When Weerasena (1) was interdicted
And the sun was on fire
Above the textile factory
Shouting slogans
Screaming hoarsely
Brother Nadesan(2)
At the flaming pickets
I was a Tamil

When Weere(3) got the job back
Riding on the shoulders
“Long live brother Nade(4)….!”
The victorious king
In the victory parade
I was a Tamil

When Siripala(1) was shot
By the squad breaking the strike
Took him in my own hands
And flew to the hospital
I was a Tamil

Both hands punctured
With saline tubes
“Nade, you are my saviour”
Sira(4), you embraced me sobbing
I was a Tamil.

When Kusum(1) was pregnant
And dying on a hospital bed
They never demanded
Sinhalese blood
But just “O” negative
Only I happened to have
I was a Tamil.

“Son, you belong to uncle Nade”
the newborn
Was put in my hands
With tears flowing
Yet, I was a Tamil.

Weere, I hear your slogan
Suppressing the shouting
At the picket line
“Slay the Tamils! …

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Aachcharya writing from Jaffna

I wrote on the 30th of December in a post to Groundviews (and republished in the Daily Mirror) that the assertion that the Tamil people would be deciders in the Presidential election would be a myth. There was nothing brilliant or extraordinary about what I said at that time, but it was contrary to public perception that was prevalent all over the country and in international media circles. What I suggested was that for the Tamil people to be deciders two conditions have to be fulfilled. I wrote:

“For the Tamils to be the deciders in the election (like they could have been in the last) they have to vote as a whole, to one candidate …

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Harim Pieris, a former advisor to President Kumaratunga in the days that she had really lost touch with what was what in the country, has written the best piece so far on the strategy of the joint opposition at this Presidential election, with a clear if implicit indication that he thinks the strategy is likely to succeed (“Ranil’s Formula for the General’s success”, Daily Mirror Monday Jan 11th 2010). It’s a good article, a correct piecing together, but to my mind a bad analysis and latent prognosis. I may well be proven wrong and I shan’t go into the why of my demurral until after it is all over, in these crucial closing ten days of a most portentous election.

Speaking …

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A particular aspect of Sri Lankan politics is color. Those days, there were two: Greens and Blues. Greens were to the right of centre and Blues to the left. There were some Reds (of the NM and Colvin type), often saying sensible things. But we know there isn’t much space for sensible things in our politics, so those Reds joined the Blues, traded their principles for power and lost their character. Then we had the New Reds, re-discovering themselves many times over, and, together with the Saffrons, punching far above their weights, thanks to an undesirable side effect of the electoral counting system in our country.

In the late seventies, nobody judged the Blues and Greens better than the ordinary Jaffna …

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With frustrated resignation, Sri Lankans are used to how government departments (the Police in particular) and public property are misused and abused by the party in power during elections for partisan advantage. For sheer insouciance though, the emergent new kid on the block during this presidential election, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRC), surpasses even the chutzpah of the President in kicking aside the Seventeenth Amendment.

On the first of January, many of us would have received an unsolicited SMS from one Mahinda Rajapakse, wishing us not only a happy and prosperous new year, but also reminding us of the handsome gift he had given us in advance: a free and independent country (no less): see Groundviews story …

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Part 1
The presidential election manifesto of the opposition Common Candidate General (Rtd) Sarath Fonseka was released on 7 January, 2009 at a media launch in Colombo, titled “Believable Change”.  He says “I am different. I am change. I will bring about believable change” writing for himself, in the manifesto in which he tries to spell out his vision.

Why this manifesto of Gen (rtd) Fonska is singled out for this short dissection, with no comparison with the “Mahinda Chintanaya” of President Rajapaksa or with what he keeps blurting out at dinners and luncheons, at public rallies and public gatherings, is because of just one reason.

There was consensus among democratic forces that Rajapaksa needs to be opposed, long before elections were declared. …

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Eelam War IV shattered and devastated Tamils social, economical, cultural and political structural factors. These four structural factors were corner stone’s of the Tamil National Struggle and were intricately interconnected to each other. These became primary targets during the war and were destroyed. To give this research paper a focus and due to contextual developments I will only be analyzing the political aspect. However, I will give due prominence, understand and agree upon the arguments that all four factors have equal prominence.

After the age of “alliance building” the Tamil polity needed to analyze and consider surrounding geopolitics maneuvers and the new world order. The very existence and future of Tamil politics will be based on its present moves while reflecting …

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The TNA’s ability to negotiate a comprehensive devolution package for the Tamil community with either Mahinda Rajapaksa or Sarath Fonseka is becoming more and more distant as the Presidential election draws nearer. This has greatly benefited Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka as they could play safer electoral politics in the Sinhalese South without dealing with the issue of  the devolution of power to the Tamil community. The TNA’s misery is a direct result of their current disunity and their lack of political direction in the democratic politics after the military defeat of the LTTE. There is no emerging political leadership that is farsighted and politically mature enough to take the Tamil community’s democratic rights to the centre stage in the …

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[Editors note: This article responds to Dayan Jayatilleka's article An Allergy To Self-Criticism In Dominant Tamil Discourse.]

I have read with considerable interest Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke’s recent critiques of the post-war strategic and normative dynamics of Tamil nationalism in terms of their limits and challenges. The most recent of these interventions are the piece on Groundviews, and another attenuated and slightly differently slanted article in The Island, both of 28th December 2009.

When I first read the Groundviews piece, it was freshly posted and there were no comments, but almost all of the comments as have so far been made, have been in a predictable tenor: approximately, that Dayan is an arrogant agent of the racist Sinhala State who was integral …

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Aachcharya writing from Jaffna

Two Tamil Dailies Thinakkural and Uthayan (Jaffna) carried yesterday a headline report of retired Supreme Court Justice C.V. Wigneswaran’s opinion on whom the Tamils should vote for at Presidential elections. (Justice C. V Wigneswaran is a highly respected member of the Tamil intelligentsia and while on the Supreme Court was known to be extremely independent and forthright in his views. He was named by TNA as their nominee for membership in the Constitutional Council)

Though the report is filed in a manner as if though the newspapers contacted Justice Wigneswaran to get his response regarding rumours that some sections of the diaspora had contacted him about contesting at the presidential elections, the two reports are …

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[Editors note: This article responds to key points raised by several noted commentators on the author's previous article here.]

There’s one important lesson to be learnt from the presidential campaign so far: It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Mahinda-Regime is determined to hang on to power by hook or by crook. Ominous signs of thuggery against all opposition are widespread; the state-media’s shamelessly transparent propaganda is making a mockery of all journalistic principles. Over one and a half million Tamils have been deprived of their right to vote.

The obvious truth is: forces of the establishment, including the military leadership, have ganged-up to defend the regime. Newly appointed military leaders have a vested interest in doing this. They probably think …

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In hard science when an experiment repeatedly fails and finally blows up the lab with it, the very assumptions which form the basis of the experiment are reassessed and often abandoned.  The empirically evident track record of Tamil nationalist politics in Sri Lanka is that of repeated failure capped by defeat. However the dominant tendency in Sri Lankan Tamil nationalist politics, including in this postwar moment, has been quite other than one of critical self scrutiny.

As I explained in several articles during the CFA and at Georgetown’s CSIS in November 2005, when placed in a comparative historical context, even the dramatic military victories of the Tigers disguised a great strategic failure. First rate guerrilla movements of national liberation (Mao’s PLA, …

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Last Christmas, together with few friends, we prayed desperately, hoping a bloodbath would be avoided

This Christmas, we prayed and lit candles for the thousands killed and missing during the war, the ones who doesn’t have a grave as their family members had to run over the dead (and sometimes dyeing) bodies to save their own lives.

Last Christmas, we prayed for a stop to political killings, disappearances, forced recruitments, unjust arrests and torture. And for families of those detained, disappeared, killed.

This Christmas, we did the same.

Last Christmas, we prayed for easing of government restrictions on food, medicine, shelter and access for aid agencies to help the people affected by war.

This Christmas, we prayed for those injured & sick – as they …

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I have been following Mr. Jayatilleka’s articles both on Groundviews and Tamil Week. While I do agree with some of his ideas such as a multi-ethnic Sri Lanka where citizenship is not defined by ethnicity, I disagree with his argument that mostly puts the onus on the Tamil minority to tread the line based on his definition of what constitutes a reasonable approach in their struggle to gain equal citizenship in Sri Lanka.

In his latest article essentially he claims that the 13th amendment is the best the Tamils can expect and they should not push for more because it was offered at a time (1987) when things were more favorable towards the Tamil cause. He also rightly points out …

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With “Sinhala hegemony” in its most dramatic form, the advancing Sri Lankan armed forces, closing in, Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism could not convince the Tamil Nadu voter of its cause and case, then surely it is imperative that that cause and case be identified as fatally flawed?

If India with its 70 million Tamils could not be budged from its stance of low key but decisive support for the Sri Lankan state, surely there is no chance of leveraging any strategically significant Western support for Tamil nationalism, given that the main Asian partner of the USA is India?

Given that MG Ramachandran was alive and one of the causative factors of the Indo-Lanka accord with its resultant the 13th amendment, it is …

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[Editors note: Lionel Bopage was a former General Secretary of the JVP and was involved with the party since 1968 until his resignation in 1984. For more content with Bopage on Groundviews, click here.]

Introduction
During the last four decades Sri Lanka has witnessed three major insurrections mainly by its youth. Since the 1970s, younger generations of Sinhalese and Tamils from similar socio-economic backgrounds have revolted against the erosion of their democratic rights. These insurrections reflected the diverse, but significant and unfulfilled aspirations of the Sinhala and Tamil youth. Both the militant movements in the south including the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the militant movements in the north including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been the …

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[Editors Note: Prof. Rajan Hoole, co-founder of UTHR (J) and co-author of the Broken Palmyra, presents this piece exclusively to Groundviews for Human Rights Day 2009].

One important indicator of Human Rights protection in modern society is successful enforcement of the rule of law. Human Rights activism in Lanka came about as a response to special challenges arising from progressive deterioration of the rule of law. The law is technical in its workings. Good laws and good law enforcement advance human rights, and their opposites lead to conflict and crisis. The strengthening of institutional aspects of human rights, the promotion of a human rights culture and the ambient political mores in which these operate, interact with and influence one another. Deterioration …

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Authors note: This is the first of two articles. The second is in draft form and is tentatively entitled ‘The Rajapakse Regime: Plus Points, Minus Points’. It may appear first in print form, but that remains to be seen.

The Rajapakse regime has been in power since April 2004 and has received a bad press in many Western countries in recent years. Such comments have often aroused Xenophobic reactions within some segments of Sri Lankan society. This parochial response merges with the rabid hostility to (selected) NGOs in some political circles.

Rather than dwelling in a parochial miasma, the Rajapakse government should ask itself WHY, why such a bad press? One answer is clear: it is the prevalence of the “white van” …

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Authors note: This expands on a comment I left on Groundviews here, in response to my last article In defense of the JVP campaign to support Sarath Fonseka.

Tamils must not play a sectarian role in the presidential election. That’ll be counterproductive. This is not the time for Tamils to do politics based on anger and hatred. Tamils, I think, should realize democratic transformation of the Centre is crucial for them. Also, Tamil-speaking people – including plantation-workers & Muslims and Colombo Tamils- live all over Sri Lanka. Therefore, it’s important to make all calculations in general terms, not in sectarian terms. All parties of the Tamil-speaking people should maintain a solid united front in presenting their demands. They should …

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“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.” — Karl Marx

“The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility.” — Paulo Freire

As news of the upcoming election unfolds, I find myself considering the meaning of the notion the “common candidate” in general, and its application to General Fonseka in particular.  In the broadest sense, a common candidate is one who represents and promises to fulfill the people’s common aspirations and desires.  Whether the General meets these criteria is still open …

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