Archive for March, 2009

Your opinion on a war ‘over in 3 weeks’ and a ‘post-LTTE’ Sri Lanka?

A senior government minister claimed today that the war would be over in 3 weeks. Whether we believe him or not, commentators like Ahilan Kadirgamar (writing in Himal Southasian, February 2009) have called attention to the dynamics of a ‘post-LTTE Sri Lanka’, suggesting that “Post-LTTE Tamil politics will have to move beyond ethnic and territorial concerns to forge solidarity among minorities, in order to reframe the ‘national question’ in Sri Lanka”. This is a decisive year for Sri Lanka, whether you choose to believe in these conjectures and formulations or not. On the humanitarian and economic fronts alone and in particular, current conditions cannot be sustained. For this and a number of other reasons, war in the manner it is being conducted today cannot be sustained for much longer. As Ahilan Kadirgamar goes on to note in his article, In a post-LTTE era, the Mahinda Rajapakse regime will be tempted to continue its politics of opportunism to consolidate and entrench…

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Groundviews on Twitter and Facebook

Groundviews was the first media website in Sri Lanka to have its own Twitter feed and Facebook page. Both Twitter and Facebook make critical content on the site more easily accessible in social networks and feature the latest updates in your own Facebook page or Twitter account (and through associated mobile devices if you’ve configured them). Join Groundviews on Facebook here. Follow Groundviews on Twitter here. Repost This Article

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Is the President hiding Lasantha Wickremetunge’s killers?

We reproduce in full a letter from Sonali Samarasinghe Wickremetunge to the IGP asking him to record ‘very important details’ known to the Sri Lankan President and at least one other senior government minister, based on the minister’s own admission, pertaining to the identity of her husband Lasantha Wickremetunge’s killers. The Editor in Chief of the Sunday Leader and one of Sri Lanka’s best known journalists, Lasantha Wickremetunge was murdered on 8th January 2009 en route to work, in broad daylight and on a busy road. The murderers, whoever they are, have yet to be captured. Groundviews was told that no newspaper in Sri Lanka was willing to carry this letter in full. Therein too lies a story of the pervasive nature of anxiety and fear in Sri Lanka, and the conditions facing independent journalists and media. We publish this letter in the hope that sustained domestic and international pressure to reveal the identity of Lasantha’s killers, especially as they…

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Bridging comedy and conscience

Violence does not make me laugh. Yet humour has not only survived nearly two and a half decades of exposure to violence, brutality, intolerance, discrimination, corruption and abuses of power, it has preserved my sensitivity and been a soft padding that shielded me from the hard blows of reality. It has been a key to our resilience as a nation and a safer platform for us to speak truth to power. Because we somehow feel that the death of a comedian is more tragic than the death of a philosopher, soldier, a politician or indeed a straight talking newspaper editor. It’s not easy to make people laugh and it is especially difficult to laugh in the midst of death and destruction of the very essence of our humanity. The most difficult aspect of satirising tragedy however, is dealing with the mix of emotions that you are left with at the end. It actually is painful to make people laugh in…

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  • 25 Mar, 2009
  • 8 Comments
  • Jaffna,
    Satire

President Rajapakse donates monthly salary and ‘malu banis’ to farmers attacked by LTTE

by Global Citizen for Banyan News Reporters Colombo, Sri Lanka: – Elite black tiger commando units of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) carried out an attack last night on farmers who may or may not have produced the vegetables and eggs that caused 270 people including 202 students to be hospitalised for suspected food poisoning in Trincomalee yesterday. Leader of the LTTE’s political wing P Nadesan who himself was the victim of food poisoning from kottu roti told reporters that he will personally hunt down the bacteria responsible for the calamity, but the lack of VIM Dishwash bars in the no-fire zone was severely hampering his efforts. “Our organisation takes the battle against food poisoning and gluten intolerance very seriously” remarked Nadesan who is affectionately known as “Padasami Hari Gandeshwaran” by his associates in reference to his sensitive digestive system. Defence Secretary Mr. Goatspirit condemned the LTTE attack on innocent farmers claiming that there was no credible evidence…

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Ending the War, Envisioning the Peace

The eyes of the world are upon us. This means two things: Sri Lanka must not blink on the fundamentals, whatever the pressures brought to bear, while at one at the same time Sri Lanka must be open and flexible on that which is non-fundamental, tactical and secondary. We must be resolute and tough, steel-like on the issue of the Tigers and pluralist, liberal and moderate on the politics that comes after. The closure of the conflict, the construction of the new Sri Lanka and the transition from one to the other requires that rare combination of characteristics: steel and water; yin and yang. We must be as hard on the Tigers as we are soft on the Tamils; as open on the Tamils as we are closed on the Tigers. But are we getting it right? Rohana Wijeweera survived the 1971 insurgency and commenced a second bloodier one in 1986. Once he was killed, the JVP abandoned the path…

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Looking at the grid of SL political opinion as a continuum

I have read An alternative grid map of political opinion serving the best interests of Sri Lanka posted by C A Saliya on March 18, 2009 in the Groundviews in response to Dayan Jayatilleka’s The grid map of political opinion in Sri Lanka appearing in FEDERALiDEA on March 10, 2009. Saliya opines, “It it is not convincingly justified why the pro-devolution cause cannot be productively served from anti-military standpoint. In fact it is contradictory to promote devolution of power while endorsing pro-war military mentality which can easily be misinterpreted as a military solution.” Much as I agree with Saliya’s viewpoint, it has to be pointed out that it loses its relevance at this stage when the military initiative is supposed to be nearing its end. His view was certainly in point before the military moved in and it may have produced more sustainable and less destructive results if it was acted upon with vision on both sides at that stage….

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For Mr K with love

Mr K died today Not unusual, all things perish But he was very young And had just got two tiny teeth And was a little fighter He tried hard to live In difficult times. Mr K died quietly today And I don’t have a right to Cry, besides I am a tad too old for that. Death stalks me heroic, wearing a shiny cloak of war but death, nonetheless In the jungles booming with mortar fire In IDP camps In accident wards full of Young men hoping the pain would end Death immortalized in the news the moving image broadcasts and telecasts and podcasts So what right do I have To mourn a tiny chipmunk parted from its mother Caught in the crossfire During an ambush by birds And the chipmunks’ retaliation In their quest for food. I fed him and kept him warm Swaddled him and held him Formed an attachment So I thought he needed me. But the…

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Interview with Udaya Gammanpila, Legal Advisor, JHU

I interviewed Udaya Gammanpila, the Legal Advisor to the Jathika Hala Urumaya (JHU) and erstwhile Chairman of the Central Environmental Authority (CEA). Udaya is now a candidate from the Colombo District for the Western Provincial Council elections to be held on 24th April 2009. I interviewed him in January, before he announced his candidature and just after the attacks on MTV and the assassination of Lasantha Wickremetunge. This was the second time I have interviewed Udaya for public television. I find him to be forthright in his political opinion and a person able and willing to conduct civil debates on highly contested issues such as the freedom of expression, the clampdown on dissent, human rights and terrorism. Even though we share extremely different worldviews, amongst many other politicians from various political parties I have interviewed it is particularly revealing that he comes across as convincing and principled to the ordinary voter. When asked about the deterioration of the freedom of…

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Three poems by Sivamohan Sumathy

[Editors note: These poems respond to Indran Amirthanayagam's poems here, here and here. They are both part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews.] 1 i am not a writer i am not a writer nor am i under siege, i do not frequent the commons, nor the poetic corner. 2 i, savage why do i write when i had promised myself aching silence after kethesh’s fall and maheswary’s stunted end? why talk suddenly of the siege now, when i have stood at death’s door, refused its dare and now can finally slumber, in a snow stirring fantasy surrounding turkey’s trouble with its torture chambers, lulled by the bewitching tones of orhan’s magic? why the artist and the writer and colombo’s array of poets, rushing to versify, riding on guilt ridden stirrings of the heart, of us and them? it’s a tale told by an idiot, and yet, signifying so much, a tale told a countless times, to still…

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Dancing In Sympathy (Mullaitivu)

Six boys from Hindu College will enter the scene from Stage Left, an equal number of girls from Muslim Ladies Stage Right. They will shake their bodies, slide and writhe, and be still to rid bones of chains and memories, and invite guests, us, to sway in harmony even if we’re away from jungles which give shelter, or ash-filled homes whose roofs are open to whistling bombs and winds that sweep left-overs clean. That Boxing Day the Tsunami swept residents out; now the Army marches in four years later to find an abandoned town, and in nearby woods yakshas howling in Tamil calling for food and water, medicine, safe passage south… while in the capital, as I imagine the performance must end, on a stage a boy and girl will embrace. January 27, 2009 Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here. For a response to these poems by award winning poet Sivamohan Sumathy,…

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Equal Treatment

Citizens of Killinochchi and Mullaitivu fled before our liberators arrived. They live for the moment in nearby jungle under a canopy punctured by shells. Some moved to a safe zone demarcated by liberators where they have fallen since to errant fire. Others ran into liberators’ arms and live now protected in large barb-wired camps. January 27, 2009 Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here. For a response to these poems by award winning poet Sivamohan Sumathy, please click here. Repost This Article

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Forgetting, Mullaitivu

The town is full of stray dogs, cows, ghosts, buildings pockmarked, unhinged, open to wind and rain. Soldiers patrol on foot. Trucks and tanks rumble through the center. Rebels took all the fittings to jungle cellars, and we wait eagerly to discover how the Supreme Leader makes his bed. Look at Europe today, Germany lost 500 kilometers on its eastern flank. How many young people know this history? We will disappear. The tsunami swept a lot away. Our failing memory compensates for the rest. January 27, 2009 Part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews. For more information, click here. For a response to these poems by award winning poet Sivamohan Sumathy, please click here. Repost This Article

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  • 20 Mar, 2009
  • 23 Comments
  • Religion and faith

The moderate Muslim: An endangered species?

There is an endangered species out there – strangely it is not an animal, or bird or plant but is in fact a human being – it is the moderate Muslim. Many hundreds of years ago, the moderate and modern Muslim was alive and well and vocal. It was they who engineered and flourished in the great Islamic empires of old. Education, Science, literature, astronomy, architecture, travel, mathematics and other spheres of knowledge blossomed and prospered under the moderate thinking Muslim. Today, the moderate Muslim has either died out or in danger of dying out. They are in fact under threat. And what is worse is that the threat comes from within their own community. What has replaced the moderate Muslim is a pernicious breed of human beings who would like to be called the only true guardians of the faith. This invasion of extremists, vocal in their righteousness target the moderate or modern Muslim as being un-Islamic and are…

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  • 19 Mar, 2009
  • 21 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Uncategorized

Imagine and innovate to honour Sir Arthur C Clarke!

Sir Arthur C Clarke on Hikkaduwa beach, photo by Rohan de Silva Sir Arthur Clarke’s first death anniversary falls on 19 March 2009 Sir Arthur’s 90th birthday reflections (effectively his public goodbye) is available online at:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qLdeEjdbWE&feature=channel_page During his illustrious career spanning over 60 years, Sir Arthur C Clarke received a large number of honours, awards and accolades from scientific, academic and literary bodies worldwide. At one time or another, he won all the top science fiction literary awards. He received honorary doctorates from universities in the east and west. In 1998, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his ‘services to literature’. In his adopted homeland of Sri Lanka, where he lived 52 of his 90 years, he received both the highest presidential honour for science (Vidya Jyothi, 1986) and the highest civilian honour (Lankabhimanya, 2005). The current government marked his 90th birthday with a presidential ceremony graced by visiting astronauts and dignitaries from several space-faring nations. At the time of…

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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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