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, …
August 12, 2008 at 7:00 am · Categories: Peace and Conflict | by Somapala Gunadheera
Now that the government appears to be fighting the war to a finish, it behoves concerned members of our civil society to put their heads together to evolve an optimum Peace Package that could win over as many contenders as possible in our ethnic dispute.
Once I blamed a Tamil friend of mine who is a leading professional, for not taking an active part in the search for a solution to the ethnic impasse. He was despondent and thought it a waste of time to get involved with a problem that no government after independence has had the guts to get to grips with. According to him, all of them have been intimidated by the threat of a highly inflated vociferous …
August 10, 2008 at 12:18 am · Categories: English, IDPs and Refugees, Politics, Puttlam | by Frances Bulathsinghala
Less that a kilometre away from a cluster of government offices in Puttalam dedicated to the welfare of Muslim IDPs is the home of thirty one year old Madeena, her jobless husband and six children.
The small, completely cadjan thatched hut, teeters upon the mercy of the weather. It is one of the temporary shelters in the string of camps for the DPs, which dot Puttalam.
Madeena’s camp, a vast barren land which faces the Puttalam Saltern, is known as Saltern 01 and houses 120 families. It has the most difficult living conditions and is adjacent to the camp, called Saltern 2, which has 65 families. In both the camps the houses are made of either wood or cadjan. In Madeena’s home …
August 9, 2008 at 11:58 pm · Categories: Colombo, English, Human Rights | by The Under Dog
Lt. General Sarath Fonseka was interviewed in the Daily News and Sunday Observer recently. This wasn’t just an interview with an Army Commander; this was a man with political aspirations, who just happens to control an armed force of 162,000 soldiers with another 3000 joining every month.
The purpose of a military is to protect the nation and the democracy-in essence, to protect you and me. IF the system works correctly, we the people are the real rulers. We elect members from amongst us to represent our interests, and the military protects our right to do so. The military serves us. But the General thinks differently; he thinks we serve the military.
Here are a few sound bites from the …
August 9, 2008 at 6:33 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
This is a year beaded as a necklace with anniversaries. Some are past us, some ahead. Some are international, the others national. Some are of heroism, others of tragedy and darkness. All are significant. All teach us something, provide occasions for reflection.
Internationally it was the 40th commemoration of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the student uprisings of May 1968 most significantly in Paris, the 80th birth anniversary of Ernesto Che Guevara, and the 55th anniversary of the Moncada uprising which initiated the Cuban revolutionary process.
Nationally, it is the 60th anniversary year of Sri Lanka’s Independence and the 50th and 25th anniversary year of two large blots on that existence as an independent country: 1958 and 1983.
This year also contains triple …
August 7, 2008 at 6:03 pm · Categories: English, Politics | by Pradeep Peiris
Today, the UNP, the SLFP and the JVP have zeroed-in all their resources to the Sabaragamuwa and North Central provinces. Ministers, Members of Parliament and the Pradeshiya Sabha politicians across the country have all been entrusted with specific tasks in this provincial council election campaign. These tasks are based on their individual capacities. Some of them strategize the campaign, some others speak at the rallies while others -unskilled labourers - have been assigned the popular traditional tasks of intimidating and harassing their opponents which has often been effective in election campaigns in Sri Lanka. This shows the utmost importance that political parties have placed in the upcoming provincial council elections. Does this mean that parties and politicians are serious about …
August 3, 2008 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict, Poetry | by Samanthi Gunawardana
losing a beloved on an ordinary day
in Colombo, in Mannar Town,
where pools of blood swell
on the steps of a bus,
in the market place,
on dusty shell shocked streets,
and the sentinels of the war
stand guard, holding back our grief;
only the palm thatched rooftops
bear witness to departing warriors.
our silence remains steadfast
as the minds of my generation,
give way to the rot of rabid thought tracks,
and all we are left with,
is denial and counter-denial,
a tunnel of silence,
a never ending drumbeat.
somebody, take this,
take my anger,
add it to yours.
take it simmering,
a ball of blue flame,
watch how it ignites when
we don’t handle it carefully
howl, howl to
Jesus, if you want
or to Allah, I don’t care
prostrate at Buddha’s altar
or in Kaliamma’s temple,
even though we may be …
August 2, 2008 at 7:30 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Bear Nugs
‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’. Edmund Burke
Pictures of Sri Lankans mourning the victims of the bomb blasts in the past few months have occupied local and international press agencies; the former to a greater degree. What were once political assassinations by the LTTE of strategic military targets has now culminated in the overt attack of the Sri Lankan public. More than ever before the public is instilled with insecurity and once safe Colombo suburbs are rattled with the sound of the LTTE suicide bombers.
In studies of international security, terrorist structures are viewed by most theorists as constantly evolving to adapt to counter-terrorism efforts. The LTTE has evolved, and its …
August 1, 2008 at 4:16 pm · Categories: Colombo, English, Human Rights, Human Security, IDPs and Refugees, Kandy, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by RD
It was July ‘83.
I was seventeen, which you’ll be surprised about if you’ve seen my youthful appearance and I was in Sri Lanka on one of those “extended” studenty type of holidays that we all wish we could have now. It was the summer between the first and second year of my ‘A’ levels and my parents had paid for me to go there and stay with my Uncle and his Australian wife for a couple of months.
My mother is Tamil, as were her parents, an incredible coincidence I know. I went to stay with her brother who was working for a couple of years in Lanka. He had left the country as a child with my Mother’s family, had …
August 1, 2008 at 7:30 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict | by Somapala Gunadheera
It would be short-sighted to dismiss out of hand, the current offer of the LTTE of a ‘cease-fire’.
Apart from anything else, it will create the impression that we were hell bent on the war regardless of its pathetic consequences to human life and rights - an impression that would further erode our standing internationally. On the other hand accepting the offer would infuriate the proponents of ‘fight to a finish’, who appear to be the mainstay of a government in crisis. This dilemma calls for an ingenious response that neither rejects nor accepts the offer.
To ‘cease’ is to ‘stop’ but to ‘hold’ is to ‘pause’. Pausing the on-going battles for a brief period of a month cannot harm the …
