saman said,

July 3, 2009 @ 3:24 pm

http://www.lakbima.lk/ for a picture of the MANIK FARM…

i am of course proud of the SL government who have done well and curtailed terror and slow and steady improving conditions, without much aid from all NGO’s who talked like kings but passed the beggers bowl empty when it came to put the cash…

the camp looks even better than the football satdium in new orleans after katrina…

also, so many were saying there will be a masscer, a genocide when GOSL won.. nothing ever happened like that…

Dayan Jayatilleka said,

July 3, 2009 @ 6:09 pm

“In other countries…”??? This guy Thiru Sambandhar obviously hasn’t heard of the notorious internment camps for Americans of Japanese origin during the days of World war 2 under the exceedingly liberal and enlightened Roosevelt presidency. Nor has he heard of mass internment without trial in UK ruled Northern Ireland in the 1980s, which led to the Bobby Sands “Dirty Protest”and fast unto death. Neither of these are models to be upheld but Thiru should stop this nauseating refrain “in other countries”. If you like them so much, man, live there, but learn their history, at least their contemporary history.

Grim Hope said,

July 4, 2009 @ 2:46 am

@Dayan Jayatilleka

“As a matter of fact, in the 80’s, it was Dayan Jayatilleka and Tamil militant groups (including his EPRLF) that demanded the establishment of a separate state of Tamil Eelam to address the issues of the Tamil people. Dayan was a frequent visitor at JVP public meetings demanding that the JVP accept Eelam as the only solution to the national problem.” – Lionel Bopage

Reply to this Dayan? Can you clarify? So you are a traitor as well at some point in time! What happened if you were taken in white van? or killed like Lasantha?

Heshan said,

July 4, 2009 @ 12:03 pm

It is indeed most interesting that Dayan Jayatillake was himself a staunch supporter of both JVP and LTTE during his Peradeniya days. Mahinda Rajapakse was also an active supporter of the JVP. These two men, who once espoused ideals which formed the core of the LTTE movement – anarchy, self-determination, armed struggle – have now come to sing a very different tune. For Rajapakse, the “human-rights” advocate, the ascension to power meant forming uneasy alliances with right-wing nationalist parties. I am not sure what the allure was for Dayan J. At least on an intellectual level, I cannot seem him ecstatic over the formation of a Sinhala-Buddhist dictatorship.

Belle said,

July 4, 2009 @ 7:22 pm

Mr Sambandar, I like the way you concretise what it means to live in the camps. The abstract idea of living in camps has desensitized people to the inhumanity of internment camps but you foreclose that by dramatising life for groups like women and teens at these camps. The ending was especially powerful with the suggestion of the utter lack of security in which they exist–one could be safe this hour, but what about the next couple of hours, etc.

As for those who seek to excuse SL by citing other countries’ bad behaviour, I wonder if they will suggest that SL should drop an A-bomb somewhere just because America has done it in the past. Perhaps SL needs a “homegrown” sense of ethics as much as it needs a “homegrown” solution to the Tamil issue.

US freed the Japanese-Americans as soon as the war ended, when there was no reason for them to be afraid of Japanese aggression any longer (though of course this doesn’t excuse the internment). SL incarcerated innocent civilians AFTER the war ended and keeps them even when the Tigers have been entirely vanquished and their arms confiscated. As for British internment without trial of people in Northern Ireland, they did not incarcerate just anybody, innocent civilians, but those suspected of involvement with IRA. At any rate, the British did not hide what was happening from the international media.

punitham said,

July 4, 2009 @ 10:27 pm

http://www.lawandsocietytrust.org/PDF/Mannar.pdf
Report of the Inter Religious solidarity visit to Mannar, 23rd April 2008:
”Mannar town and all outlying areas are heavily militarized. We realized that people in Mannar, the residents as well as the displaced, live in fear and with a feeling of hopelessness.
Amongst the places we visited was a camp in Kalimoddai. Since March, the security forces have decided to hold all these people in a camp in Kalimoddai. We heard from the people as well as the security forces in charge of the camp that the camp is snake infested. We saw a snake that was killed when we were in the camp, and were told that snakes are killed there daily.”

vino gamage said,

July 5, 2009 @ 6:13 am

Between WW2 and now we’ve seen UDHR reach 60 and more. Shouldn’t that make a difference to this world? Justify injustice??

punitham said,

July 5, 2009 @ 12:19 pm

We cannot afford to postpone heeding this:

Elie Wiesel, Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Weimar, Germany, 5 June 2009:
‘’ We must continue believing in a future, because the world has learned. But again, the world hasn’t. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.
Will the world ever learn? I think that is why Buchenwald is so important — as important, of course, but differently as Auschwitz. It’s important because here the large — the big camp was a kind of international community. People came there from all horizons — political, economic, culture. The first globalization essay, experiment, were made in Buchenwald. And all that was meant to diminish the humanity of human beings.
You spoke of humanity, Mr. President. Woe unto us, in those times, it was human to be inhuman. And now the world has learned, I hope. We must continue believing in a future, because the world has learned. But again, the world hasn’t. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia. The time must come. It’s enough – enough to go to cemeteries, enough to weep for oceans. It’s enough. There must come a moment – a moment of bringing people together.
And therefore we say anyone who comes here should go back with that resolution. Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories here not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary, a sense of solidarity that all those who need us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere who say the 21st century is a century of new beginnings, filled with promise and infinite hope, and at times profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task, which is to improve the human condition.”

punitham said,

July 5, 2009 @ 5:14 pm

Elie Wiesel’s quotes:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

”Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.”

Manushi said,

July 6, 2009 @ 12:01 am

In Another Country

In another country,
a Prime Minister
(who had nothing against ‘people of colour’)
wore a rose and
did the Pirouette in Buckingham Palace.
He put a stop to separatism
and told the non-believers:
just watch me”!

In his country,
and that of his neighbor’s,
only war heroes receive
a hero’s welcome.
As Omar Khadr languishes in
Guantanamo Bay,
the talk of the poor in “other countries”
gets that much louder.

Don’t get me wrong,
he had nothing to do with Khadr,
and like our President
he was never into drawing lines in the sand.

I only hope the dandies
of our country
who are now in “other countries”
find the courage
to tell it like it is:
“Thank you Mr. President,
the war is finally over” !

punitham said,

July 6, 2009 @ 8:30 am

Resistance against state terror can be crushed as long as there are people without conscience because they will keep creating states that unleash terror on their ethnic minorities and that support each other at international platforms like the UN.

UDHR and R2P.cannot subdue the combined state terror. Only conscience can.

People without conscience will go on defending their terror.

It is all too evident in the columns of Groundviews.

punitham said,

July 6, 2009 @ 2:53 pm

Wellawatte/Bambalapitiya camps in 1958, 1977 and 1983 for Tamils chased by Sinhala mobs in the South.
Vavuniya, Jaffna, Mannar, Trincomalee, Batticaloa camps in 80s/90s/2000s for Tamils chased by KFIR and MIG in the Northeast.

Billions of dollars and Rajapakses have moved the ”frontier.”

punitham said,

July 6, 2009 @ 7:26 pm

Vavuniya Tamils are getting calls from Colombo Tamils and California Tamils if they can be sent money to help those in the camps.

”No,please, NO. We’re likely to be shot by ”unknown” groups.
When we go to the camps or banks, strangers showing ”CID” cards come and question us for hours and days. Our mouths and hands are tied. We hear stories that the Army is drilling the IDPs for overseas tel numbers and call the expatriates and ask them to deposit money in the bank accounts in the South.
They have shops in camps. The shop owners are from the South. As aid agencies are restricted, IDPs are forced to buy things at exorbitant prices, AND the money goes South. We hear stories about IDPs leaving the camps by bribing the Army enormously.”

This is genocide:
1. detaining IDPs in camps compulsorily behind barbed wire and heavily guarded by army.
2.restricting food, water and medicine by restricting access to aid agencies
3.selling things in shops inside the camps at exorbitant prices
4. raiding Vavuniya houses in the pretext of ”CID examining households”
5.robbing and killing ordinary people in public places in Vavuniya.

Central Bank says its foreign reserve is increasing. Certainly the diaspora are sending money to bribe the army to release their kith and kin.

What else is being hidden by banning the media?