Review of ‘Right of Way: A journey of resettlement’

I was delighted when asked to review Right of Way: A journey of resettlement by Sharni Jayawardena and published by the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA). Sharni’s skill in photography is enviable, and was the co-creator of Walkabout: Slave Island, supported by Groundviews. At the time of review, the publication was not in the public domain, and given what I had seen of Sharni’s previous work, I expected it to be a largely photographic record, in a coffee table book format, of the human displacement that occurred as a result of the E01, Sri Lanka’s first highway. And yet the book features few photos. 72 pages long, the book has just 8 photos included in it. I’ll come back to why I think this makes for a less compelling way of grappling with what the book sets out to do. Thousands, since E01 opened late last year, have taken the highway to Galle from Kottawa. The focus when on the…

Silva’s Report, Role of International Community and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka

GV caption: Three terrorists, two terrorists, former terrorists, patriots or a hero? How one sees this image is  measure of how much Sri Lanka remains divided post-war. Image shows Secretary of Defense Gotabaya Rajapaksa speaking during the inaugural National Conference on Reconciliation in Colombo November 24 ,2011. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte, courtesy MSNBC. One of the most fundamental challenges of peacemaking and peacebuilding is confronting the past while building a just foundation for the future. Fighting impunity and pursuing peace are not incompatible objectives – they can work in tandem, even in an ongoing conflict situation.  – Ban Ki -moon, The Secretary General, UN [1] Background of Silva’s report Since the brutal war in Sri Lanka came to an end in May 2009 with the violation of International Human Rights Law and Humanitarian Law, the International community called for an International Independent Investigation [III] into war crimes and crimes against humanity. Due in part to this pressure, the UN Secretary General appointed a Panel…

Can Rationalists Awaken the Sleep-walking Lankan Nation?

Assorted charlatans and religious zealots across the island of Sri Lanka must have heaved a collective sigh of relief when they heard that Dharmapala Senaratne was no more. He had made it his business to make life difficult for those preying on the gullible public. Rationalist and myth-buster Dharmapala made his final exist a few days before 2012 dawned. At 67, he still had a few more years of the good struggle left in him. He would surely have enjoyed countering the false prophets of doom — and their credulous followers — who predict the end of the world on 21 December 2012. Although Dharmapala was also a teacher and lawyer with decades of experience, he was best known for his public activism as a rationalist. His was a determined and sceptical voice questioning fanatical peddlers of all kinds of dogmas, faiths and (mutually exclusive) brands of ‘salvation’. Even more importantly, he fearlessly took on confidence tricksters hoodwinking superstitious people…

The Final Report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission: A Response

Photo courtesy JDS The concluding report of Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was finally made public in mid-December, after multiple delays and an interim report that went mostly unnoticed. The Commission’s report has sparked considerable debate within an increasingly stifled public sphere, rejuvenating conversations in Sri Lanka about governance, human rights, and a permanent political settlement. Unfortunately, because the Report was only released publicly in English, a substantial number of Sri Lankans are excluded from these conversations. We also note that in a true democracy, a free press holds government to account: Sri Lanka needs—and clearly does not have—a strong fourth estate to track the Government’s implementation of LLRC recommendations. We welcome the Report’s contributions to political discourse, but even its most critical conclusions reveal its irredeemable limitations: like the many commissions of inquiry before it, it is neither a truly investigative body, nor empowered to hold political elites to account. Nevertheless, the Report, which contains the…

WILL THERE BE A REGIME CHANGE IN SRI LANKA?

Image courtesy New Security Beat A regime change takes place only if the majority of people in a country want a change. In Sri Lanka today not many people would want it. After 30 years of war and terror, people are able to get about without fear, safe in the knowledge that the LTTE has been annihilated. It is this regime, the Rajapakse regime that made it possible and so the sense of gratitude is very strong among the people. It is this feeling that makes the people vote for the Rajapaksas time and time again. All other feelings of frustration simply evaporate, when they remember the bomb explosions of the past in contrast to the peace and security they enjoy today. There is also no opposition waiting in the wings to take over power. Slowly but steadily a merger is taking place before our very eyes, in parliament. The UNP which is still the largest opposition party has more…

A-Z of Sri Lankan English: O is for our people

Boys will not always be boys! Photo credit: National Geographic The possessive pronoun “our” is deceptively simple. But who are the “we” that it refers to? The expression our people is a remarkably high-frequency term in Sri Lankan English. On a search of the Groundviews website, the phrase gets around 400 hits, compared to just 331 in the 100-million-word British National Corpus. In British English, the phrase most often refers to members of a particular organisation (“I’ll get one of our people to call you back”). With reference to nationality, it is rarely used to refer to the whole population of the country, except perhaps in a political context with nationalistic overtones – for example, an anti-immigration tirade bemoaning the plight of “our people”. More often it would be used in the context of a specific group such as Irish Catholics, the Bangladeshi community, etc. In Sri Lankan English, the expression can convey a sense of patriotism, but it is…

Agricultural Madness

(Photo credit: Claude Dupuis, IDRC-CRDI) The current  ‘development’ madness that affects agriculture also prevails over agricultural research and does not bode well for this nation.  It begins with the fact that, young agricultural scientists have to find support for the projects that will ensure their career from the only available source, the ‘chemical agriculture’ companies. Thus they are forced to carve out their futures supporting the only system that they have been trained in. In this way agricultural science in Sri Lanka has largely ignored the knowledge and wisdom that had guided our agricultural traditions for the last three thousand years or more.  Although politicians and bureaucrats, in search of money or foreign jobs, have been insensitive to this destructive process, farmers have regularly questioned this approach to agriculture: For instance, in 1998 a meeting of farmers convened by the CGIAR (Consultative Group in Agricultural Research) to ascertain the farmers viewpoint of agricultural development, submitted the following statement. “We, the farmers…

PROBLEM & SOLUTION: PARAMETERS OF POSSIBILITY

Photo courtesy JDS The New Year brought a valuable gift in my email. It was a dossier entitled ‘Seeking Space for State Reform’ and carried an even more beguiling subtitle, ‘Consensus and Contradictions in Public Perceptions’.  A publication of the ICES (the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, from and of which I hadn’t heard for quite a while), it was a product of the Politics of State Reform Project. What made it compelling reading was that it was nothing less than a ‘National Survey of Grassroots Perceptions of State Reform’, which, translated, meant that it was a recent survey of public opinion across all communities, about the ethnic conflict and the  various reform proposals to address or resolve it. Once you’ve dispensed with the layers of very proper titles, you realize what the report contains. It tells you what Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims think, today, over two years after the war, about the most contentious issues that have divided us…

Quo Vadis, the Conga Line?

When Sri Lanka vied for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, there was a telling photograph taken at one of the bashes the regime threw in the Caribbean, the culminating event of a labour intensive, extravagant self-indulgent exercise. The photograph has Hon Namal Rajapaksha MP leading a conga line followed by the Governor of the Central Bank. They both seem…well, happy. However, though a good time was had by all no doubt, that conga line led nowhere. We did not win the bid to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games; agnostics and atheists alike were put on notice about the existence of the divine. The country was saved. Yet the conga line as both a metaphor and description of the structure of power and the ruling regime remains. Into 2012, where will it head? The old year 2011 like all others before was interesting in the sense of the Chinese curse. It saw the steady decline of governance and the Rule of Law,…

Sri Lanka’s democratic institutions have metastasized into something dangerous

How hard is it to admit fault, Ambassador Wickramasuriya?

Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the US, Jaliya Wickramasuriya, recently responded to the Crisis Group Report’s assertion that assault on women in Sri Lanka is on the rise. On the one hand, the Ambassador denies the very existence of rape or violence against women in Sri Lanka – “Rapes, this and that not taking any place in Sri Lanka”. On the other hand, he admits that is does exist, by saying that “Like any other country, we have, like couple of cases”. Having thus stumbled his way through with these two contradictory statements, the Ambassador then lists two reasons to support his first assertion. One, that there was no evidence on the increase of violence against women. Two, that Sri Lanka is culturally incomparable because the country has so many women in key positions of authority, it is impossible to think any women are victims of violence. Hence, in his own words, “100% I don’t agree with the report” The Ambassador…

Interview with Alison Skilbeck: Are There More Of You?

Alison Skilbeck will perform her critically acclaimed production Are There More Of You? in Colombo on the 13th and 14th of January at the British Council auditorium. Groundviews caught up with Alison to talk about her play and theatre in general. As noted on the Oxford Playhouse website, Alison Skilbeck was a member of Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) and played lead roles at the Playhouse in many OUDS productions including King Lear, Epicene, The Plough and the Stars, Dandy Dick, and A Winter’s Tale, and toured to the Edinburgh Fringe in Oxford revue. Skilbeck’s enormously varied stage career has taken her to the West End and all over the UK, and on tour to the USA and Europe: early on she created roles in no fewer than six Alan Ayckbourn premieres at Scarborough. On radio she was ‘Polly Perks’ in the Archers until the character’s tragic death; while television credits include Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, The Beiderbecke Affair, Dr…

Good English skills over a University education?

Image courtesy Seven myths about English Education in Sri Lanka, by Ajith P. Perera It was not so long ago that the post-nominals B.A. (Calcutta) Failed was a sure route to employment in the administrative cadre of the  Government of India, in addition to being a matter of distinction in their own right. Even a decade ago, the university degree was perceived to be the key to the almighty white-collar job, and the stability, prestige and standard of living that were associated with it. Today that is no longer the case; with the decline of our university system and ever faster globalisation, command of the English language  is now the passport to success. It is not without good reason that the market chooses to prize sound linguistic skills in English over a university education. Employers find that candidates with a thorough knowledge of English are able to communicate more effectively; both with one another in multi-ethnic workplaces and with foreign parties, an increasing common occurrence. Tourism, logistics and…

Violence Against Women: This is my story

Two months ago I sat for my first year final exams at the Open University of Sri Lanka. Last month’s edition of the Hi Magazine showcased 3 pages of clothes from designer K.T Brown – modelled by me. And in December, I will be on Art TV – as a contestant for the Super Model of Asia Pacific 2011. I suffer from no grandiose illusions about myself. I am no super model. I am extremely uncomfortable in front of the camera and at age 26 have only just begun studying for my degree. Yet, every one of these steps is a huge achievement for me, for just over three years ago I was trapped in an abusive marriage. It was a marriage  that wore down every shred of confidence I ever owned – confidence I have struggled to take control of and own ever since. It has never been easy for me to speak of what took place during those…

Packets of White Powder

Photo courtesy Arsenic and toxins found in baby rice food – what you need to know Suddenly, scores of packets of white powder began appearing in the homes of many farmers we were working with. They were organic farmers, who respected their field and soil. They would never poison their farm knowingly.  When questioned, they made a wry face and declared that ‘the stuff was forced upon them’ as a part of some government program.  Some resorted to putting it onto their home gardens to get rid of it.  This means that, the poisoning of our soils is extending from the agricultural field to the very home garden and the farmer’s enslavement to the chemical salesmen becomes further confirmed. Addiction is an easy ploy for enslavement. In a port city in France, goes a story; there used to live some of the most unscrupulous criminals. They were the drug traffickers who deal in the cruel drug heroin.  Heroin is addictive, it…