On our way to the first scheduled hearing of Northern Muslims who were expelled by the LTTE in 1990, we spotted a group of men working hard out in the open, under the midday sun, and we stopped to have a conversation with them. Eight days earlier they had made their way from Puttalam to Marichchakatty with the goal of initiating the ‘journey home’ after the expulsion almost two decades ago.  Happy to leave their landless status in Puttalam and their livelihood as daily wage laborers, they were looking forward to reclaiming their lost lives as farmers and fishermen in their native villages. Although the end of the war heralded a new era and sparked hope of ‘returning home’ the …

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When faced with challenging human rights and humanitarian law issues who should we seek out for advice but a celebrated former Vice President of the International Court of Justice? Faced with the task of peace building after a Thirty Years war, to whom should we turn to spearhead a state-aided national effort, or at the very least, for ideas and guidance, but the sole Sri Lankan to win the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education? If the Sri Lankan state and society have done neither, what does that say about us, where we are at and where we are headed?

One of the more refined gratifications in my life is the friendship of a few renowned intellectuals like Richard Falk, Emeritus Professor …

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There is no rule written in an enormous ledger by an acolyte angel
that says a poet will write every day until death. The uncivil war will end

according to absence of such dictate when humours start to break down
cellular walls and cancer spreads overcoming defences of heart, lungs,

kidneys, gut, brain, in no particular order, as aforementioned parts
succumb to constant hammering of shells, fits of barking orders to kill,

and distant turning away from disaster, beating breasts, while asking
focus groups, how can we intervene in a sovereign nation, does this

particular wilful disregard for human life meet your standard, fellow
citizens and friends? Pure fantasy. Nobody consulted the man in Peoria

or the soothsayer shuffling along to the bead shop on Main …

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Murder cannot be hidden, bodies decompose but skeletons
remain; certainly they can be washed from beach into sea

and stripped clean by carnivorous fish yet the panel requires
just a few examples, sufficient to flesh out a theory of mass

slaughter; satellite shots will be investigated abroad and
conversations conducted with survivors of precarious boats

landing on Christmas Island or dragged into Jakarta. Scale
of killing poses a serious problem for management of disaster;

appointment of soft, suave diplomat to run damage control
at foreign ministry did not succeed. Murder will be revealed.

Macbeth is read also in Sri Lanka; it landed in the culture
before the current lot of customs inspectors; am sure

Saratchchandra contemplated translating …

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The Sun God disappeared from the scene in May, 2009
killed by advancing army units, not clear which brave soldier

pulled the trigger, for some reason government has kept quiet
about circumstances, but other magicians in splendid whites

are raising arms to salute on Galle Face Green’s reviewing stand
troubling peace-loving citizens. They stand before armoured carriers

while fighter jets fly over the head of Old Parliament at the annual
parade to celebrate the late rebirth of Dutugemunu into our democracy,

a spirit who appeared to have achieved beatitude centuries ago,
but has required one more round on his favourite hunting ground,

a touch of three kingdoms-in-one panache, obeisance of tens of
thousands marching past, and loyalty before judgment of the …

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Today, 18th June 2010, has been declared a public holiday by the government. Many Sri Lankans, especially Sinhalese from the South are expected to respond enthusiastically to the government’s elaborate plans to celebrating the war victory over the LTTE. For several days, citizens in Colombo had to put up with closed roads in preparation. How much of our – citizens – tax payer’s money will be spent for this celebration is something I don’t know and dare not think.

Some media had highlighted on the fact that the General who led the war victory is likely to be in detention and not invited to celebrate the victory he led.

What seems to be forgotten, and what I do know for sure …

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From the psycho-social trauma and destruction of the social fabric in Jaffna after close upon three decades of brutal war to the challenges of post-war development, entrepreneurship and economic revival, these two interviews focus on two leading Tamil civil society activists who have lived in Jaffna from when the war was still raging.

Dr. Muttukrishna Sarvananthan is the Principal Researcher at the Point Pedro Institute of Development and author of three well read articles on Groundviews. Our conversation was pegged to the socio-economic aspects of post-war scenarios in the North and East. Dr. Sarvananthan’s key ideas for post-war development are …

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Louise Arbour of the International Crisis Group is reported to have  said during an interview in the BBC that the government violated the laws of war by blurring the line between combatants and civilians, and that its killings of civilians were not accidents.   Perhaps in response to this, speaking to the BBC Tamil Service recently,  the Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Palitha Kohona is reported to have said that  the commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation  set up  recently by the government is sufficient to investigate the allegations of humanitarian standards and human rights violations  during the war.

Let us therefore have a look at some of the commissions of inquiry appointed by the governments in the …

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“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.”

“What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.”Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with their long arms. Some of them …

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Interestingly of the four best pieces I have read on the first anniversary of the war, three are by Indian analyst/commentators, of whom two are military professionals: Gen Ashok K. Mehta’s Manekshaw paper No 22 for the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (New Delhi) on ‘How Eelam war 4 was Won’ (which cannot be read by any patriot or anti-fascist without a lump in one’s throat or mist in one’s eyes), the piece by Col R Hariharan in The Hindu and by PK Balachandran in the Indian Express. The fourth is by a youthful security researcher Sergei de Silva Ranasinghe writing in the respected Australian periodical, The Diplomat.

Within Sri Lanka and among Sri Lankans, the debate on the war may …

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The HOPE in Sri Lanka after war was in 2009 Deborah Philip’s first photo-essay to Groundviews anchored to a novel and compelling idea – to photograph people holding up a sign board titled HOPE.

As Deborah notes in her first submission,

“Where is the hope?” is a question that the writer encountered quite a few times when she asked people to pose with the HOPE board. The culture of impunity prevalent in post-war Sri Lanka paints a rather depressing picture of a country that has lost the ability to hope. Human rights continue to be violated, there is an upsurge in criminal activity, media freedom is severely restricted and nationalist rhetoric continues to be the …

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Prelude: The following is a ‘fragmented reflection’, on present-day Sri Lanka, war’s end and related issues. The objective was to capture the thought process of a citizen ‘thinking’ about these issues as realistically as possible, hence the fragmented nature of the rendering, and the frequent passage from one point to an(unrelated)other.

A war was thus fought. It all started decades ago, when the colonial alcohol was well-absorbed into her, leading to inevitably sheer tipsiness, and the long-lasting ‘hangover’ was just about to begin.

As some said Sinhala should be the national language of independent Ceylon and Buddhism the state religion, some others felt insecure and concerned for their future in the island. Insecurity is a dangerously devastating feeling that’s always better …

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Background
On Tuesday 19th May 2009 – the day after the death of Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President of Sri Lanka, declared victory over the Tamil Tigers, bringing to a close 26 years of conflict. With the routing of the LTTE, and the reclamation of all occupied territory, it was announced that the conflict in Sri Lanka had come to an end.

The cost of this declared victory was immense. At least 90,000 people were estimated to have been killed, the majority of those innocent civilians; hundreds of thousands were internally displaced, and interned, having lost everything they owned; tens of thousands of families were left without an adult who could …

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About six months after the end of the war, in November 2009, the government of Sri Lanka relaxed restrictions on travel to the Vanni[1] and started to allow some of the displaced people to go back to their villages.

Although the government still maintains some restrictions on travel, I managed to visit these areas many times. My visits including overnight stay in Vanni without beds, attached bathrooms, running water, electricity, helped me to better experience and understand life there after the war. It also increased my admiration for some of my friends, Catholic priests and sisters, who warmly welcomed and hosted me and my friends every time we visited, despite the very basic and difficult life they had opted to …

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This Government, as it commences to address the many challenges facing post – war Sri Lanka, stands today at a watershed of major, unprecedented and possibly never to be replicated, opportunity. Wherever one is located in the Sri Lankan political firmament that obvious and pre eminent condition would have to be admitted. The sense of overall stability about the new Government  pervades all thinking, writing and action, both local and foreign.

How valid is this assumption of political, economic and societal stability that the Government so bountifully enjoys today – the first anniversary of the defeat of the LTTE, or of ‘separatist terrorism’, as the government calls it and would like it to be known?

The elements of that apparent stability which …

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It was, unfortunately, a necessary war, for terrorism had to be defeated, eliminated. After some thirty long years, on or around the 19th of May 2009, Sri Lanka gained liberation; liberation from the clutches of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), from the clutches of terrorism (May, 2010: The Prime Minister states in Parliament that a new military wing of the LTTE is being formed, is getting ready to raise its ugly head).

‘Terrorism’, however, was only one facet of the problem. The moment that ugly facet becomes non-existent, the moment there is an absence of a violent armed conflict, problems which remained unresolved, problems which could not be resolved through the use of force, re-emerge, re-surface. Political developments which …

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My focus in this essay is not what happened in the past but what can be envisioned in the near future particularly with regard to the national question in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan security forces comprehensively defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) one year ago. However, the transformation of peace writ small that was achieved in May 2009 to peace writ large has yet to be achieved and the steps taken in that direction are, in my opinion, inadequate. Although the simultaneous operation of so many variables in complex situations makes predictions almost impossible in social science, it is possible to identify possible future scenarios through the analysis of key drivers that undergird future changes. Here I …

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One year after the end of the war there is optimism in the country, particularly amongst sections of the business community. The government has taken the position that rapid economic development can be a panacea to the problems that afflict the country, including the long festering ethnic one.  South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hongkong, and more recently Malaysia and China, all point the success of tight political control coupled with the centralisation of power that yielded positive economic dividends.  There are predictions that the country’s growth rate can even reach rates of 10 percent like China and India depending on how effective the government is in tackling the economic challenges it faces.

Following the Presidential and General elections held earlier this …

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The teenage girls singing a Tamil song “Tomorrow is Ours” is interrupted by my wife Samantha and I walking in to the classroom.  They giggled coyly as we looked around at them.   They were being trained to be Girl Guides and did not seem any different to any of the many young people I have encountered over the years.

One of the leaders, Deepa (fictitious name) walked up to us in curiosity and introduced by the Girl Guide trainer.  She had a presence but seemed restless.

Deepa was abducted by the LTTE at age 16 from her Aunt’s home in the Wanni and was trained as a soldier.   She had not seen combat as she was found by the Army in a …

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One year ago, the war that had defined our lives for the last 30 years ended.  Brutally, callously and mercilessly fought like most wars are, it ended amidst allegations of immense suffering wrought on the people caught in the middle of the final desperate onslaughts.  Since then according to the official version, Sri Lankans have nothing but happiness and prosperity to look forward to because the one thing that has hindered our progress as a nation has been finally eliminated. That, as I said, is the official version.

Since May of last year, however, reports that contradict the official version of the story that ended happily ever after have been circulating.  It started with the horror of the internment of the …

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