Archive for July, 2008

Beyond ‘Babu SAARC’: Liberating airwaves for South Asians

Watching the current SAARC jamboree unfold over television news, my young daughter asked why none of the officials were smiling. The SAARC Secretary General, Dr. Sheel Khant Sharma, was always scowling. Others didn’t have smiles on their faces either, even insincere ones. They all looked stressed out, wearing glum, miserable faces. I could only hazard a guess. Perhaps the assorted babus have too much to worry about, as they get through their very serious and grim business of fostering regional cooperation. On the other hand, after all these years of endless meetings and declarations, they might have forgotten the simple joys of smiling and enjoying each other’s company. Make no mistake: SAARC is a good idea hijacked by unimaginative and pompous, unsmiling babus of South Asia and run to the ground. The self-congratulatory rhetoric of the inter-governmental merry-go-round is once again deafening us as the 15th SAARC takes place in Colombo. In reality, SAARC at 23 has the mental development…

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The day after tomorrow

The day after tomorrow you write to me of blowing snow and whiteouts. of snow goggles and skating rinks you tell me your cat may need clothing and you joke about living in the movie ‘the day after tomorrow’ I write to you of scorching sun and blackouts. of checkpoints and closed roads of a play I went to see called ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’ You ask for news of home. have you forgotten that over here, no news is good news or have black memories buried themselves under white snowflakes you say it is freezing there. again. You had to dig out your new car from underneath a mountain of snow this morning. It’s burning here. still.  this morning old women and new babies were dug out from underneath mounds of mangled metal you say everything there is predictable. I begin to think that is a good thing. Here, a white van has become a…

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WINNING THE WAR, WINNING THE PEACE

“The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew, cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down”.   – Barack Obama, Berlin, July 24   We must not settle for a draw in a game we can win and are winning. As we draw closer to victory, those who wish to deny it to us will intensify their efforts. Let us do everything that can help us win the war, and desist from anything that may prevent or divert us. We also need a vision for winning the peace. Our vision for winning the peace will play a part in helping or hindering the winning of the war. Our postwar program will affect the outcome of the war, not least by influencing the behavior of external powers (one of which actively saved Prabhakaran in 1987). Victory is imperative and yet not inevitable. It is more than possible; it is probable. Yet, the war…

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‘Baaldhiya’ or ‘Vaaldhiya’: Two Wor(l)ds Separated by a Consonant

I don’t think I had the slightest inkling of a problem between the sinhala and tamil people in Sri Lanka, until July 1983. But I should have. In the heady days of the 1977 election, a good 13 years before I could vote, I remember my father quite nonchalantly relating a story: at some time and place in Sri Lanka, strangers accosted people on the street and forced them to pronounce the sinhala word Baaldhiya (meaning “bucket”). The tamil language wasn’t familiar with the “B” sound as a starting consonant. So a tamil person would say Vaaldhiya. Tamils, thus identified, were beaten or killed. They were, literally, condemned by the difference of a consonant. What I don’t understand, even now, is why I have no memory of being shocked or distressed by this story and why it didn’t make me acutely conscious of a deep malaise in Sri Lankan society – in my world. The story of an LTTE landmine…

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Dhammapada and Other Works

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“Dhammapada and Other Works”- An exhibition of Paintings and Installations by Chandraguptha Thenuwara was inaugurated at the Lionel Wendt Gallery in Colombo on 23rd July 2008.It was organised to ‘Commemoration of the Un-Commemorative Julys’. Being an anti-war artist, Chandraguptha Thenuwara has sought to remind his fellow Sri Lankans of Lord Buddha’s teachings about tolerance and peace. The exhibition will remain open till 29th July 2008 from 10am-7pm. Chandraguptha Thenuwara is a senior lecturer at the University of Visual Arts in Colombo. He is also the Director of Vibhavi-Academy of Fine Arts, which was founded in 1993. An abstract of “Dhamapada” by Chandraguptha Thenuwara:- From childhood we are never allowed to forget that we live in a dharma-dveepa (an island of righteousness).  The full force of modern communication technology and the education system are both harnessed to this ‘fact’. Even if we don’t awaken to the sound of the bells in the nearby Buddhist temple, we open our eyes to a world in which…

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Memories of a Black Moon – the 1983 riots in Sri Lanka

More than two and a half decades later, one of my friends has asked to interview me about the ’83 riots. I was ten years old. My family was from the Sinhala majority, with relatives who were strong figures in politics and the military. How could I reply? July 1983 My mind goes back to how thrilled we were when our teachers suddenly told us that school was going to be closed immediately. There was no explanation; we had no understanding of why this might be and no reason to wonder. We were happy that we would not have to wait till August for our holidays. I was even more excited because my father had just given me a fantastic present: a Kodak 110 camera and three rolls of film. I didn’t want to photograph my school or the hostel where I was staying. I wanted to do something interesting. So I had been hassling my father to know where…

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Mano Ganesan on his experience of the anti-Tamil riots in July 1983

Member of Parliament and Convener of the Civil Monitoring Committee, Mano Ganeshan, speaks about his experiences during the anti-Tamil riots in July 1983. For more articles on July 1983, please click here. Repost This Article

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Some Reflections arising from Ethnic Riots

by Somapala Gunadheera Off and on, I write short stories, never anecdotes. But now I have to oblige Sanjana. He wants stories about our ethnic riots, the one that raged before he was born and the other when he was at school. Therapists say that anecdotes have a healing effect on ethnic wounds. My experience about the 1983 riot was brief. Then I was the Chairman of the Ceylon Steel Corporation at Athurugiriya. Towards mid-day, I heard that Tigers had invaded Colombo and people were running away helter-skelter. The Aturugiriya Police had blocked the road opposite their station and were in battle array. Later it transpired that the beginning of the turmoil was the sighting of a Tamil victim of the riot hiding on the roof of a building in the Pettah, reminiscent of the fable in which the entire animal kingdom took to its heels as the story spread that the world was crashing, as reported by a chick…

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Shanthi Sachithanandan on July 1983

Prominent Tamil civil society activist Shanthi Sachithanandan shares her experiences of the July 1983 anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka. For the Sinhala version of the interview, click here and visit the Vikalpa YouTube Channel for more short videos on the events of July 1983. For more articles on July 1983, please click here. Repost This Article

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Civilian displacements in the Vanni

Reports coming in from sources in Kilinochchi district shows that military operations in the district have led to mass displacements of the civilian population living in the Vanni. In the past 3 weeks, approximately 9,000 families (approximately 40,000 individuals) were displaced from areas close to the FDL (Manthai East) towards Northern part of the Vanni and inner land. Local authorities are facing fuel shortages to evacuate civilians in safe areas. Provision of emergency relief and humanitarian assistance has been obstructed by the reduced access of material and fuel through Omanthai checkpoint.  Repost This Article

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Some Gruesome Experiences: Memories of July 1983 by DEW Gunasekara, Minister of Constitutional Affairs and National Integration

From my Diary Notes written in Cell No.1, Negombo Remand Prison, (July 31st-Sept 24th 1983)   I had my own gruesome experience of the Black July. It was 29th July at midnight that I received a telephone call from my friend and party comrade AJMO Dr. Indra Kumar of his father’s sudden death by a heart attack. By then, Dr. Indra Kumar’s wife was in the Thurstan College Refugee camp – the family was scattered – Dr. Indra Kumar was hiding in a private nursing home. Father and mother were isolated in a house at Kotahena. He was so desperate and helpless. He was unable to see the dead body of his father who died in Kotahena. The situation was so dreadful, the entire Colombo and suburbs were in flames. In the mean time, I got news that the son-in-law of the founding leader of our party, A. Vaithalingam was burnt alive together with an Assessor of Inland Revenue, a colleague of…

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Pricking the conscience on reminiscences of ‘Black July’

by Austin Fernando In July 1983, my Accountant Mr. Vallipuram at the Cooperative Department lived off Castle Street where his neighbour was a notorious Sinhalese thug. Until ‘Black July’ Vallipuram once told me that, that thug was the ‘assailant select’ in his mind, whenever he feared a racial riot. When violent crowds ‘visited’ him early morning on the Day of ‘Black July’ around 3.30 a.m. he, his wife and son escaped through the back door in to the premises of the thug, as it was the safest. They hid behind some banana trees until the ‘Sinhalese nationalist friends’ disappeared. Suddenly, who appeared in front of them? It was the nasty thug, the intended killer. They thought that that was the last of their breaths. To their utter surprise, the thug invited Vallipuram and family in to his smoky slum for a plain tea, shelter and security. Vallipuram thought that the instantaneous death was postponed. Yes, they were in the slum…

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Is ethical and balanced journalism needed?

In my view, there are reporters and there are journalists. Reporters do exactly that. They report. But journalists on the other hand, should not be mere instruments of describing, but should be the activists who are working for change through their role as advocates. Journalists are blessed with something that most advocates have to look for: an audience that listens to them. Whilst advocates in the traditional sense have to fight to reach their target audience, journalists have a daily dose of communication that can be delivered right to the doorstep of the public at large. That gives them an edge to call for change. The captive audience can be fed not lies, but the needed parts of truth. There is a thin line between stating facts and using facts, and the same way there is a thin line between lying, and not telling the truth. Whilst balanced media is supposed to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing…

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July 1983: Looking back in anger and despair 25 years on

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Photo by Chandragupta Amarasinghe ONE What happened in mid-1983 and in the last week of July 1983 was obscene, a monumental atrocity, a disaster for Sri Lanka. In a context marked by the push for self-determination by the principal forces representing the Sri Lankan Tamils and an armed underground insurgency involving restive youth in the extreme north, government functionaries and elements of the ordinary populace took it upon themselves to unleash punitive attacks on Tamils living in the Sinhala-majority areas in the south. In both the towns and in several parts of the supposedly idyllic countryside Tamils were killed, assailed, maimed, terrorized and forced to flee or hide. It was not an ethnic “riot,” a term left over from the British Raj and one that covers a wide array of affrays (inadequately, of course, because of its wide sweep). Nor was it a holocaust. It was something in between in the lexicon of assaults: a pogrom. Apart from the immorality…

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My name is Cedric. Do you remember me?

July usually passes me by without too much notice, beyond the vague worry that there might be a Tiger attack on Colombo, and a few flashbacks to that weekend in 1983. But this time it’s been a bit different. I’ve found myself reliving that day a lot more this year. It isn’t the fact that this is the 25th anniversary of the carnage which most people see as the starting point of our war, though that has been the focus of a lot of attention. What did it was a phone call a couple of weeks ago. My mobile rang with an unfamiliar number, and an equally unidentifiable male voice asked for me. When I confirmed that it was indeed yours truly, the voice asked whether I was an old boy of Wesley College. I groaned inwardly, and confirmed this too, expecting to be hit by my school’s OBU for a donation or offer of membership of some committee or…

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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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