Mihiri Weerasinghe is an independent researcher and a Masters candidate at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The lagoon lay shimmering in the afternoon heat, mesmerized by the sun. Three young boys jostled in the thicket nearby sharing a smoke, then tired, they plunged into the lagoon, rippling the waters, alarming a stork.

At that particular moment the enchantment of the Batticaloa lagoon and the serenity engulfed me. The last time I was in Batticaloa and Ampara was three years ago, just after the tsunami. Back then, I saw the town battling with itself to come to grips with the disaster that the water had wrecked. The neighboring towns of Kattankudy and Marthamunai had been decimated and the people at the time …

continue reading

Fear of the “Other” has been systematically injected into the Sri Lankan population. Fear is the tool wielded by the political elite to control the masses and is created mainly through conditioning the masses to believe that their identities, cultures and ways of life are constantly under attack by the “Other” and creating a need to be “protected”. The political elite altruistically volunteer to “protect” the masses against these attacks by any means necessary. In Sri Lanka the means chosen is military.

The high military presence in and around Colombo, check points, house to house searches, raids on lodges and rest houses, parcels of explosives and a highly visible presence of weapons and artillery along the main streets of commercial Colombo …

continue reading

Source of cartoon: Daily Mirror July 14 2007

So, Thoppigala the seemingly last bastion of the LTTE in the East has been liberated and now the East is ‘open’ for ‘development’. In the usual brash manner this victory was celebrated with little sensitivity to those civilians in the East who have been in the direct line of fire during the last few months. The military victory however comes with a heavy price tag.

Firstly the LTTE have made public threats of attacks against economic hubs on the island in the coming days. This causes further social instability, fear and hysteria among the local civilians, feelings of unrest and pressure on the security forces protecting Colombo. An already reeling economy …

continue reading