Archive for August, 2008
August 29, 2008 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Media, Peace and Conflict | by Hugh Bohane
[Editors note: This interview was conducted in April 2006]
Lisa Kois is a brave filmmaker, working right at the heart of today’s dangerous and on going civil conflict in Sri Lanka. Her movie and television series on Sri Lanka’s war have won her numerous international awards; she talks to Hugh Bohane, about her experiences making her first movie, “The art of Forgetting” and the television series, “Crossing Fires”, which features British-Sri Lankan musician, M.I.A.
Tell us a bit about your background?
I am originally from the United States, yet do not identify with today’s America, its policies, or its practices. At the same time, it’s where I am from, it’s what I grew up with, there is a part of it - …
August 27, 2008 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict | by David Blacker
I walk into the bar at the Sapphire, knowing I’m early for this interview, but I don’t want to keep my contact waiting. He’s obviously a busy man, but has been convinced by a mutual friend to give me half an hour of his time.
The bar itself has a certain well-worn charm that reminds one of friendly little pubs in Europe - all dark wood, fake leather and dim, smoky corners. Except that there’s no smoke anymore. Sri Lanka’s draconian anti-tobacco laws have banished smoking to a glass-walled cage at the far end of the room. I curse softly and park myself in a cubicle, ordering a gin-and-tonic, and wait for the man.
The place is more or less empty - it’s …
August 25, 2008 at 8:57 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Politics | by Ruwanminee Wickremasinghe
No more scantily clad foreign cheerleaders at cricket matches in Sri Lanka as it goes against our “culture”, the Minister of Sports and Public Recreation Gamini Lokuge recently decreed. He was awakened to this “foreign evil” by the Minister of Cultural Affairs Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, after seeing them at the first one-day match between India and Sri Lanka at Dambulla on August 19th. So instead of foreign dancers, the Sports Minister suggested hiring Sri Lankan dancers in keeping with our traditions.
My view is that the action of the Cultural and the Sports Ministers stink of the worst kind of duplicity and mirrors the reaction of the other political parties in Sri Lanka.
The Tourism Ministry sponsored the much-hyped Hikkaduwa Beach Carnival …
August 23, 2008 at 6:48 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, English, Politics, Trincomalee | by Dayan Jayatilleka
Just as it did at the moment of decolonization and independence, the visible post-war moment provides a rare historic opportunity for nation building and the construction of national identity. We missed the first chance, but must not miss the second.
In his nationally televised dialogue with audiences in several areas on Tuesday August 19th, President Rajapakse, speaking in Sinhala to largely Sinhala rural crowds, pledged to hold elections to the Northern Provincial Council within a year of its liberation just as he had held election to the Eastern Provincial Council. He added that he was considering elections to the local authorities in Jaffna very much earlier.
Gotabhaya Rajapakse, Defence Secretary, had already indicated the goal in his response to The Times online, …
August 22, 2008 at 8:52 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Jaffna, Media, Peace and Conflict | by Librarian
About six weeks ago the organization I work with received a letter and a telephone call from the Swami Gnanapragasam Library in Jaffna commending our work. They wanted us to send them any publications we could spare, as they were very keen to have resources related to peace and governance in Tamil and English.
They had also sent a letter and a fax previously, which sadly we did not have the time or funds to respond to. This time though, we followed it up. We decided to post a small parcel of books to Jaffna which resulted in some rather revealing incidents at the General Post Office (in Colombo) as narrated by our Publications Clerk (lets call her Jenny).
The books were …
August 18, 2008 at 8:20 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, English, Politics | by Somapala Gunadheera
When we were being initiated to English under the Free Education Scheme, our teacher used to ask us to, “Hurry up and go slowly.” This command made us laugh, for by then we knew enough English to see the seeming paradox.
Sixty years later, I do not laugh at the words any more. I see their wisdom particularly in relation to the resolution of our ethnic conflict. They seem to indicate the way to put an end to this cancerous problem.
“Hurry up” implies urgency, commitment and absence of prevarication. The ethnic problem has dragged on for 60 years after independence and there has never been a dedicated commitment to resolve it. Dilly dallying has always been the order of the day. …
August 16, 2008 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, Economy, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Ruwanminee Wickremasinghe
If there is one thing that is crystal clear about the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration, it is that it rewards wrong doers and punishes the righteous.
The President’s decision to include the Treasury Secretary P.B. Jayasundera in his delegation to China for the opening ceremony of the Olympic games days is a case in point. Just days after the man found guilty of corruption in the privatization of Lanka Marine Services Limited by the Supreme Court and fined Rs. 500,000, the President’s action illustrates that anybody has a place in the regime’s inner circle as long as he is a “yes man.”
The Court upheld the findings of a the report released months earlier by the Parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) which …
August 14, 2008 at 11:59 am · Categories: Peace and Conflict | by Colin Irwin
Dr. Colin Irwin
Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool
August 2008
About this poll
Peace was achieved in Northern Ireland, after many years of bitter conflict, failed negotiations and broken ceasefires only when all the parties to the conflict and the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland were brought together in the same peace process. As part of that process a series of ‘peace polls’ were run to find out what the people wanted in terms of a just and lasting settlement. The first such peace poll run in Sri Lanka was completed between March and May 2008 in collaboration with the staff of Social Indicator of Colombo and Dr. Colin Irwin from the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool …
August 13, 2008 at 7:01 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, English, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
The devolution debate has been sharpened by the highly interesting and significant results of the public opinion poll recently conducted in Tamil Nadu, with regard to Sri Lanka’s ethnic issue and its internal arrangements.
The poll has had the effect of strengthening both pro and anti-devolution camps in their chosen opinions.
I suggest that a realist reading should result in a more nuanced approach to devolution, which escapes the trap of overreaction in either direction, namely allergic rejection and imitative appeasement. With or without the new data from Tamil Nadu, the debate on devolution in Sri Lanka reveals roughly seven and possibly eight points of view or “lines”. These are:
- Zero or small unit devolution: Abolition of the 13th amendment and Provincial Councils, …
August 13, 2008 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Prof. Kumar David
Lanka: Where to cut the Gordian knot
Sometimes the obvious is the most difficult to see; and then when discerned in a flash of blinding light it does indeed seem so obvious. Lanka will never, never ever, settle its national question, or its ethnic conflict if you prefer this terminology, within its own parameters. That is the inescapable lesson of 60 years of post-independence history. Superficially one can point to the SLFP, the UNP, the LTTE, Bandaranaike, Jayawardena, Prabaharan and so on, but these are merely phenomenological manifestations of things more fundamental. If after the six decades from the disenfranchisement of plantation Tamils, through Sinhala Only legislation, communal riots and carnage, a bloody 25 year long civil war and heinous terrorism, …
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