Archive for the ‘Jaffna’

Which way forward in post-conflict Sri Lanka? Lessons from the so-called ‘powerless’ women of the North

forgottenrefugees

Image courtesy Sri Lanka Brief Introduction Before the war, we were all together. Now, we are widows with no security, and no one sees what we have to live through. But we go on, try to find some money to get us through the day…we have to eat, no? The cooking and cleaning needs to be done, the children have to go to school…that’s how life goes.[1] What must have seemed to 36-year old Rina[2] like nothing more than a statement of unavoidable realities is laden with meaning for social scientists studying representations in postwar contexts of‘vulnerability’ and ‘marginalisation’ – and perhaps even more interestingly, the meanings of‘survival’and‘endurance’ in such settings. Tragically, although an intriguing subject for study, Rina’s circumstances are relatively ‘ordinary’ in the north of Sri Lanka: she is one of the estimated 40,000 female heads of households (“FHHs”) in that region[3], most of them born from the three decades of civil war. Given the oppressive environment of…

Continue reading »
  • 22 Sep, 2012
  • 5 Comments
  • Development,
    Jaffna,
    Post-War

Rehabilitation of Sri Lankan War Victims: Why NGOs should co-ordinate

Screen Shot 2012-09-22 at 8.18.54 PM

Photo courtesy The Asia Foundation Since the war ended in Sri Lanka in May, 2009, the wave of sympathy  for  the victims of the war resulted in philanthropists, members of the Sri Lankan diaspora, individual well wishers and funding organizations providing prospective INGOs, local NGOs and charities with the resources needed to expeditiously  help the war victims to resume their normal life as quickly as possible.    The war had resulted in the loss of  a large number of breadwinners  leaving behind thousands of disabled men and women, and,  widows and orphaned children. The infrastructure in the conflict zone had been reduced to ruins. The Government’s efforts to help the war victims has been slow and its priorities are overshadowed by defence concerns against a vanquished enemy resulting in a lion’s share of the financial  allocations being given  to the Defence Ministry.   Comparatively,  only a pittance  had allocated to provide  relief and rehabilitation to the victims of the war.  The visible…

Continue reading »

AFTER A LONG JOURNEY HOME: SOLITUDE IN JAFFNA AND THE SILENCE OF A CITY

02_nomoretears

[Editors note: Dr. Rajini Thiranagama (née Rajasingham), was a Tamil human rights activist and feminist murdered in 1989 by the LTTE. She was one of the founding members of the University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna, which during the war, published some of the most hard hitting critiques and exposes of Government as well as LTTE atrocities and human rights violations. Since 2009, Dayapala Thiranagama's insightful articles to Groundviews have been amongst the site's most read and shared]. ### This summer, after 23 long years, I drove to Jaffna from Galle with my eldest daughter. We travelled through the heart of Sri Lanka on the A9 road, passing Kandy, Matale, Dambulla and Kekirawa. We drove past areas where I had worked in 1986 as a member of the Vikalpa Kandayama (Alternative Group), laying down an underground political structure. At the time, I had left my academic job in the university to do fulltime political work and was confronted by two great dangers: increasing political repression from the…

Continue reading »

Justice and Truth

A Sri Lankan Tamil devotee offer prayers

Photo credit: Ishara S.KODIKARA/AFP/Getty Images via Foreign Policy I am no writer, no Political Scientist, Economist, Historian or Human Rights Lawyer. I am a simple citizen who has lived most of my life in this country. Recently I was at a funeral of a relative in Matara. The father of my cousin’s husband passed away after living a full life and having seen his children and grand children. At this funeral I heard he had two younger brothers who went missing during their teenage years in the ‘71 insurgency. No one knew what happened to them, but no one ever saw them again. Their parents and sibling lived with their memories till they died. However, their stories are not told to the world. I watched the funeral video of Nimalaruban and saw how devastated his poor parents were to see their only child beaten to death while in Police custody. They too will remember him and live in pain till…

Continue reading »

A Critique of Political Fundamentalism in Sri Lanka

Screen-Shot-2012-07-30-at-8.35.56-PM

The mirror-like symmetries of dogmatic Sinhala and Tamil nationalism are occasionally remarked upon but not often pinned down. It is these interactive symmetries that constitute the amalgam which has hardened into the deadlock in the process of ethno-political reconciliation in post war Sri Lanka. The core issue is that of political autonomy and power-sharing, on which the most moderate and well-mannered representatives of Tamil and Sinhala nationalism, Messrs. Sumanthiran and Udaya Gammanpila share a Manichean view. In the mindset of each, there exist only two alternatives this side of secession: the unitary and federal models. The two parliamentarians disagree only on the normative values they attach to each model. For the Sinhala nationalist, unitary equals good and federal equals bad, while for the Tamil nationalist, unitary is bad and federal is good. Neither accepts that a model may be good, acceptable or unavoidable at certain times and in certain places. Neither recognises that the best should not be the enemy…

Continue reading »

Sri Lanka’s LLRC: A timeline from inception to implementation

Screen Shot 2012-08-03 at 11.51.37 AM

Groundviews is pleased to present a new web based timeline that traces key events and developments around the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), from its inception to the implementation of its recently released action plan, spanning the next three years. The timeline at launch features over 125 entries, and will be updated regularly. For a more easily readable and larger version, please click here. Each entry is colour-coded for easy reference, and the sliding marker at the bottom of the screen also provides visual cues to explore key events and developments at certain times. Projections into the future are based on the official LLRC Action Plan, available here. Note that aspects of the action plan marked as ‘on-going’ or sans any determinable completion date have NOT been included in the timeline (e.g. Recommendation 9.115e – Enact legislation to ensure the right to information). The colour-coded categorisation of the timeline covers, Foreign Government statements INGO / NGO reports LLRC implementation…

Continue reading »

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

Screen Shot 2012-07-30 at 8.35.56 PM

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,…

Continue reading »

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

Continue reading »

School closed early today

Colombo1983pogrom

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…

Continue reading »

Jayasena and Rajakulendran: Heroes of a Lesser God

sukur-kast-sistemi-4

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…

Continue reading »

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

Continue reading »

SRI LANKA & TAMIL SELF-DETERMINATION

DSCN0020

The announcement that elections to the Northern Provincial Council will be held in September 2013 has raised eyebrows in some quarters and generated criticism in certain others. As one who unfashionably – and riskily—advocated the holding of that election soon after the decisive military victory of 2009, I find myself paradoxically in agreement with the decision not to hold the election right now. This is due to the difference in the situations and prospects of 2009 and 2012. In the immediate post-war period, an election would have placed in office, a politically moderate long standing Tamil ally of the state, not merely this government; someone who has been in alliance with the administrations of three Sri Lankan presidents belonging to both major parties. This was what I termed the Chechen solution of President Putin. Not having done so, the Sri Lankan state faces today the prospect of the election to office of a party whose moderate ideologues advocate the right…

Continue reading »

Buddhist monks and party politics in post-war Sri Lanka: In conversation with Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe MP

Screen Shot 2012-07-16 at 4.30.20 PM

Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, President’s Counsel, is a Member of Parliament from the United National Party, and currently President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka. In the past, Mr. Rajapakshe’s also chaired the Committee on Public Enterprises. No stranger to being in the headlines, Mr. Rajapakshe in late May tabled Private Member’s Bill in Parliament asking that Sri Lanka’s Constitution be amended to prevent a priest of any religion becoming a member of Sri Lanka’s legislature. As noted in the media at the time, Mr. Rajapakshe said he had decided to bring this amendment for the purpose of maintaining and preserving religious dignity and holiness of all religions. As expected, all hell broke loose. At the time of our conversation, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) emerged as one of the most strident opponents of the proposed bill, vowing to defeat it if and when tabled in Parliament and asserting that Western conspirators are behind the proposal. As noted in the media,…

Continue reading »

For the Blink of an Eye

1692682-on_the_road_again_Sri_Lanka

Image courtesy Virtual Tourist I almost always enjoy my time in Jaffna. Riding on the AC-bus to Jaffna is a no-brainer for me. It’s a long ride; the extra 450 rupees is worth it. In Sri Lanka, I have witnessed fistfights, protests, vigorous debate after a car accident and even some mild vigilante justice after an incident of sexual harassment. I thought I had seen anger firsthand here; then I got on a Colombo bus headed for Jaffna that was supposed to have air conditioning. Things were fine for the first hour, until we arrived in Negombo. At first I am not even sure that I noticed. I was lost in an Ondaatje novel, Anil’s Ghost. I heard loud voices towards the very front of the bus. I still only know a smattering of Tamil and do not understand Sinhala at all. Yet body language rarely requires translation. I took my eyes off my book. Seated in 16A, I could…

Continue reading »

Land and the National Question in Sri Lanka

Screen Shot 2012-07-12 at 6.46.47 PM

Image courtesy Sainthan Sivanesan on 500px I am thankful to the Norwegian Tamil Study Forum for inviting me to address this Workshop and am looking forward to listening to the main speakers. In this brief intervention I wish to make some general comments and raise a few issues, which I believe are pertinent to the purpose of the workshop. I shall offer some background to the concept note before commenting on the current situation. I shall also put forward some ideas for discussion. As stated in the concept note, land remains a major bone of contention in the resolution of the national question (NQ) as it is not only a vital means of livelihood for the vast majority of the people but also the contested material base with intangible symbolic value for territoriality and identity construction. The protracted war has generated new grievances and conflicts related to land and coastal zone resources in the North and East (NE), which have added…

Continue reading »
Page 3 of 3312345...102030...Last »

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!"

cezarneaga.eu