Archive for April, 2009

Four things done, Four things undone: The self-immolation of the LTTE Part 2

A Brief Preface Some of my friends were worried that through the previous articles I may have inadvertently ‘’caught the tiger by the (ir) tail’. They have requested me to take care physically (I don’t from whom?). This is besides the 270+ emails flooded into my inbox, and the indicator of 1800+ (if it is true) readers of the article within three days even with some embarrassing evidence of my repeated indiscipline in proof reading. (My apologies)                                The death of democracy in SL is so deep that it shivers even to present with a mere journalistic commentary on the question of present and future of peace and justice in a land once called paradise, now poisoned(?) Before I try to chart the four things ‘Undone’, let me make a confession if I am entitled to. My writing is not in any absolute or abstract sense, even in its wildest (mis)interpretation is to support…

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Thank you, Maori Party in New Zealand

Hon.Te Ururoa Flavell Hon. Hone Harawira Hon.Te Ururoa Flavell Māori Party Whip Hon. Hone Harawira Foreign affairs spokesman, Maori Party This is written in appreciation of The Maori Party’s decision to block the motion expressing concern about the Sri Lankan “humanitarian situation”; that is, the fighting against LTTE terrorists by the Government forces of Sri Lanka. The reason given by the Maori leaders is very valid: “Because it gives equal weight to the Sri Lankan Government and the Tigers”. The New Zealand Herald on Wednesday 29 April 2009 reported that: “The Maori Party has been attacked as ‘disgusting’ for blocking a parliamentary motion yesterday… in the name of Progressive [Party] leader Jim Anderton.” It is also reported that “Labour associate foreign affairs spokesman Grant Robertson said he was disappointed that the Maori Party blocked the motion.” The motion read: That this House, notes its deep concern at the dire humanitarian situation in Northern Sri Lanka and calls upon both the…

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Get your humanitarian paws off my country

It is heartening that the Tamil Tigers have retained a sense of humor under extreme pressure. It is a lesson to us all. The Tigers have declared a unilateral ceasefire and promised not to engage in any offensive military operations. The joke is in two parts. Firstly, they are in no shape to engage in any offensive military operations. In the second place these clowns have pulled this on us and the IPKF on more occasions than I can recall. The first ceasefire in 1985 saw the Tigers under Kittu ringing Sri Lankan army camps in Jaffna with landmines. The IPKF’s stop-go campaign — its rhythm and inconstancy influenced by Tamil Nadu and electoral considerations — enabled Prabhakaran to survive, escape and turn the tables on them, culminating in the suicide bomb murder of Rajiv Gandhi on Tamil Nadu soil in 1991. Let’s be crystal clear on this. The only deal that must be on the table is “hands up…

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  • 27 Apr, 2009
  • 13 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Satire

‘Barefoot Nation’ to revive an ancient tradition?

27 April 2009, Colombo, Sri Lanka: The government is considering a proposal to usher in a new ‘barefoot revolution’ in Sri Lanka as part of its philosophy to revive ancient Sinhala traditions. This will see the systematic phasing out of footwear use in all government offices, and other places where politicians and officials are present. The practice will be first introduced in Parliament, as well as offices of the President and Prime Minister, and later extended to cover all government offices. “Wearing shoes and slippers is a recent habit introduced to our people by western colonialists,” says Emeritus Professor Amaradasa Gunasekera, originator of the idea. “The ancient Sinhalese knew that we living in a tropical country do not need to cover our feet. In our current quest to revitalise indigenous knowledge and traditional Sinhala Buddhist culture, we want to restore this excellent practice.” Professor Gunasekera, who is Presidential Advisor (No 223) for reviving ancient traditions, has drafted a policy paper…

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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke, 1795 As I sit on the steps leading down to the garden from the verandah, its night in Pelawatte. Darkness in the tropics descends fast and lies very like a thick blanket. The heat and humidity making it feel more so. The night is still and black.  Intermittent houses and lack of streetlights add to the feeling of absolute darkness. The house lights are low to extenuate the earthy feeling from the dark yellow coloured cement floor, the terracotta tiles on the verandah, antique furniture all add to the stillness of the night. Behind me I hear the murmur of the people at the party. Green sleeves plays softly on the old Pioneer stereo with 60HPM speakers I owned since childhood. I am bored but politeness is a must with the eclectic mix of people at the party. All from United…

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The ‘post-LTTE’ misnomer

[Note from author: I had a piece in the web-magazine Lines that attracted an extremely detailed response from someone who called him/herself John the Baptist. The comments were embedded within the text of my article. I am sending the article with the comments embedded just as it was in red because I think it will interest Groundviews readers and trigger of much more discussion.] The term ‘post-LTTE’ is a misnomer; there will be no post-LTTE period in a political sense. There will certainly be a ‘post-LTTE as a conventional army’ phase, and there will be a ‘post-Prabaharan’ phase if the government succeeds in catching and killing him as it intends to. I can also discern a ‘post-hope’ or disheartened and subdued stage in Tamil nationalism, within the Island, which could last maybe months or over a year. It is not uncommon to see middle class Tamils slink around, cowed down, head bowed. People with deep LTTE paranoia, have pointed out…

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Have NGOs failed in peacebuilding? An interview with Jehan Perera

I recently interviewed Dr. Jehan Perera, Executive Director of the National Peace Council. Jehan is also a columnist for the Daily Mirror and the Lanka Monthly Digest in Colombo. He holds a Doctor of Law degree from Harvard Law School and a BA in economics from Harvard College. Based on his significant experience as a civil society activist, I asked Jehan whether NGOs in particular had fostered any appreciable difference in the quality of governance in Sri Lanka. Jehan stated that after a quarter century of working in civil society, he was acutely aware how little impact it had in shaping the political agenda in Sri Lanka and could in no way compare with the power and reach of a politician or political party. Jehan noted that the fundamental issue was for Sri Lanka’s continued strife was the confusion of majority rule with democracy. Agreeing that while the LTTE is close to defeat militarily, he also stressed the need to…

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Four things done, Four things undone: The self-immolation of the LTTE

It is clear, even amongst the most liberal of the western political academic circles that the end of the LTTE is now inevitable. Backed by the widow state of Sonia Gandhi and designed by the US counter terror agencies for the GOSL, the SLA under the command of the wondered and vengeful solder of Mj. Gen. Sarath Fonseka and the non-elitist Rajapakese brothers, have now achieved what all the SL governments for the last 30 years dreamed doing. An annihilating of the LTTE at any (human) cost. Has ambassador Jayathilake echoes, one question that observers of SL politics and conflict studies in general are busy finding answers is how did the fall of the ‘invincible’ LTTE happen so quickly so dramatically? As a concerned observer of the political war theatre in SL but who does not claim to have any superior affiliation or insights to any side, (that is from the GOSL or of LTTE). I attempt to map four…

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Ape Lankawe: The Great NGO Pantomime!

For anyone concerned with the plight of innocent civilians, the reports from the North are depressing. The latest ‘avalanche (!?) is yet to be fully screened, searched, scrubbed and bleached for any LTTE connections and corralled into what the Government calls ‘welfare centers’. As to what awaits these men, women and children, thereafter and for how long is not clear at this point in time. But every one agrees that it is going to be a tough and miserable time for them. As usual, despite knowing that there is going to be a large number of people displaced, in fact demanding such a displacement for a long time, the Government is woefully and recklessly underprepared to receive and take care of its most vulnerable citizens. And as usual, a bulk of the emergency responsibility by default will fall on the assortment of humanitarian agencies including the UN, ICRC and the NGOs – who are only slightly better prepared than the…

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Let this be the moment that defines us

For over three decades, we have bombed and shot each other, split our tears and shed them only for ‘our own’, split our joys and celebrated as ‘their’ mothers, wives and children cried. This war will not end when the last shot if fired. Let us not wait till the last shot is fired. Let us not wait for tomorrow… for the ‘war’ to ‘end’ to realise that we are but branches of the same family tree. Those who would have been our friends, and relatives if only we had not let murderous guns separate us, lie without shelter, unclothed, maimed, bloody and hopeless. They need us now. So even while those on many shores protest and shout slogans, let us unite in our own communities, and use the power already devolved to us – not by any constitution or law, but by our inalienable inheritance – to collect clothes, food and other essentials for our fellow countrymen and women…

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LTTE and Tamil People IV : Dedicated Tamils

In the previous essays within this cluster I have dwelt on the dedication to cause displayed by the Tamil Tigers and identified various inspirations or conditioning factors: namely, the Cankam poetry, the warrior tales from Indian history, the embodied practices of self-punishment exercised by religious devotees and the ‘everyday’ acts of surrogate sacrifice that are integral to Saivite Tamil life ways. It was noted that the LTTE leaders marshaled and deployed symbols associated with these practices in the course of their propaganda and indoctrination work. Such processes sacralized the project of Eelam, rendering it “holy.” But I surmise that in this work of propaganda the Tiger leaders made their choices as true believers. Their selections gained energy (a) from the context of threats posed by the government of Sri Lanka, (b) the subjective engagement of the leaders themselves in the practices (e. g. māvÄ«irar liturgies) they espoused; and (c) a self-belief in the virtue of their goals, a conviction that…

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The ethics and politics of war zone writing

On 24 April 2005 Dharmaratnam Sivaram, (‘Taraki’) editorial board member of the website Tamilnet, was found shot dead from gunshot wounds to the head several hours after four unidentified persons had abducted him from a restaurant opposite a Police station on Colombo’s Galle Road. His murder, which followed weeks of threats, is as yet “unsolved.” Four years after his death, it is instructive to revisit his politics and draw lessons from a life lived amidst violence.  Mark Whitaker’s Learning Politics from Sivaram: The Life and Death of a Revolutionary Tamil Journalist (Pluto Press, 2006) is an extended and moving act of mourning and meditation for Sivaram, and arguably the best and brightest of a generation of youth lost in Sri Lanka’s interminable post-colonial conflicts.  Here is a fine grained, powerful, reflection on war, violence, nationalism and their diminishing returns – not only in Sri Lanka. For those who start reading the book knowing the tragic end of its (anti) hero,…

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LTTE and People III : Nationalism and Living Religion

The emergence of the LTTE was an outgrowth from Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism. Tamil nationalism in its turn was an outgrowth from SL Tamil communitarianism in the centuries prior to 1949/50, the moment when an explicit theory of nationality was presented in a sustained manner (Roberts 1999). Note, however, that Tamil nationalism in the period 1949 to the 1970s was a “sectional nationalism” nestling within “Ceylonese nationalism” (Roberts 1979a, 1979b). Tamil nationalism turned secessionist in the 1970s for reasons that have been widely canvassed in the historical literature and which do not need reiteration here (Wilson 2000; Sabaratnam 2001; De Votta 2004; Wickramasinghe 2006: 171-99, 252-301; Roberts 2007). The LTTE was among those who advocated such a goal, working initially with loose affiliation to the TULF. In the late 1970s and early 1980s radical socialist vocabulary figured prominently in LTTE propaganda – to a degree that even captivated some Indian media outlets. But we now know that the LTTE was…

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LTTE and Tamil People II : Interflows

During the halcyon years of the LTTE, besides MāvÄ«rar Nāl on 27 November, the Tigers conducted nine other māvÄ«rar or tiyaki ceremonies every year. These were, on the one hand, subjectively meaningful engagements and, on the other, political propaganda. I have argued that the māvÄ«rar rites — within the context of past grievances and memories, as well as the sufferings of war — contributed substantially to the support for the LTTE project among SL Tamil peoples residing in the territories under their authoritarian sway (Roberts, “Suicidal,” 2009 c, d). The māvÄ«rar ceremonies included the deployment of pictorial imagery, whether as backdrop scenes, pandals, billboards or sculpture. The Tamil cultural heritage has been nourished for centuries by the colourful (sometimes florid) artistic expressions produced by specialists, known in English-Tamil as scenekāra, usually drawn from pupillary lines of kalaignan or siththirakkalagnan. The scenekāra usually painted the backdrop scenes for the lively dances and folk theatre known as kÅ«ttu (kuththu) that was a…

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A Common Programme for a United Left Front in Sri Lanka

[I wrote this article in response to an "internet-project" initiated by the Sri Lankan journalist, Kusal Perera] Vasantha Raja 20 April 2009 In countries like Sri Lanka, capitalism did not organically evolve from feudalism. In contrast, European capitalism grew within the womb of feudal society systematically challenging all aspects of feudal consciousness and institutions. Sri Lankan capitalism, on the contrary, was arbitrarily imposed by colonialists on a feudal society. Therefore, it is not surprising at all that its feudal past is still alive. The feudal consciousness continues to persist in various forms. The Sinhala politicians’ pathological failure to politically solve the Tamil Question is partly a result of that. Sri Lanka‘s capitalist economy and its state are invariably intertwined and dependent on the global capital serving rich countries interests. Sri Lanka’s capitalism has no future without direct help from global capitalism. Thus, the formation of a fully-fledged capitalist class with a commitment to democratic values fails to take roots; and the greed ‘for…

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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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