Archive for May, 2008
May 27, 2008 at 6:00 pm · Categories: Colombo, English, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict | by The Under Dog
A bomb on a train in Dehiwela killed 9 civilians, including a pregnant woman. The Sri Lankan government blames the LTTE; they deny it. Three days earlier, a claymore attack on van deep in LTTE territory killed 16 civilians, including 5 children. The LTTE blames the Deep Penetration Unit of the Sri Lankan army; they deny it. In February, a bomb on a bus in Dambulla killed 20, while a bomb at the Colombo Fort railway station killed 12, including 8 children from the baseball team at D.S. Senanayake College and a 12-year-old girl. The LTTE was blamed for both attacks; they denied it. A few days earlier, a claymore mine attack on a bus in the LTTE-controlled area of …
May 23, 2008 at 8:54 am · Categories: English, Human Rights, Human Security, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Somapala Gunadheera
Most of what I reveal below has been lying concealed in my notes and diaries deposited in the Government Achieves. I have decided to focus on them out of my belief that they may throw some light as we grope through the darkness covering our arduous trek towards national reconciliation. Read between the lines with insight, they may perhaps point the way to peace and prosperity.
I started my career in the then Ceylon Civil Service in 1957 as a Cadet in the Jaffna Kachcheri. My thoughts of Jaffna are nostalgic, prompted by the happy life I led among a hospitable, and peace-loving people, nurtured in the best traditions of a noble culture. I always looked forward to returning the ample …
May 21, 2008 at 12:31 pm · Categories: Batticaloa, Constitutional Reform, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics, Trincomalee | by Publius
As the much hard-sold elections to the Eastern Provincial Council came to an unseemly and acrimonious conclusion last week, it was already becoming abundantly clear that its political and constitutional ramifications may well turn out to be anything other than what the government’s triumphalist claims would have us believe.
Perhaps the most disturbing political upshot of these elections was the sharp and violent polarisation of ethnic and religious communities in this most pluralistic of provinces. Electoral politics was conducted unashamedly as a form of antagonistic communal competition and outbidding, paralleling without much overstatement that nonpareil of political disintegration, the general elections of 1956. In the years before the watershed of 1956, the gross ineptitude of Sir John Kotelawala’s UNP with regard …
May 20, 2008 at 4:59 pm · Categories: Colombo, Economy, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by raja
I received a comment from one Mr. Perera from Cairo, who lamented about my opinion on the EU and the GSP+ issue published on Groundviews.
Fortunately for him he is in Cairo and not here. Had he been here he would know about the breakdown of the Rule of Law - the abductions, the extra-judicial killings, the disappearances taking place. The victims are largely Tamil civilians and even if they were LTTE sympathizers we don’t expect the State to act like the LTTE and deal with them according to the law of the jungle. Who does these things we don’t know for sure but only have suspicions. But they are done with impunity and the state law enforcement agencies have …
May 16, 2008 at 9:36 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Media | by groundviews
The Island newspaper in Sri Lanka is already known for its Editorial blunders. Yesterday however, it sunk to a new low when it published the following in the children’s section of its daily edition (Page 2, The Happy Island).
Click here for a larger image that places this section in the context of the page.
Clearly The Island has a very different idea to most parents on nursery rhymes for children.
What do you think?
UPDATED 17 May 2008
Ravana says that The Island claims someone hacked into their computer and replaced what was originally supposed to go up, an explanation as outrageous and incredible as the “nursery rhymes” they published.
Also …
May 14, 2008 at 3:57 pm · Categories: English, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by The Under Dog
By Under Dog
Amidst the bombs, the war, the white vans, and the checkpoints, I look back with fond memories of the ceasefire. It brought four glorious years of peace and prosperity, and also did what the naysayers said could never happen—it split the LTTE in two. Karuna, the LTTE’s fiercest combat commander, and an incessant thorn in our side during the ill-fated Jayasikurui operation, decided he wanted out. Perhaps he wanted a bigger share of the spoils from the LTTE money machine, perhaps more authority, or perhaps he had a lover’s quarrel with Prabhakaran (when the Dear Leader asked ‘do I look fat in this?’ he shouldn’t have recommended changing the uniforms to vertical stripes). Anyway, the …
May 11, 2008 at 5:06 pm · Categories: Colombo, English, Uncategorized | by Lalith Gunaratne
Stupid Old Men
I don’t want to end up being a stupid old man
Just look at what they have done to our world in vain
What’s the big deal in going to the moon
As he yet settles score by inflicting pain
War on terror, crusade or witch hunts
Stupid old men run scared to ruin
Peace on earth has little chance to shine
I wonder whether it’s the testosterone drain
that give men the jitters when age is on the gain
I need to wise up and control this mind game
Or else I will end up a stupid old man
Dig not my heals in the old men’s club
When science of Descartes takes the quantum leap
Calling it mumbo jumbo quackery they oppress
The new magic of now you see and …
May 11, 2008 at 8:41 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, English, Human Rights, Politics | by raja
Economic sanctions have been used for foreign policy objectives since the time of Ancient Greece.
The idea that economic sanctions might be an alternative to the use of force received attention after the First World War, largely owing to President Woodrow Wilson’s advocacy. Since World War II, Economic sanctions have been employed to promote democracy and human rights, to end civil war, to stop drug trafficking, to fight terrorism, to combat weapons proliferation, and to promote nuclear disarmament. Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the Security Council has imposed sanctions in fifteen cases: Southern Rhodesia (1966), South Africa (1977), Iraq (1990), former Yugoslavia (1991), Liberia (1992), Libya (1992), Somalia (1992), Angola (1993), Haiti (1993), Rwanda (1994), Sudan (1996), …
May 9, 2008 at 10:07 pm · Categories: Colombo, English, Politics | by Leftie
It was a busy afternoon on the Galle Road in Moratuwa and I stopped my vehicle at a pedestrian crossing to allow a few women and children cross the road. The vehicle on the left lane also stopped and the people were now more than halfway across when a Matara bound Leyland bus squeezed through the left and overtook both vehicles along the curb, barely missing the people crossing the road. The bus then cut across to the right lane and nearly missed another bunch of people about to cross at another pedestrian crossing and sped away. The above scenario is a common site on our roads, but no one takes any action, so the unsociable behaviour from the bus …
May 9, 2008 at 12:32 am · Categories: English, IDPs and Refugees, Mannar, Peace and Conflict | by CHA
As soon as the security forces arrived at Arrippu, in September 2007, we were escorted out of our villages, some with personal belongings many with only what they were wearing. We sheltered at Nanattan School for 15 days. We made a request to the area commander through our GA Mn & DS Nananattan to resettle us in our native place.
First they said that they would allow us to go to our village with in a month. Then they said after 06 months. Finally they said that they would resettle us when The Defense Ministry would give an order only they would allow us to go. We still remain IDPs unable to go back to our villages.
Since we engage in fishing …
May 3, 2008 at 8:51 pm · Categories: Peace and Conflict | by groundviews
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May 3, 2008 at 5:26 pm · Categories: English, Peace and Conflict | by Chulani Kodikara
There appears to be renewed interest in Northern Ireland (NI) and the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) within policy circles here. The GFA is certainly unique because it fundamentally reconstituted the state and politics in NI. Republican and unionists expectations on a number of issues were diametrically opposed to each other, but major concessions were made on both sides in order to reach agreement. Sinn Fein (SF) and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) eventually agreed to a settlement which did not grant them their primary political aspiration - a united Ireland. The unionist agreed to share executive power with the Catholic community, an idea resisted by them for decades. The GFA has many lessons for Sri Lanka, and it is …
