Archive for April, 2008
April 19, 2008 at 8:15 pm · Categories: English, Human Rights, Human Security, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Ruki
If we knew the government will put us in an open prison, we would not have come, it would have better to die in the Vanni” Man being held in Kallimoddai after fleeing Vanni to “cleared” areas
Last year, I had helped a boy from Killinochi who was arrested in Pettah and kept in inhumane conditions, worse than a caged animal, in Welikada Prison. Treatment that should not be given to even a convicted criminal, though in this case, the boy was a suspect, the basis for suspicion being him being a Tamil and coming from Killinochi. He had fled the Vanni, as he feared recruitment by the LTTE. But only to fall prey to Sri Lankan security forces and suffer …
April 19, 2008 at 4:41 pm · Categories: Batticaloa, English | by groundviews
Image courtesy Mannar Diocese website
The sacred shrine of Madhu is being violated.
What right has the LTTE to encroach on the Pilgrim Reservation Area gazetted under the Pilgrimage Ordinance in 1982? The LTTE has violated International Conventions relating to War in entering the Church or its environs and converting it to a battle zone. The International Community should condemn this action of the LTTE. Only cowards hide in places of worship because they are unable to face the enemy in the battlefield. The International Community must call upon the LTTE to forthwith vacate the Madhu Church Reservation Area or face international condemnation. They must remove all mortars and other military equipment from the Reservation Area.
As for …
April 19, 2008 at 9:27 am · Categories: English, Uncategorized | by CHA
Rice, which is the staple food in Sri Lanka, has become the subject of a national issue today. Government appears to being in the dark as to how to tackle issues confronting rice in the context of a market economy. As it is well known, since independence, many successive governments through various public spending programmes, supported by foreign aid, developed the rice production sector with a vehement dedication with the aim of making Sri Lanka a rice self-sufficient country. However, neither producers nor consumers of rice appeared to have benefited to the best satisfaction due to various reasons.
There is a large number of small-sized rice producers scattered around the country. The smallness of their unit of …
April 17, 2008 at 12:50 pm · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Leftie
Our self esteem is central to our survival. Yet, we do not value its importance as we face life’s challenges. Self esteem, whether our own or others’, is strengthened or takes a beating, through the way people communicate with each other. This communication is based on our power in relation to others. So, the more hierarchical and controlling a system is, power is concentrated with a few people, chances are esteem of the people below is undermined.
What is good for people is also good for nations. So, nation’s success also depends very much on its population’s collective self esteem, which is also called social esteem.
If we define esteem as the confidence in our right to be happy, feeling …
April 16, 2008 at 10:49 am · Categories: English, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict | by CHA
“The cost of living is sky rocketing like the Kfir jets,” said an old man standing along the road side with great sigh. He was holding his loaf of bread tightly as though it was something precious. “Yes, soon will have to give up eating,” another old man standing next to him admitted. Now a days bread is the main food item in many families. We can simply estimate the rate of cost of living with the price increase of wheat flour and bread.
Posing a question regarding the cost of living to a crowd in front of a grocery shop a man answers saying, “so many reporters and media people have visited us and asked the same question again …
April 14, 2008 at 1:32 pm · Categories: Colombo, English, Politics | by Gamini Viyangoda
Image courtesy JVP website
Some priests in ascetic orders who indulge in carnal pleasures, though not very often, do get excommunicated. A prominent catholic priest of high rank in Europe who had allegedly abused a child some twenty years ago was disrobed recently, when the affected party unearthed that case. There are some Buddhist monks too who are not virtuous, but there is no effective mechanism to disrobe them. What happens often is that the person in question himself voluntarily quits the temple. Though they are frowned upon by society as Heeraluvas I esteem them for their courage and honesty in leaving a place where they don’t fit in anymore.
In a certain sense, Peoples …
April 14, 2008 at 11:15 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Media, Peace and Conflict, Uncategorized | by groundviews
Groundviews is fully back online after an upgrade of its back-end content management system to the latest version of Wordpress. While the site looks and feels the same, improvements under the hood make it more secure, responsive and easier to use.
There are also several significant new features to the site:
- You now no longer have to register to write a comment. A combination of Akismet and the WP Captcha Free plug-in ensures that bots are kept at bay and legitimate comments make it through. I can attest that the combination has dramatically reduced comment spam. Still not 100% fool proof though - so if there’s a comment that doesn’t appear after 24 hours that you think is in line …
April 12, 2008 at 7:01 pm · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Publius
The constitutional reform debate in Sri Lanka is in a particularly enervated state as we approach the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, with a government in power that displays that bizarre concoction of procrustean infantilism that so characterised the Jayewardene and Premadasa attitudes to constitutional government and democracy: its thinking juvenile, its methods menacing. This has, in turn, lent a degree of respectability to secessionism it would not otherwise enjoy in world opinion. In fact, the supremacist ethno-nationalism which is at the ideological core of this government, and the simple-minded and unreflective obstinacy with which its dictates are pursued, raises a question that is at the heart of the liberal theory on self-determination and secession, but which Sri Lankan liberals, …
April 11, 2008 at 4:05 pm · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Anupama Ranawana
Peace talks in Sri Lanka are temporarily on hold. The Ceasfire Agreement of 2002 has crashed and burned and the Norwegians and the SLMM have bid a quick but reluctant goodbye. To all intents and purposes, the country has been left to descend into its own spiral of ruin as the parties engage themselves in all out war. The exclamations and interjections of the nationalists have won and peaceniks, media professionals and the members of the international community now live like fiddlers on a rather shaky roof.
The author does not want to use this paper to discuss the reasons for the failure of the peace talks. Instead she would like to take a quick look here at foreign mediation, specifically …
April 9, 2008 at 6:38 pm · Categories: Peace and Conflict, Uncategorized | by groundviews
Groundviews will be down tomorrow, 10th April, for a scheduled upgrade. The site should be up and running as normal by 11th April the latest, but we don’t really expect it to be inaccessible for anything more than a few hours at most.
For the geeks out there, we are upgrading our back-end content management system to the latest version of Wordpress (2.5), which strengthens security and adds some neat features to help authors publish their content more easily.
We’ve also disabled site registration - we hope temporarily. An unusual amount of bot accounts terminating with mail.ru or ukr.net (with IP’s unsurprisingly terminating in Russia) flooded the site recently and with a resulting increase in comment spam that became tedious to …
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