Archive for March, 2009

The farcical ‘National Action Plan for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights’ in Sri Lanka

Exactly a year ago today, a week before the Royal-Thomian, the journalist J.S. Tissainayagam went into the TID to enquire after his friends who had been taken in for questioning the previous day, and promptly walked into a monstrous nightmare that continues to date. After months of agonising uncertainty and delay, roughshod abuse of process by the TID and a deplorable judicial refusal to enforce procedural rights fundamental in a democracy by the Supreme Court, he was finally charged last year under that ghastly blot on our legal landscape, the PTA. Tissa thereby won the suspect distinction of becoming the first journalist to be prosecuted for PTA offences arising directly out of the practice of his profession. In proof that neither international opprobrium nor civil society outcry matters a jot in Sri Lanka these days, the year of Tissa’s incarceration we mark today, only saw even more egregious assaults on freedom and democracy. We have seen, among many other things,…

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It’s not cricket

“Ancient rulers of Sri Lanka built monuments established institutions to honour the philosophy of Buddhism. In turn this led to lesser folks following the principles advocated by Buddhism en masse.” Lankapuvath, National News Agency of Sri Lanka “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people… They can live in this country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue things.” Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, National Post, 23 September 2008 Every time a highly placed individual from the Rajapakse administration says something offensive – which sadly occurs quite frequently – I recall a photo of the President hugging, with great affection, his brother Gothabaya, who had just escaped an attempt on his life by the LTTE in Colombo. It’s an awkward photo in a sense – neither of them are posing, the President has this grin of relief…

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None Other Than Mahinda Rajapaksha!

Lasantha Wickrematunga faced his last moments at an unusual time at an unusual place. From the moment he left home the day he was murdered, he was aware that he was being tailed. He informed his friends of this fact on the phone. One friend had advised him to immediately go to a safe place. Lasantha’s reply was that ‘…at most, I will be killed.’ He had realised that if he had gone to a safe place, it would only be postponing his death for a few more days. He was an unarmed man driving his own car. There is no safety for the civil population of this country. If someone decides that another should be liquidated, it is a dead cert that it will happen any time. The moment I heard Lasantha was shot, I made my way to the Kalubowila hospital. On the road, I was reminded of the trip I took to the same hospital on a…

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  • 3 Mar, 2009
  • 15 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Religion and faith

Bad Buddhists, Good Buddhists and True Buddhists

The purpose of this article is to discuss very briefly a few contemporary issues on preaching, interpretations and practices of the Lord Buddha’s teaching from an expatriate’s point of view. First of all I would like to insist that Buddha never preached Buddhism but expounded Dhamma. Discussing these issues is important due to three main reasons. Firstly, from a religious view point such a debate would arouse our own Buddhist cultural thinking, especially among the migrated young Sri Lankan community that will contribute to protect and sustain our value system. Secondly, in a theoretical sense, the points raised here might help to optimize our understanding on the Buddha’s teaching and therefore, could serve to clear certain misconceptions that act as road blocks for non-Buddhists to become Buddhists. Thirdly, from a philosophical point of view, such discussions could inspire interested persons to engage in for further reading, learning through investigations and to accumulate knowledge towards achieving wisdom and mindfulness to become…

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What we do now will be remembered

“In the day that we stood on the other side and did nothing for our brother’s distress, even we were part of the cause of the distress…  Do not speak proudly in the day of their distress… For the violence done to our brother, shame will cover us…  As we have done, it will be done to us…” The scene is reminiscent of a scene straight out of a movie. The scene is full of blood and gore. Except the zombies who are in the movies are not there and none of those who look like zombies are after you. This is the picture of what you will find in the hospitals where the civilians and soldiers from the war front are brought to. And those are not zombies; they are shocked, traumatized humans with missing limbs and some dying or dead. But here in Colombo, we refer to this as an inevitable consequence or war and close our eyes….

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Calling a spade a spade: Michael Roberts’ ‘moral relativism’

Dear Sanjana, I am responding to Michael Roberts’ two articles Dilemmas at wars end: Hard realities (article-A)  and  Dilemmas at wars end: Clarifications and counter offensive (article-B) published on Groundviews, and since about half of article-B was devoted to the counter offensive aimed at Lionel Bopage and me, I do hope you will give this response equal prominence. The counter offensive B was to thwart a presumed offensive from Bopage and me, and in so far as I was involved the ‘offensive’ (pun intended) was a very brief comment which I posted on Groundviews. In the comment I asserted that Roberts, on balance, had strayed beyond scholarship and placed himself at the service of chauvinism and behaved like an apologist for one of the protagonists (the state) in a race war. He seems to feel that instead of calling a spade a spade I christened it a bloody shovel; so be it, bloody shovel it was. Serving mammon Now here…

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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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