everything is about the money.

    It certainly doesn’t sound like Enrique Iglesias will be invited back to Sri Lanka to perform any time soon.

  • For First Time, U.N. Study Highlights Pacific-Asian Rape Culture

    A multi-country survey recently conducted by the U.N. of Asian countries near the South Pacific sheds a terrifying light onto rape culture as it exists in nations far less fascinating to the media than India.

    The abstract is here, and the study is to be published in the medical journal The Lancet. A little over 10,000 men were asked about their lives through a questionnaire that conveniently omits the words “rape” and “violence” because the researcher hypothesized that most men do not believe their actions amount to rape. Instead, questions were more carefully phrased like asking if the reader “had sex with a woman who was too drunk or drugged to indicate whether she wanted it” or if the reader ever “forced a woman who was not your wife or girlfriend at the time to have sex?”

    The numbers, frankly, will terrify and astonish for all the wrong reasons: on average, 24 percent of the men questioned admitted to raping a partner, while 10 percent admitted to subjugating an unwilling non-partner at least once. The overwhelming reason for these horrific acts of violence: sexual entitlement (also known as “the right to have sex”) at 73.3 percent, followed by boredom at 58.7 percent. 28.3 percent of respondents admitted to being multiple rapists, and 30.2 percent of respondents confessed to raping both men and women in a group (CNN notes that poor, uneducated men were statistically more likely to engage in violence in a group setting).

    Now, at this point, you must be wondering how many of these people were caught or punished for their violence. 35.7 percent claimed that friends or family chastised them where 32.5 percent said they were arrested. Only about 23 percent of respondents ever did time in a prison cell, and a remarkable 55.2 percent of respondents said they “felt guilty.” In countries like Sri Lanka, 96.5 percent of respondents got away with their crimes completely unpunished.

    Why should the rest of the world care about these statistics? The answer could not be more obvious: the people of these nations represent half the world’s population! At this rate, nearly one out of eight human men is predisposed to sexual violence.

    The Guardian spoke with Dr. Emma Fulu, who works with the Partners for Prevention, the UN-connected group that helped manage the study. Dr. Fulu called the work “unprecedented and ground-breaking,” saying that “this is really the first time we’ve had data on rape perpetration on this scale, not just in the region but in the world, and I think it probably suggests rape is more widespread than we had thought, and the perpetration of rape starts earlier than people perhaps thought, which really highlights the need to start working with younger boys and girls to stop the violence.”

    [Image via CNN’s terrifying graphical breakdown]

  • Sri Lanka Independence Day Celebrated With Google Doodle

    Sri Lanka Independence Day Celebrated With Google Doodle

    Google is showing a doodle on its home page in Sri Lanka, honoring Sri Lanka Independence Day:

    Sri Lanka Independence Day Google Doodle

    On February 4th each year, the island country commemorates its independence from Britain, which became official on this day in 1948. Citizens celebrate the holiday with flags, parades, etc.

    This isn’t the only doodle Google is running today. On its Canadian home page, the company is honoring the last day of the Canadian penny, as it is withdrawn from circulation.

    Last week, Google honored Jackie Robinson with a doodle here in the United States.

  • Sri Lankan Man Dies After Burying Himself Alive, Earns Darwin Award Nomination on Twitter

    Twenty-four year old Sri Lankan man, Janka Basnayake, perished on Saturday after trying to set a record for the longest time that anyone has been buried alive.

    Basnayake’s final attempt may have been up to 6 1/2 hours; he was buried at 9:30 a.m. and exhumed at 4 p.m.. When he came to the surface he was unconscious and taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

    Hospital representatives say that post-mortem examinations did not point to any specific cause of death and more complex medical investigations are being conducted.

    This Sri Lankan Houdini was something of a war hero prior to turning to these antics; he had fought in the country’s 25 year civil war as a member of a police unit called the Civil Defense Force.

    Now once fellow officers are saying that friends and family helped Basnayake bury himself in a, “… trench sealed with wood and soil in the town of Kantale, about 137 miles (220 kilometers) north of Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. A local newspaper reported that the trench was 10 feet (3 meters) deep.”

    While years of fighting in a violent civil war may have driven Basnayake to tempt his fate, his mother claims that he has been performing bizarre acts since his childhood.

    It is unclear whether there is an official world record for the longest time buried alive but this Sri Lankan man was not even close. Writer Ann Gripper has noted in the Mirror that other magic men and stunt devils have been far more successful: “Magician David Blaine spent a week buried alive in a plastic box in 1999. He had six inches of headroom and two inches either side. He drank two or three tablespoons of water each day, and was connected to the outside world by a hand buzzer, which would have alerted the support team if he became distressed. Earlier the same year Geoff Smith of Mansfield, Notts, emerged after spending 147 days buried in a coffin 6ft under the beer garden of his local pub.He was following in a family tradition – his mother Emma spent 100 days buried in 1968.But he did not get his name in the Guinness Book of Records, which had scrapped its endurance section on safety grounds.”

    Twitter user, John Haynes, nominated this man’s demise for a Darwin Award; “The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it..” Others tweet that the risks involved with this stunt were clear.

    (image)@JonathanHaynes
    Jonathan Haynes    Darwin award nomination! Sri Lankan man dies trying to break record for longest time buried alive http://t.co/31fsHLvq(image) 51 minutes ago via TweetDeck ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@rainy101
    rainy101    Wow – who could have predicted that? RT @DailyMirror: Buried alive world record attempt ends in tragedy http://t.co/KKL5xogd(image) 11 minutes ago via TweetCaster for Android ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    (image)@bradpoulos
    Brad Poulos    What kind of idiot does this??? Man dies trying to set endurance record for being buried alive. http://t.co/VLbMDOPg #whatawaytogo(image) 35 minutes ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    So wrong, yet so right!