Archive for July, 2012

Ganesan Nimalaruban: A damning murder, funeral and silence

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Photo credit: Vikalpa It is very likely readers of Sinhala mainstream print media have no clue who Ganesan Nimalaruban was, or exactly how he died. A simple Google news or general web search suffices to highlight how poor even English mainstream media coverage has been over the controversy surrounding his death. Vikalpa was present at the funeral of Nimalaruban. They note that aside from a few provincial journalists (whose news reports don’t make it to the actual print editions on the best of days) there were no other seasoned journalists from any mainstream newspaper present. Recall that the courts didn’t want Nimalaruban’s body to be released to his parents, citing that, “his funeral arrangements could result in a violent situation in his home town of Vavuniya.” Before his body was released, in an open letter to the President, senior Tamil politicians and civil society activists noted, Your Excellency, we have been informed by the eye witnesses on the inhuman merciless…

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In conversation with M.A. Sumanthiran, TNA National List MP

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M.A.Sumanthiran, is a National List Member of Parliament from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). Groundviews has carried in the past the Minister’s submissions to Parliament against the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, for which he faced the most outrageous heckling and insults within the legislature itself, and from fellow MPs from Government. With this and other media reports in mind, we begin the conversation on the obvious question – whether he thought it was worth it, in hindsight, to become a Member of Parliament instead of just sticking to his law practice. He noted that while the heckling and verbal violence is something he expected, the irrelevant nature of most debates came as a surprise. We then talk about the elections for the Northern Province, promised by the President to be held in September 2013. The TNA dismissed government concerns about the election being conducted sooner. As noted in the media, TNA spokesman and Jaffna District MP Suresh Premachandran asked,…

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A quotidian response: Letter to President regarding religious extremism

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On 4th July 2012, along with printed and bound copies of the over 1,400 comments in Tamil, Sinhala and English generated by Not In Our Name (coming to over 300 pages), a letter was penned and delivered to the Presidential Secretariat, with copies to relevant Government Departments and the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu Chapter, Ven. Inamaluwe Sumangala Thero. Precisely three weeks later, on 25th July 2012, we received this intimation from the Presidential Secretariat that the letter was received. However, to date, there has not been any public statement of regret, an apology or unequivocal condemnation of the tragic violence in Dambulla by government, the President or the Mahanayaka of the Rangiri Dambulu Chapter, Ven. Inamaluwe Sumangala Thero. Into this damning silence and unwillingness to condemn even that which is so blatantly captured on video and other media, one can read a chilling message – this government will not just condone religious violence, it will protect leading monks and…

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The Writer Fighter

Have you become a lance corporal, wing commander, lieutenant, private, sergeant, major general? Or are you a writer transporting yourself into trenches to wield a saber against a vague menace, bespectacled, sitting at a computer, trying to finish his latest report on the war without witnesses that went wrong somehow because the witnesses and warriors snapped photos on cell phones and sent them to scribes composing on computers eternal odes to mere privates in trenches, launching projectiles from bazookas, following orders, not responsible for blood baths beyond gun sites, in no man’s land, no fire zones? Repost This Article

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Tamil Civil Society Memo to the TNA regarding the Eastern Provincial Council Elections

Sampanthan, leader of the political proxy of the Tamil Tigers, the Tamil National Alliance, addresses reporters during a media conference in Colombo

Editors note: Also read A Public Memo to Members of Parliament representing the Tamil National Alliance from the Tamil Civil Society, published in December 2011. Tamils have consistently made it clear that a unitary constitution and a provincial council system within the confines of a unitary constitution are incapable of fulfilling their political aspirations. In this regard it is notable that Tamil political parties with a Tamil Nationalist dispensation had chosen to boycott the two provincial council elections that took place in our homeland in the past (1989 and 2008). There can be no doubt that a Tamil political party with a Tamil Nationalist dispensation can never run a provincial council autonomously, something that even Tamil parties aligned with the Government could not achieve. The Chief Ministers who ran the provincial councils subsequent to the elections of 1989 and 2008 have confirmed that nothing substantive can be achieved through the provincial council system which is in the firm grip of the…

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Chandrika’s discourse

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Former president of Sri Lanka Chandrika Kumaratunga at business centre of Grand Palace Hotel in Srinagar. Kashmir. India. 2008. © Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World Former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga calls it “the first serious political interview I have given in six and a half years” referring to the interview she has given Sanjana Hattotuwa, editor of the website Groundviews. The least important segments of the interview deal with the SLFP.  Her remarks are revelatory though. She states that she “can’t be bothered fighting with Mahinda for power in a Bandaranaike party”, thus reasserting that the party is a family property in her view; her only problem being which family it belongs to. Her hardly covert tilt to Opposition candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe in late 2005 also belies her affirmation at the tail-end of the interview that she pretty much presented the candidacy to Mahinda Rajapaksa on a platter when only three of 59 members of the SLFP’s top decision-making body supported it….

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School closed early today

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Original photo from Ilankai Tamil Sangam School closed early today. Amma was looking very jumpy when she came to pick me up, but she wouldn’t tell me why. When we went to get Loku and Chuti, Chuti was nowhere to be seen. We walked all over school looking for him and finally found him running around with a chair in his hand looking to ‘hit someone’. Amma gave him a good scolding. Serves him right. On the way home we saw a group of aiyas dancing around an uncle whose hands were tied to the lamp-post. They were pouring bottles of talcum powder on him, and he was starting to look like a ghost. They were laughing. He was looking sad. I think he was the uncle who worked in the Pharmacy we sometimes bought our Multi-Sanastol from. Amma said it was better if we looked straight. Everyone was on the road today. Lots of Aiyas. Lots of police uncles…

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Jayasena and Rajakulendran: Heroes of a Lesser God

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Wars are terrible things. They kill people, destroy their property and livelihoods. They also destroy people’s souls. Horrendous atrocities are committed against the defenceless, often in the name of the highest ideals, and often by men – and nowadays also women – who have rarely shown deliberate cruelty towards their fellow human beings or even animals before they donned a uniform or took up a cause. War also turns the unarmed into passive monsters, regaling in the death and destruction of the enemy, gloating over body counts and encouraging their armed heroes to kill. But war also produces heroism, struggles against odds that seem so astounding that surmounting them seems humanly impossible. Soldiers sacrifice their lives to save their friends and civilians, survive despite horrific wounds and refuse to yield when everything seems lost. Such men and women rise to the status of national heroes, praised and worshipped by their people. The war in Sri Lanka also produced plenty of…

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Lance Corporal

I’m tired. It’s midnight. I’m propped up Against the mud Like a cannon gun, To fight The battles you Criticise From behind Your trenches Of ink. My blood. Your right. That’s not so hard To rationalise, When I’m out here And you’re safe in there. Your sovereignty Well intact. Our skies are not the same. Mine and yours. Mine is black. You’ve taken my stars Away. Away. To stud Your darkness With my light. I was like you When I signed my name. Just a father, A son, A lover. A friend. But today I am a coin in your Treasury of blood. Cold, worthless blood You so casually Spend. Repost This Article

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LLRC roadmap: An ‘action plan’ to suit the US, not us!

Sri Lanka's President Rajapaksa attends the Executive Session III at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth

Photo credit: Daily FT The government announced (26 July, 2012) it has drawn up a comprehensive “National Action Plan to Implement the Recommendations of the LLRC” and has released same to the public domain. This comes after the Geneva Resolution and the discussions the Rajapaksa government had thereafter with the US administration. Immediately after the Geneva Resolution was adopted in March 2012, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton extended an invitation to External Affairs Minister Peiris, for a discussion in Washington that was accepted by Minister Peiris. Summing up the meeting Minister Peiris had with Secretary Clinton, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told the media on Friday 18 May 2012, “The Sri Lankan Foreign Minister presented a very serious and comprehensive approach to the Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’s implementation”. Secretary Clinton was quoted saying, the (SL) presidential secretariat’s programme is an, “excellent mechanism for implementing the LLRC’s recommendations”. The Rajapaksa government nevertheless tried it’s best, to tell the Sinhala gallery that it…

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Interview with Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga: Governance and politics today, future plans and prospects

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On 25th July, Groundviews met with former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga in Colombo to get her views on Sri Lanka’s present state of governance, plus a range of other issues, including – as is often today hinted at – the chances of re-entering active politics. This is the first in-depth interview she has given any media in over six and a half years since she left office. We talked for close upon two hours. The podcast is edited for length and content. Approximate time codes are provided when questions are posed or when particularly important points are made by the former President. This brief write-up is by no means a comprehensive account of what she says and readers are strongly encouraged to listen to the podcast in full, which you can download as an audio file here (plays in iTunes, Quicktime or VLC). 2.14:What are you doing these days? At around 4:40 she talks about the South Asia Policy and Research Institute [SAPRI] and…

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Whither Sri Lanka’s media?

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Image courtesy Now Public Having been through the grind in the field of Sri Lanka’s mainstream print journalism for nearly two decades, what I feel is a growing sense of frustration. Whatever standards and respectability that was maintained by our past peers are deteriorating to the extent that journalists are being looked at, more with ridicule, than with esteem. Today journalists have come to be often identified as so and so’s catcher or hanger on other than men and women of integrity and fair play. The failure to do some serious soul searching by those of us in the media fraternity has led to this situation. Journalists, who are so good at turning the search light outwards and preaching to all and sundry on what is right and what is wrong, rarely turn the search light inwards. We do a lot of finger pointing but rarely realize that more fingers are being pointed in our direction than ever before. Most…

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Never Again: Remembering ’83

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First broadcast on aired on the MTV, Shakthi and Sirasa terrestrial TV channels in Sri Lanka from 23rd to 30th July 2008, Never Again in Sri Lanka featured 22 videos in Tamil, Sinhala and English on the anti-Tamil pogrom of July 1983 in Sri Lanka. The 30 second videos on the site featured well-known Sri Lankan civil society, film, teledrama, entertainment, academic and religious personalities including: Bellanwila Wimalaratne Thero Asoka Handagama Iranganie Serasinghe Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne Upekha Chitrasena Sunila Abeysekera Kasun Kalhara Prof. S. Sandarasekaram View the videos in Tamil, English and Sinhala below. In addition to these videos, the following content was submitted to Groundviews in July 2008, 25 years after the riots of 1983 and 50 years after those in 1958. Nearly all submissions were exclusive for Groundviews and came from award winning poets and novelists, senior Government Ministers, Members of Parliament, renown scholars, human rights defenders, civil society activists, artistes, senior civil servants, a former Secretary of Defense and others. It bears…

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The Rebel Who Peddled Dreams: On Nimal Lakshapathiarachchi (1954–2012)

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Nimal Lakshapathiarachchi, who suddenly died on July 19 aged 57, is being described in tributes as a ‘veteran broadcaster’ and a pioneering figure in private radio and TV broadcasting. He certainly was – but that covers only part of his legacy. He was also an indefatigable champion of popular culture, a rebel who undermined, in a very short time, an artistic ‘feudal system’ that had been entrenched in our airwaves for well over half a century. In that sense, Nimal did to radio broadcasting what singer H R Jothipala (1936 – 1987) did to Lankan music: made it an integral part of popular culture, indigenised content and form while keeping it accessible and enjoyable to everyone from all walks of life. Nimal gave ordinary Lankan youth the ambition and freedom to dream and aim high. Until then, their dreams had been scripted by an unimaginative (nanny) state and orchestrated by a snooty band of cultural elites and bureaucrats. By the…

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  • 23 Jul, 2012
  • 0 Comment
  • Colombo,
    Development

Sad Passing of a Creative Genius: Nimal Lakshapatiarachchi

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Nimal at a village promotion in 1988 Nimal Lakshapatiarachchi was an icon.  I first met him with my partners Viren Perera and Pradip Jayewardene when we established our solar energy company in 1987.   Nimal has to be credited for making the SUNTEC brand name a household word in rural Sri Lanka.  It was proven when Shell Renewables negotiated to buy the company in 1999.  Shell executives not believing SUNTEC’s brand value did a survey and found it had 92% recognition beating Shell’s famous brand.   That was the tribute to Nimal. The three of us were amazed at his ingenuity, creative talent coupled with his critical thinking skills and his connections in the arts and the media.  He had an amazing ability to coordinate, organize, inspire people to come together for a common purpose and most of all he enjoyed and thrived on the freedom he got to be creative.  He was impetuous and impulsive at times but that was part…

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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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