Over the course of 2008, Groundviews published over 250 compelling contributions from ordinary Sri Lankans, award winning poets and authors, renowned academics, diplomats, civil servants, leading civil society activists and others.

Sri Lanka’s first citizen journalism website and operating without any donor funding, content from Groundviews is consistently republished in mainstream media, academic journals, books, other leading news websites and blogs and widely quoted in presentations at leading workshops and conferences locally and internationally. Content published this year ranged from essays to poetry, photos to videos, serialised narratives to academic papers and unique perspectives of life on the ground from embattled cities in the North and the “liberated” Eastern Province.

The site welcomed well over 230,000 readers in …

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Sri Lanka closes out its 60th year of Independence, though in the strictest sense it lasts till the beginning of next February when we celebrate our 61st Independence Day. It is a moment to take stock.  Due to all the wrong turnings we took and the right ones we did not at and since our Independence six decades ago, we have spent a quarter century commemorating our independence in conditions of a separatist civil war. This will in all probability be so next year too. However it may not be so the year after, and from then onwards, because of what we have achieved this year. And I do mean “we”: the leadership, the government, the military, the vast majority …

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Its Christmas day. For a change, I was at home with my family.

Early morning, I went for Christmas Mass in my parish. Many years ago, I had been active in the church, as a student and teacher in the Sunday School, as an Alter Server and in the Young Christian Students Movement. But I had not gone to my parish for a long time, though I have been visiting and staying in churches all over Sri Lanka, especially in the war ravaged North. I thought I will go today, as it was Christmas, also because of my family.

Unlike most people, I didn’t go to the crib in the Church. But I did have images of Jesus being born …

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I have never felt the
same about blue frothy waters and
ebb and tide
since learning how
your mild self could turn
and gush
hiss and spit
washing out her tomorrows, her
child, her home
and
Blue shimmering water is
now a memory of
a blue baby shirt,
the white sari that blows in the wind
as she feeds the crows and dogs on the
beach in their memory is the
colour of white sea foam…
The breeze that beguiles gulls and
suspends them in mid air is now the
a silence
of sadness that
cannot be stilled.

Minister Bandula Gunawardene appeared on V and implicitly commenting on the Supreme Court decision perhaps made a point that all taxes are made by Parliament. Not quite since the Minister of fiancé can gazette orders under the Revenue Protection Act if my memory is right. True they have to be tabled in Parliament thereafter. The question at issue is not a change in taxes.

The Supreme Court as far as I am aware has not changed the taxes on petrol. What it has done after consulting the Secretary of the Ministry of Finance who submitted pricing formulas decided to fix the price of petrol. It has taken into account the current taxes and levies on petrol. What it has done …

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My feet
are tired
pressed
into asphalt
climbing
the campus hill,
composing
a sparer line:

effervescence
in mist,
swirling about
the stones,
a girl,
freckled,
jeaned,
auburn-haired

like the leaves,
walks past
my shadow,
a shadow,
the wish
to dissolve
into scenery,
flowering bush,

wind, chameleon
silent on a branch
not hurt or harassed
by predators
swooping down
from clouds :
over the A-9
Highway,

by Elephant Pass.

Indran Amirthanayagam, November 8, 2008

91st birth anniversary on 16 Dec 2008

“For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.”

Sir Arthur C Clarke, whose 91st birth anniversary falls on 16 December 2008, once opened an essay on science and society with this pun on Newton’s Third Law of motion. He was empathising with politicians and the public who get confused when scientific opinion becomes divided or polarised.

Sir Arthur Clarke – photo by Shahidul Alam

Clarke was a rare expert who always tried to reconcile rational analysis with the real world’s limits of the possible. His forte was not only in extrapolating about humanity’s technological future, which he did exceedingly well in his writing and television appearances, but also in exploring …

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“You should not let these men (politicians) to come out. Their presence in public places itself threatens the common men. I do not know why it has become a matter of prestige for them to move with 10-15 uniform security personnel carrying lethal weapons” a High Court in New Delhi observed in October 2007 during a Court hearing into inconveniences caused to the public by politicians in that country. Observing they were not a “national asset”, the two judges who made the observation, Justice T.S. Thakur and Justice Veena Birbal also told politicians to remain in the confines of their homes and offices if they feel threatened by citizens.

The judges could well have been speaking for us Sri Lankans given the unbearable situation that …

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By Metis

We never had human rights in the past, at least not in the sense we know it today. We probably had a better record of animal rights in our glorious past before 1505 when foreign aggressors corrupted our ancient culture. True those other countries too had practiced similar or even worse forms of torture. But the difference is that they don’t glorify their past.

The Human Rights declaration of 1948 was signed by the members of the UN. We signed it but with what commitment. Oaths, affirmations and treaties are signed to be routinely violated. The first serious violations were in the 1980s. But Human Rights- original definition which animated HR movement centered on the twin concepts of freedom of …

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Michael Roberts
Dept of Anthropology, University of Adelaide

Guided by existing evidence from the past two decades, in composing an article on 26 November 2008 I contended that “there [was] no evidence of any generalised targeting of Westerners” in the Indian sub-continent. The atrocities perpetrated by a band of Islamist militants in Mumbai, beginning from the night of 26 November, have shattered that conclusion.

But to what degree, I ask? My answer is firm: the chances of Westerners and/or cricketers (of any colour) being in the wrong place at the wrong time are minute. This assertion I plant in the face of Greg Baum as one step in an address to a general audience.

Challenging the Australian Media
In a lead article in Melbourne’s …

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I took these photos in Dambulla. Today, on a day we celebrate Human Rights, I hope we spare a thought for thousands of children in Sri Lanka who have been affected by the conflict. 

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has described the current financial crises as “probably a once-in-a-century event”. Does he mean very long Kondratiff cycle? In a recent speech, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared that “laissez-faire is finished, the all powerful market that always knows best is finished”. The crisis began at the financial end of the system, but appeared to be extending gradually to the real segment of the economy. The US motor industry has already come up begging for a bail-out plan. Last few months have witnessed that big companies that everyone though too big to fall have either submitted for bankruptcy, or been bailed out by the US government or been statized. This list includes …

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About a week ago, Dilan Perera, the Minister of Justice happened to say something of a timely need – that there should be a political solution with some form of devolution of power if we are to defeat the cause of the North and East conflict and it can be done only by the politicians. He stressed that only politicians can ensure sustainability of the military victories of the Army. A good point and I’d say a brave remark at a time when the entire peace discourse is over flooded with a war discourse and at a time war has become an ideal solution to the war. But he has forgotten another party who has a big say in this …

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[The following is the English translation of a review essay by Prof. Remy Herrera which has just appeared under the caption "Morale de la révolution" in the December 2008 edition of Afrique-Asie, the reputed French magazine.]

Re-defining the terms of a moral ideal of rebel resistance: How to master revolutionary violence? questions the Sri Lankan academic Dayan Jayatilleka in his latest book. It is by practicing a strict code of ethics, the way the ‘Maximum Leader’ did,  proving that the limits imposed on legitimate violence help avoid terror and extreme violence and that those limits help gain popular support.

For nearly a decade, Latin America has become a place of resurgence of the peoples’ struggle …

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Several months ago, the government of Sri Lanka made announcements “inviting” displaced people in Vanni to come to government controlled areas, saying that they would be well taken care of.

In the last few weeks, media reports indicated that several hundreds of people had come to government controlled areas. Pictures and statements were made to media, showing members of the armed forces providing food to people who had fled Vanni. Most media institutions had been happy to limit themselves to share with the public the information shared by the government.

What most media didn’t report and what the government has not told Sri Lankans and the world is that all these people are now being detained against their will. From 21st to …

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There is no doubt that our ethnic conflict is the worst scourge that has bedeviled this nation since Independence. An incisive and objective look at the calamity would reveal that it is being prolonged by misconceptions born of prejudice, parochialism and rivalry.

Perhaps the initial mis-concept is the impulsive assumption that the conflict has to be settled by a grant of concessions from one sector of the nation to another. There can be no ‘grantors’ or ‘grantees’ among ethnic groups in a nation. Once a community is inside, it should automatically be entitled to all privileges of citizenship. These privileges are inbuilt and non-negotiable. What is negotiable is only synchronization of interests.

In the national context, fundamental rights do not depend on …

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