Encounters with Upper Echelons
“What is the similarity between President Mahinda Rajapakse and our former President Dingiri Banda Wijetunge?” the Sri Lankan Tamil man, Sivapuranam Thevaram, of whom I have told you much in these pages…
“What is the similarity between President Mahinda Rajapakse and our former President Dingiri Banda Wijetunge?” the Sri Lankan Tamil man, Sivapuranam Thevaram, of whom I have told you much in these pages…
Some photographs of ‘aid’ being provided to Sri Lankan Tamils in Keppapilavu were recently posted online. The Keppapilavu community were the last to be released from the Menik Farm Camp, but were…
Image courtesy The present crisis engulfing the Jaffna University may be a turning point for the Tamil politics and Sri Lankan politics at large. There are three important issues, I would like…
Some years ago while on a visit from abroad, my niece was entertained and perhaps a little shocked when she overheard comments broadcast over the loudspeaker from a nearby school. It was…
Photo courtesy Keynote Address at Judges’ Conference on 22nd December 2012 by Justice Wigneswaran. For an in-depth interview with Justice Wigneswaran, conducted one year ago, click here. Download the speech as a…
Image courtesy Centre for Human Rights The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) Final Report contains many positive recommendations which merit immediate attention. Unfortunately, the present administration has given virtually no indication…
Photo by Kuni Takahashi/Bloomberg, via Bloomberg I walk the hills rising from an azure blue Caribbean sea, and try to envision the history that I have been told, a history of an island,…
On 18th December 2012, at around 10pm in Sri Lanka, Valerie Amos, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator took to Twitter, ostensibly to answer questions related to the…
Image courtesy Green College I interviewed over email the award-winning author Shyam Selvadurai on a new initiative called Write to Reconcile, of which he is Project Director. featured an in-depth interview with…
Image courtesy Flickr Debates of the Senate (Hansard) 1st Session, 41st Parliament, Volume 148, Issue 130 Wednesday, December 12, 2012 Hon. Hugh Segal: Honourable senators, the recent and further steps by the…
Photo courtesy “Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois economy into confusion, violates everything that seemed inviolable to the Revolution of 1848, makes some tolerant of revolution and makes others lust for it, and…
Work and travel kept me from writing about two significant theatre productions in the past month. Ariel Dorfman’s ‘Widows’ directed by Feroze Kamardeen and produced by Sirraj Abdul Hameed was staged at…
Photo courtesy Chaos and Fear Much has happened in the space of three months. Soon after the Eastern Provincial Council election came the (Heroes’ Day) incidents in Jaffna. It would seem…
After the violent unrest that started late November in Jaffna, (for photos and background, read has continuously received updates on the ground situation. In addition to forwarding these updates via email, we…
Cartoon by W R Wijesoma – Development that leaves some behind Paul Hermann Müller (1899 – 1965) was a Swiss chemist. He won the 1948 Nobel Prize in physiology (medicine) for his…