Archive for the ‘Colombo’

Who’s Afraid of Exotic Species, Gene Pirates and Government Babus?

Dr Ranil Senanayake, photo by Janaka Sri Jayalath

Dr Ranil Senanayake, photo by Janaka Sri Jayalath In this second part of a long interview, South Asia’s first systems ecologist Dr Ranil Senanayake shares his views on many facets of biological diversity. He looks at the challenges involved in in-situ and ex-situ conservation of plant and animal species on our already crowded and slowly warming planet. He takes stock of the Convention on Biological Diversity, adopted by governments of the world in 1992, and laments the narrow vision of old school foresters and Sri Lanka government bureaucrats who “literally miss the forest for the trees”. Dr Senanayake obtained his PhD as a Systems Ecologist from the University of California at Davis in 1978 and has had a long and illustrious career as a researcher, university teacher and activist. Author of numerous scientific papers, media articles and presentations, he has served on the UN committee that produced the authoritative Global Biodiversity Assessment. Systems Ecologist Ranil Senanayake in conversation with Science…

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Responding to comments whether the End of the War should be Celebrated or Mourned

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Photo courtesy Vikalpa Given the comments to the article I wrote on 19th May, I felt it was better to respond to them substantially. The first question point I raise is still debatable – and clearly demonstrates the polarization in the North and South of the country. Whether the end of the war should be celebrated or mourned, if so in what way? In the past, I had used the example of a funeral and a party happening at the same time in one house of a group claiming to be one family and living in one house they call home. I believe this is still valid. Perhaps while this is being discussed, in the short term, could we at least agree that people should have the freedom to do either or both without fear and intimidation? Which brings me to the second focus of my original article – my insistence about the right of any family to cry, mourn,…

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Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on ethnicity in Northern Sri Lanka post-war

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Image courtesy 3mana In my interview with the Secretary of Defence, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, broadcast on the BBC a week ago, his comments on the demography of the North aroused particular interest. DBS Jeyaraj disputed his assertion that it was easy for Tamils to live all over Sri Lanka, and described as “troubling” Mr Rajapaksa’s assertion that the North of Sri Lanka should not be viewed as a predominantly Tamil place.  In his website he asked why, indeed, Tamils should not call the north their homeland; such a term need not exclude others from living there, he said. In contrast, the senior presidential secretariat official, Lucien Rajakarunanayake, said the BBC had been “humbled” by Mr Rajapaksa as the BBC’s plan “to show… that Tamils … were threatened by Sinhala settlers” was disproved. The BBC had no such plan but only raised the subject of ethnicity once Mr Rajapaksa brought up the subject of government agents. Mr. Rajapaksa dwelt on the point…

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Extended time in police custody: Is it Necessary or permissible?

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Image courtesy JDS The decision of the Justice Ministry to amend the law relating to the period of detention of people arrested and to extend it to forty-eight hours instead of the existing twenty-four is alarming and unjustified to say the least. The statement of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka issued through its President is more alarming and also saddening because it points to the fact that the justice Ministry has not thought it necessary or fit to consult the said association before embarking on this course of unprecedented action. Secondly the Bar Association as they normally should, have studied the legal position here and in other civilized countries before rushing into readily express their unqualified approval to this kind of legislation. The casual way the President has reacted shows that the Bar Association has failed to consider this matter in depth before expressing its unqualified approval. It follows that the President will not speak on the subject in…

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THE ‘AUTONOMIST-SECESSIONIST CONTINUUM’ IN TAMIL POLITICS

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Photo courtesy news360.lk Professor Urmila Phadnis the late doyenne of Lankanology in Indian academia was utterly discerning when she concluded over two decades ago in her last book (‘Ethnicity and nation-building in South Asia’) that Lankan Tamil ‘sub-nationalism’ was unique in the region in that it alone displayed an ‘autonomist-secessionist continuum’. It was with shock and dismay that I found that the keynote speech of R Sampanthan at the 14th Convention of the ITAK in May 2012, echoes in significant respects those of Velupillai Prabhakaran, to the extent that that there are near-identical passages. Here is a single sample: “The world does not revolve around the axis of justice. The freedom struggles of persecuted communities are not measured on the scales of justice. Global powers that preach of Democracy and Human Rights are themselves not the epitome of justice. We do not expect governments around the world and international organizations that support them to take pity on us, sacrifice their…

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  • 3 Jun, 2012
  • 10 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Development,
    Environment

Sri Lanka’s Fast-track to Post-war Development: Remember the Mahaweli’s Costly Lessons!

Ranil Senanayake (L) in conversation with Nalaka Gunawardene, 19 March 2012

Systems Ecologist Ranil Senanayake in conversation with Science Writer Nalaka Gunawardene. For Part 2 of this interview, titled Who’s Afraid of Exotic Species, Gene Pirates and Government Babus?, click here. Dr Ranil Senanayake is a rare public intellectual in Sri Lanka. He is extremely well informed, analytical, multidisciplinary — and courageous enough to speak his mind on matters of public interest in a land where many academics and professionals choose silence, or grumble privately. In particular, he has been vocal about the indiscriminate use of pesticides and chemical fertiliser in farming; the use of exotic tree species for monocultures in the name of forestry; heavy reliance of imported petroleum for developing Sri Lanka’s economy; and the erosion of biological diversity at the levels of habitats, species and genes. Besides raising these concerns at scientific fora, he has been a regular contributor of op-ed essays to newspapers and is increasingly expressive online. In 2011, he collected many of his public media…

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Gotabaya Rajapaksa on disappearances in Sri Lanka

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Screen grab from BBC video In March after making a feature on enforced disappearances for the BBC, I made a further radio broadcast for our From Our Own Correspondent programme, later expanded for Groundviews, saying that I hoped Sri Lanka’s top leaders would be able to give answers about the fate of recent victims of enforced disappearance in Colombo and other cities. The Defence Secretary, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, has dashed any such hopes in my BBC interview with him broadcast earlier this week. He shed no new light on what has happened to Ramasamy Prabagaran, Nethiyas Chandrapala, Lalith Weeraraj, Kugan Muruganathan, Upali Mendis, Stephen Suthararaj or other unfortunate victims.  Instead he suggested lists of victims were inflated or that the disappeared were criminals or the victims of kidnapping for ransom.  As for any suspicion that the state was in some cases responsible, he said the government had no interest in doing such things. “No, that is wrong actually – you are…

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Not In Our Name: 1,400+ signatures against religious extremism in Sri Lanka

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Not In My Name (NION) ran from 27th April to 31st May 2012. The blog was created and launched late on the 26th, just under a week after a violent attack on a mosque in Dambulla, led by Buddhist monks. At the time, the situation was very volatile. Islandwide, despite appeals for calm, there was real concern as to what would happen after jumma on the 28th. NION was an attempt to showcase that the violence in Dambulla, and any religious extremism, was simply unacceptable and by doing so, serve as a bulwark against the spread of violence that Friday, and beyond. Sadly, given attacks against mosques even around Colombo, and as noted by many who have signed up, attacks against churches in the past, it is clear the violence in Dambulla signifies growing religious intolerance in Sri Lanka. On the other hand, out of over 1,400 comments in English, Sinhala and Tamil, there are a number that quite clearly…

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On the (Non)sense of Being ‘United’ and/nor/or ‘Unitary’

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Image courtesy The Hindu I must admit that reading Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke’s (DJ) recent piece, on Groundviews and elsewhere, on Mr. R. Sampathan’s (RS) speech at the ITAK convention, left me very disturbed. In his piece, DJ draws attention to one statement in the speech in particular, which he notes is central to revealing that the RS/ITAK are separatists in disguise. The statement in question reads thus: “To put it more strongly, the international community must realize through its own experience, without us having to tell them, that the racist Sri Lankan government will never come forward and give political power to the Tamil people in a united Sri Lanka” (emphasis added). Indeed what RS said was that “the racist government”—note, he did not just say “Sri Lankan government” but qualified it with “the racist”—will never come forward to grant political power to Tamils. And this is true; forget about a racist Sri Lankan government, does anyone think that any…

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Reconciliation in Sri Lanka: What? Why? How?

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Photo courtesy: Steve Chao /Al Jazeera via JDS With our Government busy defending itself from war crime allegations, protecting the sovereignty of the country and advising the common man to say ‘no’ to Google, the Tamil leadership and, of course, the Tamil Diaspora dreaming of some mode of foreign intervention and drooling over the latest Channel 4 documentary, the Muslim Community deeply wounded by the recent developments in Dambulla, and the common man constantly worried over the ever increasing fuel price, it’s understandable why the journey towards achieving true and authentic reconciliation has become such  a tricky business in our country. With so many external factors coming into the equation (of achieving reconciliation) even Albert Einstein would have had trouble sorting things out and moving forward. The intention of this article is to look at reconciliation from a different angle; an angle that helps simplify the equation – eliminate as many external factors and make the concept as practically attainable…

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Where brevity cripples and distorts reportage

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Image courtesy eHow Once upon a time, after I presented a public talk in Oslo courtesy of Kumar Rupesinghe, a Norwegian journalist provided me with a refreshing insight into the difference between academic essays and journalese. There is, to be sure, a considerable overlap between the two fields; but the lesson he taught me was that journalists usually place their conclusions and punch lines at the very start of their essay. Academic authors, in contrast, tend to end with a BANG so that they build up to a conclusion. Journalists, my friend told me, adopt this course partly because it enables them to face editorial demands for a shorter piece by simply lopping off the end. So it is also time-saving. Given the demands on their time arising from the hop-skip-and-jump character of journalist duties in diverse arenas, this tactic is quite pragmatic. Short reports also enable the story to be kept simple. Where the tale is sensational, the shorter…

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ITAK’S PLAN OF ATTACK: THE BREAKOUT STRATEGY

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The keynote speech by Mr. R Sampanthan, the leader of the main Tamil parliamentary party at the recent congress of that organization is in many respects a landmark event. It sheds light on a number of key strategic issues and should make clear to the international community that the matter of political dialogue leading to ethnic reconciliation is, has become or is becoming rather more complex and fraught than is customarily thought. The senior political leader of the Tamil community in the island’s strategically sensitive Northern Province reconfirms the political aim and goal of his party. Perhaps more importantly he clarifies the international strategy that is being, and is to be, adopted in furtherance of that political project, as well as the interconnection between the international strategy and domestic tactics in support of the project. It is not so much a strategy for breakthrough as for ‘breakout’. Mr. Sampanthan’s speech not only states clearly that the political project lies outside the…

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Parama Weera: What it takes, and what it means

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Image credit Ishara S.Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images via The Baltimore Sun The eyes stared expressionlessly back at me from the fifteen small pictures, some clear, and some blurred; reflections that only hinted at the men behind those eyes. But sharp or soft, they all looked so innocuous, so devoid of any indication of what they had once seen. So normal. To look into those fifteen pairs of eyes, to read their names on the Wall that held thousands of similar names, was to gain no hint of the impossible acts of bravery that their owners had committed. Acts that would now see them join the eight who had gone before. Twenty-three names for twenty-three men. Twenty-three individual acts of supreme courage, selected out of twenty-eight years of war. The faces were tucked away in the second page of the Sunday Times, and I stared back at them for awhile before reading the short paragraph beneath each. The words were trite, cliched, dry;…

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Operation Liberation: 25 years on

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The commanders of “Operation Liberation” commonly known as “Vadamarachchi Operation”. From left to right: Lt Col. Vipul Boteju, Lt Col. Sarath Jayawardane, Col. Wijaya Wimalaratne, Brig. Denzil Kobbekaduwa and Maj Gotabaya Rajapakse [1987, Jaffna] Image courtesy Defence.lk Twenty five years ago, on May 26th 1987, the Sri Lankan military forces launched ‘Operation Liberation’, which, at the time, was the biggest military operation in Sri Lanka since independence. At least 5,000 troops broke out of their bases in Jaffna in a bid to take the battle to the rebel Tamil Tigers who had kept the soldiers confined to the barracks for more than a year. The operation met with significant success. Within a week the Vadamarachchi sector of the peninsula was brought under government’s control, and scores of rebels killed or captured and some of their munitions factories destroyed. However, any ambitions the Sri Lankan government had about widening the operation to cover the entire Jaffna peninsula had to come to…

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Cast as mother: A review of a work in progress

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[Editors' note: All photos courtesy of Ruvin de Silva] Cast as mother – A reading produced by Stages Theatre Company is a work in progress and therefore poses a unique challenge to the reviewer. How does one review a piece of theatre which is a fragment and when we as an audience are told that this is only a prelude to the actual play? But this might well be one of the fundamental features (and strengths) of this project. It is a metaphor for the processes through which this piece of theatre has evolved and is evolving—for the women involved in this project time is a precious commodity and they take what they can when they can and wherever they can. The reading at the Wendt on 24th evening staged selected parts of a multi-author, bi-lingual script writing exercise that took place over one and a half years and sought, in part, to inform the audience of how this entire…

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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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