The question of Muslim identity, displacement and forcible evictions during war and their enduring socio-political impact in post-war Sri Lanka is often underplayed in the media and mainstream politics. Muslim IDPs in the East are amongst those who have been in IDP camps the longest, often in conditions no better than Tamils interned in Manik Farm. Their plight has been covered on Groundviews on a number of occasions including,

• Feature story: Cries for help from Puttalam
• The divide between Muslims and Tamils: Perspective of an IDP
• Forgotten IDPs from the North
• The voice of an IDP single mother in Puttlam

Twenty years after the Muslims were evicted from the Jaffna peninsula by the LTTE, the scars of war still remain, resettlement …

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Shanthi Sachithananthan, the Chairperson of Viluthu has been featured on Groundviews during the war. This interview, conducted late 2009 after war’s end, considers significant developments over the course of the year including the demise of the LTTE.

Shanthi talks about the need to change the timbre of political interactions between the South and the tamil peoples. She also speaks about the Tamil diaspora, noting that their tactics at the time pandered to the mindset of the Tamil people in the country. She noted that in the future, more constructive engagement was necessary, pegged to treating Tamils in Sri Lanka as …

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How can we strengthen democracy in Sri Lanka?

From blue sky thinking to tried and tested ideas at the grassroots that need to scale up or be better recognised and supported, Groundviews invites you to create a unique catalogue of ideas on how post-war Sri Lanka can strengthen democratic governance.

Groundviews, as well as other online fora and media are already tremendously rich in engaging discussions on the trajectories of our post-war democracy. This is an opportunity to flag ideas that moved you to debate or action, or refine those featured elsewhere through your own experience and expertise.

You can easily submit your ideas, including attaching a video uploaded to YouTube. We encourage you to be succinct and go beyond …

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Justice C.G. Weeramantry was bestowed Sri Lankabhimanya, the highest National Honour of Sri Lanka in 2007. Justice Weeramantry also won the UNESCO Peace Education Prize in 2006 and the Right Livelihood Award in 2007, considered alternative Nobel Prize.

In this interview conducted a few months ago, Justice Weeramantry talks about the importance of peace education in post-war Sri Lanka as a pillar of reconciliation. He also looks back at his career in law and experience as a Judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from 1991 to 2000.

Arvind Kejriwal is one of India’s foremost champions of the Right to Information. Awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership in 2006, Arvind has won a number of awards for his pioneering work in India. As noted on the Ashoka Foundation site,

Arvind uses a 2001 law called the Right to Information Act (RTIA) to bring political power back to the people of India. The law began in Delhi, and has since spread to eight other states, opening opportunities for citizens to hold their governments accountable to high standards of transparency and integrity. Through his organization Parivartan, Arvind raises awareness …

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Manik de Silva is the most senior and longest-serving Editor of an English newspaper in Sri Lanka. Presently the Editor of the Sunday Island, Manik was also a former Editor of the Daily News. In July 2009, he was elected as the President of the Editors Guild.

I interviewed him in July 2009, just around two months after the end of war. Our conversation touched on aspects of Manik’s life and how he took to journalism, how the media industry and practice of journalism have undergone dramatic change in recent years, the freedom of expression and threats to independent media.

Prof. Kumar David, an electrical engineer by training, regular columnist in traditional print media and a frequent commentator on Groundviews, talks about what’s left of leftist politics in Sri Lanka, the end of war and its impact on Tamil diaspora juxtaposed against th autocratic and essentially one-party rule in Sri Lanka.

I also asked him about the growing web and Internet censorship, which in a recent column he had referred to as a disturbing retrogression into a Lanka Internet Dark Age (LIDA).

Groundviews was able to obtain an audio recording of an exchange between Swiss journalist Karin Wenger and a well-known, senior journalist now part of the Presidential Media Unit (PMU). Karin’s visa and media accreditation to cover the Sri Lankan presidential election was revoked after she asked several questions from government representatives at an official press briefing. As reported by Deutsche Welle,

“I asked two questions,” Wenger says. “Why were there so many troops in front of opposition candidate Fonseka’s hotel? And the second referred to rumours we kept hearing: Was it true that the president’s brother Basil Rajapaksa was inside the election commission’s office?” An official stopped her after the press conference and started shouting at her: “I won’t …

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[Groundviews was informed that this open letter was penned on 20 January 2010, before the presidential election. Tellingly, efforts to publish it in the traditional print media before the presidential election, we were told, had failed.]

The Official Government News Portal (www.news.lk) carried a news item, datelined 18 January 2010, that vice-chancellors of Sri Lankan universities pledged support to the President, with some of them asking the people of this land to vote him into a second term at the forthcoming elections – this letter is being written on 20 January 2010.

After a President is duly elected to office, the right and proper thing for all citizens to do is to pledge support to him, whatever their political affiliations. Most …

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From the first update after the close of polls at around 10pm on the 25th and then from around 3am on the morning of the 26th, Groundviews gave regular updates on the high drama in Colombo just after the presidential elections via its Twitter account. Because it is very difficult to locate these updates on Twitter over time, we’ve collated key tweets issued during the course of the 26th and 27th related to the elections.

In the course of publishing these updates, we mirrored key news items from the Daily Mirror website whenever we got access to it, because an unsurprisingly high volume of traffic rendered this well read traditional media website inaccessible for most of the 26th. Along …

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I’ve been tweeting from around 3am this morning on what’s going on in Colombo after the elections, and in particular what is at the time of writing a rather tense situation around the hotel that presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka is residing in. Leading English mainstream media websites are crashing under the heavy load of web traffic, so mirrored links to key articles appearing in them about the current situation are also provided.

See all the updates on the Twitter feed of Groundviews.

We feature this video captured by Groundviews today without any additional comment because it is abundantly clear which candidate the sign stapled on to this anomalous polling card refers to. It is also very clear what such an indication outrageously and completely illegally attached to a polling card implies.

As this voter asks in the video, who has the power to commit such a gross violation of election laws?

Click here for high resolution image of this polling card.

An English transcript of the video follows:

I am Prasanna Perera. I live in Kottawa, …

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Groundviews was the first website in Sri Lanka to visualise key statements by a Presidential candidate in the public domain. We followed up with a visualisation of Sarath Fonseka’s manifesto. The incumbent Executive’s manifesto was released in English on 14 January. On the website, it is called Mahinda Chinthana – Vision of Future. The cover page it says A Brighter Future and Mahinda Chintana: Vision for the Future. For the purpose of this article, we will call it Mahinda Chintanaya 2010. Whatever one calls this document, the emphasis very clearly is on the future of Sri Lanka, as envisioned by the incumbent.

As with Sarath Fonseka’s manifesto, to avoid allegations of the partial or selective use of …

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Tamil journalist J.S. Tissainayagam was enlarged on bail today pending the appeal of his conviction under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Groundviews spoke with Asanga Welikala, Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives, for his views on this development and its implications for media freedom and the freedom of expression in Sri Lanka. For a Sinhala interview with Asanga, click on Vikalpa Video here.

Groundviews repeatedly flagged the case of Tissainayagam as a significant affront to media freedom and the freedom of expression. Nimalka Fernando, a leading human rights activist, even called his conviction a travesty of …

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Dear Mr. President,

As a tax payer and citizen of Sri Lanka, I am deeply concerned by, inter alia, the wasteful nature of your campaign and the manner in which you have manipulated what should in reality be independent authorities, to broadcast propaganda.

Your SMS message on New Year’s Day is a case in point (http://www.groundviews.org/2010/01/09/the-shocking-behaviour-of-the-telecommunications-regulatory-commission-of-sri-lanka) and your ad campaign on international media websites another (http://www.groundviews.org/2010/01/05/paying-global-media-for-local-elections).

Why is it that your official campaign website has no information on campaign financing? How can I be assured as a voter that the money being lavishly spent by you and your campaign for re-election is not public finances? Will you disclose the sum of money spent on the international ad campaign, and even …

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[Authors note: The original version of this article was drafted in September 2009. There was no response from Atlantic Monthly when I sent it to them. Nor did it pass muster with SLATE, Mother Jones, the NY Times, International Herald Tribune and Tehelka. However, HIMAL accepted it, but also made a few editorial changes and suggested some extensions. Their format did not have space for footnotes or citations. The version that is reprinted here is an amalgam of my original piece and the article that appears in Himal, January 2010. I here acknowledge the courtesy extended to me by the Editors of HIMAL.]

The senior US journalist Robert Kaplan is well-connected and famous, a master of prose. He is versed in …

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Groundviews was the first website in Sri Lanka to visualise key statements by a Presidential candidate in the public domain. Visualising key speeches and submissions of Sarath Fonseka was republished in traditional print media and circulated widely over email because we seem to have hit a chord with many voters looking for an easy way to get to the core of what the two leading candidates were saying.

Key issues as noted on Sarath Fonseka’s website

We now use the same technology to visualise the content featured in the issues tab / section of Sarath Fonseka’s official presidential campaign website.

[caption id="attachment_2426" align="alignnone" width="425" caption="Sarath Fonseka Manifesto"]

…

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Maybe we are numb too
Though it’s warm
and all we have today
Is a cloudy sky

Death at Noon, Vivimarie Vanderpoorten

Lasantha Wickremetunge, the Editor of the Sunday Leader and one of Sri Lanka’s best known and most senior journalists, was killed in broad daylight one year ago. As we noted on the site a year ago,

Lasantha was 50 at the time of his assassination. No group to date has claimed responsibility. In a tremendously powerful and moving editorial published posthumously the Sunday after he was killed, Lasantha notes that “When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.”

Groundviews published a number of articles, including poems by award winning poets, condemning the murder and …

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It is probably not the incumbent President himself in charge of the massive re-election campaign which has no qualms about misusing State property and public finances or perverting telecoms regulations to deliver propaganda via SMS. Yet to date, there has been no official statement or clarification over these clear reports of gross misappropriation of public resources.

In yet another bizarre example of a campaign gone berserk, it appears that banner ads have been purchased on leading global media sites to promote the incumbent Executive. Examples of these generic banner ads are reported to be on the webpages of,

• The Telegraph
• The Independent
• The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune
• The Sydney Morning Herald
• The Hindu
• The Indian Express
• The Hindustan Times
• The Guardian
• Facebook profile …
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All mobile phone subscribers, across all networks got an SMS from the President this morning – “Kiwu paridi obata NIDAHAS, NIVAHAL RATAK laba dunnemi. Idiri anagathaya sarwapparakarayenma Wasanawantha Wewa! SUBA NAWA WASARAK WEWA! Mahinda Rajapaksa” (As I promised, I gave you a free and independent country. May your future be successful in all ways. Happy New Year!)

Many thought it was a hoax until it was confirmed in the media that the message was legit.

At the conservative estimate of 1 rupee per message, and around 12.6 million mobile phone accounts in Sri Lanka, this one SMS message could have cost over US$ 110,000 to send out. A number of pertinent questions arise around this extraordinary SMS message.

Did anyone pay …

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