A senior government minister claimed today that the war would be over in 3 weeks. Whether we believe him or not, commentators like Ahilan Kadirgamar (writing in Himal Southasian, February 2009) have called attention to the dynamics of a ‘post-LTTE Sri Lanka’, suggesting that “Post-LTTE Tamil politics will have to move beyond ethnic and territorial concerns to forge solidarity among minorities, in order to reframe the ‘national question’ in Sri Lanka”.

This is a decisive year for Sri Lanka, whether you choose to believe in these conjectures and formulations or not. On the humanitarian and economic fronts alone and in particular, current conditions cannot be sustained. For this and a number of other …

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Groundviews was the first media website in Sri Lanka to have its own Twitter feed and Facebook page.

Both Twitter and Facebook make critical content on the site more easily accessible in social networks and feature the latest updates in your own Facebook page or Twitter account (and through associated mobile devices if you’ve configured them).

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We reproduce in full a letter from Sonali Samarasinghe Wickremetunge to the IGP asking him to record ‘very important details’ known to the Sri Lankan President and at least one other senior government minister, based on the minister’s own admission, pertaining to the identity of her husband Lasantha Wickremetunge’s killers.

The Editor in Chief of the Sunday Leader and one of Sri Lanka’s best known journalists, Lasantha Wickremetunge was murdered on 8th January 2009 en route to work, in broad daylight and on a busy road. The murderers, whoever they are, have yet to be captured.

Groundviews was told that no newspaper in Sri Lanka was willing to carry this letter in full. Therein too lies a story of the pervasive …

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Violence does not make me laugh. Yet humour has not only survived nearly two and a half decades of exposure to violence, brutality, intolerance, discrimination, corruption and abuses of power, it has preserved my sensitivity and been a soft padding that shielded me from the hard blows of reality. It has been a key to our resilience as a nation and a safer platform for us to speak truth to power. Because we somehow feel that the death of a comedian is more tragic than the death of a philosopher, soldier, a politician or indeed a straight talking newspaper editor.

It’s not easy to make people laugh and it is especially difficult to laugh in the midst of death and destruction …

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by Global Citizen for Banyan News Reporters
Colombo, Sri Lanka: – Elite black tiger commando units of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) carried out an attack last night on farmers who may or may not have produced the vegetables and eggs that caused 270 people including 202 students to be hospitalised for suspected food poisoning in Trincomalee yesterday.
Leader of the LTTE’s political wing P Nadesan who himself was the victim of food poisoning from kottu roti told reporters that he will personally hunt down the bacteria responsible for the calamity, but the lack of VIM Dishwash bars in the no-fire zone was severely hampering his efforts. “Our organisation takes the …

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The eyes of the world are upon us. This means two things: Sri Lanka must not blink on the fundamentals, whatever the pressures brought to bear, while at one at the same time Sri Lanka must be open and flexible on that which is non-fundamental, tactical and secondary. We must be resolute and tough, steel-like on the issue of the Tigers and pluralist, liberal and moderate on the politics that comes after. The closure of the conflict, the construction of the new Sri Lanka and the transition from one to the other requires that rare combination of characteristics: steel and water; yin and yang.

We must be as hard on the Tigers as we are soft on the Tamils; as open …

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I have read An alternative grid map of political opinion serving the best interests of Sri Lanka posted by C A Saliya on March 18, 2009 in the Groundviews in response to Dayan Jayatilleka’s The grid map of political opinion in Sri Lanka appearing in FEDERALiDEA on March 10, 2009.

Saliya opines,

“It it is not convincingly justified why the pro-devolution cause cannot be productively served from anti-military standpoint. In fact it is contradictory to promote devolution of power while endorsing pro-war military mentality which can easily be misinterpreted as a military solution.”

Much as I agree with Saliya’s viewpoint, it has to be pointed out that it loses its relevance at this stage when the military initiative is supposed …

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Mr K died today
Not unusual, all things perish
But he was very young
And had just got two tiny teeth
And was a little fighter
He tried hard to live
In difficult times.

Mr K died quietly today
And I don’t have a right to
Cry, besides
I am a tad too old
for that.

Death stalks me
heroic, wearing a shiny cloak of war
but death, nonetheless
In the jungles booming with mortar fire
In IDP camps
In accident wards full of
Young men hoping the pain would end
Death immortalized in
the news
the moving image
broadcasts and
telecasts and podcasts

So what right do I have
To mourn a tiny chipmunk
parted from its mother
Caught in the crossfire
During an ambush by birds
And the chipmunks’ retaliation
In their quest for food.

I fed him and kept him warm
Swaddled him and held him
Formed an attachment
So I …

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I interviewed Udaya Gammanpila, the Legal Advisor to the Jathika Hala Urumaya (JHU) and erstwhile Chairman of the Central Environmental Authority (CEA). Udaya is now a candidate from the Colombo District for the Western Provincial Council elections to be held on 24th April 2009. I interviewed him in January, before he announced his candidature and just after the attacks on MTV and the assassination of Lasantha Wickremetunge.

This was the second time I have interviewed Udaya for public television. I find him to be forthright in his political opinion and a person able and willing to conduct civil debates on highly …

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[Editors note: These poems respond to Indran Amirthanayagam's poems here, here and here. They are both part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews.]

1

i am not a writer

i am not a writer
nor am i under siege,
i do not frequent
the commons, nor the
poetic corner.

2

i, savage

why do i write
when i had promised myself
aching silence
after kethesh’s fall
and maheswary’s stunted end?
why talk suddenly
of the siege now,
when i have stood at
death’s door,
refused its dare
and now can finally
slumber,
in a snow stirring fantasy
surrounding turkey’s trouble
with its torture
chambers, lulled by the
bewitching tones of
orhan’s magic?

why the artist
and the writer and colombo’s array
of poets, rushing to versify,
riding on
guilt ridden stirrings …

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Six boys
from Hindu College
will enter the scene
from Stage Left,

an equal
number of girls
from Muslim Ladies
Stage Right.

They will shake
their bodies,
slide and writhe,
and be still

to rid bones
of chains
and memories,
and invite

guests, us,
to sway
in harmony
even if

we’re away
from jungles
which give
shelter, or

ash-filled
homes
whose roofs
are open

to whistling
bombs
and winds
that sweep

left-overs
clean. That
Boxing Day
the Tsunami

swept
residents
out; now
the Army

marches in
four years
later to find
an abandoned

town, and
in nearby
woods
yakshas

howling
in Tamil
calling
for food

and water,
medicine,
safe passage
south…

while in
the capital,
as I imagine
the performance

must end,
on a stage
a boy and girl
will embrace.

January 27, 2009

Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here. For a response to these poems by award …

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Citizens
of Killinochchi
and Mullaitivu
fled before
our liberators
arrived.

They live
for the moment
in nearby jungle
under a canopy
punctured
by shells.

Some moved
to a safe zone
demarcated
by liberators
where they
have fallen

since to errant fire.
Others ran into
liberators’ arms
and live now
protected in large
barb-wired camps.

January 27, 2009

Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here. For a response to these poems by award winning poet Sivamohan Sumathy, please click here.

The town is full of stray
dogs, cows, ghosts,
buildings pockmarked,

unhinged, open to wind
and rain. Soldiers patrol
on foot. Trucks and tanks

rumble through the center.
Rebels took all the fittings
to jungle cellars, and we wait

eagerly to discover how
the Supreme Leader makes
his bed. Look at Europe today,

Germany lost 500 kilometers
on its eastern flank. How many
young people know this history?

We will disappear. The tsunami
swept a lot away. Our failing
memory compensates for the rest.

January 27, 2009

Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here. For a response to these poems by award winning poet Sivamohan Sumathy, please click here.

There is an endangered species out there – strangely it is not an animal, or bird or plant but is in fact a human being – it is the moderate Muslim. Many hundreds of years ago, the moderate and modern Muslim was alive and well and vocal. It was they who engineered and flourished in the great Islamic empires of old. Education, Science, literature, astronomy, architecture, travel, mathematics and other spheres of knowledge blossomed and prospered under the moderate thinking Muslim. Today, the moderate Muslim has either died out or in danger of dying out. They are in fact under threat. And what is worse is that the threat comes from within their own community.

What has replaced the moderate …

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Sir Arthur C Clarke on Hikkaduwa beach, photo by Rohan de Silva
Sir Arthur Clarke’s first death anniversary falls on 19 March 2009
Sir Arthur’s 90th birthday reflections (effectively his public goodbye) is available online at:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qLdeEjdbWE&feature=channel_page

During his illustrious career spanning over 60 years, Sir Arthur C Clarke received a large number of honours, awards and accolades from scientific, academic and literary bodies worldwide. At one time or another, he won all the top science fiction literary awards. He received honorary doctorates from universities in the east and west. In 1998, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his ‘services to literature’.
In his adopted homeland of …

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This sadly is not an unusual sight in Colombo. Despite well-known problems arising from industrial and vehicular emissions and the Central Environment Authority’s Vehicle Emission Testing Programme, we see a number of these wretched vehicles on the road.

This bus belonged to (or was operating under) one of Sri Lanka’s best known travel agencies. Weathering financial woes, it may be the case that they cannot maintain their vehicles as best they can. But should they care about more than just their bottom line?

Pulling up behind this bus and switching off my A/C because it was pulling in all the smoke, …

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Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke has analyzed various possible political views on Sri Lanka and suggests a grid map of Sri Lankan political opinion. His intention is to evaluate these opinions and show which opinion is best in serving the interests of Sri Lanka today. He has pointed out eight different opinions but trickled them down to six groups (A-F), giving priorities to the factors such as protecting the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, devolution efforts and military/war mentality. All eight groups are indicated as A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H (not in his order) in the “Grid of Opinion…” illustrated below together with other possible couple of groups which I believe important.

Taking into consideration the factors such as …

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The modus operandi of the widespread abductions and disappearances we witness in Sri Lanka today is similar to what we saw in the late 1980s and early 1990s. President Rajapakse, who was a Member of Parliament then, was in the forefront of the struggle against these incidents. Now his regime has become one of the world’s worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances. Members of the security forces, police and pro-government groups are alleged to be involved in these incidents.
The government has demonstrated an utter lack of resolve to inquire and investigate into these incidents. It downplays the problem, denying the scale of the incidents and blaming unknown persons for them. It is being said that since the government …

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17 March 2009, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Tasty Chocolate Manufacturers Pvt Limited is being investigated for assisting the LTTE’s aerial attack on Colombo on February 20 according to sources within the security forces. More than ten bars of chocolate were found in the LTTE plane shot down over Katunayake while investigations are being carried out on the wreckage of the second plane which crashed into the Inland Revenue Building to prove that Tasty Chocolate was being carried in both planes.

“That both pilots had Tasty Chocolate shows that the Company is aiding and abetting terrorism” a reliable source from the security division told Banyan Newswire, noting that “We believe the Company provided the LTTE with chocolate as …

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My critique of the Ministry of Human Right’s report on its preparations on a future National Human Rights Action Plan (NHRAP) has drawn the kind of contumacious response from one ‘Trigger Happy’ (hereinafter ‘Trigger’), which in Sheridan’s England may have resulted in a dual at Putney. That may not be perhaps the wisest thing to do with someone calling himself trigger happy, and indeed, is no insurance against his retention of the recently advertised ‘White Van Pest Control’ service, but some aspects of his overeager and substantively superficial intervention require rebuttal.