As I write more than 250,000 civilians are trapped in jungle near Mullaitivu. They have little food, water and medicine. They are being injured and killed. They need help. Please speak to your representatives, write letters to your editors, insist that their plight be reviewed by the UN Security Council. Harming innocents is not a matter of internal security or civil war to be left to the warring parties in the Sri Lankan conflict. We must not be quiet. Let us make a lot of noise.

Let us make the bombers accountable to us.

Let us try to save a few lives.

The proximate cause that led me to write this article was a question asked by a friend of mine who earn his daily income by selling sundry items in Kandy pavement. He is known to me for almost 40 years as we were members of the same political party in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been always a careful observer of events that have been taking place in national and international political arena. His question reads like this: “Comrade, it seems that the LTTE will be definitely defeated in the military front soon. Since it has been a military-politico organization, I think it would weaken or even disappear with the military defeat. So don’t you think Sri Lanka’s situation …

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The trick is to grasp the main needs of the present while being able to see into the future, with its problems and prospects, while being aware that the choices we make today, in the here and now, will determine the shape of tomorrow.

First things first: the Tigers have been almost completely overthrown and almost totally defeated, but not yet and not quite. The task is to stay focused and finish the job, resisting all external pressures from whichever quarter however exalted or powerful.

If the foot-soldiers of an army survive but not its General staff, it is almost impossible for it to continue to fight, but as long as a leader and his General staff survive, they can raise an …

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End of January 2009. The political situation in Sri Lanka has seen considerable developments through 2008 and especially during the month of January 2009. The main focus today is the war against terrorism, also described as a ‘humanitarian’ mission, intended at defeating the LTTE and it military might. On the management of the military forces and elaboration of military strategy, the Sri Lankan government has achieved considerable feats, and has provided the political and military leadership required to the execution of successful military operations. As Austin Fernando, the former Defence Secretary under the Wickramasinghe government of 2001, notes in his recently published book (My Belly is White: Reminisences of a Peacetime Secretary of Defence. Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2008), the …

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New meters will monitor ‘patriotic TV watching’ by citizens

By Banyan News Reporters

Colombo, 15 January 2009: The television remote controller poses a serious threat to the country’s national security, the government has determined. A new law will soon be introduced to register and regulate this electronic item.

The ubiquitous gadget helps unpatriotic persons to change the channel when matters of national importance are being broadcast on state TV channels. This, in turn, deprives the government its rightful opportunity to address and inform all its citizens, security advisors have pointed out.

There is also the possibility that terrorists or their sympathisers could use remote controller as a ‘weapon of mass distraction’, to keep citizens uninformed or misinformed about the …

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It looks like one of the more winnable conflicts in an age of the global ‘war on terror’. The Sri Lankan government appears to be on the brink of announcing victory in its drawn-out battle against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The armed separatist group, listed as one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups, has fought successive Sri Lankan governments for over a quarter of a century in the guise of liberating the island’s Tamil community from a state that has increasingly marginalised linguistic and religious minorities. However, the question remains as to whether the victory would be pyrrhic when finally manifest, consolidated on irreparable damage to the county’s increasingly fragile democratic institutions and centuries-old multicultural, multi-religious …

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Heartland of Eelam is fallen. LTTE is now cornered to a narrow strip of land and in near future whole bulk of 65, 610 km2 of land would be under the control of the Government of Sri Lanka. Glory of the victory would be with the Sri Lankan Army and the politicians as always would reap the harvest at the cost of the Sri Lankans. We’re practicing representative democracy. Though not futuristic as the President is, a fraction of me believes that the Independent celebrations might be held in Kilinochchi. The government has announced a rapid development plan for Kilinochchi with the hope of creating an endogenous return of the displaced civilians. Well done!

Development discourse follows with a tender cry …

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There is a trend to convert the triumph of the Armed Forces over the LTTE in the north into a triumphal Sinhala-Buddhist ultra nationalism. Their ideology is that the country belongs only to the Sinhala Buddhists and that the other communities be they of different ethnicity or religion must live on the sufferance of the Sinhala Buddhists. It is also part of the ideology that no Buddhist should embrace any other religion and therefore the Christians who seek to make converts of Buddhists should be punished severely, never mind if the convert voluntarily and genuinely accepts the Christian religion and not out of any inducement -material or otherwise offered by anybody who preaches to him. The politicians and civil society …

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This article is dedicated to our late mother “Chandra Perera-Gunaratne” who balanced between motherhood and her profession as a Montessori teacher and entrepreneur – for her dedication to us, her courage and her generosity

Sri Lanka boasts about the foreign exchange income earned through the labour of our women overseas.  Yet, we do not place much importance to the social cost of this.   Sri Lanka will face a major epidemic of social misfits into the future as so many children are growing up in a motherless home.    Intuitively, we all know the crucial role a mother plays in a home.  Now, science is proving this further.

Our limbic brain requires social interaction to grow healthy.  It has been proven over and over …

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Drop all charges
against
Tissanaiyagam.
his glaucoma
needs treatment
and his wife
will be grateful,

…and the Dean
of the Diplomatic
Corps will feel
less inclined
to speak
at public
acts of grievance.

I agree
we must not
interfere
with funerals.
leaves a bitter
taste on
the BBC’s tongue.

Inevitably
advisors
will counsel
banning that
Commonwealth
voice.
Yet, then

we must cope
with reporters
in disguise,
especially
these pesky
bloggers
who feel

empowered
to write
what they see
and hear
taste and
touch
as if witness

can make
bread out
of flour
or yams
sprout
in a
mineswept

Vanni.
And let me
not forget
the political
analysts
who worry
in public

that a failed
state will
be our cup
of tea.
I trust
you will
still drink

our fabled
single
leaf
beverage
and visit
our white
sand,

black
sand,
red
sand,
blue
sand
beaches.

Prominent civil society activist Kumudini Samuel shares her views on the future of the LTTE in Sri Lanka. Kumudini Samuel is the founder of the Women’s and Media Collective and a member of the Gender Sub Committee established during negotiations with the LTTE under the ceasefire agreement (CFA).

For more short videos that look at the future of the LTTE in English, Sinhala and Tamil, click on Vikalpa’s The future of the LTTE: What next? playlist.

Prominent Tamil civil society activist Shanthi Sachithanandan shares her views on the future of the LTTE in Sri Lanka.

For more short videos that look at the future of the LTTE in English, Sinhala and Tamil, click on Vikalpa’s The future of the LTTE: What next? playlist.

With the position of spokesperson for, and sole representative of the Tamil community set to become vacant upon the projected defeat of the LTTE, one would hope that space would be created for the emergence of democratic, plural and dissenting Tamil voices within the community and the polity at large. However, the vacuum is most likely to be filled by Tamil politico-armed groups battling each other to be the ‘sole alternative’ to the LTTE and gain the favoured position of the ‘authentic’ Tamil voice that is accepted and supported by the government. The escalation of internecine violence in the Eastern Province is illustrative of the failure of non-LTTE Tamil leadership and political groups to provide a viable alternative to the …

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I once asked the following question, not from anyone in particular of course: Why don’t pens, pencils and paper go on strike decrying journalists who will not write the truth?” I might have added the new tech instruments employed by writers such as word processors, printers, diskettes, thumb-drives etc., but that would not have added much to the issue.

Truth of course is a strange creature for its authenticity is not easily tested not least of all because the instruments of evaluation are by definition subjective. And so each of us will defend the truths we believe in, subject to the caveat that their authenticity is informed by perception. As such my original question seems rather stupid.

On the other hand, even …

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Dinidu de Alwis, a well known and well read blogger and journalist in Sri Lanka shares some thoughts on the future of independent media in Sri Lanka and the significant challenges it faces today.

For more videos in Sinhala and English, click on the Violence against and the future of independent media in Sri Lanka playlist on the Vikalpa YouTube video channel.

Interview with Lakshman Gunesekera, President of the Sri Lanka chapter of the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) and former Editor of the Sunday Observer.

For more videos in Sinhala and English, click on the Violence against and the future of independent media in Sri Lanka playlist on the Vikalpa YouTube video channel.

“…The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…

…And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

WB Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’

I have a particular problem with the murder of journalists, especially editors of newspapers. The Editor’s Guild and Publishers Society of Sri Lanka annually host an awards ceremony at which the final presentation of the evening, the pinnacle prize (distinguished by a different hue from the others), is for Journalist of the Year. That award is named after my father, Mervyn de Silva. It was not donated by me or any member of his family. It was instituted …

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The yardstick which President Mahinda Rajapaksa and many in his government used often to illustrate the “unbridled” freedom the media in this country was the publication of “The Sunday Leader“, a fiercely anti-government newspaper. The President has remarked many times that despite the constant personal attacks on him as well as his government in that newspaper, a clear indication of his commitment to a free media was that the newspaper continued to publish what it did without any interference. With the killing of the Editor of the Sunday Leader, neither the President nor others in his government will any longer be able to cite this example to make the dubious claim that there exists in this country a …

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I remember the day I heard
Richard was killed
Almost twenty years ago.
Far away in the diaspora
I sat all night
My back bent
and still.

Regimes shifted,
People still disappeared
into the night
Witches, burnt at the stake
A sacrifice,
An offering..
In the name of the nation,

Today I heard
Lasatha was killed.
“One of us” who spoke
for the “them”,
Burnt at the stake..
Another offering..
In the name of the nation.

Far away in the diapora
I have sat still
With a bent back.
For much too long.
Slowly
The Ashes
Gather momentum…

Francesca
USA

“What’s going on just now? What’s happening to us? What is this world, this period, this precise moment in which we are living?” –Michel Foucault

Two incidents that happened within a period of 48 hours signified a major blow to media freedom and democracy in Sri Lanka. In the first incident, the main complex of Sirasa TV was attacked and its equipments were destroyed. According to reports, this attack was carried out by about group of 20 armed persons. The second incident that happened in day light on busy road in a Colombo suburb was the killing of Lasantha Wickramathunga, the editor of Sunday Leader by unidentified gunmen. All circumstantial and historical evidence has made me feel that these cowardly attacks …

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