Archive for March, 2009

Belching smoke in Colombo

This sadly is not an unusual sight in Colombo. Despite well-known problems arising from industrial and vehicular emissions and the Central Environment Authority’s Vehicle Emission Testing Programme, we see a number of these wretched vehicles on the road. This bus belonged to (or was operating under) one of Sri Lanka’s best known travel agencies. Weathering financial woes, it may be the case that they cannot maintain their vehicles as best they can. But should they care about more than just their bottom line? Pulling up behind this bus and switching off my A/C because it was pulling in all the smoke, I rolled down my window and asked a cop at the junction as to why the Police didn’t pull the bus over for pollution. His answer was surprising – “Oka mahattoyo suddan geniyana bus ekak ne?” (“This is a bus carrying tourists!”) So I guess that makes it ok to pollute our environment. Repost This Article

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An alternative grid map of political opinion serving the best interests of Sri Lanka

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke has analyzed various possible political views on Sri Lanka and suggests a grid map of Sri Lankan political opinion. His intention is to evaluate these opinions and show which opinion is best in serving the interests of Sri Lanka today. He has pointed out eight different opinions but trickled them down to six groups (A-F), giving priorities to the factors such as protecting the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, devolution efforts and military/war mentality. All eight groups are indicated as A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H (not in his order) in the “Grid of Opinion…” illustrated below together with other possible couple of groups which I believe important. Taking into consideration the factors such as ‘the character and proven track record of the Tigers’, ‘the nature of the UNP leadership’ and ‘the character of the Lankan crisis, chiefly a crisis of armed secessionism’ he concludes that “the interests of the country are best served by the…

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Disappearances of Persons in Sri Lanka

The modus operandi of the widespread abductions and disappearances we witness in Sri Lanka today is similar to what we saw in the late 1980s and early 1990s. President Rajapakse, who was a Member of Parliament then, was in the forefront of the struggle against these incidents. Now his regime has become one of the world’s worst perpetrators of enforced disappearances. Members of the security forces, police and pro-government groups are alleged to be involved in these incidents. The government has demonstrated an utter lack of resolve to inquire and investigate into these incidents. It downplays the problem, denying the scale of the incidents and blaming unknown persons for them. It is being said that since the government is in the midst of a war, it did not want to demoralize the soldiers by investigating into incidents of this nature. Consequently these incidents continue with impunity often at, near or between security check points, or during curfew hours in the…

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  • 17 Mar, 2009
  • 9 Comments
  • Satire

TASTY CHOCOLATE AIDING TERRORISTS

17 March 2009, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Tasty Chocolate Manufacturers Pvt Limited is being investigated for assisting the LTTE’s aerial attack on Colombo on February 20 according to sources within the security forces. More than ten bars of chocolate were found in the LTTE plane shot down over Katunayake while investigations are being carried out on the wreckage of the second plane which crashed into the Inland Revenue Building to prove that Tasty Chocolate was being carried in both planes. “That both pilots had Tasty Chocolate shows that the Company is aiding and abetting terrorism” a reliable source from the security division told Banyan Newswire, noting that “We believe the Company provided the LTTE with chocolate as a high energy substitute for the tastier but severely depleted BP-100 rations from the UN.” Banyan News did try to contact the Tasty Company but their number was engaged so we did not pursue this further as it is a pro-terrorist entity and we…

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Responding to criticism on human rights: A case of ante-natal stress disorder?

My critique of the Ministry of Human Right’s report on its preparations on a future National Human Rights Action Plan (NHRAP) has drawn the kind of contumacious response from one ‘Trigger Happy’ (hereinafter ‘Trigger’), which in Sheridan’s England may have resulted in a dual at Putney. That may not be perhaps the wisest thing to do with someone calling himself trigger happy, and indeed, is no insurance against his retention of the recently advertised ‘White Van Pest Control’ service, but some aspects of his overeager and substantively superficial intervention require rebuttal.

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Impervious and Insular members of Tamil Diaspora: M.I.A. and the Bogey of Genocide in Sri Lanka

I listened to the interview of Tavis Smiley of the Public Service Broadcasting (PBS) with Mathangi (aka Maya) Arudpragasam; a hip-hop artist (stage name M.I.A.  – Missing in Action) who has been nominated for Grammy and Oscar awards for 2009 (this interview was telecast on January 28, 2009 but I listened to it only in mid-February). Maya was born in Sri Lanka, so she claims, (though I cannot confirm this fact but give her the benefit of doubt) but lived most part of her life first in India and then in the UK and currently a British citizen, to the best of my knowledge. It is imperative to know the background of M.I.A. in order to comprehend the motivation behind the views expressed by her during the foregoing television interview. Maya’s father, A.R. Arudpragasam (aka Arular), is a pseudo-Marxist and was a founder member of the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), which was founded in the early-1970s in the…

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The verdict sans representation

The Jury’s verdict comes in. “Guilty” is the call of the day. And next you proceed to execute the sentence. So it is that in a country that hardly executes convicted criminals, we are executing after a trial where the accused was not represented. Let us look at what this court case is, which seems extra-ordinary. As accused, we have “combatants” of a pro-scribed organization. Well the verdict is clear-cut right? “Guilty” we shout in unison, but wait… let us now listen to the defense Counsel, yes the lawyer who has not turned up for the trial thus far. The proceedings discover the following background story to the climate in which the Accused has been in. The organization which is named the LTTE has a long history of forced recruitment. With a well known record of extreme use of violence, they are also notorious for recruiting children as combatants. In areas which were un-fortunately under their control, it is well…

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Opportunity to make terrorism history

“The war will not end through war, through collective suicide or through international intervention. This is why a sober and humanist approach is necessary to be evolved from within Sri Lankan society at this very juncture if a solution is to be found sooner rather than later for a shared future in our shared island.” Jehan Perera- Daily Mirror 10-3-2009 The sober and humanist approach is orchestrated in Sri Lanka according to the spokesperson’s preference. This is why we hear most politicians, bureaucrats, donors etc state that the intended path would focus on physical infratsruture development (e.g. roads, rail lines, harbors etc). This I believe is erroneous because the effects of a conflict have several other facets to be addressed to carve a sober and humanist approach. For example, I quote the orphaned Tamil children’s hate on the ‘South initiated war’, and the hate of uneducated, vocationally untrained, conscripted cadres of whom some are suicide cadres in the north and…

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Dial a White Van for a pest-free life!

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WINNING LOCALLY, WINNING GLOBALLY

“The political moment is always connected with changes to borders” – Jacques Ranciere (2006) The Sinhalese and Tamils are in a Mexican standoff. Locally, the Sri Lankan armed forces have surrounded the Tigers who have embedded themselves among the civilians (some of whom are the Tigers’ extended families and trained “Makkal Padai” militia, as well as those who chose to follow the Tigers as they evacuated Jaffna in 1995, all constituting the LTTE’s social support base or the Tiger tribe). Meanwhile, globally, from the US Senate to the UN Security Council, from Ottawa to London, from Brussels to Pretoria, from Delhi to Dili, Sri Lanka is under pressure and scrutiny as never before. Are we being encircled globally just as we have encircled the Tigers locally?  The Sinhalese are the majority on the island and the Tamils the minority, but the Tamils are the majority off the island and the Sinhalese are the minority. These realities of demography reinforce each…

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14 years ago: Memories of the Big Match

14 years ago there was cricket, but no SMS. The challenge then was to communicate a ball-by-ball account of Royal’s tawdry batting and its inevitable and ignominious defeat to an enthusiastic Thomian old boy network outside the grounds and abroad on the days of the Big Match. Things were simpler then. A few of us had a bottle of Mendis Arrack stashed in a safe place, ensconced in more newspaper than was necessary (a broken bottle was to be avoided at all costs), and checked up on more frequently than consumed. We were College or House Prefects then, and drinking alcohol in public was to undermine an existing social, political and moral order. We were also young, our live(r)s fresh, our teenage libido priapic at the mere hint of any skin from girls, and for some, boys. Teachers in vain tried to give us oodles of homework, which was faithfully untouched. Their vexation sometimes faked, for they too revelled in…

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Unsolicited Advice

While the bureaucrat fulminates about the cost of hotel rooms in Geneva and the great burden placed on the Sri Lankan government to have to pay exorbitant rates, he may wish to report back to Colombo, that the most efficient way to avoid such soaring costs is to conduct a human rights policy that shows some affection for the starving, shot up, and terrified civilians— all 70,000 or 200,000 of them— caught at the moment in their ancestral lands in the Vanni, burrowing into bunkers, dying when they come out. Repost This Article

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An exclusive interview with Eastern Province Chief Minister Pillayan after the TMVP’s arms decommissioning

English transcript of an exclusive interview with the Eastern Province Chief Minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan (alias Pillayan) conducted by Vikalpa. Have all the powers in the 13th amendment been given to the Provincial Councils? It is not possible to say that. It should have been implemented fully as soon as it was enacted. Unfortunately, the North Eastern PC stopped functioning and the PCs in the other parts of the country didn’t care- this could be the reason why PCs did not work. The current govt has established the Eastern PC and is going to est the Northern PC. The govt needs to fully implement the 13th amendment and even go beyond it. It is only by doing this that the govt will be able to win the hearts and minds of the Tamil people. We are running the PC in the belief the govt will fully implement the 13th amendment. You asked for land and police powers which haven’t been bestowed…

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Unending End Game

The end game is not ending.  It is being drawn out with an ever increasing toll to the lives and suffering of the civilian population estimated by the UN and the international agencies to be 200,000 and by the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) at 70,000.  According to Sir John Holmes, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Relief Coordinator who recently visited Sri Lanka, in his statement to the UN Security Council on February 27, The number of casualties from the fighting, among whom we believe are many civilians, cannot be verified in the absence of independent sources, since humanitarian agencies and the media have no access to the area, but we believe dozens of people per day at least are being killed and many more wounded. (Emphasis added) In recent days the international community has repeated its calls for a pause in the hostilities to allow for the evacuation of civilians.  This requires the agreement of…

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Video footage from TMVP weapons decommisioning

Exclusive video footage taken by Vikalpa YouTube Channel team on the handing over of weapons by the TMVP in Batticaloa on 7th March 2009, including footage from the press conference. A related story on Vikalpa in Sinhala can be read here. Repost This Article

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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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