Watching the current SAARC jamboree unfold over television news, my young daughter asked why none of the officials were smiling. The SAARC Secretary General, Dr. Sheel Khant Sharma, was always scowling. Others didn’t have smiles on their faces either, even insincere ones. They all looked stressed out, wearing glum, miserable faces.

I could only hazard a guess. Perhaps the assorted babus have too much to worry about, as they get through their very serious and grim business of fostering regional cooperation. On the other hand, after all these years of endless meetings and declarations, they might have forgotten the simple joys of smiling and enjoying each other’s company.

Make no mistake: SAARC is a good idea hijacked by unimaginative and pompous, unsmiling …

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The day after tomorrow

you write to me
of blowing snow and whiteouts.
of snow goggles and skating rinks
you tell me your cat may need clothing
and you joke about
living in the movie
‘the day after tomorrow’

I write to you
of scorching sun and blackouts.
of checkpoints and closed roads
of a play I went to see
called ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’

You ask for news of home.
have you forgotten that
over here, no news is good news
or have black memories buried themselves
under white snowflakes

you say it is freezing there. again. You had to dig out your new car
from underneath
a mountain of snow this morning.

It’s burning here. still.  this morning old women
and new babies were dug out
from underneath
mounds of mangled metal

you say everything there is predictable. I …

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“The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew, cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down”.  

- Barack Obama, Berlin, July 24

We must not settle for a draw in a game we can win and are winning. As we draw closer to victory, those who wish to deny it to us will intensify their efforts.

Let us do everything that can help us win the war, and desist from anything that may prevent or divert us. We also need a vision for winning the peace. Our vision for winning the peace will play a part in helping or hindering the winning of the war. Our postwar program will affect the outcome of the …

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I don’t think I had the slightest inkling of a problem between the sinhala and tamil people in Sri Lanka, until July 1983. But I should have.

In the heady days of the 1977 election, a good 13 years before I could vote, I remember my father quite nonchalantly relating a story: at some time and place in Sri Lanka, strangers accosted people on the street and forced them to pronounce the sinhala word Baaldhiya (meaning “bucket”). The tamil language wasn’t familiar with the “B” sound as a starting consonant. So a tamil person would say Vaaldhiya. Tamils, thus identified, were beaten or killed. They were, literally, condemned by the difference of a consonant.

What I don’t understand, even now, is why …

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“Dhammapada and Other Works”- An exhibition of Paintings and Installations by Chandraguptha Thenuwara was inaugurated at the Lionel Wendt Gallery in Colombo on 23rd July 2008.It was organised to ‘Commemoration of the Un-Commemorative Julys’. Being an anti-war artist, Chandraguptha Thenuwara has sought to remind his fellow Sri Lankans of Lord Buddha’s teachings about tolerance and peace.

The exhibition will remain open till 29th July 2008 from 10am-7pm. Chandraguptha Thenuwara is a senior lecturer at the University of Visual Arts in Colombo. He is also the Director of Vibhavi-Academy of Fine Arts, which was founded in 1993.

An abstract of “Dhamapada” by Chandraguptha Thenuwara:-
From childhood we are never allowed to forget that we live …

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More than two and a half decades later, one of my friends has asked to interview me about the ‘83 riots. I was ten years old. My family was from the Sinhala majority, with relatives who were strong figures in politics and the military. How could I reply?

July 1983

My mind goes back to how thrilled we were when our teachers suddenly told us that school was going to be closed immediately. There was no explanation; we had no understanding of why this might be and no reason to wonder. We were happy that we would not have to wait till August for our holidays.

I was even more excited because my father had just given me a fantastic present: a Kodak …

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Member of Parliament and Convener of the Civil Monitoring Committee, Mano Ganeshan, speaks about his experiences during the anti-Tamil riots in July 1983.

For more articles on July 1983, please click here.

by Somapala Gunadheera

Off and on, I write short stories, never anecdotes. But now I have to oblige Sanjana. He wants stories about our ethnic riots, the one that raged before he was born and the other when he was at school. Therapists say that anecdotes have a healing effect on ethnic wounds.

My experience about the 1983 riot was brief. Then I was the Chairman of the Ceylon Steel Corporation at Athurugiriya. Towards mid-day, I heard that Tigers had invaded Colombo and people were running away helter-skelter. The Aturugiriya Police had blocked the road opposite their station and were in battle array.

Later it transpired that the beginning of the turmoil was the sighting of a Tamil victim of the riot hiding …

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Prominent Tamil civil society activist Shanthi Sachithanandan shares her experiences of the July 1983 anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka.

For the Sinhala version of the interview, click here and visit the Vikalpa YouTube Channel for more short videos on the events of July 1983.

For more articles on July 1983, please click here.

Reports coming in from sources in Kilinochchi district shows that military operations in the district have led to mass displacements of the civilian population living in the Vanni. In the past 3 weeks, approximately 9,000 families (approximately 40,000 individuals) were displaced from areas close to the FDL (Manthai East) towards Northern part of the Vanni and inner land.

Local authorities are facing fuel shortages to evacuate civilians in safe areas.

Provision of emergency relief and humanitarian assistance has been obstructed by the reduced access of material and fuel through Omanthai checkpoint. 

From my Diary Notes written in Cell No.1, Negombo Remand Prison, (July 31st-Sept 24th 1983)

I had my own gruesome experience of the Black July. It was 29th July at midnight that I received a telephone call from my friend and party comrade AJMO Dr. Indra Kumar of his father’s sudden death by a heart attack.

By then, Dr. Indra Kumar’s wife was in the Thurstan College Refugee camp - the family was scattered - Dr. Indra Kumar was hiding in a private nursing home. Father and mother were isolated in a house at Kotahena. He was so desperate and helpless. He was unable to see the dead body of his father who died in Kotahena. The situation was so …

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by Austin Fernando

In July 1983, my Accountant Mr. Vallipuram at the Cooperative Department lived off Castle Street where his neighbour was a notorious Sinhalese thug. Until ‘Black July’ Vallipuram once told me that, that thug was the ‘assailant select’ in his mind, whenever he feared a racial riot.

When violent crowds ‘visited’ him early morning on the Day of ‘Black July’ around 3.30 a.m. he, his wife and son escaped through the back door in to the premises of the thug, as it was the safest. They hid behind some banana trees until the ‘Sinhalese nationalist friends’ disappeared.

Suddenly, who appeared in front of them? It was the nasty thug, the intended killer. They thought that that was the last of their …

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In my view, there are reporters and there are journalists. Reporters do exactly that. They report. But journalists on the other hand, should not be mere instruments of describing, but should be the activists who are working for change through their role as advocates.

Journalists are blessed with something that most advocates have to look for: an audience that listens to them. Whilst advocates in the traditional sense have to fight to reach their target audience, journalists have a daily dose of communication that can be delivered right to the doorstep of the public at large.

That gives them an edge to call for change. The captive audience can be fed not lies, but the needed parts of truth. There is a …

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Photo by Chandragupta Amarasinghe

ONE
What happened in mid-1983 and in the last week of July 1983 was obscene, a monumental atrocity, a disaster for Sri Lanka. In a context marked by the push for self-determination by the principal forces representing the Sri Lankan Tamils and an armed underground insurgency involving restive youth in the extreme north, government functionaries and elements of the ordinary populace took it upon themselves to unleash punitive attacks on Tamils living in the Sinhala-majority areas in the south. In both the towns and in several parts of the supposedly idyllic countryside Tamils were killed, assailed, maimed, terrorized and forced to flee or hide.

It was not an ethnic …

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July usually passes me by without too much notice, beyond the vague worry that there might be a Tiger attack on Colombo, and a few flashbacks to that weekend in 1983. But this time it’s been a bit different. I’ve found myself reliving that day a lot more this year. It isn’t the fact that this is the 25th anniversary of the carnage which most people see as the starting point of our war, though that has been the focus of a lot of attention. What did it was a phone call a couple of weeks ago.

My mobile rang with an unfamiliar number, and an equally unidentifiable male voice asked for me. When I confirmed that it was indeed yours …

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Tamil National Alliance MP Mr. R. Sampanthan speaks of the anti-Tamil riots of July 1983.

Speaking of the “terrible experience for all Tamil people in Sri Lanka” he says that the riot was “premeditated pogrom… largely believed to be with the support of very influential forces within the then government”. He notes that there were Sinhalese friends who helped Tamil friends in distress and says that the riots were a “determined effort by some forces within the majority community with the support of the government to teach the Tamil people a lesson.”

Mr. Sampanthan ends by stating that only a political solution, not violence, will bring about an end to the conflict. …

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AFLAME - Remembering Black July, 1983

What is a poem
to a man hiding
in the cellar
of his neighbor’s house,

breathing the way
his hostess spices
lentils and mutton,
while son and daughter

keep quiet,
not one word
allowed
in the mother tongue,

and wife strokes
her neck,
the golden wings
of her thali,

and across the lane
a mob, ruffians,
tontons macoutes,
lynch squad, a few

holy men, politicians
in white vershtis,
light rage
and sew pestilence

in summer fires
that turn houses
to foundation stones
and stoke residents

out to shelter
at  neighbors,
St. Peter’s College,
the police station

near Bambalapitya Flats,
before three days
voyage on a ship
hungry to Kankesanthurai

where soldiers
have been swinging
cricket bats
and teenage boys

have stopped
playing cricket,
disappeared,
coerced

into resistance:
this war, these
flames burning
every day since,

and even before,
50 years ago,
1958, when mobs
first enforced

what was deemed
the people’s will.
by unleashing
latent and dark

social energies,
microbes that murder,
that insist on power
as well as alms,

that circulate
in the body politic
and …

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This morning, I woke up to the news that the LTTE had declared an unilateral ceasefire during the SAARC conference. Of course, war is not a sport - but their declaration must be causing a slight dilemma for the Sri Lankan Military. Here’s an extract from the LTTE’s press release that was said to have originated from LTTE’s Political Office in the Vanni during the early hours  of this morning:

As a sign of this goodwill, our movement is glad to inform that it will observe a unilateral ceasefire that is devoid of military actions during the period of the SAARC conference from 26th July to 4th August and give our cooperation for the success of the conference. At the same …

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25 years after Black July, the term “National Security” is used to thwart lot of things. V from the movie ‘V for Vendetta’ said “I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of the everyday routine, the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition”.

At least he had that. We don’t.

We can’t nikang sit, walk around at night, carry our CDMA phones, visit TamilNet, buy remote controlled toys, visit Galle Face Greens, nikang stand, wear full-face helmets, fix crash-guards to our SUVs, take photos, talk about cessation of violence and a host of other things because they might supposedly impede upon the national security and the sovereignty of the country.

The country the (proud) Sinhalese stole from the native …

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My Belly is White - මගේ බඩවත සුදුය දුටු සැනින් ඒත්තු නොයන මාතෘකාවක්.

ඒත් පිටු 927 ක් පුරා දිවයන කතාවක්. පසුගිය සඳුදා දොරට වැඩි මෙම කෘතිය ලියා ඇත්තේ ශී‍්‍ර ලංකා පරිපාලන සේවයේ කීර්තිමත් පරිපාලන නිලධාරියෙකු වූ හිටපු ආක්‍ෂක ලේකම් ඔස්ටින් ප‍්‍රනාන්දු මෙය ගැටුම් නිරාකරණ සාහිත්‍යයට අලූතින් එකතු කිරීමකි. අනෙක් අතින් වසර දෙකක්වත් නොපැවති රනිල් වික‍්‍රමසිංහ රෙජීමය තුළ සිදුවූ සාම කි‍්‍රයාවලිය දෙස නව මානයකින් බැලීමට කරන ලද උත්සාහයකි. මීට පෙර මෙම සාම කි‍්‍රයාවලිය පිලිබඳ විෂය අරභයා ලියවී ඇත්තේ කෘති දෙකකි. එනම් ජෝන් ගුණරත්න විසින් ලියන ලද ආණ්ඩුවේ සාම මහලේකම් කාර්යාලය විසින් ප‍්‍රකාශයට පත් කරන ලද සාම කි‍්‍රයාවලිය පිළිබඳ දින වකවානු හා යම් යම් විස්තර අඩංගු .රෙදප එයැ ිැජදබා රදඅ, කෘතියයි. කෘතියකි. අනෙක …

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