Evidence of militarisation is everywhere – most recently in the sphere of higher education.  The armed forces are involved with development projects, in welfare, and in farming. They are even involved in city beautification, the maintenance of playgroups and shops, of course Sports, and now higher education.  Their increased presence is evident in subtle changes in our daily lives.  The large number of ‘yu ha’ vehicles dropping and picking up school-going children is one that confronts me each school day.

Militarisation is, however, not just confined to their conspicuous presence in public spaces but extends to public acceptance and reinforcement of an attitude that glorifies the forces which in turn enables the process of militarization. The military does not operate through a process of consensus building and does not, in general, function according to democratic principles. While those at the lower rungs of the military hierarchy bear the brunt of this oppressive system, civil society is not immune.

Last week, while I was shopping at a boutique, a person in uniform leaned into the shop to ask the person behind the counter to clean the portion of the street in front of the shop – technically the responsibility of the municipality. The shopkeeper agreed without argument. A few yards away from the boutique, I encountered municipal workers in fierce discussion with their supervisor. They had been ordered to clean a private residence. They were upset because their role was to clean public places, not private property. The supervisor’s response, ‘egollanta monawath kiyanna ba’ (we can’t say anything to those people) illustrates the crux of the problem – the lack of space for discussion when interacting with the armed forces. The incident also demonstrates our ambivalence in protesting or resisting their orders, because to many of us the recent cleanliness of the city is a welcome change. The command and control methods used in the military, its methods of training to resolve disputes through force, its inculcation of perceptions of entitlement as a result of military glorification, make the armed forces dangerous in a democracy. This is especially so, when the military enters higher education as we see today.

Militarisation is counter to the essence of higher education. It contradicts the ideals of higher education as a democratic space that fosters free and critical thinking. It also threatens the autonomy of universities, which is established in law, because universities need that freedom to perform their role in society. The effect of the military in higher education is multidirectional and has increased gradually.

1. Leadership taught in Military Camps. Perhaps the most public are the leadership programmes which were held for prospective university entrants at military camps. Conspicuously absent from these programmes were institutions of higher education and the procedures of curriculum evaluation that are generally followed to ensure their quality. Instead the programmes by their very location at military camps, had the involvement of the armed forces.
2. Minister’s Vision of Future Education. Mr. Ranawaka, in statements issued to the papers, proposes that military knowledge be taught at schools and universities in the future. These were some of his ideas for reforming education and higher education and are based on a submission he made to the President and the Ministry of Higher Education
3. Security functions of the Universities through the Defense Ministry. The decision to hire a firm of ex-service people, under the Ministry of Defense, for all universities, circumvents the university level administration that typically makes such decisions.
4. Provision of Higher Education. Unlike other State institutions, the military has its own university as of 2009, the Kothalawala Defense University (KDU, which is interestingly fee levying and includes a Faculty of Medicine). It falls under the purview of the Defense Ministry. As a result of a much higher pay for officers who teach and better resources for teaching and research for those attached through the officer cadre, relative to other universities, KDU has access to  resources that are unavailable in traditional universities. 
5. The Provision of Services to the Military. Whether in the name of patriotism, nation building, or otherwise, many staff members at universities provide professional advice to the armed forces. These relationships are at times formalized through the Faculty Boards of Faculties or through other agreements. While such relationships are no different from agreements with other state institutions and are healthy for both the universities and the country, they again reinforce a presence of the military in these institutes of higher education. The fact that these relationships are increasing gives more credence to the level of involvement of the military in activities that are not within their purview such as in construction and farming, and city beautification as mentioned earlier.

In each of the instances the armed forces and its resources are gradually changing the face of higher education. While the State universities’ role in higher education is gradually reduced, even in terms of administering themselves and in determining the content of their education (such as with the leadership programme), the military’s has increased. The State University system is starved of resources and yet the military’s seems to be abundant.

The involvement of the military in higher education should be at the least questioned and debated, but such debate is difficult. To illustrate, unlike private educational institutions, which have been opposed by various groups (for example, protests against the Malambe private medical school and the Private Educational Bill), the public seems more hesitant to protest issues surrounding the military. This is to a small extent because the sheer size of the military today means that most of us have family or close friends attached to it. To a greater extent, this is because the armed forces are viewed as noble and heroic and thus unworthy of criticism.  However these emotionally evocative images associated with the armed forces are just another facet of militarization.

The military has a very specific role that does not include stadium building, selling food, and definitely not military style education and leadership building of the civil society. There are institutions that are designed to provide these services, which have done a good job in the past considering the resources available to them. In the education sector, these are institutions that have given us much to be proud of. They have created a population that has much greater access to education, than their counterparts in neighbouring countries. Compared to these other countries, Sri Lanka provides better access to education to the poor and to women – two groups that typically have trouble accessing such services.  While these services need to be improved, using the military to do so should not be an option. We must engage with the institutions charged with the services we want made better. For instance, we must increase the budgets for education so that educational institutes may provide better service and higher educational institutes may serve a larger population of the country.

The end of war did not bring about a decrease in the strength of the military, but its expansion. It also brought about institutions which were outside the purview of the military, such as the Urban Development Authority, under it and brought military influence on institutions such as higher education. Instead of providing opportunities for those who saw combat to move to institutions that could help them transition to non-military work, the Government has sought to increase the strength and breath of the armed forces. We should not accept military institutions, which are not equipped to listen, negotiate and be made accountable to the public, as a solution to needs of the civil society.  This is especially true of higher education with its ideals of a democratic space which should promote free and critical thinking.

Shamala Kumar, Ph.D., is attached to the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya.

• An appeal against infringement of university autonomy in Sri Lanka
• Removing the Emperor’s Clothes
• University Students, Military and the Leadership Programme: Observations on the First Session
• Education, Citizenship and Development
• It is time to decide on Sri Lanka’s university system

TED Fellow and gifted cellist Joshua Roman was in Sri Lanka recently for his debut concert in Colombo. He also performed in Kandy. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma called him an “extraordinary young musician”. Those who came to listen to him play in Colombo and Kandy, accompanied by Eshantha Peiris on the piano, left richer for having experienced his music.

As with Mandhira de Saram, Joshua started playing an instrument very young, at age three. Joshua speaks about his family’s influence on his music, and choice of instrument. We also talk about the cello he brought to Sri Lanka, which made in 1899, was perhaps the oldest western musical instrument to ever grace the stage at the Lionel Wendt and the venue in Kandy.

Joshua speaks about his approach to music, and how though trained and obviously adept at playing classical music, he always tries to experiment and likes to play contemporary music as well. This brings us to the question of how and to what extent the audiences Joshua plays to influence his selection of music, if at all. Joshua opines that an audience may not have to like the music played, but that it is the role of the musician to take them on a journey through soundscapes both familiar and new, to connect with an audience, to take them by the hand and guide them through the traditional classical cannon and at the same time introducing them to the new and contemporary.

Joshua also talked about how he developed his style of playing, anchored to the music he played and listened to as a child. He then speaks about the time he played in Uganda’s IDP camps, noting how people there connected immediately and in a novel manner with the classical music he played. He connects this to the possibility of using music in reconciliation processes, including in Sri Lanka.

Joshua also talks about his relationship with the web and the Internet, and how both are helping him create a community of listeners who tune in to what he plays, and hopefully, more of the same online.

Photos of his concert in Colombo can be seen here, and the one in Kandy, here. They are also embedded below.

• Joshua Roman in Sri Lanka
• In conversation with Mandhira de Saram
• Lionel Bopage: Evolution of the LTTE and Prabhakaran’s role in the Tamil nationalist struggle
• In conversation with Iranganie Serasinghe: Environmentalist and cinematic icon
• Song of the Sleepless River: Music, racism and resistence

We used the web service Tweet Book to capture all our tweets over the past year in a single PDF. We’ve tweeted thousands of times over the past twelve months and have covered,

• The media fallout of the farcical fast of senior government Minister Wimal Weerawansa in front of the UN HQ in Colombo.
• Praise for our model of journalism on C-SPAN video in the US, captured from an event at the United States Institute of Peace.
• Key statements by world leaders like Desmond Tutu on post-war reconciliation and accountability for war crimes
• Bell Pottinger’s sickening relationship with the incumbent government, largely hidden from public scrutiny
• Key reports on Sri Lanka from, inter alia, HRW, AI, ICG and the US State Department, including responses from senior Ministers and the Foreign Ministry
• Foreign relations and the tussle in Sri Lanka between India and China
• The court proceedings on Sarath Fonseka
• The UNP’s perennial leadership crisis
• Key updates on the LLRC, including additions to our media archives, the most comprehensive available on the web
• Key submissions to the LLRC, including holding mainstream media accountable for highly selective and erroneous reporting of certain submissions.
• The most comprehensive coverage of the 18th Amendment’s passage in Parliament across any media in Sri Lanka including in-depth analysis, articles and video interviews, plus video of submissions by the TNA in Parliament and the racist responses of fellow MPs.
• Visualisations flagging the hypocrisy behind promises to abolish the Executive Presidency, and the utter farce of the President appearing before Parliament after it was passed into law.
• In-depth and sustained coverage of the Panel of Experts appointed by the UN Secretary General
• Unique use of web platforms to contextualise the first leaks from the UN Panel’s report and visualise key findings
• In-depth coverage of the Cablegate / Wikileaks affair, with the first and best visualisation to date of how it impacts Sri Lanka
• Unique use of Google Maps to visualise the extent of the devastating flooding in Sri Lanka in early 2011
• The bizarre boycott appeal by RSF against the Galle Literary Festival and the response to it
• The desecration of LTTE graves in Jaffna
• Coverage of the Cricket World Cup and its impact on post-war reconciliation, including a poll taken by hundreds, and flagging the surreptitious increase of fuel and essential items the day of the Finals.
• The launch of Moving Images – Sri Lanka’s first high definition short video productions – and media coverage around it
• Leading web investigations into utterly bogus newspaper advertisements against the UN report taken out by those closely embedded in the Army
• In-depth coverage of the leadership training programme, including the exclusive publication of the syllabi
• In-depth coverage of Channel 4′s video documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields including exclusive interview with its producers
• In-depth coverage of the recent Katunayake FTZ clashes, including exclusive video and photos from our affiliate, Vikalpa
• In-depth coverage of the recently held defeating terrorism seminar in Colombo, including flagging the bizarre statements of the US Defence Attache, which led to an official State Department press release just two days after

In addition we’ve covered the challenges facing and often, the failure of mainstream media including homophobic editorials and plagiarism, self-censorship, tragic example of racism and Sinhala chauvinism in post war Sri Lanka, war crimes allegations, rehabilitation, breakdown in democratic governance, human rights violations, censorship, clamping down on the freedom of expression, corruption, nepotism of the Rajapaksa family, compelling reviews of culture and art, news articles and information on contemporary events and issues in Sri Lanka.

Read the full book of our tweets below, or view full screen here. The book contains all the web links we’ve flagged and all the public exchanges we’ve had with our readership over Twitter.

• A Public Memo to Members of Parliament representing the Tamil National Alliance from the Tamil Civil Society
• LLRC: Interim report to Government
• Launch of Moving Images: Stunning documentaries and photo essays from Sri Lanka
• Archive of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) submissions and media reports
• Sinhala and Tamil translations of UN Panel’s report on accountability

Great controversy and concern surrounds the ‘leadership’ training programme designed by the Ministry of Defence for under graduate students, conducted in around 28 military installations around the country. As the Young Researchers Collective recently noted on Groundviews,

“Although the government has stated that this will be a leadership training program rather than a military training program, it has conceded that the military will be involved in a number of aspects of the program. Students have also been informed that this training is “mandatory” for university entrance, though there now appears to be a great deal of confusion with regards to this provision as Government officials have issued a series of contradicting statements. These decisions have also been challenged by many students, rights groups, student unions, teachers’ unions and academics who have raised a number of concerns about the way in which this program has been conceived and implemented. This issue has also exacerbated a worsening crisis in local universities as the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) are also in the midst of trade union action.”

Other civil society groups have also raised grave concerns over this training which is essentially the indoctrination of a militaristic Sinhala Buddhist ideology. The Friday Forum for example notes,

“The curriculum of the training programme obtained by the Friday Forum after some effort reveals extremely problematic aspects. No mention is made of the authority responsible for the curriculum but a prominent photograph of the Defence Secretary on the cover of the study guide suggests authorship by the Defence establishment.”

The Friday Forum goes on to say,

“What is more problematic is the content of the module on history and national heritage. The topics are, in order, the arrival of the Aryans, foreign invasions, (who the foreigners are is not clear) and the development of Sinhalese kingdoms. “National heritage” focuses exclusively on prominent cultural symbols of the majority Sinhala community such as Sigiriya, the Temple of the Tooth and the Aukana Buddha statue with none from other communities. Subjecting new university entrants who may well become future leaders of this country to a course which focuses exclusively on the majority community, undermines all the official statements on national reconciliation after three decades of civil strife. If this is an officially sanctioned method of national reconciliation what hopes do we have for a peaceful conflict free future in this country?”

In a cogent essay on the training course, Lemek notes on this site,

“The political motivations of the leadership programme are quite clear when we consider that it is essentially a retributive reaction to the student protests that occurred in October and November 2010. It also provides an opportunity for the government to restrict the political influence of opposition parties within the university system and student politics, which presents a potential force of mobilisation against the government.”

Responding to the justification of the programme by those opposed to ragging, Lemek goes on to aver,

“The other issue that has received much attention is the problem of ‘ragging,’ which has developed into an institutionalised practise within a majority of universities. Perhaps a greater tragedy is the complicity of lecturers and other university officials who in complete indifference accept ragging as a ‘rite of passage’ within a hierarchical system of senior dominance over freshers/juniors. It is sufficiently amusing – in consideration of the egalitarian pretence of boot camp society – that the instruction of an alternative hierarchical system with a similar call for subordination is the solution to ragging. Is it exceedingly ambitious to request the chancellors and senior lecturers of universities to set about establishing intelligent administration in order address the issue by expelling students who are guilty of physical abuse? “

This is not just a domestic issue anymore. Capturing the concern over the substance of the leadership programme and the manner in which it is conducted, the Hindustan Times notes,

“Be it Mahinda Chintanaya, or what the government’s policy doctrine is know as, or name stadiums after the President or print currency notes with his photo, there is worrying trend to blitzkrieg the Lankan population with images and words about the ruling family. If his brother is having some fun, why should Gotabhaya miss out? Secondly, to focus only on one community in history is manipulating it. Though I haven’t seen the history module, it’s clear from Friday Forum’s statement that the module will far from help in reconciling the country emerging from years of civil war.”

To date, no one outside of the students who have undergone this training have seen the course material. We were emailed copies of the manuals and timetables in all three languages, plus copies of the covering letters the students received, which clearly state that the training is compulsory, with no exceptions. On the issue of mandatory participation and the confusion that arose due to contradictory statements issued by the MInistry of Higher Education, Lemek notes,

“There is a certain degree of confusion apropos to whether participation in the leadership programme is mandatory and essential for entrance into university. The Secretary to the Ministry of Higher Education, Dr. Sunil Navaratne, was kind enough to inform the public last week that the programme was ‘not compulsory contrary to popular belief.’ One would expect Dr. Navaratne to be aware of what occurs at the ministry, particularly when the Minister for Higher Education, S.B Dissanayake, appears to have been the source of this ‘popular belief.’ It is possible that incorrect reportage and miscommunication resulted in this inexcusable error, but then how would Dr. Navaratne and Minister Dissanayake explain the fact that the letters dispatched in Sinhala, Tamil and English by the Ministry emphasise mandatory participation? The second and tenth paragraph of the letter informs the students that the ‘certificate,’ which confirms the completion of the programme, is ‘required for entry to the university…’”

Leadership Training – English Covering Letter

See this letter in fullscreen here.

Training Manual (English Version)

See the manual in fullscreen here.

Leadership Training Covering Letter (Sinhala)

View the covering letter in Sinhala fullscreen here.

Training Manual (Sinhala Version)

See the Sinhala version of the manual in fullscreen here.

Leadership Training – Tamil Covering Letter

See fullscreen version of the letter here.

Leadership Training Manual (Tamil Version)

See fullscreen version of the Tamil manual here.

Leadership Training Timetable – Detailed Version

See fullscreen version of detailed timetable here.

Leadership Training Timetable – Concise Version

See concise version of the timetable here.

• Sinhala and Tamil translations of UN Panel’s report on accountability
• A Public Memo to Members of Parliament representing the Tamil National Alliance from the Tamil Civil Society
• An elephantine gestation: UN Panel’s report on accountability in Sri Lanka released
• Launch of Moving Images: Stunning documentaries and photo essays from Sri Lanka
• Mojo for mayhem or source of serendipity? Sri Lankan Army’s model to defeat terrorism

We are very pleased to announce that films from Moving Images will be part of the first Kandy International Film Festival (KIFF). Though the official schedule is still being finalised, we have been informed by the organisers that Moving Images will be screened from 4 – 6pm on Saturday, 25th at the Kandy City Centre. A moderated discussion will follow. The selection of films will be from A Lost White Tribe: The Eurasians of Sri Lanka by Menika van der Poorten and Koothu, kerosene and paper: portraits of resilience by Kannan Arunasalam.

Please join us. Ticketing information for KIFF can be accessed here.

The Kandy Film Festival will be a four-day celebration of global cinema, with a special focus on Asian film and upcoming talent, in the UNESCO world heritage city of Kandy, Sri Lanka. Against a stunning background of gardens, hilltops and cultural architecture, the Festival will showcase an exciting program of films celebrating diverse techniques, styles and themes relevant to the region. As noted on its website, the Festival is designed to generate an inclusive and tolerant environment to allow a close-knit and passionate artistic community, including Sri Lankan students and youth, to engage in debate, dialogue and be inspired by the power of film to understand the human experience.

Moving Images is a series of stunning short-form documentary and narrated photographic portraits on facets of life in post-war Sri Lanka. These high-definition productions, the country’s first, range from portraits of resilience from the war ravaged Jaffna and reflections on the Eurasian community by the last surviving Eurasians themselves to fascinating lives in Colombo invisible even to most who live and work in the city.

Some of the comments we received after the premiere of Moving Images in Colombo were,

• “moving images is FAN TAS TIC. Please convey my congratulations to those involved in it—they tend to be online acquaintances or friends of friends or people I follow on Twitter. Thinking of Kannan Arunasalam, Sharni and Tari Wickremaratne particularly. How marvelous it looks. And, of course, to you! It looks spectacular. And as always, I am amazed at how much you accomplish.”
• “I love Moving Images. Inspiring, and beautifully produced. Congrats. We’re gearing up for some relatively similar stuff here, but perhaps not so classy, more mainstream.”
• “A sincere thank you for last evening. There was certainly something to say and not merely something to show!”
• “Absolutely f******* fabulous.”
• “I’ve had a look through a lot of the videos that you and Kannan have put up – this has immense value and I’m so glad something like this exists. They are all just great stories and beautifully shot.”
• “Groundviews has been producing some great content in the last couple of years and the ‘Moving Images’ is super stuff. Congratulations! “
• “Looking at kerosene nearly brought tears to my eyes. This is my Jaffna.”
• “Beautiful and evocative images. Look forward to seeing more stories soon.”
• “excellent pictures.”

Of particular note is that the co-editor for Groundviews, Nigel Nugawela and the producer of A Lost White Tribe: The Eurasians of Sri Lanka, Menika van der Poorten, both hail from Kandy. Nigel will lead the moderated discussion after the screening of the films.

Trailers for the productions follow along with the flyer announcing the launch of the content back in April this year.

• Launch of Moving Images: Stunning documentaries and photo essays from Sri Lanka
• Kerosene: How does a taxi driver take the sick to the hospital when there’s no fuel around?
• A Lost White Tribe: The Eurasians of Sri Lanka
• Paper: The incredible story of Uthayan in Jaffna
• Koothu: Theatre and leprosy in Jaffna

[Editors note: Emil van der Poorten is a regular columnist in the Sri Lanka media. His short article in the Edmonton Journal (Violence still plagues my Sri Lankan homeland) prompted an invitation to contribute a more fuller account of his life to Groundviews. Emil's story and his many adventures with politics recounted here with an acerbic wit offer unique insights into political figures and events that have shaped our lives.]

Looking through the scraps of memorabilia from the time prior to my departure to Canada and then through my Canadian clippings to those accumulated in Sri Lanka since my return was a fascinating and nostalgic experience that I would not have indulged in without the stimulus of having to write this piece for “Long Reads” in Groundviews. The exercise was not unlike browsing through old diaries, except the material in those scrapbooks was more akin to snapshots from a lifetime spent in significantly different circumstances in two very different parts of the world.

My Sri Lankan clippings from the 1970’s were pretty sparse, primarily because most people then didn’t have their “fifteen minutes of fame” repeated at regular intervals in the media.  However, reading some of that material brought back memories of my earliest political association. The year was 1965 and I was persuaded that I needed to actively support the United National Party’s (UNP’s) candidate in the Galagedera electorate in the General Election that the “Weeping Widow,” Sirimavo Bandaranaike, had called.

It was an exercise that I look back on with a great deal of pleasure. As the saying goes, I “worked my butt off” for W.M.G Tikiri Banda, the UNP candidate. One of my early memories of that campaign, which began early in the day and most often culminated with a de-briefing at my home in electric light provided by a Lister generator, was quite a dramatic one. I visited the bathroom to empty my bladder late the first night. Lo and behold, the liquid I passed was dark red, almost black in colour! As might be imagined, this was rather frightening. However, on further discussion with those near and dear to me, the cause was located: the dye in the cheap aerated waters (“pop”) that I had consumed throughout the day that was offered by a variety of poor, but hospitable villagers in Tumpane and Harispattuwa. I made sure that I restricted my liquid intake to water or King Coconut (thambili) thereafter, even at the risk of offending the villagers who gave so readily of the very little they had. Things do change over half a century, even in Sri Lanka, because I am sure you don’t have what amounted to cottage industry aerated water manufactories any longer!

Our candidate, a small village trader with the nickname “Ottupaal (scrap rubber) Banda” was as feisty as they come and was not intimidated by the political heavyweight, Tamara Kumari Illangaratne, who was his opponent from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). To cut a long story short, after a team of committed and hardworking people – composed primarily of youth – had put their “all” into the campaign, Tikiri Banda emerged victorious, though by a very slim margin.  He and I were, for the first and I am sure the last time, carried on the shoulders of supporters from what was then the New Kandy Kachcheri to the Dalada Maligawa to give thanks for our victory. Heady stuff, indeed!

I was given cause, not so long afterwards, to regret this political adventure.

Life went on for me during the five years of UNP rule that ensued. I neither expected nor received so much as one “favour” of any description at that time. I diversified my agricultural efforts, replanting land in “non-traditional” crops; established a sheep-enterprise that was considered a bit too sophisticated for Sri Lanka at the time by an internationally-recognised New Zealand expert in the field; broadened the livestock effort into broilers, layers, muscovy ducks, hogs, a dairy cow upgrading effort and even the beginnings of a beef-cattle enterprise. While the experience of dealing with people in the Department of Animal Production and Health of the Department of Agriculture and the Veterinary Faculty of the University of Ceylon at Peradeniya was an unadulterated pleasure, I experienced some real heart-burn when I was confronted with a medical bureaucracy that viewed my efforts to seek expert medical help in England for a very seriously ill wife with what can be described politely as indifference.  At a time when, despite stringent Exchange Control regulations, some of the “chosen” were spending joyous summer holidays in Britain, our entreaties were greeted with cynicism. Then our MP decided to go to bat for us and talk about a bull in a China shop! He raved at the Minister of Health and moved heaven and earth to obtain the required clearance for us to go to England. If it was not for his intervention, my wife at the time would probably not have survived more than a few years longer after being diagnosed and having to undergo surgery subsequently for a tumor that was described as afflicting only “one in a million.”

Not having had any favours from a UNP government, I was to experience, in spades, what a vengeful SLFP government could subject me to.

When the 1970 election rolled round, I was in two minds whether to campaign for the UNP or not.  However, a friend of mine, no longer among the living, persuaded me that the UNP was certainly the lesser of the evils facing us and that we should, once again, man the battlements, gird our loins (make your choice!) and seek the re-election of Tikiri Banda.

While I didn’t put anything like the effort I had five years before into the campaign, I did more coordinating and acted as the “banker” for campaign funds from donors who were reluctant to hand cash over to our candidate and his minions. When I found that there was escalating violence in the constituency (I was told that boulders were being rolled in front of and onto cars taking seriously-ill patients to hospital etc.,) I went to the Superintendent of Police (SP) in Kandy, Merrick Gooneratne if memory serves me right, to seek his intervention.  To his question as to whether I was suggesting that it was only Mrs Illangaratne’s supporters that were guilty, I answered in the negative and asked that police strength be reinforced to stop the law of the jungle becoming the Highway Code, particularly after dark. The SP agreed to beef up the police presence in Galagedera, though I don’t know to this day whether that ever happened.

Shortly after this, I had a request to meet with the late E.W Balasuriya, the gambling czar and businessman of Kandy. “Bala” gently suggested that I desist from working in the field for the UNP and, instead, donate some money to party coffers as he and other businessmen were doing. I told him politely that I had to continue doing what I was most effective at and I returned home.

After the UNP defeat at the 1970 election, there were very noisy and seemingly violent mobs roaming up and down the Kurunegala-Kandy road from which I had access to my home.

A police inspector from Kandy on special post-election duty in Galagedera came looking for a place to have a shower and, maybe, a decent meal. He found both in our home and proceeded to tell me that I shouldn’t step out on the highway because they had been given instructions not to intervene if any UNPers were attacked. I took his advice and confined my family and myself to our home for a couple of weeks. I had the distinct impression during the latter part of this campaign and what followed that the SLFP forces had a plan for post-election action, which anticipated either a UNP victory or Dudley Senanayake hanging onto power after being defeated. In any event, the storm troopers who subsequently became those of the first Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna insurrection could scarcely conceal their militancy during the period immediately following the election. Many of those young people, I know for a fact, comprised the first wave of Che Guevarists in our part of the country in 1971.

The Balasuriya summons also achieved new significance when, sometime after the election, I was reliably informed that two individuals of significantly unsavoury appearance had been making not-so-tender inquiries as to where I lived.  Both of them were, apparently, from the Kolonnawa area, Mr. T.B. Illangaratne’s political home turf at the time! The witch-hunt began immediately after the election.  Hector Kobbekaduwa, a not-very-successful lawyer at the Kandy bar, assumed the mantle of Minister of Agriculture and immediately began seeking out “enemies” on whom to vent his spleen.  In this he had an admirable helper in Mrs. Illangaratne who had returned to Parliament by defeating Tikiri Banda in Galagedera.

Kobbekaduwa named my family and me in the House of Representatives and threatened us with all kinds of dire consequences. I was personally surprised at the man’s conduct because I knew him quite well as a classmate of my maternal uncles and a friend of my parents. Anyway, the first step that the tandem took was to appropriate van der Poorten land. Unfortunately for them, my holdings were entirely within the Akurana electorate, one of the few held by the UNP. No matter, there were other fish to fry, in that my two siblings owned an estate within the Galagedera electorate. The two of them were lifetime Trotskyites and would rather have been dead than be seen as UNP supporters. In fact, one of my brothers had his first “baton-charge experience” inclusive of a busted head in Kandy by working for… guess who?  Tamara Kumari Illangaratne when she (successfully) contested the Kandy seat in a by-election in the late nineteen-forties or early fifties!

A footnote to that particular story is that subsequent to the fall of Mrs. B’s government in 1977, the man who held my brothers’ Powers of Attorney, took the government to court and the acquisition was held to be completely unjustified and driven by vengeance pure and simple. The land was returned in what, I had been informed, was a landmark decision. Anyway, with land reform – another Kobbekaduwa lunacy from the results of which the mid-country of Sri Lanka in particular will never recover – the writing was on the wall for my family and I. I knew for a certainty that until the Illangaratne-Kobbekaduwa cabal had done me in, in one shape, form or fashion, I and my young family would have no peace.

Thanks to several sisters-in-law who had settled in Canada, emigrating to that country did not present too much of a challenge.  I do recall, however, the Canadian Emigration officer, who in those days came down from New Delhi periodically to hold interviews, asking me what we expected to do in Canada. Our response was, “whatever it takes.” My family and I knew we were leaving a comfortable, upper-class existence for goodness knew what in a country very different from tropical Sri Lanka.

However, before we began the next chapter of our lives, along came the first Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna insurgency with a little chapter in our lives covering that time that could provide a quite fascinating short story. That, though, will have to await another time and another opportunity. Suffice it to say that because we believed that even an insurgent accused of dire deeds is entitled to “his day in court,” my little family was placed at considerable risk when we chose to harbour an alleged Che Guevarist leader from the Mawanella-Kegalla area until he was able to surrender to the army in Kandy. The alternative, when he sought refuge with us after the back of that rebellion was broken, was to hand him over to the police immediately, which was a step that would have led to him being beaten to death and added to the human pyres burning at night in the Asgiriya area. That fate was not one owing its origin to local gossip but described to us by an army officer patrolling our part of the Province. However, this story even has a happy ending: the man is still alive and living close to Kandy, 40 years later.

My first job in central Canada – Toronto to be exact – was as an accounts clerk at British Petroleum Canada.   It was not ideal employment for someone who wanted to stay in agriculture. Thanks to a Sri Lankan friend who had preceded us into Canada and had secured employment in agriculture, I was able to follow suit and made the winter trek out west, leading the way (in my old Rover 2000TC car) for my family who followed by airline. As I soon discovered, that was hardly the vehicle for Canadian conditions, particularly during the winter! Brooks in Alberta was an oil town and was as conservative as they come in a province that is alleged to contain the blue-eyed Sheiks of Canada. I discovered, however, that the (very successful) local paper had an owner-editor who was part of an endangered species: he was a Liberal in one of the most red-necked towns in the most conservative province in Canada!

I began contributing articles to his paper and made the mistake of saying that Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the Liberal Prime Minister of Canada at the time, was not a frothing-at-the-mouth communist. As I discovered, this was a very dangerous thing to do that was akin to extolling the virtues of Satan in a Bible-belt town. I was a marked man and in due course, despite the fact that I had done some very useful work for my employer as a commodity buyer for what was then Canada’s largest (cattle) feedlot with a capacity of 25,000 head, I became “redundant.”

This was my first taste of political victimisation in my new home.

We moved farther west to a very beautiful part of the province where, literally, “the prairie met the foothills of the Rockies.” I was still in the livestock feed business and we spent four years in this town of barely 3000 souls where the only other Asians were a Ugandan couple who had been dispossessed by Idi Amin.  Despite its ultra-conservatism and Bible-belt underpinnings, my family and I were treated fairly and with respect and never experienced anything resembling discrimination. I even began writing a regular racquet sports column to our small-town weekly thanks to my facility with the ‘Imperialist language!’  Even though I wasn’t a businessmen, per se, I was elected to the Presidency of the local Chamber of Commerce over several consecutive years (a once-in-a-lifetime experience!), established a local club for the racquet sports and became very involved in them, beginning a seven-year tenure as a Regional Director on the Provincial Badminton association. I mention all of this trivia because it was indicative of a country where, even if the majority of its older settlers might not have been comfortable with a “foreigner” at all times, fairness prevailed and discrimination was very much an exception. I cannot over-emphasize this because I was a new immigrant of colour, espousing “left-wing” views both in person and in print, in a province that had a series of increasingly conservative parties in power from way, way back!  In fact, those Sri Lankans who might remember the early days of commercial radio in Sri Lanka might recall a morning fifteen-minute programme called “Back to the Bible.”  The originator of that programme was “Bible Bill” Aberhart, the first Social Credit Premier of Alberta whose party stayed in power for better than thirty years, commencing at the Great Depression.

My involvement in the community led me also to a preventive social services programme run by a volunteer board that was funded by the Province but with complete local autonomy. I served as its Chair for several years and then decided, without the benefit of a Social Work education, to seek paid employment in a similar programme. This gave me my first taste of “culture shock” since leaving Sri Lanka. I had charge of a similar programme to that in which I had been board chairman. Only this one covered an area about as big as Sri Lanka, with a population, if memory serves me right, of twelve thousand souls in Northern Alberta.  A lot of real estate and very few bodies, most of them Indians and Metis (of mixed ancestry)! Suffice it to say that I was very glad I had been the successful candidate because I shall always remember 1981 to 1987 as probably my most challenging years in Canada.  Despite an ultra-conservative provincial government, a federal government only [1]marginally less so and local politicians – on the majority of whom the appellation “redneck” would sit lightly – a dedicated team of volunteer board members and staff successfully delivered a plethora of services within the programme’s mandate.

The work we engaged in was directed at building self-esteem and community-capacity among very disadvantaged people who lived under conditions that would be usual in the Third World. We had Home Support programmes; day cares; play-schools and youth programmes. We established Information and Referral Centres (staffed with local people) providing access to government services to people of limited formal education. All of this was done with a minimum of funding, the exercise of a maximum of ingenuity and an absence of anything resembling self-aggrandisement. A contrast to what the country of my birth now provides, unfortunately.

Those six years ended too soon. However, before it did, it started me back on the road of formal electoral politics.

I joined the local New Democratic Party constituency association while in the north. This was Canada’s version of left-wing political activity. In fact, the province adjoining Alberta – Saskatchewan – had elected the first Socialist premier of any North American jurisdiction, when Tommy Douglas won a provincial election.  He went on to introduce “socialised” medicine to that province and in time, the Government of Canada followed suit by providing, arguably, the best medi-care system in the world. On a note of trivia, Tommy Douglas was the grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland, the movie and TV star, and the father-in-law of movie actor Donald Sutherland. Kiefer’s mother, Shirley Douglas, an actress and political firebrand had to be rescued once by her Premier father from a police cell in California, thanks to her active support of the Black Panthers. So, all in all, even in an ultra-conservative province like Alberta, being a New Democrat had a certain cachet!

The first Canadian election in which I was active was that of 1986 when, lo and behold, the New Democrats went from a grand total of 2 seats in the Alberta legislature to 16 and Official Opposition status! Within a year, I paid a price for that success when an ultra-conservative volunteer board, which had been deliberately appointed to get rid of the “leftists” in the system, fired me.

With a rather decent (in terms of what prevailed then) settlement in my pocket, I moved into an identical position in the southern town in which I had lived before moving up north. I continued my political involvement; such as it was, in a place where there was virtually no evidence of the NDP. Within a short time, financial constraints began to threaten the programme and it ceased to exist in a form that required an Executive Director.

My next stop was as the manager of a “camp” for the physically and mentally disabled who spent a couple of weeks each year outside their institutional or home environment. While the prospect of working with such a client group was intimidating in the extreme, jumping in the deep-end did not induce any of the traumas I had expected!

A year later, my wife and I were engaged by an Indian Band to set up and manage a business on an Indian Reserve. All the pieces were in place to make the auto repair shop-restaurant-conveniencestore-gas station into a roaring success. However, a Board riven by the traditional destructive rivalries of Indian communities had the capacity to induce suicidal impulses in any who had the misfortune to be caught in the middle!  It was a new and bitter experience of “Indian politics” for the both of us. Suffice it to say that that year couldn’t have ended sooner and provided material for a slim volume in and of itself!

The next three years were spent in formal, paid employment as a full-time organiser/fund raiser for the Provincial NDP. That was another great experience working with people of skill and commitment. When the recriminations following the devastating electoral defeat of 1993 had settled, some of us decided that we needed to set up a new political party without the elements of policy that we saw as having brought about the debacle of that year and which the organisation’s “establishment” refused to abandon. We chose the most democratic method of establishing a new political entity – going door to door with a petition and obtaining the signatures of thousands of citizens who supported our efforts.  Let me tell you that knocking on doors through cold winter nights in Alberta is no fun as a Yorkshireman of Irish origin, an Ethiopean communist and a Sri Lankan, among others, will vouch for! When the snow settled, we had succeeded and The Forum Party of Alberta was born. We ran our leader in a by-election to “show the flag” and four in our group, yours truly included, were candidates in the next provincial general election.

The results left something to be desired and we soon discovered that it took a hell of a lot of money to establish and maintain a political party in Alberta! At the end of that exercise, we all continued to be politically active and support progressive causes, some returning to the NDP fold.

My stint as an employee of a political party was followed by my time as the Executive Director of the Edmonton Multicultural Society lasted as long as that organisation’s (diminishing) municipal, provincial and federal funding. While Edmonton does not have as diverse a population as Toronto and is a much smaller city than the capital of Ontario, it does have a significant population of “people of colour” and I derived a great deal of satisfaction from working with a host of them.

The next logical step was to move into the position of paid coordinator of the community organisation in which I had worked on a volunteer basis for several years – the Immigrant Neighbourhoods Community Planning Association (INCPA).  This was exciting and challenging work with a wide array of nationalities: the proverbial wisdom was 40+ nationalities, speaking 10 major languages within a small, central part of the provincial capital city. While this organisation generated considerable favourable publicity for its successful organising of a significant diversity of residents, it also provided me with the opportunity of managing the campaigns of individual candidates of the NDP at Federal, Provincial and Territorial elections in Canada.  These were campaigns in which the eight-hour day was conspicuous by its absence, but never lacked for variety! The NDP had a tradition of grassroots organising and campaigning, and the utilisation of large volunteer resources. In addition, I was fortunate in the diversity of candidates whose campaigns I managed.  Among them were a retired nurse; a man who had been the only aboriginal speaker of a Commonwealth legislature and the chief of the largest Indian Band in the Yukon Territory; a black woman of Caribbean heritage, a school psychologist who owed his origins to the Punjab and others with marginally more mundane personal and professional backgrounds.

Diversity notwithstanding, the common thread running through every campaign was a commitment to social justice and fairness.

The change in my marital status and the advancing years prompted a “reconnaisance” trip to Sri Lanka shortly after the 2004 Tsunami.

As my Canadian friends keep telling me, I should either have taken a longer look at the land of my birth or I should have made the evaluatory trip a little later, after Mahinda Rajapaksa had established his suzerainty!

No matter, there’s no use in crying over spilt milk, as they say!

I went back to Canada, managed yet another Federal election campaign that spanned the Christmas holidays and came back to Sri Lanka having decided to start a new life here. In the meantime, the partner who was to share the rest of my days had begun the (Herculean) task of seeking to repair and renovate what passes for an ancestral home to the van der Poortens in Sri Lanka. And Herculean it certainly was, as it has proved to be yet another “work in progress” that will, I am sure, have to be continued by at least the next generation!

The attempts to restore a semblance of economic viability to agricultural pursuits on the land have proved, largely, ineffectual. The damage done by the vermin that now infest the surrounding land, which was once a plantation and now a secondary jungle thanks to Hector Kobbekaduwa’s “Land Reform,” is beyond belief and we have just about reached the point of throwing up our hands in disgust and resignation. The real losing battle though has been in terms of governance that makes it impossible for anyone except thieves and thugs (and politicians) to prosper. The fact that I embarked on a career as a columnist in the last of the independent Sunday papers has not helped our case either, with that fact proving a real roadblock to progress from time to time, not to mention the threats from those who don’t share my opinions and the constant, well-meaning warnings from those who do!

I am comforted through all of this, though, by good and sincere friends and the old saying that goes, “the darkest hour precedes the dawn!”

• Radical Reforms in Sri Lanka: Realities we are afraid of?
• Brotherhood Bloodshed Again?
• Provincial Council Elections 2008/2009: Nominations for and representation of women
• Provincial Election Campaign: Battling for the Centre?
• Understanding electoral results in Sri Lanka: Beyond winners and losers

The map above identifies the main flood-affected regions, sites where relief and rescue operations have been conducted, areas prone to landslides and specific locations that are at risk.  Please click on the link below the map to view it on a larger screen. You may click on individual markers for detailed information and zoom in to view the location of specific shelter camps located in the east. Please note that this map is updated as soon as the Editors of Groundviews receive detailed information and reports from the ground.

After our last updated post on 12 January 2011, a Daily Mirror SMS update at 12:50PM reported that there were 21 deaths and over 1,000,000 people affected as a result of the floods and bad weather that continues to devastate these regions. The Eastern Province is the worst affected with over 860,000 flood victims according to the latest figures released by the Disaster Management Centre. There have been widespread reports that it has become increasingly difficult to access specific areas due to submerged or damaged roads and the prevailing weather conditions in the North Central Province and the Eastern Province. The Director General of Disaster Management Centre stated the following in a news report published by the Daily Mirror,

Batticaloa District is worst hit by the floods with 533,000 people belonging to 30,264 families have been displaced. He said eight deaths have been reported from the district and 225 displaced camps have been set up in the district.

He said the district is experiencing a rainfall of 113mm/day continuously (Emphasis ours.) Yesterday it had been 200mm. Major General Hettiarachchi said two air force helicopters had been deployed to distribute relief and to rescue the affected people but they could not be taken off the ground due to bad weather yesterday as well.

More than 200 tanks have been extensively damaged while nearly 20,000 acres of paddy land were also destroyed.

Overall 996,757 people have been affected by the floods with 1727 houses have been fully destroyed while 12,151 have been partly destroyed. Total numbers of deaths stood at 18 while 49 were injured as at yesterday afternoon. Some 52, 391 families who have been displaced have been housed in 502 camps.

The Daily Mirror notes that Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena has informed “officials about the necessity to repair the submerged roads as early as possible as it has hampered the relief supply to flooded areas in the country.”

We now face a real threat of severe food shortages due to the complete destruction of over 130,000 acres of paddy field. Agriculture Minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardhana stated the following to the Daily Mirror,

“There is no doubt that we need an advanced strategy to face the food crisis that is inevitable. We can have a better picture only after the flood waters have fully receded. Therefore, we cannot say what kind of response we have to the crisis right now. What I can assure is that the government is going to face this with resolve and people must be prepared to it.”

Over a quarter of Sri Lanka is currently under water and 40 per cent of cultivated areas are submerged according to the Minister of Agriculture.

Update at 14:26PM: The death toll is now at 23.

Update on 15/01/11 at 4:13PM via JNW SMS update: “Total 1,053,718 persons affected by floods. 3744 houses fully damaged and 19,534 partially damaged. 37 deaths with 18 in Batticaloa – DMC – JNW.”

###

HOW TO HELP

The Editors of Groundviews appeal to all our readers to assist in any way possible and to spread the word. For more information on how to help the victims of flood-affected areas, please visit our previous post here.

• Google map on flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka – February 2011
• On Flooding and Disaster Management
• UPDATE: Situation report on flood-affected areas and a call for assistance
• First images: The flooding in Menik Camp and the increasingly dire situation for IDPs
• Abandoned War Displaced People From Border Villages

Ada Dernana notes the following in a news story published today,

Director General of the DMC, Major General Gamini Hettiarachchi speaking at the media conference said that 11,338 homes had been partially damaged while 1,609 homes had been fully damaged. He added that around 200 tanks had also been damaged in the floods.

Meanwhile, P.B. Samarasinghe, Director General of the Meteorological Department said that rains are expected for the next three days while this was the heaviest rains that the country had witnessed in over thirty years. (Emphasis ours.)

R.M.S. Bandara of the National Building Research Organization (NBRO) said that landslide warnings had been issued in 10 Districts including Matale, Badulla and Kandy where besides the heavy rains, poorly planned constructions on sloped areas had also contributed greatly to the reported landslides.

According to sources on the ground, the SL Army, Air Force and Navy are working hard to deliver food items to flood victims. The World Vision office in Batticaloa and the Red Cross are assisting as well in the relief effort. There is an urgent need for assistance to those victims who are sheltered in schools. With reports that weather conditions could actually worsen over the next few days, it is of utmost necessity that as much relief is delivered as soon as possible to those affected.

At present, there are 295 families at shelters in Chetipalayam and another 156 families Theththatheevu. There are a further four shelter camps in Kaluthwalai with 200 families in Kaluthawalai Mahavidyala, 114 families in Ramakrishna Vidyala, 112 families in Vipulananda and 48 families in Pugalidam.

The relief items required include milk powder for children, sanitary napkins, other basic food items and clothes.

The office of Chief Minister Chandrakanthan released an official SOS call for immediate assistance. The letter highlights the ground situation in the Eastern Province,

600,000 (Batticaloa 232,571, Ampara 317,270, Trincomalee 57,020) people have already left their homes and are residing in safer places. Most of the houses have been submerged and people have lost their belongs (sic.) More than 5000 people have lost their housing utensils and clothes. Considering the plight of the flood victims, please give a helping hand by providing donations and assistance in whatever way.

A Daily Mirror update today noted that other areas are at risk of flooding due to heavy rainfall,

The Ariyamancheni-Neelapola area is facing the threat of floods as several leaks have been detected in the bunts along the Mahaweli River in the Ariyamancheni area. Troops, police and irrigation officers are also engaged in packing sand bags to minimize the damage.

A total of 125 families in Ariyamancheni have been moved to the Lingapuram Tamil College while 121 families in the Sirimangala area have also been moved to the Somadevi Vidyalaya.

Several leaks have also been detected in the stream from Mavilaru to Kalaru and the army is packing sand bags at the moment, the Serunuwara Divisional Secretary Chandana Piyadasa said.

An Ada Derana news update confirmed that President Rajapaksa had to postpone his flood assessment visit and was grounded due to bad weather. A BBC news update notes the following,

Those displaced by the floods have squeezed into 800 camps that have sprung up in school premises, many of which are surrounded by water.

The air force has helped evacuate people and drop food supplies to some cut-off communities.

The government has made an emergency appeal for ordinary people’s help in sending dry rations, mattresses and bottled water.

Clean water and food supplies have been sent by official and international agencies to the worst-hit areas.

But the deputy disaster management minister Duleep Wijesekara said some places, such as Mutur, have been difficult to reach.

Around 200,000 people have been displaced.

HOW TO HELP

The Editors of Groundviews appeal to all our readers to assist in any way possible and to spread the word. The following is a list of organisations and numbers that you can contact to assist the flood victims. This list will be updated as soon as we receive word of other agencies and collection centres.

STITCH – Youth Movement

Please contact:

Dehiwala – Call Prabu on 0774 377477 for details

Moratuwa – Call Prathibha on 0779 851851 for details

Colpetty – call Sabrina on 0777 751718 for details

Wellawatte – Call Divya on 0714 289869 for details

If you would like to volunteer for STITCH, please email them at ivolunteer@stitchmovement.com

SARVODAYA

Please contact Mr. Saman Algoda, the Executive Director (0774394577, saman@sarvodaya.org) or Mr. Chamindha Rajakaruna, Director-Programmes (0777710205,chamindha@sarvodaya.org), or call the general lines on 2655255 or 2647159.

Federation of Youth Club (COLLECTION CENTRE)

86, High Level Road

Maharagama

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Update 8:57PM: “24 hour relief operation is in place by deploying tri-forces to ensure continuous supply of basic needs for the flood affected – Info Dept- JNW.”

This page will be updated as soon as we get more information.

Update 9:37PM: SMS’s from Chanuka Wattegama in Batticaloa we received throughout the day today, reproduced here verbatim.

• “rain continues, Flood levels increased. Relief distribution poor n disorganised. Mess. 4tos @ sarvodaya.org”
• “situation is worse. Raind since morn. Relief can’t reach ppl. Supply routes blocked.”
• “Heavy rains @ batty. Water level rapidly increase. Eravur town may be under water in few hrs at this level cutting off Batti from mainland. Expect worse”

Update 12:50PM, 13th of January 2011: “21 deaths reported, over 1 million people affected due to bad weather.” Daily Mirror SMS update.

• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka
• On Flooding and Disaster Management
• Google map on flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka – February 2011
• Breaking News: IDPs in Zone 3 and 4 in Menik Camp affected by flooding
• Messages by people in Manampitiya and Dimbulagala on flood relief

Photo courtesy www.facebook.com/battipeople

Over the last two days, torrential rainstorms in the Central and Eastern province have caused severe flooding, landslides and an overwhelming humanitarian crisis with 758,000 people affected island-wide (according to the latest update at 7:14AM today from the Disaster Mangement Centre [via JNW]) 809 houses have been fully damaged and 2948 houses have been partially damaged. There have been nine deaths; nine injuries and four people are still missing (last update Sunday evening.)

An article in the Daily Mirror details the extent of the crisis,

According to the Centre (Disaster Management) some 55,936 families belonging to 14,519 families have been displaced and had been housed at 138 camps that have been opened.  Several Divisional Secretariat offices in the East were also reportedly under water while Badulla District Secretary Keerthi Disasnayake was also reportedly marooned as a result of a land slide which occurred along the Badulla-Mahinyangana Road.

The following areas in the country have been affected by the floods: Batticaloa, Polonnaruwa, Nuwara Eliya, Moneragala, Badulla, Kegalle and Kandy.

The Sri Lankan Army, Air Force and Navy have deployed teams for immediate rescue and relief operations. The latest update by Daily Mirror reveals that the Air Force has rescued 22 people that were stranded in the Thoppigala area and 1500 SLA troops have been deployed in the east to assist with rescue operations:

An SLAF MI-17 helicopter was also engaged in distributing dry rations and other needs in the Thoppigala area in Batticaloa that was severely affected by rains. The SLAF was using MI-17 and Bell 212 helicopters to assist the flood victims, he said. The Sri Lanka Army has set up four camps in Wellaveli, Maduru Oya, Dehiaththakandiya and Valaichchenai to assist flood victims while 1500 troops have being deployed to the east to assist the ongoing distribution of dry rations and provide medical assistance, Military spokesman Major General Ubaya Medawala said.

In Wellaveli 1000 persons, in Maduru Oya 25 families, in Dehiaththakandiya 17 families and in Valaichchenai 2000 persons were provided with medical assistance, clothes and dry rations by the army.

Update: The Air Force and Army have stepped up rescue and relief operations. As of 11:00 AM today, the Air Force delivered 2.5 tonnes of dry rations in Batticaloa.

Update at 4:40 PM (via Daily Mirror Mobile Alert): “Three more bodies of landslide victims from Gatambe found bringing total to seven. Bad weather destroyed 132,000 acres of paddy in the East and NCP.”

There has been no confirmation on the exact death toll as yet.

Update at 4:45PM: Seven people have been rescued by the Air Force in Rambakanoya, Ampara (via Ada Derana.) The Daily Mirror has published aerial photographs of terrain affected by the floods and photographs from an air rescue by the Air Force.

The Editors of Groundviews received the following images of the flooding and damages to roads in Batticaloa.

Courtesy of www.facebook.com/battipeople More images can be viewed on that page.

The Disaster Management Centre and the Department of Meteorology issued a rather late ‘early warning’ message last night on their website, which points to the issue of the effectiveness of early warning mechanisms in place and how information concerning public safety can be disseminated to the public immediately in order to minimise possible risks. It is also the responsibility of the Ministry of Disaster Management for Safer Communities and Sustainable Development to issue road travel warnings and to ensure that police departments and other institutions have the capacity to deal with emergencies. After the severe flooding in the Western Province that affected over 70,000 people last year, one would have hoped that the Ministry had set about planning a more effective early warning system and emergency response system. With over 750,000 people affected, it is quite clear that the Ministry needs to focus more on the methods of disaster management and public safety.

• UPDATE: Google Map on Flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka
• Sri Lanka on tsunami alert after Indonesia quake (Updated)
• UPDATE: Situation report on flood-affected areas and a call for assistance
• Google map on flood-affected areas in Sri Lanka – February 2011
• SMS news alerts during emergencies – The experience of JNW and the tsunami warning of 13th September 2007

1. I recently visited Sri Lanka after seven years. End of it I was overwhelmed by nostalgia and wanting to go back home. When I left my country for higher studies I had plans to come back. Right after the PhD, I wanted to stay a little longer and get some more research experience. So I took a postdoctoral position at a prestigious university. Of course I had to give up my probationary lecturer position and pay back the bond. After coming back from the recent visit, I searched for suitable jobs with enough chance to do scientific research in Sri Lanka. I actually sent my resume (CV) out. I am still waiting to hear. No vacancies! I also looked into becoming a lecturer at a university. That is the only viable option for science graduates. Starting salaries of a senior lecture positions are dismal. I don’t expect American salaries but I think it is not overly greedy of me to expect Indian salaries.
2. One of my friends who has a PhD and a considerable postdoctoral experience in immunology wanted to returned to Sri Lanka and work at a well known research institute Kandy. He has been getting ready for this move in June of 2010. He has been offered a position. All but the letter was sent to him. He has told his current research director that he will be leaving and helped him to recruit and train a new person to take over his duties once he leave. He even asked me to bring a Sinhala 2nd grade book for his daughter so that she will have a smooth transition upon returning. Suddenly he received an email from this institute indicating that someone had filed a complaint against his recruitment. While I am not aware of all the details, the institute ended up retracting the job offer. I know my friend is a  very good scientist and his research idea was to develop a vaccine for a common illness unique to the South Asian region. Knowing his capabilities and plans (research and funding) he would have succeeded too.
3. One of my former students was offered admission by two universities in the USA to pursue her PhD. She wrote and ask me about the quality of those two universities so she could make an educated decision. While writing a reply to her I did a Google search to find the rankings of those universities. I ended up using http://www.4icu.org/; a site where universities in the world are ranked. For fun I searched my work place, which is ranked number 59th in the world and the two top universities in Sri Lanka. The numbers were dismal. I am not literally going by these rankings but if they were within the first 2000, I would have been happy.

People of Sri Lanka, after the war and electing a strong government are hopeful of development and making our country the wonder of Asia. Infrastructure building and other investments and are flourishing. As it has been for the last 50 years Science and Technology is neglected. H.E. the President named 2009 as the year of Information technology (IT) and English. Ministry of Science and Technology has an incomplete website with most of the data outdated. Sri Lanka recently invested in a coal power plans and oil resources exploration while the whole world is talking about going green and developing alternative energy resources. One wind farm was started but this was done without proper planning. For a small country land wind farms are a waste of space. They are noisy and eventually people will start complaining. Some of the smaller European countries are building wind farms off shore solving both noise problem and the land problem. We need to get little more organized in out efforts. Need to take lots of baby steps and pay attention to the details. Need to be smarter even when doing the right thing.

If we are to achieve the goal of becoming the next wonder of Asia, we need at least few of our universities to be in the top 500 universities in Asia. If India can do it we definitely can do it. There are lot of trained and very capable Sri Lankans from chemistry, physics, molecular biology, immunology, pharmacology and other biochemical and biological sciences,etc. are eagerly waiting to return. Most of my Indian friends were able to return after finishing their degrees. Some of the Chinese students have started returning. We spend a lot of money in educating people in sciences and other than in IT, we lose most of them to the developed countries.

In addition to all these we as a country need an attitude change. Let the young blood to take over and inject new ideas. We have to feel less threatened by them. In a world where molecules are imaged using atomic force microscopy (AFM), barrettes have to make some space for AFMs. Things like what happened to my friend makes the young generation to move further away. We need these fires under the ashes to completely burn out. Hope someone is listening!

• A turn for the worse? Undergraduate protests and unrest in Sri Lanka
• It is time to decide on Sri Lanka’s university system
• Training for University Entrants in Army Camps and at District Level
• Dr. Cyril Ponnamperuma (1923-1994): A Passionate Champion of Public Science
• An education to die for

Sunday: Catch up on sleep and go to funeral. My cousin goes through religious rituals, with the priest dragging on. He is a nice guy, my cousin, meticulously following all instructions from the priest. When in his position, at my dad’s funeral a few months ago, I had a quiet word with the priest: “Itupaththu Oraam nootaaNdu aiya, vEhamaahap pOngO (it is the twenty first Century, priest, go faster)”, and he obliged. Doesn’t matter though, because the only person at the event with good knowledge of Sanskrit was my dad, and he was dead. At my aunt’s funeral, I think of her amazingly peaceful life. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly” is most appropriate.

Monday: Email from a friend inviting me to an event on Sunday afternoon in memory of Kailasapathy, the founding President of the Jaffna University. Annoyingly, when the invitation was emailed on Saturday, I was already in the plane. I could easily have joined the event, if only she had informed me earlier. I tell her off: “Silly girl, your Jaffna habits!” She won’t take offence. Kailasapathy and I are also “He comes from Jaffna” type Sri Lankans.

I remember Kailasapathy, the great scholar whom I have met once or twice. After a seminar he gave at Peradeniya, back in 1978, I had sneaked along with the VIPs for plain-tea and vadai at a canteen. That’s how you get the real stuff – tea with the speaker after the seminar. I remember being so impressed with the man’s vision for his university, a non-sectarian, inclusive scholarly vision. A fantastic scholar of Tamil literature was warning of the dangers of Tamil (and Sinhala) nationalism. That is something about great men. It takes 30 years to establish the accuracy of their predictions – and at a massive cost!

On facebook a friend notifies: “Watch Rupavahini at 6:30”. The programme is on eco sanitation –on constructing toilets with minimal use of water, and making compost from our posterior outputs. Not just the theory, but evidence of successful take-up in dry-zone villages. “We are using this for over a year now”, a woman says in Tamil, another chap echoes the same in Sinhala. The star cricketer batting on behalf of the concepts in the programme was particularly great.

Tuesday: Kandy bus stand, when it rains, is rather a tough place. It was a miracle I protected my books and computer from getting drenched. The hotel still has very low occupancy, as on my last visit in July: Eight Europeans, twelve Indians and myself, sharing a 120 bed facility. A group of about six young Sri Lankans have come up for beer and snacks, behaving like spoilt kids.

Kandy Bus Station

Across the corridor, the Indian group is wide awake at 4.00AM. I open my door in anger. Pause. They outnumber me twelve to one. Is it wise to pick a fight? Hasn’t the futility of this approach been demonstrated in recent times? I need a different strategy. With a broad Mr Bean grin and Madras accent I say “thookkam varElliya aiya? (don’t you feel sleepy)”. It works. “Sorry saar”, one of them responds, “shhhh…” to the others. At 6:30 I find no hot water in the shower. No…, you don’t even think that! Some of my good friends are from India.

Wednesday: I take a three-wheeler ride to the University. The campus is as beautiful as ever. Here, the hills are alive. The river has something majestic about it: “There is more to life than simply increasing its speed”. The huge trees inspire you, if you stay quiet without disturbing the young lovers’ simulated privacy under umbrellas. Walk through campus, stopping on the way for a vadai and plain-tea. Brilliant, they still taste the same. I see portraits of Marx and Lenin on the canteen walls, just as it was then, though something tells me the current iPod generation may not be fans of these characters.

Over to the Engineering Faculty, where I settle down and do a couple of hours of serious work reading my student’s draft thesis on automatic translation between languages. I take a walk across the river to meet the new Vice Chancellor, who is gracious enough to see me without an appointment. Talking to him, I am confident he will fix some of the bad habits the institution has accumulated over half a century.

Clockwise from top left: Hantana mountains, Mahaweli river, tree and University building

On the way back to Kandy, the bus stops near Regal theatre. There is Alimankada showing at 6:15. I look at my watch, 6:10. “Bahinawa (getting off)”, I shout. A very nice film it was, speaking of ethnic minority issues in Sinhala, and portraying the emotive responses. For too long, our politicians have only spoken in Tamil, to Tamil people, about how evil the Sinhalese were; and in Sinhala, to the Sinhalese people, about how evil the Tamils were. Both great vote winners. The dialogue in this film seems a welcome change. I give the film 7/10 (slow moving, unrealistic bird-watching in places and bits of Rambo). In my scale, Pura Handa Kaluwara scores 9/10. (Remember the powerful scene in PHK where the sister gets the message even before she sees the coffin — the strength of context making language redundant, and acted out first class to Schindler’s List standards?)

Thursday: Breakfast, back to the campus. I am making myself really useful today, talking to recent graduates who want to know about research opportunities. I am saddened by the low access to journals. Regular reading of journals is important to stay abreast of latest developments in science. I give them tips on accessing stuff that commercial journals protect and tell them about the Public Library of Science initiative (www.plos.org).

Strict Instructions – where is the “please”? (Avoid taking the drink bottle out of the canteen)

The students are all incredibly polite here, having been instructed in a strongly hierarchical setting. I insist they call me by my name, and not “Sir”. That is too much of a shock to their system: “OK Sir, I won’t call you Sir, Sir.” I know how to make them change (wait till I start calling them Sir and Madam!). Nuke will come next week, guys.

Friday: Morning with a control engineer – and a good old friend, discussing the use of control theory in understanding some aspects of molecular biology. We converge on a project plan for a junior member of staff. He will contribute theory and supervise her, and I will supply the biological problem and data. It is a win-win deal.

I want to try the trains. Railway guy says there are only three trains a day to Colombo. I mention this to an engineering professor – “It is the most under-utilized parts of our infrastructure”, he says of the railway tracks. “But still they go on building highways”. He is cynical. “I think the aid agencies influence it – after getting us to build roads they can make money selling us cars, no?”

I settle for a bus journey. Where is the investment in roads? 40 km per hour is the best speed. Despite low speeds, you need to close your eyes and hold your breath when the guy overtakes, or else you think your transition between this world and the next is imminent.

Train (left) and Dangerous Driving

To make political predictions, I count the number of images of the contestants in the forthcoming election. At 300 images of the incumbent I stop the experiment. In that time I saw just four of the main challenger. Given that the contest is not about any substantive policy issue, familiarity is the main determinant of success. The outcome is a no-brainer.

In a local bus to Battaramulla, I start a conversation with the guy in the next seat. A 20 year old, “I am in IT” – type guy. He is paying Rs 400,000 a year for a degree programme run by the University of Westminster.

“In Sri Lanka, you need a degree for anything”, he asserts. We chat a bit, and I gain his confidence, before coming back to the 400,000.

“Four lakhs a year is a lot of money, isn’t it? What do your parents do, to be able to afford it?”

“My mother doesn’t work”, is all he says.

“So, did you sell some family land or something?”

“Yes”, he agrees.

A plethora of foreign universities are here, offering IT and other degrees. Ambitious people, with parents willing to make sacrifices, create the business opportunities for some. From the other side, I know this phenomenon as “Internationalization”. Just before getting off, he says from the footboard: “Still cheaper than going to the UK”.

Why our own tertiary education system has not built up the capacity, I wonder. Perhaps I have no right to blame anyone for that. In my youth, I was opposed to expansion in medical education via the Private Medical College. That was the Red in me then, just like it was in the eminent scholar, Kailasapathy.

A great week it was, and I am looking forward to my next three.

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Ragging is thought to have begun in educational institutions in the 18^th Century and was very much in vogue in European countries. The concept was then adopted in the US in a milder form known as ‘hazing’, and spread across the world during the era of colonization, entering the Indian sub-continent along with the British education system. Stern laws against ragging have resulted in its eradication from the West and most of the rest of the world. However, in Sri Lanka, it remains.

In 1975, Peradeniya University was the first to report a major ragging related incident when a fresher of the Faculty of Agriculture became paralyzed as a result of having jumped from the second floor of the hostel to escape the physical ragging being carried out by the seniors. She later committed suicide.

Dr. Anoma Abhayaratne, the Dean of the Arts Faculty at the Peradeniya Univerisity, says that ragging continues to take place at Peradeniya, albeit in a milder form. “A lot of the time we get anonymous notes and parents call us anonymously to complain about ragging,” said Dr. Abhayaratne, going on to say that few students are willing to identify the raggers due to the fear of what might happen to them. However, some weeks ago, for the first time in the history of the university, a fresher lodged a complaint against twelve senior students who had ragged him excessively. “We are very concerned about the security of this student because of what might happen to him due to his having had the courage to stand up to the raggers,” Dr. Abhayaratne said, “The court ordered police protection for him but that is a big challenge especially in an university environment.” The Dean went on to state the case of another fresher who had been physically ragged to the point of sustaining internal injuries to his head. He is still undergoing medical treatment.

Unlike in other countries affected by ragging such as India, no official movements against ragging exist in Sri Lanka, and related information and statistics are almost impossible to come by. However, in recognition of the magnitude of the problem, the Sri Lankan Parliament passed a Bill in 1998 entitled the Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Educational Institutions Act No. 20. Under this Act, ragging is defined as “any act which causes or is likely to cause physical or psychological injury or mental pain or fear to a student or a staff member”. The Act makes ragging a distinct and punishable offence under which any individual found guilty would be subjected to two years rigorous imprisonment, ten years if the rag were to lead to sexual harassment or grievous hurt. In addition, depending on the gravity of the offense, students found guilty could face expulsion from the University.

More than ten years after this law became effective however, ragging continues.

In 2002, Samantha Vithanage, a third year Management student at the Sri Jayawardenapura University, pioneered an anti-ragging campaign in the University in an attempt to stop the practice. On November 7^th that year, the anti-ragging campaigners sat down for a discussion with the JVP controlled student council who defended the practice. Midway through the discussion, a mob of around 200 JVP supporters armed with clubs and stones stormed into the room and viciously attacked Vithanage and others in the anti-ragging camp. The attackers stabbed their victims with shards of glass and Vithanage who was struck, fell to the floor and had a computer monitor dropped on his head. Two days later he died.

Although the death of 22 year old Vithanage subdued the rag at the Sri Jayawardanapura University for awhile, students say it still occurs. While the rag is now less physical, it continues to be brutal, and a third year Management student recalled her rag as a fresher two years ago where one of the ‘activities’ the freshers were forced to do involved rubbing their hands in mud just before meals and being told by the seniors that they could only wash their hands once; either before eating or afterwards. Needless to say, many freshers went without meals for days.

A senior Professor at the Moratuwa University, who declined to be named, says that ragging is no longer the problem it once was. “Ragging has been eradicated to a large extent, especially in Moratuwa,” he said, “The administration doesn’t really consider it a big problem and because students don’t come forward to complain about it there is no real pressure on the administration to take any measures to prevent or stop it.” He went on to say that some students even consider it a “badge of honour” to have been ragged, but also said that he knows of students who have quit their degrees because of the humiliation they have been subjected to during the rag.

Kanthi Wickramasinghe (name changed) is one of those students. Having secured a place at the Bio Science faculty at the Colombo University, Kanthi endured two months of ragging before she finally decided that it was not worth it. “The last straw was when they singled me out and told the rest of the batch that they would be punished if they spoke to me,” said Kanthi who had also been banned from going to the canteen and attending meetings held for the freshers. “It was one thing to be ragged as a batch but to be targetted personally, partly because I had studied at a private school in Colombo, was unbearable,” she said.

The Arts faculty at the Colombo University has been free of ragging for the past five years. This year though, that changed. A group of students who themselves had never been ragged at University, began to randomly corner students in the canteen and verbally assault them, making demands that girls could only wear skirts or dresses to campus. Malini Fernando (name changed), a fresher at the Colombo Arts faculty, said that if a student not from Colombo wore jeans to campus, the raggers would yell at those from Colombo, accusing them of corrupting the others. “They go to the extent of threatening to kill you if you don’t wear a skirt,” said Malini, and even though the freshers are confident that the raggers do not mean this seriously, casually dishing out death threats is not something to be condoned.

The administration at the Colombo Arts faculty, for their part, seems to be willing to control the rag. “The lecturers gave us their numbers and told us to call them if we get ragged or see anyone getting ragged,” said Malini. However, she went on to say that many lecturers seem reluctant to be identified as being anti-ragging. “The lecturers don’t come while the rag is happening,” she said, “they only come afterwards.” One wonders about the wisdom in that.

At Kelaniya University, which has seen its share of student clashes, the authorities have taken an extreme and certainly unpopular approach of having police officers stationed both outside and inside the university. However, students say that the presence of the police does little to curb the ragging. “Most of the time the police just watch and laugh while the students get ragged,” said Sasha Perera (name changed) a fourth year Arts student, who went on to say that a few senior students had taken to saving freshers from the rag. “We try to flank them on either side when they enter the university so that the raggers can’t get to them,” she said, “But obviously we can’t save everyone and strangely, a few even say they want to be ragged.”

Michael John (name changed), a recent graduate from the Kelaniya University, sees ragging in a different light. “My batch-mates and I still laugh together about what we went through at our rag,” said Michael, who had in turn ragged his juniors when in his second year. “I tell people to think of ragging as an experience,” he said, “I’m very glad I went through it because I would probably have been more of an obnoxious prick if I hadn’t.” While he does not condone any form of physical or extreme ragging, Michael feels that there can be positive side to ragging which is not necessarily demeaning.

In Michael’s opinion, ragging is a complex class issue. He identifies those who protest against it as belonging to the middle or upper-middle classes in society and sees those who practice it as coming from the poorer strata of society. The hue and cry over ragging, he says, is a reflection of the intolerance of the rich about being dictated to by people they look down on. He argues that far from the raggers suffering from an inferiority complex, the complainers instead, suffer from a superiority complex, and he sees those who quit University due to ragging as those who can afford alternate forms of higher education either abroad or in private institutions.

To the vast majority however, ragging is bullying. To them, most of those who practice it, do so to make themselves feel important, feared and respected. A few more do it out of peer pressure. Whatever the perspective, there is no justification whatsoever for depriving any student, whatever his or her background may be, from pursuing the University education that they worked so hard for. There should be little debate that ragging violates civilized norms of behavior and established human values and there should be no place for it in modern society, let alone in institutions educating and nurturing the best brains in the country.

Perhaps it is useful to analyze how Western societies where ragging originated, have succeeded in eliminating it. Is it due to strict laws and their effective enforcement? Or is it due to the fact that the disparities among the student populations there are not as vast as in a developing country like ours? Does the fact that all students pay for their education make them feel more equal?

There are many views on the root causes of ragging varying from it being a psychological problem to it being a form of expression of frustration against inequalities, injustices and disparities in society, particularly the wide urban – rural and rich – poor gap that continues to exist. Proponents of ragging see it as a means of equalizing the wide disparity in social status that exists in a university student body, as well as a means of ensuring that those from more priviledged backgrounds become aware that they are no better that those from less priviledged ones. Politicization of university student movements, which exist despite claims to the contrary, may also be a contributory factor.

Is the Western success in eliminating ragging replicable in a country like Sri Lanka? Perhaps legislation can only go thus far and no further than in eliminating extreme forms of ragging that lead to grievous hurt or death. Depending on one’s view on the root causes of ragging, until some of the wide spread disparities in society are addressed and the gaps bridged, ragging may be one of the few negative consequences of an otherwise equitable free education system, that students just have to put up with.

Having said that, apart from legislation and deterrent punishment, a more effective approach to address the problem of ragging in Sri Lanka, would be through creating awareness and conviction about the futility of ragging among the students themselves. In this context, anti-ragging student movements starting within the universities is a step in the right direction and presents the best opportunity to effectively address this long standing problem. It should therefore be wholeheartedly supported and encouraged by everyone who wishes to see Universities in Sri Lanka rid of ragging.

By Nishika Fonseka, Groundviews Staff Writer

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All elections are important and these will be no exception. It is worth reminding that we are still in a post-war situation and far from the post-conflict one we ought to be in. What this requires is the prioritization of peace, reconciliation and unity and the firm commitment to ensure that the causes of ethnic conflict are not reproduced and sustained.  This means at least the rights of the IDPs as the litmus test for all else, a political settlement of the conflict and a reversal of the culture of impunity in respect of human rights along with facing up to the questions of whether there can be unity without reconciliation and reconciliation without accountability.  This is not all.  There are serious questions to be considered on the economic front with regard to employment and indebtedness – the real consequences of the fate of GSP Plus and the IMF loan – and most importantly in light of recent demonstrations, the ability of the system of education to meet the requirements of the economy.  And given Angulana, what happened to Nipuna Ratnayake and the Bambalapitiya drowning, the overarching issues of the Rule of Law, the supremacy of Constitution and the intentional violation of the Seventeenth Amendment.

Constitutional reform, at least in terms of the abolition or reform of the executive presidency will be on the agenda, as a consequence not so much of the requirements of governance but the emerging imperatives of regime survival and stability.  There is the danger that on this score, what is in store is the abolition of the form and title of the executive presidency with the transfer of its substantive powers to an “executive prime minister”.   The electoral system too, could be up for debate with the virtues of the ‘first-past –the post’ system and constituency MPs being eulogized to discredit proportional representation.

There is a crying need for a national debate on the future of the country and the issues on which the next presidential and general elections are to be fought.  The challenges ahead are far too serious to treat these elections merely as opportunities to register electoral approval, appreciation, admiration and gratitude for the defeat of the LTTE.  There has to be a tomorrow and a time when the war is truly behind us.  We need a plan to move towards that time and in order to design one, as many of us as willing and able must be part of that process.  An agenda for change and reform is critically needed and it will not come from the politicians who are trapped in fighting yesterday’s battles.

The island wide debate, discussion or conversation on change and reform is a vital and integral part of this.  Where however, through or on what medium or channel or site can it be conducted?

The obvious answer is the mainstream print and electronic media.  For a variety of reasons, very real and crucial constraints ranging from official displeasure, threat and sanction to self censorship, ideological disposition, market demands and problems of professionalism, the robust exchange of ideas called for will not happen here and not beyond the efforts of a persistent few, as required.  Moreover, since it is an exchange of ideas – a discussion, debate or conversation- that is called for, many voices need to he heard.  This is not about letters to the editor, about comment and observation alone but about participation and engagement with passion and conviction about the Sri Lanka of the future, we desire and deserve.

Citizens’ journalism and given its record as a forum for quality debate, Groundviews is ideally positioned to make a major contribution to this exercise in national rejuvenation and renaissance.  Is it not possible in the lead up to the elections that citizens use Groundviews to canvass their ideas for constitutional reform, governance, human rights and the economy and whatever else they see as constituting essential elements of an agenda for change and reform? The exchange could, but need not be time bound. As in the nature of a conversation it should be ongoing and active.

This would be a convincing demonstration of the strength and value of citizens’ journalism and its substantial utility in empowerment for peace, governance and human rights – An enabling facility for a functioning democracy.

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I was seventeen, which you’ll be surprised about if you’ve seen my youthful appearance and I was in Sri Lanka on one of those “extended” studenty type of holidays that we all wish we could have now. It was the summer between the first and second year of my ‘A’ levels and my parents had paid for me to go there and stay with my Uncle and his Australian wife for a couple of months.

My mother is Tamil, as were her parents, an incredible coincidence I know. I went to stay with her brother who was working for a couple of years in Lanka. He had left the country as a child with my Mother’s family, had subsequently settled in Australia, then gone to Sri Lanka with his wife as an expat worker. He was an Australian citizen, but still a Sri Lankan and still a Tamil. I went with my maternal grandmother, a proud old Tamil who hadn’t been back for a few years, and we were meeting my first cousin, one of my grandmother’s other grandchildren, in Sri Lanka. That particular cousin lived in Denmark. His mother was my mother’s sister and his father was Danish. It was his first time in Sri Lanka. They were confusing times indeed!

I’d had a few weeks in Sri Lanka before that day. I’d done some hanging around, some sightseeing and travelling, but it was all with people. Looking back I can see that I was a dependant seventeen year old much more than the independent backpacking type that many seventeen year olds are now. One of these excursions was a few days up country to see something to do with my family. I don’t know the exact dates involved but we’d been up country, out of contact with most people, for a week or so. Then, on what must have been July 25th or so, we headed back to Colombo by car.

These were the days before mobile phones, satellite TV and many of the things we take for granted today. Computers were things that scientists used, mostly because they were the size of a room, the internet was unheard of and even Kottu was only in its infancy, version 2.0 or something.

We broke our journey in Kandy, where we stopped off at someone’s house for tea and things. The first leg had been uneventful. There were five of us in the car; my Uncle who was driving, his wife, my Danish cousin (I’ll call him DC), my grandmother and me. We had been chatting happily and watching the scenery go by with that sense of awe that up country Sri Lanka inspires in people.

Once we left Kandy things became different. The roads were quiet and there was a strange lack of activity. After passing Kadugannawa my Uncle and his wife became very concerned, it was all too quiet and too eerie for comfort. Shutter on stalls were closed, people were absent and the usual hustle and bustle of the Colombo Kandy Road was missing.

We turned on the radio and only then did we find out what had been happening in Colombo in the preceding days. It’s important to remember that this was twenty five years ago. We had been up country and communication wasn’t in any way like it is now. It was the first we’d heard of the rioting and looting, of the murdering and violence. It was also the first time we realised we were driving while there was a curfew on. A bit of a bummer.

I was in the back seat with DC and my grandmother. DC, being of mixed parentage, looked very western and not at all like a Sri Lankan. I, being seventeen and thinking I was some sort of fashion god, looked unlike the average Sri Lankan. My hair was long and I had tried to dye it blonde so it had that reddish colour that blonde hair dye turns jet black hair into. I had an earring and wore clothes that made me look as if I was about to go on stage with a band. These days, when I do go on stage with a band, I look like I’m in a car on a trip.

My grandmother wore a white saree, as she had done since my grandfather had died many years before, not the same one every day though. I’ve never thought about it but I suppose clothes shopping for her must have been quite easy.

My Uncle looked brown, mostly because he was, but he was very western in his clothing and demeanour. His wife was white and looked like an Australian tourist.

I was very much a child in terms of my input to the conversations and plans that followed. I mean that I had no part to play other than to do what I was told. I didn’t understand the conflict at the time and all I knew was that there was a big risk involved in being Tamil, seen to be Tamil or with a Tamil. My Uncle and his wife decided that the best course for us was to continue on our journey and get to Colombo as quickly as possible.

The plan, if stopped, was to say that we were unaware of the curfew and that we were tourists, except my Uncle who would be called the driver. It seemed like a good plan and we continued on the road. The eerie stillness followed us on our journey for some miles. It was like something from an episode of Star Trek when the crew have beamed down to an old abandoned planet.

Then we rounded a corner and almost drove headlong into a mob of people in the road. As mobs go this one didn’t look like the friendly type. They were carrying guns, sticks, things on fire and others bits and pieces that were only going to do damage. My Uncle slowed the car, he had no choice as they were blocking our way. There must have been about a hundred or more people, or a hundred and five if you include us in the car.

We stopped the car and I thought we were going to die. I had never had the feeling before and I’ve never had it since. We were surrounded by the mob and one man was standing in front of the car with a gun pointed at my Uncle’s head. To this day I can remember the look on the gun toting man’s face. He was wide and red eyed, he looked wild, angry and like he’d shoot just for the fun of it.

It’s funny what goes through your head during something like this. I guess many people face danger of this sort regularly and are able to think all sorts of rational stuff. I thought my Uncle would be shot and that we’d be killed and that bit, the bit about dying, didn’t scare me. What did scare me was the thought that no one really knew where we were. We’d die and never get found, never be traced. I felt afraid of that.

The gun toter was evidently one of the leaders of the mob. He walked around the car to the driver’s side. My Uncle wound down the window and a discussion in Sinhala ensued. The car was surrounded by people and I thought that anything could happen at any point. It was all well and good that my Uncle was talking to the one chap but anyone else around the car might have decided to smash a window and do something at any time.

The minutes of discussion felt like hours and during this period, while the conversation went on, the chap continued to point the gun straight at my Uncle’s head. Everyone else in the car was quiet, not that I could have joined in even if I wanted to. After a while the mob let us pass. I don’t mind telling you that, even as I type this, I feel nervous and jittery to think about what might have been. The mob had believed and “spared” us. They were happy that none of us were Tamil.

We carried on our way. I recall looking briefly out of the rear windscreen as we drove away. I looked at the mob and felt a sense of relief mixed with dreaminess. It was as if the last minutes had been a film or a fantasy and I’d just woken up again.

There were no more mobs on our route, there was no more direct danger but, as we entered Colombo, we saw the sights that so many others have talked about. The debris and residue of what had been happening, what was still happening, was everywhere. Buildings were burned, looted and smashed. Roads were deserted and filled with nothingness and the smell of fear.

We got back to my Uncle’s house. It was a wealthy street and three or four of the houses, the Tamil ones, had been looted or destroyed. Ours was untouched and undamaged, perhaps because it was rented, maybe because it had been empty. Either way it’s not the sort of scenario that fills you with feelings of security and safety. By this time we knew what had been happening, that the mobs were going round looking for the “enemy”.

The next days were timeless ones. I can remember detail but not exactly when it happened. For about a week most of the household went to bed at night not knowing if we’d wake up in the morning. I remember lying in bed (I shared a room with DC) and we’d hear the shouting and raging of the mobs as they roamed the city. Me and DC spoke a lot and he was more scared than I was. He was right, I was wrong. I was filled with a mix of teenage naivety and youthful ignorance. He was older and understood more about the immediate danger we were in. I had one of those “It won’t happen to us” mentalities. It was only some years later that I realised it so nearly did.

Staying in the country for my grandmother, DC and I wasn’t a favourable option and my parents back in the UK were desperately trying to organise flights for us. Flights were limited and packed and it was only after a few days that they were able to get DC out. I look back and feel admiration and gratitude to my Uncle and his wife. They were in a state of mutiple loco parentis and had to look after themselves, my grandmother and their two nephews. It was like going through the different stages of a computer game. Complete level one to get to level two and so on. But each person only had one life and starting the game again if you die wasn’t an option.

I was dispatched to some good family friends to stay with, my grandmother went off to some cousins of hers and we reconvened some days later when we had been put on a flight. We stayed in one of the airport hotels the night before the flight, for fear of travelling during the hours of darkness, and were under strict instructions not to tell anyone our ethnicity.

My grandmother suffered from this. She hadn’t been back to Sri Lanka for many years prior to this trip and she never went again. Two years later she died. I know that she felt immensely betrayed, as if her motherland didn’t want her. Having to deny her identity was something she hated doing as she was so proud of her heritage.

My Uncle and his wife left to go back to Australia afterwards. They have returned many times since ’83 and have mixed feelings about Lanka.

DC has never been back. I talked to him about it a while ago and he hasn’t ruled it out at some time in the future, just not now.

Me?

I didn’t go back for five years. I know I was one of the privileged and lucky ones. I had a home to escape to and I didn’t have to leave my home to live. Tens of thousands of people, Sinhala and Tamil have suffered so much more in the last twenty five years than I did or any of my family did.

Living through those weeks and those events added something to me, to my passion for Sri Lanka. It was only a few years ago that I stopped thinking, every time I left Lanka, that I might not see it again. It’s made me so determined to try to instil some of that passion for Sri Lanka in my daughters, so that they can love the country like so many of us do. I think I’m doing okay there.

My little story is only a drop in the ocean of stories that have been told already. Those that have been told are only a drop in the even bigger ocean of ones that exist.

[Editors note: A version of this essay is published on the author's personal blog, London, Lanka and Drums.]

For more articles on July 1983, please click here.

• July: Life after 25 years
• Memories of a Black Moon – the 1983 riots in Sri Lanka
• HEY MAN!
• Deepavali Dilemma: Reflections from the Diaspora
• The Disillusionment of the Diaspora

“We urge the UNO to evict three million aliens from Sri Lanka as an effective measure to prevent the conspiracy of exterminating the Sinhala race. The present war, the scarcity of food, obstructing development projects, murdering Sinhala leaders, anti-Buddhist campaigns led by Marxist movements, political instability, depriving Sinhalese of land, employment and business opportunities, mud slinging against Sinhalese throughout the world, the conspiracy to hatch an alien religious state in Sri Lanka, underworld gangs, promoting liquor, gambling and smoking, encouraging corruption and rackets, so-called campaigns of human rights, media and peace- are all happened to be direct consequences of alien forces”.

This, he says, is a publicity poster of a formal petition later to be signed by some thousand intellectuals, like Prof. Mangala Ilangasinghe, Prof. Abhaya Ariyasinghe, Prof. B.K.Basnayaka, Prof. Robert P. Liyanage, Prof. H.M.Moratuwegama, Prof. A.A.Abhayasinghe, Prof. H.T.Basnayaka, Dr. Piyasena Dissanayaka, Lecturer Laksman Watawana and Dr.Bandula Siriwardene.

As a live example of the pathological state of our national ailment this is an ideal document to refute the stance of those who disclaim the existence of any national or ethnic question in Sri Lanka.

This monk is concerned only about the Sinhala leaders getting killed. Laksman Kadiragamar and T.A. Amirthalingam allegedly killed by the same people are not to be grieved. Others like Raviraj, a charismatic democratic leader and an MP of the Tamil people allegedly killed by the government-affiliated paramilitary groups are unimportant, reason being their non-Sinhala origins. The apparent conflict between this racial compassion of a Buddhist monk and the universal value of all lives in true Buddhism is astounding, where nothing but the Gouthama Buddha’s very doctrine itself is at peril. Therefore, to save not only race but also Buddhism, how many more millions would be liable to be evicted from this holy land warrants some fresh calculation, indeed!

Though the practice of deporting citizens from a country of origin was one of the punishments meted out to traitors or criminal elements in the period of ancient kingdoms, modern world hardly resorts to that practice anymore for the simple reason that no other country can be expected to receive those banished. Prince Vijaya and his clan of cohorts, great forefathers of our race were such people deported from India, some two and half millennia ago, according to legend. A fairly contemporary case in point was the edict of Idi Amin, the psycho pathetic former leader of Uganda to deport some tens of thousands of Indians from his country for the sin of one Indian lady not willing to sleep with him. However much he was insane in his own way, his decision affected only those Indians who were not Ugandan citizens, whereas our (B.A. Honors) priest’s vengeful wrath encompasses his own citizens, most probably those who may have lived in this country from the time of Vijaya.

When a mad man is asleep his insanity is hardly visible. But, once he is awake he is unable to keep his mouth shut thereby exposing his derailed state of mind to the whole world. It is from the commandments of this monk that we came to know that the UNO role is also comprised of petty activities like the monitoring of liquor consumption and gambling in Sri Lanka as well! Not only that, a world body that practically failed in arresting alien forces from invading a sovereign state called Iraq is empowered to evict three million people from Sri Lanka, this erudite monk faithfully preaches.

Quoting from two dictionaries he invites us to have a proper understanding as to who would be qualified as aliens:

1.The Oxford Dictionary- NATION (n) community of people of mainly common descent, language, history.
2. Chambers Dictionary- NATION (n) a body of people marked off by common descent, language, culture or historical tradition.

Well, in the first place this is not a definition of aliens or non-nationals as you may see, but of a Nation. Anyway, by way of deduction (while keeping in mind the broad political implications of the term, nation) the most probable meaning of a non-national could be a person not belonging to the aforesaid categories, leaving only foreign nationals like tourists and other immigrants, temporarily resident in the country as aliens. But if this is all our monk is worried about, the best way to address that problem is to inform our Board of Investment, which has some fresh experience in revoking the work permit of a foreign national at Sri Lankan Airlines! Yet, one can hardly believe that there are 3 million foreigners of this type in Sri Lanka, a number nearing one sixth of our population.

He further urges the UNO to evict these 3 million from Sri Lanka and settle them down in, “Norway, Canada, Australia, US or any other place in the world”. When a newly wed husband is not satisfied with the bride, he takes her back not to other people’s houses but to her parent’s home. By what whimsical logic that this priest could be possibly wishing to dump these people in “any other place in the world” is incomprehensible, unless the whole world is to be held responsible directly or indirectly for our own predicament.

Then he goes on to assess the economic gains by way of deporting these people. Three million loaves of bread and one million kilos of rice a day, in addition to business and employment opportunities and land and health sector savings that can be used for the welfare of the true Sinhala Buddhist people in the country are the immediate benefits.

Finally, he refers to the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution as historical precedents where he thinks the national question had been resolved once and for all in 1789 and 1917. As for the Bolshevik Revolution, we are at a loss to reconcile his scathing attack at the beginning of the poster on “anti-Buddhist campaigns led by Marxist movements” with this last minute favorable lesson drawn from the annals of the Bolshevik Revolution.

However, for the benefit of his so-called professorial advisers this much has to be added as an appendix. It is true that the formal concept of Nation State was originated with the French Revolution. But that Revolution had got nothing to do with what we call a national question of ethnic origin, which we witness in Sri Lanka, and which this Thero also has in his mind when pointing an accusing finger to alien elements amongst us.

In fact, the Bolshevik Revolution did have a proper national question and a Commissar for Nationalities as well, by the name of Joseph Stalin who ruthlessly massacred thousands of Bolshevik cadres in Georgia to suppress a national revolt while Lenin was in his sick bed. Having come to the knowledge of this unhappy incident after recuperation, Lenin was swift in categorically condemning this irresponsible and brutal act of Stalin and making an apology for not intervening himself at the proper moment to avoid that catastrophe. (For further reference one can read Lenin’s Last Testament).

However, the fact that after seventy years of Bolshevik Revolution former Soviet Union was fated to be split into some 15 odd separate states on ethnic lines is common knowledge today. Whatever the case may be, in none of these revolutions no one has ever thought even in a daydream of deporting one sixth of its population as a viable solution to the National Question, apé hamuduruwané!

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In the wake of numerous interpretations and reinterpretation of the present political situation as a result of the recent crossover by the political elites, the authors of this article attempt to discuss how citizens perceive the crossover. The results of the latest poll, that was conducted by Social Indicator – Centre for Policy Alternatives are used to discuss the public views in this article. This survey was conducted amongst 1300 individuals residing in 17 districts using the interview technique. It should be noted that this survey was conducted Islandwide with the exception of the North & East and therefore does not capture the opinion of the Sri Lankan Tamil community.

Who’s hurt the most: UNPers or JVPers
Despite the justifying rationales put forward by the MPs who have crossed over, the present political accusations and counter accusations indicate that the crossover has hurt many parties who lost their MPs as well as who lost their political positions. If we were to look at the UNP itself, it lost a group of heavy weights including its deputy leader as a result of the recent crossover. Also it led the opposition leader Mr. Wickramasinghe to a new battle in order to retain the opposition leadership from the JVP; a party that has shown a remarkable capacity in mobilizing the masses against any ruling party. The present government too, is faced with issues resulting from the crossover. President Rajapakse’s main electoral ally, the JVP, permanently walked into the opposition while vowing to topple the Government, accusing the government of going against the electoral mandate, it received in November 2005. Not only that, but this parliamentarian exodus triggered a battle between the president and the two ministers, Mr. Mangala Samaraweera and Mr. Sripathi Suriarachchi, who have done tremendous work in bringing President Mahinda Rajapakse into office. On one hand the crossovers shook the status quo of the government while on the other hand it annulled the memorandum of understanding signed between the SLFP and the UNP even before its ink dried up. In addition, this disappointed the groups who were optimistic and overjoyed about the rare opportunity of a southern consensus.

The disapproval of the crossover is highest amongst the JVP loyalists – 68% disapprove while 15% approve of it. Perhaps this could be a reflection of the feeling of humiliation that they are undergoing after the SLFP sidelined them ignoring the crucial role they performed at the elections. Amongst the UNPers, only 48% disapprove of its own party members crossing to the SLFP while 34% of them could not decide whether to approve or disapprove of it. However, 18% of the UNPers approve the crossover. While on one hand this reflects the frustration of the UNPers with their leadership on the party reforms, on the other hand this is a clear indication of the confused status of the UNPers in the aftermath of losing a group of the most senior members of the party. Interestingly, this survey does not indicate that the SLFPers are over-jubilant about the newly captured elephant herd. This is apparent as only 50% of them approve of the crossover while 30% disapprove.

Crossover for Democracy or Vise Versa:
In the present electoral system, more primacy has been given to the parties than to the MPs. When selecting candidates for an election, most members are at the mercy of the party leaders. Even after being elected to the parliament, MPs will have to support the party decision rather than acting on their conscience. In this context, MPs do not have much option other than crossing over to another party that allows them to voice the concerns of their communities or adhere to one’s conscience. Therefore, MPs crossing over to another party can be considered as an expression of democracy that one may want to practice. This was not the first time where MPs crossed over to another party in the parliament and neither, we suppose, the last time. However, when analyzing the history of crossing over, usually it has been the opposition MPs who crossover to the ruling party instead of otherwise. Some get cabinet portfolios with other privileges while others allegedly receive huge sums of money. Therefore, it is very difficult to decide whether it is principle or perks that matter when deciding to crossover.

It is interesting see on what grounds people have approved or disapproved of the recent MP drain from the opposition to the ruling party. Amongst the people who approve of the recent crossover, 50% think that the move strengthens the Government and the President while 24% think that it would help the Government’s present war with the LTTE. Only 6% approve of the crossover on the basis that it is an expression of democracy. Interestingly, more SLFP loyalists than UNP loyalists approve of the recent crossover as it strengthens the Government and the president. Nevertheless, even for UNPers who support the crossover, the main reason for their approval is that it strengthens the Government and the president.

Amongst the people who disapprove of the recent crossover, 46% disapprove on the basis that it adds a bigger burden to the public due to the the increased number of ministerial posts. However, 9% disapprove on the basis that it damages democracy while 7% and 6% reject the crossover as it goes against the ‘Mahinda Chinthanaya’ and as it will lead to the abrogation of the SLFP- UNP MOU, respectively. It is interesting to see the varying reasons on which different party loyalists disapprove of the recent crossover. The primary reason for the SLFP and UNP loyalists to disapprove of the crossover is the fact that this will become a bigger burden for the already suffering Sri Lankans. However, JVP loyalists who disapprove of the crossover seem to have two main arguments. They think this is a clear violation of the ‘Mahinda Chinthanaya’ that they successfully advocated during the presidential elections and that the large number of present ministerial posts would (will?) increase the burden on the citizens. 29% of JVPers see the recent crossover as against the ‘Mahinda Chinthanaya’, while only 9% of SLFPers think that way.

Hence, when looking at the rationales for approvals and disapprovals, it seems that it is based on three arguments, namely forming a national government, waste of public funds and betraying the mandate received for the ‘Mahinda Chinthanaya’. According to Mr. Karu Jayasuriya, his motive of crossing over was the dire need to join the two main parties in the South, in order to solve the ethnic conflict and establish good governance. When analyzing the (often vague) interviews of President Rajapakse in the wake of the crossover, it seems that both the President and Mr. Jayasuriya are trying to voice that they have the same objectives. If it is the case we do not think anyone would disagree with such a noble objective. Nevertheless, unfortunately what we see in the government today does not reflect the stated objectives.

If the recent cross over means to assist the Government in solving the protracted ethnic conflict, then the Government must be keen on a negotiated settlement on the basis of a federal structure, because, the heavy weights of the reformists who crossed over were the individuals who led the UNP Government’s peace process that insisted on a solution within a federal united Sri Lanka. However, having had their cabinet portfolios, they have not yet shown any active engagement in such activities. Therefore, Minister Thissa Vitharana has to be engaged in a solo battle at the APRC, in bringing forward a constitutional transformation. Given the SLFP’s negative stand on the CFA and the passive commitment to constitutional arrangement, it is not clear what the role of UNP reformist is in transforming SLFPers to perceive for the federal solution that has been agreed in the Oslo Communique in 2003.

Given the wastage of public funds in maintaining the large number of ministries, which was the primary result of the crossover and the prevailing impunity that has high potential to worsen in months to come, do not show a rosy picture on good governance that Mr. Rajapakse and Mr. Jayasuriya are dreaming about. Therefore, the rationales given as the basis for the crossover are difficult for people to stomach.

However, it is undeniable that this recent crossover has made President Rajapakse stronger – a personage whose popularity is anyway on the boom in the context of the recent military victory in the East. Therefore, we believe President Rajapakse enjoys a stronger political position, empowering him to make drastic political decisions in order to solve the country’s ethnic conflict even if he is unable to clean the office of corrupt officials and politicians.

Therefore, in next few months public can witness the real impact of the cross over on the Sri Lankan society and how distance the reality from the claimed motives of the UNP reformists.

Authors:
Pradeep Peiris and Rangani Ranasinghe are researchers of the Social Indicator, the survey research unit of the Centre for Policy Alternatives.

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• Public Perceptions: National Security and/or Human Rights