Archive for the ‘Colombo’

Killing dissent: Lasantha, violence and impunity

In a country where, it seems, shooting the messenger has become the norm, yet another journalist who sought to highlight everything that is wrong with Sri Lanka today, has been brutally gunned down. Lasantha Wickramatunge is the latest victim of a long list of assassinations of media personnel in Sri Lanka, yet another sorry statistic which has made Sri Lanka one of the most dangerous countries for journalists to practice their profession, according to Reporters without Borders. My obvious political differences with Lasantha do not prevent me from appreciating his personal, political and journalistic qualities as a leader in the island’s media industry. He was fearless and was willing to boldly uncover and critically expose in no uncertain terms what he believed to be the truth. His assassination is a tragic loss to the people of Sri Lanka as a whole. I take this occasion to convey my deepest sympathies to his family, friends and colleagues. In the outstanding contribution…

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Registering for another pogrom in Sri Lanka?

By a frustrated thrice registered Tamil citizen living in Colombo This is about www.citizens.lk. I am concerned as I am sure you are about the racial profiling (in addition to a whole load of things that are problematic about this registration drive) this regime seeks to do through the registration process. We should consider a campaign to ask people to ignore this registration drive. An alternative is to ask people to register all Sinhala speaking people as ‘Tamils’ since there is no criteria as to how you decide on how someone belongs to a particular ethnicity and not the other. I confess that i am typing this email wondering whether this will be accessible by someone who wont like its contents. Committing to a campaign asking people not to register or to distort it is without saying will put those involved in danger. So what are we to do? Let this go by as well? Repost This Article

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Death at Noon

Today dawned Like any other morning At the other end of the world My sister sits nursing a cup of coffee Her fingers numb From minus twenty Mind numb with shock. Here, I drive to work Still swear under my breath at the driver of the truck that cut into my lane Nearly killing me, Plan my day Tick off the list of things to be done: A listening test to be recorded A lecture to prepare for A report to write A professor to be contacted Before lunch. But more than four of my colleagues Are in black and white And I realise that includes me. We stand around the Water filter Discussing ‘heroism’. And no one is in a mood to work today Even those joyous about captured Territory. Maybe we are numb too Though it’s warm and all we have today Is a cloudy sky [Editors note: A comment left on a blog I read regularly regarding…

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For Lasantha and others

Murder is a moment to point fingers Murder is a moment to crawl into shells. But moments don’t forbid, there is no opportune time, nothing auspicious about standing up, speaking out. Speaking of Lasantha now, he was not the just-another-guy not because he was right (he was wrong a lot of times; hard to agree with too), but he wrote his politics regardless he made his allegiances clear protected friends (and some of them were unsavoury creatures too); it does not matter, though. He was flawed as the next person but was more a citizen than many of us, he spoke his mind, he screamed. And I, hardly a friend or fellow-traveller, salute him, for I prefer word to silence in the matter of political engagement. There is a finger that is itching to point, let us point it at ourselves at least in the manner of a question. Who are we, who am I in these times of omission…

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The murder of Lasantha Wickremetunge and Sri Lanka’s future

Watch reactions to Lasantha’s murder in Sinhala here. The Editor in Chief of the Sunday Leader and one of Sri Lanka’s best known journalists Lasantha Wickremetunge was murdered this morning en route to work. He was shot repeatedly and succumbed to his injuries at around 2.15pm. The murder of Lasantha comes just two days after after the arson attack against private TV broadcaster MBC / MTV networks that destroyed their Main Control Room and studios. On both counts, the Rajapakse administration points to some mysterious armed force hell bent on discrediting the government. It has done what it does best – expressed outrage, ordered a full investigation and appointed a committee to investigate the attacks. Yet it conveniently forgets that the Cabinet subcommittee to look into the grievances of journalists set up in June 2008 is largely forgotten today. No one knows whether it exists, how to reach it, what it does, or came up with as recommendations to protect journalists….

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“There is a right way and a wrong way to use violence”: Interview with Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

“There will be times when organised violence has to be exercised as a last resort. People will resist with violence. States will use violence against various foes. But there is a right way and a wrong way to use violence.” Watch Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka‘s first video interview, conducted over Skype, after presenting his credentials as Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations at Geneva and other International Organizations in Switzerland on 6th June 2007. Topics discussed in our interview ranged from future scenarios arising from the capture of Killinochchi last week and media freedom to international relations and the timbre of democratic governance in Sri Lanka today. You can download the video in full here. Noting that Dayan is open to and regularly engages with comments very critical of his writing and worldview on Groundviews, I allowed Dayan to respond at length to each of my questions without any interruption. Readers are encouraged to engage with Dayan’s comments…

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Hasta la Victoria Siempre! – Ever Onward to Victory!

“Hasta la Victoria Siempre!” (“Ever Onward to Victory!”) - Che Guevara “One thing is now required-to deal the death-blow to the fascist beast…The last storming of the Hitlerite lair is on…give them no respite until they cease resistance.” - Stalin, Order of the Day, May 1, 1945    With the liberation of Paranthan and Kilinochchi, the war has pivoted decisively in favor of the Sri Lankan armed forces and against the LTTE. We are winning a ground war, not against sporadic suicide bombers or home made rockets causing single digit casualties over long years, but against a ferocious insurgent foe fielding large  formations, armed with heavy artillery, fast boats and light aircraft. We are doing so not with open ended foreign patronage, not while imposing collective punishment and inflicting civilian casualties which are almost a fifth of armed enemy casualties, but with minimum collateral damage despite the use of human shields by the enemy. If in the eyes of some, colossally disproportionate…

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  • 4 Jan, 2009
  • 0 Comment
  • Colombo,
    Poetry

In conversation with Vivimarie Vanderpoorten

An interview with Vivimarie Vanderpoorten, the Winner of the Gratiaen Prize in 2007. Vivimarie is also a Senior Lecturer in English, Dept of Language Studies, Open University of Sri Lanka. The interview covers, in addition to her poetry, identity, culture and creative writing in Sri Lanka. For a taste of her poetry, read The Day After Tomorrow. Groundviews has also published the poetry of Vivimarie’s sister, Yichaelle Devendra. Vivimarie will also be part of the Galle Literary Festival 2009. Repost This Article

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Using SLBC to brainwash the population

For the last 100 years or more there have been continuous struggles in many Asian countries to fight against their feudal and rural traditions and to establish a modern economy and a modern state. In Japan, these struggles culminated in the creation of the modern Japan. It is equal in status the most developed countries in the world. China took a longer time in this struggle, but it too has reached the status of a world power already, and is likely to become even more powerful and prosperous in the future. Many other countries in South East Asia have had enormous struggles to replace their feudal set up and, particularly, to do away with the powerful families, including the royal families, which tyrannically ruled over these countries. There are relative levels of success in different countries, but by and large the victory is on the side of those who stand for modernization and democratization of their countries. The result is…

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  • 1 Jan, 2009
  • 3 Comments
  • Advocacy,
    Colombo

For a quieter Colombo – Ban the bus horns!

Close your eyes and imagine a horn free Colombo – no loud ‘fog horns’ from all those buses – bliss !!.   As I sit here in a café in the centre of Windhoek, Namibia, I have not heard a horn all morning.  This is developing country but the road behavior is definitely ‘developed’.  In the last six months, I have been working in several African countries and one thing that stood out for me is the good road discipline and how little they use the horn.  There is always the exception as in Kenya and Malawi’s private bus drivers – the ‘mutatoos’  - a law onto themselves.   Yet, it is nothing compared to the nuisance of the ‘fog horns’ and indiscipline we have with Sri Lanka’s public buses.   It is such a relief in these countries not to be subjected to this aggressive noisy behavior on the roads.   One can almost gauge the social values and discipline of a country…

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Achievement 2008, Challenge 2009

Sri Lanka closes out its 60th year of Independence, though in the strictest sense it lasts till the beginning of next February when we celebrate our 61st Independence Day. It is a moment to take stock.  Due to all the wrong turnings we took and the right ones we did not at and since our Independence six decades ago, we have spent a quarter century commemorating our independence in conditions of a separatist civil war. This will in all probability be so next year too. However it may not be so the year after, and from then onwards, because of what we have achieved this year. And I do mean “we”: the leadership, the government, the military, the vast majority of people, the dissident Tamils.  What has been the balance sheet of 2008? It is that we are winning but have not yet won. Victory is on the horizon but it has not yet been achieved. 2008 was the year…

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Christmas 2008 in Sri Lanka

Its Christmas day. For a change, I was at home with my family. Early morning, I went for Christmas Mass in my parish. Many years ago, I had been active in the church, as a student and teacher in the Sunday School, as an Alter Server and in the Young Christian Students Movement. But I had not gone to my parish for a long time, though I have been visiting and staying in churches all over Sri Lanka, especially in the war ravaged North. I thought I will go today, as it was Christmas, also because of my family. Unlike most people, I didn’t go to the crib in the Church. But I did have images of Jesus being born in a cattle shed 2008 years ago. That Mary was compelled to give birth to Jesus away from her home, as she and Joseph were forced to leave her hometown, while she was pregnant, due to an order of the…

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Tears

I have never felt the same about blue frothy waters and ebb and tide since learning how your mild self could turn and gush hiss and spit washing out her tomorrows, her child, her home and Blue shimmering water is now a memory of a blue baby shirt, the white sari that blows in the wind as she feeds the crows and dogs on the beach in their memory is the colour of white sea foam… The breeze that beguiles gulls and suspends them in mid air is now the a silence of sadness that cannot be stilled. Repost This Article

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Petrol Pricing

Minister Bandula Gunawardene appeared on V and implicitly commenting on the Supreme Court decision perhaps made a point that all taxes are made by Parliament. Not quite since the Minister of fiancé can gazette orders under the Revenue Protection Act if my memory is right. True they have to be tabled in Parliament thereafter. The question at issue is not a change in taxes. The Supreme Court as far as I am aware has not changed the taxes on petrol. What it has done after consulting the Secretary of the Ministry of Finance who submitted pricing formulas decided to fix the price of petrol. It has taken into account the current taxes and levies on petrol. What it has done is to prevent profiteering by the CPC perhaps to cover up its losses on the hedging contracts and the defaulting in payments by the government departments like the CEB, the Railway and the Armed Forces. Should the public be called…

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Planes in the sky

My feet are tired pressed into asphalt climbing the campus hill, composing a sparer line: effervescence in mist, swirling about the stones, a girl, freckled, jeaned, auburn-haired like the leaves, walks past my shadow, a shadow, the wish to dissolve into scenery, flowering bush, wind, chameleon silent on a branch not hurt or harassed by predators swooping down from clouds : over the A-9 Highway, by Elephant Pass. Indran Amirthanayagam, November 8, 2008 Repost This Article

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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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