Archive for March, 2010

Seeing it comin’: Reforming the Sri Lankan State

“You never see it comin’ till it’s gone” – ‘Falling & Flyin’, Jeff Bridges in ‘Crazy Heart’ Seeing it comin’: Will the Tamils silently celebrate and the Sinhalese secretly curse the day that Prabhakaran died? With his secessionist fundamentalism and ghastly terrorism, he was the biggest obstacle to achievable autonomy for Tamils and the best excuse for the Sinhala establishment’s tardiness in devolving power to the Tamil speaking periphery. Now the North is no longer hostage to secessionism and the South is bereft of a human shield against democratic demands for devolution. There was an old Cold War joke about the thief who broke into the Kremlin and stole, among other things, the complete results of the next election. Well, one of the most important results of Sri Lanka’s upcoming parliamentary election is already in or rather, is predictable: the predominance of the TNA in the Tamil majority areas of the North and East and the resultant political polarization between…

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  • 9 Mar, 2010
  • 3 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Environment

Death of a Green Activist: Tribute to Piyal Parakrama (1960 – 2010)

L to R - Nalaka Gunawardene, Mark Harvey (Internews) & Piyal Parakrama in Nepal, Oct 1996

Piyal Parakrama on Sri Lanka 2048 TV show Piyal Parakrama’s smile was regular and genuine, but it could be also be a bit misleading. Those who engaged him found that there was a keen mind, passionate heart and a sharp (yet always courteous) tongue behind that disarming smile. Opponents dismissed him lightly at their peril. In public and media debates, Piyal could float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. That flutter and buzz are now abruptly silenced with his sudden death on March 3 at age 49. Another public spirited player has left the stage all too soon. Piyal combined the roles of environmentalist, educator, researcher and media personality. He wasn’t part of the Colombo elite dabbling in a bit of green activism (mostly concerning wildlife or garbage) in their spare time. Instead, he straddled the parallel worlds of grassroots reality and the often ephemeral preoccupations of Colombo. Not many knew him in formal capacities as the Executive…

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The Slide in Sri Lanka

The 24th of February marked the first month anniversary of the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda, the Lanka E-News journalist. Two special Police teams are said to be on the case.  They have however, not come up with any information as to Ekneligoda’s whereabouts. Ekneligoda’s disappearance is yet another statistic of shame in the long list of disappearances, abductions and extra-judicial killings that have targeted the media in particular over the last four years.  His disappearance, it should be noted, took place in the course of a presidential election campaign the first post –war island-wide electoral contest in this country for two decades.  The war – the one that it between the GOSL and the LTTE is over and cannot be cited as it has been in the past and continues to be cited, shamelessly and unthinkingly by some as an alibi, justification or explanation for human rights violations.  There appears to be another war, a persisting, menacing violence that perpetuates…

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Interview with Arvind Kejriwal: No democracy without right to information

Arvind Kejriwal is one of India’s foremost champions of the Right to Information. Awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership in 2006, Arvind has won a number of awards for his pioneering work in India. As noted on the Ashoka Foundation site, Arvind uses a 2001 law called the Right to Information Act (RTIA) to bring political power back to the people of India. The law began in Delhi, and has since spread to eight other states, opening opportunities for citizens to hold their governments accountable to high standards of transparency and integrity. Through his organization Parivartan, Arvind raises awareness of the Act and trains citizen groups to use the law to check corruption. He leverages a growing volume of success stories to demonstrate that direct engagement in local government can make a real difference in people’s lives. It is this last point, of story-telling, that comes out clearly in this interview. Arvind does not rely on hard statistics or…

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  • 7 Mar, 2010
  • 7 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Media and Communications

Interview with Manik de Silva, Editor of the Sunday Island

Manik de Silva is the most senior and longest-serving Editor of an English newspaper in Sri Lanka. Presently the Editor of the Sunday Island, Manik was also a former Editor of the Daily News. In July 2009, he was elected as the President of the Editors Guild. I interviewed him in July 2009, just around two months after the end of war. Our conversation touched on aspects of Manik’s life and how he took to journalism, how the media industry and practice of journalism have undergone dramatic change in recent years, the freedom of expression and threats to independent media.

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The Return of Sarath Fonseka: An Enduring Headache?

Sarath Fonseka | Original from Indian Express

The sudden and allegedly suspicious death of former General Secretary of the UNP and Minister of Transport, Highways and Civil Aviation, Gamini Athukorala (in 2002) seemed to have marked the end of a critical phase in Ranil Wickremasinghe’s political career; a phase which spanned from the early 1990s to 2002. During this phase, Ranil saw most of the charismatic and senior colleagues in the UNP being assassinated [President Premadasa, Lalith Athulathmudali (then in the DUNF), Gamini Dissanayaka et al], or pass away (Gamini Athukorala). The deaths of these leaders, almost effortlessly and unwittingly made Ranil the undisputed Leader of the UNP, as well as of the Opposition, and more importantly, made him remain there without much trouble. The next critical phase began thereafter, and continues to date. But this is not one in which Ranil sees his political challengers passing away. It is one in which such challengers are being either arrested, detained or imprisoned. One significant landmark in this…

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Rebuilding Sri Lanka

A perceptive and sensitive Sri Lankan has noted; “It is reported that the people of the North, especially in the Jaffna district, have developed a feeling of dissatisfaction, disaffection and contempt towards the people of the South, who post the end of the war are now engaging in pilgrimage and sightseeing related visits to the North in large numbers, and in the process totally disregarding the need for privacy, encroaching on meagre infrastructure resources and services of the district, causing significant negative impact on the environment/cleanliness and pollution in the area, and behaving in a manner unacceptable by the cultural and religious values of the Northerners. These negative feelings are expressed in relation to the following issues highlighted in support of the claim; 1. Large and unrestricted numbers of pilgrims are traveling from the South to the Jaffna District especially to visit Naghadhipa, Nallur Kovil, Madhu Church and other places of religious worship and there are no adequate infrastructure facilities…

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Interview with Prof. Kumar David

Prof. Kumar David, an electrical engineer by training, regular columnist in traditional print media and a frequent commentator on Groundviews, talks about what’s left of leftist politics in Sri Lanka, the end of war and its impact on Tamil diaspora juxtaposed against th autocratic and essentially one-party rule in Sri Lanka. I also asked him about the growing web and Internet censorship, which in a recent column he had referred to as a disturbing retrogression into a Lanka Internet Dark Age (LIDA).

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Citizen’s Commission: Expulsion of the Northern Muslims by the LTTE in October 1990

Sri Lanka has been increasingly the scene of much ethnic violence. The Northern Muslims are the victims of the earliest large scale act of ethnic cleansing in our history. Close to 80,000 persons, constituting the entire Muslim population of the five Northern Districts of Jaffna, Mannar, Vavuniya, Mullaithivu and Kilinochchi were summarily expelled from the province by the LTTE on one fateful day in October 1990 at a few hours notice. The details of the constraints imposed on the victims varied from location to location depending on the degree of brutality of the local LTTE leadership, but nowhere were those evicted able to sell, transfer or otherwise secure or dispose of their property or to take with them cash or other moveable possessions. The operation was carried out so quickly and with such ruthless efficiency that there was little or no resistance. The state failed to intervene. Sadly, the protests of the national leadership, Tamil and non-Tamil, and of the…

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THE DEEPEST DIVISION IN SRI LANKA

I have always argued that the deepest division in Sri Lanka is not the so-called ethnic divide but the split between supporters of democracy and supporters of totalitarianism, and the presidential elections proved this point. Bitter arguments within the Sinhalese community generated by the candidacy of Sarath Fonseka completely demolished the manufactured image of a community united behind Mahinda Rajapaksa which had been projected immediately after the end of the war. There was understandable relief among Sinhalese that there would be no more bomb blasts in buses, trains, shops and markets, no more young men being sent to the front to die in their thousands or come back disabled. But this did not necessarily translate into universal approval for Rajapaksa. Gratitude to Rajapaksa for winning the war was indeed the main reason why Sinhalese voted for him. There were also negative perceptions of Fonseka. His opponent was a seasoned politician, Fonseka a novice, and he lacked the charisma that might…

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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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