Archive for March, 2012

Fishing in Turbulent Waters

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Introduction Newly initiated development projects in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in post-war Sri Lanka are expected to open new avenues towards ethnic reconciliation, as proclaimed not only by government media but also by the mainstream development scholarship. However, this popular perception about opening up new avenues for reconciliation through development seems to foreclose certain barriers and obstructions existing within the so called development highway itself, especially with regard to ethnic minorities. To understand the possible political and other forms of repercussion of the currently existing development-community encounter, one should turn one’s ears not only to the subject-agents of the development discourse but also to those who are subjected to the development industry, considering the fact that the subalterns also are involved in creating meanings (or counter-articulate the dominant discourse, as Laclauian discourse analysts would suggest) in their own way. This piece explores the ways in which the local communities in the Northern fishing villages receive the messages enunciated by…

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In conversation with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu: The resolution in Geneva and its discontents

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Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu is the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, the institutional anchor of Groundviews. He is today one of three human rights defenders senior government ministers consider traitors and would like to, as in ancient times, kill, and, inter alia, break the limbs of. Though Sri Lanka’s foreign minister distanced himself from these remarks, the President and his brother, the all-powerful Secretary of Defence, have not expressed a single word of condemnation, or distanced themselves from the minister’s comments, who has openly and repeatedly said he derives his legitimacy from the Rajapaksa’s. Much of this hate and harm directed against Dr. Saravanamuttu and other key human rights defenders of late has been on account of their participation at the recently concluded 19th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, and in particular, supporting a US sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka. There hasn’t been much informed debate and discussion within Sri Lanka on the contents and genesis…

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  • 26 Mar, 2012
  • 35 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Economy,
    Peace and Conflict

After the fuel hikes and slide of rupee: State of Sri Lanka’s economy and future prospects

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Dr. Neavis Morais is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Open University of Sri Lanka, and in this interview looks at the state of Sri Lanka’s economy. As couple of days ago the Economist Intelligence Unit noted that, tweet Around the same time, Sri Lanka’s Central Bank said it cut this 2012′s economic growth target to 7.2 percent, down from 8 percent. There’s a big difference between the Central Bank’s and the EIU’s growth projection. The interview begins with Dr. Morais looking at this significant discrepancy, and why it exists. He notes that whatever the Central Bank says, it is highly doubtful Sri Lanka will achieve anything close to 7% GDP growth, and flags the failure of macro-economic reforms targeting economic growth as a central factor. Dr. Morais also speaks about the Revival of Underperforming Enterprises and Under Utilised Assets Act, which was rushed through Parliament as an urgent Bill last year and notes that it sends the wrong…

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The Geneva II debacle

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Photo courtesy Vikalpa, from protest against US resolution in Colombo, 27 February 2012 The US-sponsored resolution at the UNHRC had to be defeated. It was not. 24 in favour, 15 against, 8 abstained. Hearts are broken, glasses are shattered, the ‘gods’ have ignored our prayers, there is madness surrounding us; 2012, we are now sure, is when the world comes to an end. But that was yesterday. Today, the morning after, is once again cold; we need to pick up the pieces, mend our hearts, move on. And there are questions too: what is this resolution? How did we perform? Is it all India’s fault? Where did we go wrong? Are we to be blamed? What now? Resolution L.2: From US, with love The resolution titled ‘Promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka’ has, during the process of the UNHRC session, undergone considerable change. From being an intrusive and arrogant one sponsored by the US, it now appears rather soft,…

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Defending the Country

They cry foul in that cauldron of a news room, saying these human rights defenders are traitors, publishing their names and photographs, inciting fears of death squads preparing to drive white vans to their residences. The warning by the UN Human Rights Commissioner to protect witnesses is welcome, quixotic. How will her office stop disappearances when government has rejected the resolution, said it will push back reconciliation, which I presume to mean more islanders vanished, bloodshed, people living in fear and loathing, keeping quiet or moving out, accompanied to the airport by diplomats from a friendly mission, leaving their homes to caretakers, a new life abroad for champions of human rights at home? And for those who stay, negotiating protections, waiting for a post- midnight call by an elite team of assassins, like the ones who shot prisoners at Nandikadal, stopping motorbikes in the intersection to beat Lasantha to death, dressed in black with black glasses, or as drivers of…

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Desertification and Biodiversity

Photo courtesy NASA The link between land degradation and desertification has been made abundantly clear in studies conducted in Africa and Australia. A loss of natural vegetation, a loss in soil organic matter and a loss of soil stability contribute greatly to the process.  These processes are often interlinked.  Vegetation encourages soil stability by providing cover, the binding action of roots, providing root exudates and by the contribution of its biomass to the soil.  A loss of vegetation results in a corresponding loss of soil organic matter and stability. Soil organic matter and soil stability are often linked.  A soil that becomes depauperate in its content of organic matter looses the glue that holds soil particles together and becomes easily erodible.  The more a soil erodes the more difficult it becomes for the soil microorganisms to glue the particles together.  The process is analogous to a spider’s web in the wind.  A whole web can withstand the pressure.  If one…

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Geneva 2012: The signs missed, lessons unlearnt

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Photo courtesy JDS Let’s learn the right lessons from the Geneva outcome, not the wrong ones. It is not the case that a small country such as Sri Lanka cannot fight a diplomatic battle with the mighty USA and win.  Minutes after the Sri Lanka vote at the HRC this time, the Cubans moved a resolution on the composition of the staff of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the opacity (code-named independence) of which the West regards as a holy of holies. The USA opposed the resolution. The Cuban resolution won with a massive 33 votes. Last year the USA invested far more effort and political capital at a far higher political level than in the case of the Sri Lanka resolution in Geneva, to prevent Palestine from being granted full membership of the UNESCO in Paris. The US lost that battle, and besieged Palestine, an embryonic or proto-state (unlike Sri Lanka) won a two…

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changeABLE cohesion: Dance and disability

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Groundviews caught up with Gustavo Fijalkow, one of two (the other being Gerda König) responsible for the concept behind ‘changeABLE cohesion‘, a contemporary dance performance that will kick off the Colombo International Theater Festival on 26th March. changeABLE cohesion features six dancers, two women and four men, three with and three without physical disabilities. In the interview, we ask Gustavo as to why the Theatre Festival decided to go with a production such as this for opening night, and obviously, details of the production and what the audience could expect to see and take away. More broadly, and interestingly, we speak on disability and the differently abled in performance – how their interaction is framed by the performance space and tradition, but also redefines both. Gustavo, a trained dancer for over 20 years, speaks of his frustration with traditional dance companies and their auditions process, and how markedly different DIN A 13 tanzcompany, one of the few mixed-abled dance companies…

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WHOSE MOVE IS IT ANYWAY?

Image from www.dbsjeyaraj.com. Photo by Jean-Marc Ferré

  The passage of the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution on Sri Lanka raises a fundamental question: what next? When the dust settles and tempers calm, all parties concerned will be faced with the actuality that things have changed quite dramatically. This piece attempts to identify the challenges and opportunities presented by the passage of the Resolution to a number of political entities or individuals. Sri Lankan government The Sri Lankan government now faces an awkward situation. Having lost more than one half of the entire membership of the Council including almost all of Latin America, and given the exhortations from even sympathetic members that it should implement the recommendations of the LLRC, the options at the Rajapaksas’ disposal have narrowed. What is clear is that twelve more months of slow or no progress on key issues of demilitarization, devolution, disarming paramilitaries, democracy and accountability will only isolate Sri Lanka further, and augment the likelihood of an international investigation…

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After the UNHRC Resolution Vote: Don’t Hold Your Breath for Truth, Justice or Reconciliation

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Photo courtesy JDS/Guy Calaf, Agence France-Presse​ By the time this article is published, the votes on the hotly-contested UN Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka will have been cast and counted.  I am writing this as the debate over the resolutions is taking place in Geneva, and I find myself wondering if the outcome will be meaningful for the lives of hundreds of thousands of victims of our 30 year war.  Don’t get me wrong – I recognise the significance of the UNHRC resolution in terms of its moral and political symbolism, and that it may have profound implications for the Sri Lankan state’s position within the field of geopolitics and international relations.  I know that it will very likely impact the course of Sri Lanka’s national politics – even if I can’t anticipate the precise consequences.  Whilst I’d like to hope that the outcome of the UNHRC vote could lead to the harm and hurts of decades of…

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Counter-productive propaganda and human rights in Sri Lanka

JOINT STATEMENT - Sunila Abeysekara, Nimalka Fernando and Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu

As the three Sri Lankan human rights defenders who have come most under attack by the state media in Sri Lanka in the past week, because of our active involvement with the on-going session of the UN Human rights Council in Geneva, we feel compelled to issue this statement of clarification. We do not deny that we are critical of the conduct of the government of Sri Lanka, and the institutions and agencies under its control, whenever disregard for the human rights obligations imposed on the government by virtue of its being signatory to almost all international human rights conventions comes to our attention. As the President of Sri Lanka, and his Special Envoy on Human Rights well know, the three of us have offered our services to this government to ensure human rights accountability in the past. For example, all of us served on the National Advisory Council appointed by Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, when he held the portfolio for…

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Off the Field

In the end we have only ourselves to pick up from the grass, the bed, the gymnasium floor. The dead will have their say in dreams, and fond ones too, how the boy used to laugh when chasing the ball on Duplication Road, or the girl back in the village, shyly accept the glance of her neighbor’s son, by the well, over a garden wall, the victims, the left behind after the tsunami or the shelling without end, abroad, processed, rebuilding their lives in the company of Australians or Canadians, new people, while the distant war on its nightly visit to parents, single or a pair, does not curse the kid born away, who loves the latest fad on satellite radio and the girl in his class who sports an infectious laugh. Repost This Article

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Trilingual bus signboards

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“The private transport services ministry has made it compulsory for all buses to display name boards in Sinhala, Tamil and English languages.” (Sunday Times Online 15/03/12) The 135 bus runs past my house on its way from Kohuwala to Kelaniya. There’s one particular bus which I see regularly with a trilingual nameboard (see photo): in English it says “Kelaniya-Kohuwala”; in Sinhala it says “Kelaniya-Kohuwala”; in Tamil it says “Muhaduhasooailu-Mudeelaruruhaduha”. This appears to be a random collection of Tamil letters, typed on a keyboard with the caps lock key on. Did no one else notice? We’re used to seeing English signboards with spelling mistakes, but the 135 bus sign seems to take the art of the typo to a new level. Another bus on the same route appears to say “Thalana-Karahawanala”, but in such small print that it is barely legible. I have counted 4 different Tamil versions of Kohuwala, none of which are actually correct. The closest, displayed by most…

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Choosing What to Believe

Photo courtesy Reuters/Dinuka Liyanawatte

Photo courtesy of Reuters/Dinuka Liyanawatte [Editors' note: The article below was sent to us by a regular contributor to the site whose name we have redacted due to security considerations.] With the airing of Channel 4’s new film, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished, a follow-up to their first one Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields first broadcast nearly a year ago, there is bound to be a renewed interest in the matter of alleged war-crimes concerning the Sri Lankan Government. Because, let’s face it: Channel 4’s first video came and went, and while there were about two weeks of discussion around it, mostly everyone eventually forgot about it. Now, with the emergence of the new film and its alarming new footage, released in time with the Human Rights Council meetings in Geneva, we are forced to remember what we forgot then: That it is undeniable that Tamil civilians were maimed and killed during the last stages of the war, despite…

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A question Sri Lanka’s leaders keep dodging: Where are the disappeared?

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Photo courtesy Avaaz I’d been in Sri Lanka just three weeks when I first heard of someone disappearing. It was May 2009 and I got an anonymous email telling me that Stephen Sunthararaj, a human rights worker from northern Sri Lanka, had been abducted at gunpoint and taken away in a white van in the heart of Colombo. He had previously been detained by the police – on suspicion of what, it is not clear – then released for lack of incriminating evidence just before his abduction. I tried to contact one or two ministers, I think, but didn’t get through and my work once more turned to the war then still raging in the north. I bitterly regretted not following up the case. Months later I met a Westerner who had known Stephen Sunthararaj. At the mention of him at dinner, he wept. Fast forward to this year. Five weeks ago Ramasamy Prabagaran, a businessman and, like Stephen, a…

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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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