Archive for the ‘Puttalam’

Muslims and the Eastern Provincial Council Elections in Sri Lanka: Kingmakers or Pawns?

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Photo via Colombo Telegraph As the campaigning for the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) election concludes, there are only a few absolute certainties as to the outcome – most notably that there will be no outright winner.  Given the electoral system, the results of recent elections, the demography in the East and the general voting pattern along communal lines, it is more or less clear that neither the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) nor a possible Tamil National Alliance (TNA) –United National Party (UNP) combine will have a simple majority. In such a context it will be the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) which is contesting independently that will hold the balance of power. The strategic value of the Muslim vote is all too evident, not solely due to the SLMC having been the key focus of pre-nomination lobbying, but also that other political parties and alliances are attempting to shore up their Muslim votes. Once more, the Eastern Muslim polity,…

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Who Killed Razeek? And Why? Unanswered Questions Two Years After His Abduction

Funeral of Pattani Razeek | Photo courtesy of Deutsche Presse Agentur

(Editors’ note: The report below is a follow-up from the last update about Mr. Pattani Razeek’s case, which was published on 17th August 2011 and can be read here.) 1. Background and key events: Mr. Pattani Razeek was a Sri Lankan Human Rights Defender who disappeared on 11th February 2010. At the time of his disappearance, Mr. Razeek was the Managing Trustee of the Community Trust Fund (CTF) (www.ctfsrilanka.org) and an Executive Committee Member of the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) (www.forum-asia.org). For over a year following the disappearance, there was no credible action by the police to investigate the case despite several leads. The chief suspect Shahadbeen Nowshaadh was not arrested until July 2011, despite being identified by police in May-June 2010.  The family, Puttlam Mosque Committee and those campaigning for justice in the case believe that the failure to arrest Nowshaadh is due to the involvement of Minister Rishad Bathiudeen, the Minister of Trade &…

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Who Killed Razeek?

Funeral of Pattani Razeek | Photo courtesy of Deutsche Presse Agentur

Mr. Pattani Razeek’s case is a rare instance where the body of a disappeared person has been found, based on information given by arrested suspects. The arrest of key suspects is itself a rare occurrence in the thousands of disappearance cases in Sri Lanka. It is even more unusual that people connected to a Minister in the ruling regime would be arrested for a serious crime. Razeek’s case had generated mass outrage in his home district of Puttalam. Since the disappearance, protests, signature campaigns, posters and leaflet campaigns were conducted. The family and local Muslim leaders played a prominent role in the campaign. Their efforts were supported at the national level by Razeek’s friends and colleagues, who monitored the investigation and court proceedings, the exhumation, post mortem process and the funeral. 62 Sri Lankan civil society activists including Buddhist and Christian clergy, senior lawyers, academics, media personnel and human rights defenders signed a statement calling for justice in this case….

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Resource book for historians, researchers and media: A year of tweeting from Groundviews

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Visualisation of our Twitter followers. See larger version here. 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…

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21 Years of Hopeless Existence

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Image credit PaperMag For about 21 years, more than 100,000 Internally Displaced People from the Northen Province of Sri Lanka have been languishing in camps.  Mainly from the Muslim community, these people were forced out by the LTTE for crimes of not being Tamil.  In the wake of post conflict debates about reconciliation and rehabilitation, there are now challenges for future resettlement and rehabilitation of this affected community. June 20th was World Refugee Day.  For many it is about remembering the plights of many people the world over, who today are without rights, a state and an identity.  You can picture the Palestinians or the Rohingas or the Kurds.  Over the past week, in Sri Lanka, international attention has turned once again to the 300,000 refugees (or internally displaced people) after the end of the conflict in 2009.  Despite all this attention, very little is said about the plight of the other major victims and refugees of the 30 year…

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Old Mannar Road and IDPs Access

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Photo of Mannar-Puttalam road, courtesy Panoramio Environmentalists have gone to courts demanding that the road connecting Mannar and Puttalam that runs through the Wilpattu National Park be permanently closed. The opening of the old Mannar-Puttalam Road on January 24 2010 was seen as a crucial step in supporting the Northern IDP return process, especially for Muslims displaced from Mannar district. The Southern-most division of Mannar, Musali had the largest concentration of Northern Muslims and was the only Muslim majority division prior to the expulsion in 1990. This road provides easy and low cost access from Puttalam to Musali in Southern Mannar as opposed to the other route that goes via Medawachchiya, which takes double the time (Puttalam- Medawachchiya – Marichchukadi 235km vs Puttalam – Wilpattu – Marichchukadi – 77km) and triple the cost, from Rs. 320 versus Rs. 100. Saving Rs. 220 per trip means a lot to the IDPs. For this cost, an IDP family struggling to have one…

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Content digest: Full coverage of the 18th Amendment, 1 – 9 September 2010

Groundviews was read well over 22,000 times from 1 – 9 September, when content and debates around the 18th Amendment to the constitution reached their peak. Over 170 comments were featured in the site during this week alone, totalling around 65,000 words. In addition to the content on the site, our Twitter feed posted well over one hundred and fifty updates during the course of the week. Content on Groundviews was republished or referred to by the Sunday Leader, the New York Times, Le Monde Diplomatique dozens of other local and international Twitter accounts of leading journalists and others, Livemint.com published by the Wall Street Journal in India and a range of other blogs and websites. Around one hundred highlights from our tweets anchored to the 18th amendment are now archived in four parts. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 A full list of content on the 18th Amendment published on Groundviews can be accessed by clicking here,…

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Where do they go from here?

On our way to the first scheduled hearing of Northern Muslims who were expelled by the LTTE in 1990, we spotted a group of men working hard out in the open, under the midday sun, and we stopped to have a conversation with them. Eight days earlier they had made their way from Puttalam to Marichchakatty with the goal of initiating the ‘journey home’ after the expulsion almost two decades ago.  Happy to leave their landless status in Puttalam and their livelihood as daily wage laborers, they were looking forward to reclaiming their lost lives as farmers and fishermen in their native villages. Although the end of the war heralded a new era and sparked hope of ‘returning home’ the people are caught in a quagmire of challenges and obstacles. The absence of permanent structures and conditions conducive to living has compelled the women—their wives and daughters– to restrict themselves to temporary visits. The distressing lives of the displaced indicate…

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We Regret To Inform You That Your Condolences Cannot Be Accepted At This Time

We regret to inform you that your condolences cannot be accepted at this time. At present, both our pain and our hope defy that word, which has been offered and denied us, which we need and do not need, and which in any case we cannot accept, because they (your condolences) will not reach from what has happened to what will come. We find the word condolences stunning in its insufficiency for past and future. We evacuated our homes in the light; we vanished from our homes in the dark; we walked away from our families, toward the weapons, and wished that we could turn around. Our bodies entered the earth in places we cannot now identify, and so we are everywhere, blown to dust. By both dying in and surviving this place, we will live here long after your condolences become a ghost in your throat. We joined others’ battles, willingly and unwillingly; we walked forward on paths not…

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The Muslim question and resettlement of Muslim IDPs in post-war Sri Lanka: Two comprehensive interviews

The question of Muslim identity, displacement and forcible evictions during war and their enduring socio-political impact in post-war Sri Lanka is often underplayed in the media and mainstream politics. Muslim IDPs in the East are amongst those who have been in IDP camps the longest, often in conditions no better than Tamils interned in Manik Farm. Their plight has been covered on Groundviews on a number of occasions including, Feature story: Cries for help from Puttalam The divide between Muslims and Tamils: Perspective of an IDP Forgotten IDPs from the North The voice of an IDP single mother in Puttlam Twenty years after the Muslims were evicted from the Jaffna peninsula by the LTTE, the scars of war still remain, resettlement continues to be vexed issue and concerns unique to the Muslim community even more marginal to mainstream politics than the fulfilment of legitimate Tamil aspirations. The following interviews, conducted in late 2009 and March 2010, look at these issues…

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Needed: An Agenda for Reform on Groundviews

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Whilst it is not clear as to whether we would be voting in both the presidential and general elections on the same day, it is clear that we will be voting in at least one of them in the next three months, followed soon thereafter by the other.  Most likely it will be the presidential elections since it is the president who has to decide and since he is much more popular than his party. Moreover, we have been told that he is willing to sacrifice, if necessary, two years of his first term in order to secure a second and a parliamentary majority nearest to the heart’s desire. 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…

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Feature story: Cries for help from Puttalam

S.M. Jinnah seated in front of his home

Less that a kilometre away from a cluster of government offices in Puttalam dedicated to the welfare of Muslim IDPs is the home of thirty one year old Madeena, her jobless husband and six children. The small, completely cadjan thatched hut, teeters upon the mercy of the weather. It is one of the temporary shelters in the string of camps for the DPs, which dot Puttalam. Madeena’s camp, a vast barren land which faces the Puttalam Saltern, is known as Saltern 01 and houses 120 families.  It has the most difficult living conditions and is adjacent to the camp, called Saltern 2, which has 65 families. In both the camps the houses are made of either wood or cadjan. In Madeena’s home the walls, roof and door are all a mass of mildew because there is no money to replace the cadjan. If one stoops enough to enter the shack streaks of sunlight filtering through the rain decayed coconut cadjan…

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The voice of an IDP single mother in Puttlam

Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai “We lack road, water, and housing facilities. Our children are unable to attend school regularly as there is no proper transport service. We don’t have any facility and leading the same life even now as same as 18 years ago”. This is a cry of an Internally Displaced single mother from Jaffna, A. Shahula who chewed betel and shared her agony. She is living with her two kids in Saltern 2 welfare camp in Puttlam. Most of them are still leading their lives in welfare camps, and lack the normal living standard of a person. A large number of internally displaced persons from Jaffna are living in Thillaiyady, which is called “Little Jaffna”. These Internally Displaced Persons feel that, there is a discrimination between the Internally Displaced Persons from Jaffna and Mannar. They are frustrated about the long delay in distribution of services and goods. The People’s Revival Front was inaugurated in order to fulfill the needs of…

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Forgotten IDPs from the North

‘Cries from Puttalam’ For those familiar with the fairytales of the Grimm Brothers, the story of the young girl who equals her love for her father to her love for salt is no doubt a resounding one. Banished from her home by a wounded father who assumes her love for him to be trivial, she later gains grace when he realises the true depth of her love for him. However, for the Muslim refugees of Puttalam, life is no fairytale. The situation is certainly grim, and the taste of salt is now bitter. For these Muslims, who once led peaceful and productive lives in the north of the country, their lives were shattered when they were ordered to leave their homes in just two hours – or face dire consequences. Leaving everything they possessed behind them, they fled with their families, hoping no doubt to return when things calmed down. Little did they know that their lives, which had turned…

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The divide between Muslims and Tamils: Perspective of an IDP

Opinion of Fathima, 24 and mother of one child from Karambe camp in Puttlam “I was eight year -old, when we were forced out of Jaffna. I was crying throughout the journey from Jaffna to Puttlam. We came to Puliyankulam, Vavuniya and Puttalam. It took three days for us to reach Puttlam. Initially I was in a camp along with the others. Food and immediate needs were met by various organizations. My other family members bring to my reluctant memory even now. I forgot every sweet memories of my mother town in Jaffna. I don’t know the present situation our house or the surroundings in Jaffna. The unbearable issues is that we lost our culture. I will not go back to Jaffna, because I am used to this place and people, and it’s very hard for me to go back and adjust. The Internally Displaced Persons are still called “Agathi” or refugee by several host community members. We did not…

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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