Archive for March, 2007

Investigate us, or stop the harassment and false allegations!

Speaking at a media conference to launch “Press Freedom and Freedom of Expression in Sri Lanka: Struggle for survival“, a damning new report on the state of Sri Lankan media drafted by over a dozen leading international human rights and media freedom organisations and based on a mission to Sri Lanka in October 2006, Sunanda Deshapriya, Spokesperson of the Free Media Movement said that the FMM, the SLWJA, the SLMMF, the SLTMA and the FMETU, the five largest journalist organisations and trade unions in Sri Lanka, were completely open to any official investigation into any allegations of complicity with the LTTE and terrorism, and would give such an inquiry their fullest support and cooperation. Stating there were clear attempts to stifle free media and the freedom of expression in Sri Lanka, Sunanda went on to say that journalists were extremely fearful of the hate speech directed against them. Recalling the actions of Radio Mille Colline just before the Rwandan genocide…

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“Some people were shot while going to see their houses on the road like dogs”

Interview was taken from: MRS.GNANAPRAGASAM ARASAMMAH, 53 years. Displaced from: PALAI NAGAR, MUTHUR 2, Trincomalee Now at the welfare Centre: SRI KONALINGA MAHA VITHYALAYAM IDP’S CAMP – LINGA NAGAR, Trincomalee We all went to the Methodist Church Refugee’s Camp, as soon as a neighbor of our house of twenty years was shot and died, while working in his Saloon. We couldn’t be able to bring any of our belongings with us at that time or later. Some people were shot while going to see their house on the road like dogs, by unknown armed group In the Church, we were given foods, and some house hold items, in the camp by Father and other NGO, INGO, and UN Agencies. We were in a position, that even in any circumstances, unable to go to the road. Those who went out to the road were shot or abducted. On the date when a suicide attempt was held in Colombo Police Head Quarters,…

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TOLERATING THE INTOLERABLE: AN EPILOGUE TO UVINDU

Uvindu Kurukulasuriya’s inaugural piece in Groundviews is an aptly Niemölleresque exhortation to greater civic responsibility in the defence of political freedom, civil liberties and the Rule of Law. It comes at a time when Sri Lanka is once again returning to a ‘Bheeshana Yugaya’, the previous experiences of which should have toughened the resolve of Sri Lankans to never allow a repeat. It appears, however, that rather than resistance, that experience has inured Sri Lankans to serial abuse much like a tragic case of battered wife syndrome. I would like to offer some further parallels in addition to the historical ones that Uvindu mentions in his article. In September 1930, Hitler was called to testify at a trial of three army officers accused of high treason for infiltrating the army with Nazi propaganda. He stated: “The national-socialist movement will try to attain its aims in this State by constitutional means. The constitution only prescribes the methods but not the goal….

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  • 6 Mar, 2007
  • 9 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Peace and Conflict

Find the parallels – Hitler’s rise in Germany and lessons for Sri Lanka

My first article to Groundviews is on the rise of Hitler in Germany. The article is in Sinhala. All I ask the reader to do at the end of the article is to transpose Sri Lanka’s own political developments and context today, to that which I point to as the rise of totalitarianism and fascism in Germany in the early years of the last century. Read the article in full here.

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White Vans, Disappearances And Abductions

Lets talk about white vans, disappearances and abductions. How much do people who don’t speak in Tamil know about these subjects, and conversely how much do people who speak in Tamil know about these things? I will get to these odd questions in a bit. Being a Colombo-based Sinhalese person, I found the occasional reference to white vans, in the last year or so, curious but I didn’t come across a clear description of what it was in the media. The media and people I talk to are my only sources of news about the world. My best guess and reaction was “ah, the van was used in an abduction! I wonder why the vehicle was a white van. Don’t people get abducted in blue vans?” Why am I describing my naivety in detail? It is to convey a sense of the information barriers and the separate information zones that we live in. Some people know all about white vans,…

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“We need a revolution in Sri Lanka!” – A brief chat with Sam de Silva

Photo credit: Nazreen Sansoni “on one level, Sri Lanka needs a revolution to really change what’s going on here. There is such a domination by the powers that be… there needs to be a real uprising. How to actually get an “enlightened uprising”, to use a term from the film, is the tricky part.” I caught up with Sam de Silva of Circles of Violence fame, before he headed back to Australia tonight. Sam’s film, shown to a few of us in Colombo last week, has already generated some interesting responses and is the most recent attempt to explore through film Sri Lanka’s tryst with peace in the midst of rising violence. Sam began by stating that for him what was most interesting about the premiere of the film a week ago at Barefoot was the discussion on what it is to be a Sri Lankan and what (and how) we define a Sri Lankan identity. Comfortable with his Australian…

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Prices Improve In Jaffna

Jaffna people are a little happy now. All the essential item prices are down a little bit and things are available at pavement shops. Still the prices are double or triple the market price but reduced two to three times from the January market price. Whats not easily bought are medicine and baby items. Rice reduced from Rs170.00 to Rs70.00, soap Rs150.00 to Rs50.00, shampoo Rs35.00 to Rs5.00, matches box Rs30.00 to Rs5.00, cocunut oil Rs 1200.00 to Rs300.00. Kerosene is buffer stock. But baby items are still in shortage. A young father said he can’t survive in Jaffna with his babies. “I have a three years old and three months old babies all the baby things are not available in Jaffna, what do I do. Baby milk powder and baby infant is not available in Jaffna, Baby cologne and baby powder also shortage even feeding bottle and baby brush also not available in the market.” In this situation how…

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The wages of passivity

Sri Lanka’s Muslims have long kept quiet while Tamil militancy has made its own demands. Now they are becoming restive, fearing that silence may have cost them too much. By | Dilrukshi Handunnetti If you were to go by the international headlines, the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict appears to engage only the two main communities, the Sinhalese and the Tamils. Yet when the conflict exploded into war in 1983, and in the more than two decades following, it was not just the two communities locked in battle that suffered. The impact of the internal war on the island’s Muslim community has been massive – and severely overlooked. In Colombo, when issues of politics or peace deliberations arise, the ‘Muslim question’ has long been confined to intellectual debates and dinner-table discussions. This continues to this day, despite the fact that representatives of the Muslim community have for decades worked with the country’s majority-led governments. This has included the premier Muslim party,…

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  • 1 Mar, 2007
  • 35 Comments
  • Peace and Conflict

CIRCLES OF VIOLENCE – GOING ROUND AND ROUND

I watched Sam De Silva’s film ‘Circles of Violence’ on Tuesday. I will be brutally blunt and say I didn’t like it at all. I am a skeptic when it comes to watching documentaries that essay the country’s conflict. Over the past couple of years I’ve talked to one too many budding film-makers armed with a camera and a financial grant looking to find that ‘elusive angle’ and to tell that ‘untold story’ about the Sri Lankan conflict. Eventually they all make one more cookie-cutter documentary, filling it up with footage from the ‘dangerous’ and ‘restive’ North and East, smattering it with interviews with victims and activists and tying it together with some heavy-handed hypothesizing and eulogizing about the tragedy of this beloved isle. Usually these documentaries do the preview rounds at the Barefoot-esque venues of Colombo and end up gathering dust on the shelves of an NGO or two. Or, they end up breaking into the international festival circuits…

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The advent of terror politics

Amidst shackles – Notes of a citizen journalist Sunanda Deshapriya’s article in Sinhala explores the recent statements of Champika Ranawaka, Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the Rajapaksa government and a highly placed and trusted advisor to the President. With excerpts from MP Ranawana’s writings and his recent statement to Ravaya, Sunanda explores the disturbing growth of hate speech at the highest levels of governments, and the resulting erosion of space for civil society initiatives for peace and democracy in Sri Lanka. The full article (as a PDF in Sinhala) is available here.

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The politics of hate and harm

Most readers in Colombo would have seen the posters of the National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT) calling for the peace, media and leftist ‘Tigers’ to be identified and destroyed. This columnist was asked to comment on the poster by a newspaper and he along with other colleagues condemned the message conveyed by it. Following this our photographs appeared on the organisation’s website with an English translation of the poster. It has also been learnt that the call was repeated at a public meeting and that Minister Champika Ranawaka condoned and supported these sentiments in a comment to the newspaper. He has subsequently denied this. Questions A number of questions arise with regard to this. There can be no dispute surely that messages such as this plastered on the walls of the capital are incitements to murder; they go beyond the routine invective of hate speech. They are intended to have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech and association….

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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